md_
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by throwaway in Would you use a FOSS Instagram-like social platform? by throwaway
Do you use it, then?
I was looking into hosting my own instance. Sharing photos from trips was the first time that I missed social media. But Pixelfed looks complicated to set up.
If someone made a much lighter and simpler to self-host federated image sharing software (eg database-less, limited Javascript use, etc), I would prefer it over existing solutions.
md_ wrote
Reply to What would you like to study at university? by videl
I am fortunate enough to be studying something I like, but I wish I had the option for a minor in Computer Science or programming more specifically.
University takes way too much time from my life, to the extend that I only do things I enjoy, like reading literature or learning new languages if it is part of my degree (otherwise it would have to take time away from working to fund being a student, or time from studying). I want to be able to make more substantial contributions to Libre Software, so any chance to learn how to program (principles, and popular languages in libre software development like Python and C++) would be very welcome, but my uni doesn't have anything like that.
md_ wrote (edited )
Reply to comment by ziq in An idea for altering the vote counts to improve engagement by ziq
And it's kind of our job to curate
I don't know why there's this sense of obligation. People are free to choose what they read and what they skip. I don't read all posts that show up in my RSS reader for example.
I understand that I have a very different use for forums with link posts than other people, and as long as /new is kept, I am not that affected by the changes (other than having to see people get hurt by the psychological effects of being rated by their peers, which makes me skip coming to Raddle for a week at a time, because it's hard to watch).
But yeah, for me Raddle, and Reddit in the past, are discussion boards. From time to time you discover a new blog someone links in a forum post, but that's not the main function of a forum imv. If curating went away, the downvote anxiety attacks would go away, and discussions will improve.
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by ziq in An idea for altering the vote counts to improve engagement by ziq
It already does that and when people get downvoted, they get anxiety. I've seen it happen countless times. If the system upvotes everyone, that won't be a problem.
There's for sure some extra psychological effect caused by seeing negative numbers, but I'm pretty sure that it would persist even if only positive numbers are used.
It's not what postmill is tho, the software is a link aggregator.
Postmill has text-posts (even links are text posts with a featured external link), and threaded discussions. Non-chronological ordering of forum threads is a relatively new idea, but it doesn't radically depart from what we generally call a forum board.
At least 95% of people. Most people that come here don't even comment or even make an account, they're only here for the articles.
I don't think any usability will be taken away from those people if externally-imposed curation goes away.
md_ wrote
If it federates, like https://pixelfed.social/ for example.
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by ziq in An idea for altering the vote counts to improve engagement by ziq
But what if you want to read articles for months or years ago?
Maybe indexing by month/arbitrary time period would be a good feature request then. /Top is only incidentally covering that need, it's not why it exists.
I'd like the system to reward engagement
I don't think that Raddle should introduce a system of psychological conditioning.
If it didn't have voting altogether it would just be a regular message board
That's a positive, in my book.
and that's not why people come here
Not everyone, surely.
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by ziq in An idea for altering the vote counts to improve engagement by ziq
I don't like the idea of someone else curating my reading, be it other people, or a machine. I just go for /new all the time.
In addition, it seems that there's a tendency in a lot of people to get too invested on scores like that, creating a lot of personal strife for them.
So imv, post scoring is useless, and it seems to upset people. That's (ironically) -2 for post scoring. What are the upsides of keeping it?
md_ wrote
Just remove it altogether. There should not be "Hot", "Top", and "Controversial" tabs.
md_ wrote
Maybe I'm mentally exhausted at the moment, so my worst reflexes are taking over, but I'm not going to weep for LGBT conservatives who want to uphold bullshit like family values.
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by An_Old_Big_Tree in How Do We Make Online Feminism Less US-Centric? by An_Old_Big_Tree
And thanks for sharing this posts and others like it.
The intersection of language, politics, and activism is important, but often people who think about language, and people who think about politics do not listen to each other.
md_ wrote
I would prefer it if the voting system went away, and I wouldn't find a new ranking system necessary (no need for "Top", "Hot", or "Controversial" pages).
I think it's best for for each person to curate their feed manually.
md_ wrote
Culture shapes language, and language shapes culture. Often it’s like the proverbial chicken and egg; impossible to discern what came first.
The first claim is overwhelmingly more true than the second, so it's quite easy to discern what came first, but OK, I get their point.
I do agree with the observation that a lot of online politics, including Raddle btw, are presented with a US audience in mind, even when non-US-based activists are the ones writing about them.
That's not necessarily a language issue, as I've seen many authors writing in languages other than English, in places definitely outside of the Anglosphere, who are adopting US political analyses without any modifications to make them work in the local context. Racism (which they mention) is one such case. Racism works different elsewhere, and every time I hear a Levantine progressive identify (with the intend of recognising their privileges) "as a white man", I cringe. "No, you are not enjoying white privilege, you are enjoying dominant-ethnicity privilege. There are people with much fairer skin than you who work in almost slave-labour conditions for you to have your quality of life. You picked the wrong model to understand racism in this region, and that obscures part of the reality. "
Of course writing in a register that is accessible to people who are not familiar with the latest coinages of niche online communities is also important. I've seen English texts geared towards international audiences that were full of Germanisms and other region-specific cultural references and idioms that were impossible to follow as well. Picking the correct register matters, and there's a lot to be said about activist communities linguistic practices.
md_ wrote
Reply to Best way to respond to a fash troll? by ziq
Not to respond.
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by GrimWillow in Would anyone be opposed to a bot that posts web-comic posts from various radical comic artists? by GrimWillow
Yeah, that's why I didn't phrase it as an objection outright. I will live with it if it comes to pass.
But generally, I don't see the point of bots and automatic posting. We have RSS for that. I follow webcomics over RSS, and if I see a strip that's worth sharing, I share.
md_ wrote
Reply to Would anyone be opposed to a bot that posts web-comic posts from various radical comic artists? by GrimWillow
Because I browse /all/new, any high volume posting is making the experience frustrating (eg the MEGA links for a while were very annoying).
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by thelegendarybirdmonster in by !deleted1759
In general, I'd say yeah, municipal-level politics, it can meaningful to participate (voting for council members, not for mayor), but I also haven't done it yet, because there wasn't a non-party affiliated list with ideas worth supporting yet, and running an electoral campaign for the municipal council is at this point not the priority of the far-left milieu in my town.
md_ wrote
Reply to by !deleted7175
Another vote for Kdenlive. It's easy enough to use while having some of the features the other casual-user-oriented ones do not have.
Hyperbola probably has a recent enough version of Kdenlive, but Trisquel is probably on an old version, so not recommended. The rendering will be slow on an X200 unfortunately. I think there's no video encoding hardware acceleration on the GMA 4500MHD Intel Graphics chip it uses, so all the work will be done by the CPU.
A great feature of the Kdenlive in recent versions though, is the ability to work with "proxy clips". So you can make all the editing on low-resolution versions of the clips, and then switch to the full quality source files only for the export. It makes the editing process more tolerable on weaker computers.
md_ wrote
Reply to comment by 2145 in ZeroPhone Is "Coming Soon": A Raspberry Pi-Based, Linux-Powered Phone For Just $50 by mofongo
As an ARM device, it's near the Android side of the spectrum at the moment. There is an effort to write replacement firmware, but the progress is slow.
ARM SoCs are generally as unfree as x86 computers at the moment.