Spyke

Replies

Comment on

Lemmy resembles the old reddit experience so well that they even emulate the old reddit server performance

Reply in thread

  1. Yes, that's how federation works. Your local host may be faster than the instance you are browsing content on, especially if that other instance is getting hugged to death or DDOSed. But even if that is happening, the rest of the Fediverse works just fine.

  2. No, instances are not mirrored. That's probably possible in activitypub (the protocol that Lemmy and similar Fediverse platforms use), but unlikely to happen due to server resources and funding.

Think of it as a bunch of forums on the Internet, where an account made on one forum allows you to comment and see content on other forums, but you don't need a separate account for all of them. Federation somewhat simplifies things, but there are drawbacks that I won't get into here.

Comment on

No More Windows! Indian Defence Services are Switching to Linux: Indian Govt offices to use Linux distribution, replacing Microsoft Windows

South Africa has been the exception.

Well yes, it's really difficult to switch when government only just managed to migrate to Windows 10 on most machines, and still uses Microsoft's document formats for everything aside from PDF.

Up until a few years ago, UNISA was still using public-facing IIS servers and SARS was paying up the wazoo to maintain old Flash applets that people used to file their taxes.

One government department managed to waste R5 million on a WordPress website that used a $15 theme.

games

Comment on

Ubisoft Clarifies That It Won't Delete Game Libraries Due to Game Inactivity After Fan Panic

Reply in thread

This is the basis of the ASUS warranty issues recently when they had exploding AM5 motherboards and vague text about EXPO support voiding warranty, painting themselves into a corner when they only had unsupported firmware that would technically void warranty.

It doesn't matter that the company says "Oh we won't enforce that rule" but they still keep the rule in place.

Comment on

Second largest Lemmy instance preemptively un-friends Facebook

Reply in thread

Meta's decision to work towards federation does need to be taken with a lot of salt. Corporations using open platforms or open source to make their money has always resulted in power imbalances that, left unchecked, may become impossible to solve without concessions from said corporation, or else [X] thing just gets hung out to dry.

You have to hope the people running that company understand that these problems exist, and actively work against ruining everything for everyone else that relies on it.

Comment on

Grateful to be here.

Reply in thread

I work for an online retailer for computer components. Reddit helped/helps give me perspective of what people think about tech products, what they're looking to buy, and I used it to keep up with the news in the hardware-focused subreddits. Reddit's community is sufficiently large enough that there are opinions you can read from enthusiasts to homelabbers to people who don't know what to do when Windows screws up their Radeon Software installation.

As a former technical writer, it helps fill in gaps about things I don't know enough about, like where people on lower budgets actually choose to spend their money in a build, and whether or not the RTX 4060 is actually terrible, as opposed to it not meeting expectations of an audience that it's not aimed at.

Comment on

So, where do we go now?

Reply in thread

That's not a realistic proposal if Facebook volunteers dev resources to improve and support ActivityPub and we grow to rely on that. In the same way that Google co-opted the W3C to now just accept Chrome as the default, I can see something similar happen if Threads really kicks off and has a ton of effort put into it.

It's a lot more grey than you'd expect given the absurd resources that nation states have compiled to try and usurp Google's dominance, but all the same I'd rather not have the internet rely on something made by a publicly traded company that cuts projects on a whim.