The idea is to gauge community interest/relevance and facilitate content discovery. I feel it is becoming a bit dated method of accomplishing this and easily gamed.

For the most part as highlighted above, yes only one account/instance and you can engage with anything that instance federates with.

However there are already cases where large instances have defederated from others, in which case you will not be able to engage if your local has been defederated from a community you want to access.

For this reason it is a good idea to have multiple, but use one as a primary.

Hey folks, guy in the cross post. Thanks for doing that @[email protected] , I feel it is an important discussion for people to be a part of across the Lemmiverse.

Seems there is some positive engagement on here, and maybe a couple that are a bit confused. I'm going to assume they aren't just curmudgeons because why would you waste time commenting if you weren't making an expression of interest in good faith, but maybe not ready to fully invest yet?

To expand on the TLDR; many new users are coming from monolith platforms (such as reddit; Meta; etc) into the brave new world of federated platforms (like Lemmy) without fully understanding the difference in privacy principles between these two models. Many, more experienced, users do not understand it fully themselves and they make potentially dangerous assertions, or at least ones that could mislead less experienced users into believing Lemmy behaves in a way that it doesn't.

It's all fine and good to say "Everything posted on the internet stays. Never post anything you don't want public", but in practice, and especially people coming from monolith platforms, they may make mistakes if they are not highly cognizant of some distinctions between the two models of public, social engagement.

If you are certain you'll never, ever have any risk of making such a mistake, the subtle distinction won't matter to you. If you aren't sure (it is very easy to trip up here) you are going to want to be educated on where some of the potential hazards are, and you will want to be very, very, very careful. Like you never have been before.

Even some of the most confident, let's call them, "perfectly private posters", often get a little shook when I inform them their votes are entirely public, when they had previously made an assumption they were not due to familiarity with a monolith platform where votes are private. It seems intuitive that they should be private here, but that is not the case. This is a very prevalent misunderstanding right now, and very eye opening to some.

I much prefer the model of federated because it really gives the user the full control of their privacy to engage to the level they are comfortable with. But it can be very dangerous if not managed appropriately.

I also feel the wider community is not doing a very good job of communicating this, which is validated by the chord it seems to have struck over on Beehaw. But I come with solutions: a haywire, but comprehensive essay on some of the things a user should be aware of. I have also started a project that provides templates for privacy policies so that admins can add accountability to their instances while also protecting themselves.

Anyway, a very complex subject many are still learning to navigate, and not something easily reduced to a tldr; As it is, this version is half the length of the original, and you would have been half way through it by now if you just went to the source.

If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them.

I’ve done a lot of low rate or entirely volunteer work for small, often non-profit organizations in the past, and don’t fall into the trap. It can be thankless and it can be soul sucking.

However, obviously if you want to eat and if this is your only income right now you’ll have to stick it out a bit. So I hope we are talking like you are virtually working no hours for that rate, leaving you time to expand your resume on your own.

I have often been asked in the past by friends or acquaintances how you get a good career in programming, and the answer typically is either luck, or a lot of your own hard work.

I don’t know what the job market is like these days, but historically your papers mean very little to getting a job. A link to your Github goes a long way to demonstrate your abilities and provides a much higher degree of confidence you know what you are doing because they can actually look at your work, and if you are contributing to other projects, that you are a team player. As one speaker said at a Google Q&A I watched when asked if a PhD would increase their chance of getting hired: “well, we won’t hold having a PhD against you”.

There is also a lot of free course material out there to various degrees of difficulty.

Programming is becoming more and more competitive, and the ones that succeed have made it their passion, which does mean a lot of unpaid work. So either find projects you are happy to provide your time to to sharpen your skill, or start your own project that you can get satisfaction in building. Actually programming something is always the fastest way to improve your skill.

I've also found it useful to have multiple to compartmentalize the subjects I subscribe to on each and limit what I see when I am in different "modes".

I've been looking to do the same for the many pros I've seen posted here, but maybe someone can give me some clarity on a very big downside to me.

From my understanding most instances are pretty liberal with federating anyone, then blacklisting bad actots or problematic instances. However as adoption grows is there not the potential for larger instances to move towards a whitelist, and possibly move towards only federating with known, established instances or ones with established conditions? Possibly flat out banning personal instances due to moderation overhead?

Perhaps my understanding is incorrect, but seems to me that there could be a big future risk your personal server turns into an island and all of your past engagement is no longer in your control.

I've found this in particular with lemmy.world with posts made on lemmy.ml communities, which seems to be the case in your example as well (the community you posted to is ThinkPad@lemmy.ml).

Lemmy.world has been defederated in at least one high profile case. I have a suspicion .ml may have defederated as well without announcing (unless maybe we have defederated them here @lemmy.ca? Still working out how source of truth works myself). edit: checked, both still list .world as linked

If an instance defederates another it means they will not accept engagement from that instance. However, if that instance does not reciprocate the defederation they still get a copy, and it is isolated to their instance. Ie. Comments/votes only appear on that instance and the instances they federate with.

Not entirely sure though as I would think that means lemmy.world would still receive edit/deletion broadcasts which it doesn't from my experience. So maybe just a bug.

Basically, at least from my experiments, Lemmy.world gets the original post / comment, and all engagement on the lemmy.world instance stays isolated there (lemmy.world has a large user base therefore often more engagement).

This is going to be an ongoing problem for folks because there really isn't a way to see who (instance) is talking to who (instance) (edit: incorrect; a user pointed out a place to check, but it isn't always going to be clear unless you constantly check). Without a platform wide policy of mutual, reciprocal defederation, there is going to be a lot of fractured discussion users will never be notified of.

*edit: may not be an issue with defed. See comment below.

I hear ya. The inferred beginner part was more what I was getting at.

Yeah, discovery is super frustrating right now. Would love to see a hide feature for both posts and categories. Find a lot of great categories from browsing new, but the majority I would be happy to never see again.

Unless they are going for a distressed finished look, this is a horrible idea. Even with experience there is no way you'll get a flat finish; without experience you'll have deep pockets and very uneven, rounded corners. Maybe slightly faster than a belt sander, but it'd be negligible and definitely not after all the finish sanding that will be required after.

is there a option to toss a coin to my Witcher(ie the person paying for back-up/server space

Isn't very easy to find if you are using the app and took me a while to find myself, but on the main page there are these donation platforms listed:

https://liberapay.com/lemmy.ca/ https://opencollective.com/lemmy-ca

Also could be user name is too long or you have already registered using the same email (email has to be unique / account)

Depends on what you consider "smaller" and "decent". Also what your overall budget is for purchase and maintenance, your ability to do the maintenance, and what your expectations are. Very important to determine even before starting to look.

You don't specify what you consider "small" trips either, or the comfort you expect on those trips, which would be key points in expectation. Plenty of great overnight trips you can have in a sailing dingy depending on the location and your tolerance for roughing it. Heck, depending on your tolerance, people have sailed around the world in little 4 meter boats, open canoes and all sorts of wacky things.

Also consider what resources you have for storing it. The cost of mooring, and consider a swing keel or otherwise trailerable if that is not a cost you want to continually incur (and also consider the additional maintenance of a boat left in water).

Cost of purchase can be all over the map, usually tethered to the sense of urgency the owner has to sell more than the actual value of the boat (see cost of mooring/maintenance).

You may even find a lot of boats that drop to free, or might as well be free. But be very wary of a very inexpensive sailboat (at least one that is larger than a dingy). I've had a free boat that only cost a can of resin and a can of flat black paint in its life with me. I sailed it for many years and many miles until the keel literally fell off. But I've also had a free boat that ended up costing $16,000 over a few years, then another $4000 to crush and responsibly dispose of it, without sailing it once.

Regardless of budget or expectations, start visiting your local docks. Sailors are often looking for others to infect, you'll gain lots of information whether you wanted it or not, and often leads on boats. Though I feel a word of caution is warranted here: listen to everything a sailor has to tell you, trust none of it. Not to say it isn't going to be reliable information, but take what you gather from the docks and use it as a reference point for your own research. A lot of it can be unreliable.

As noted in other comments, get familiar with maintenance, it is essential to survival. But you can also easily fall into the trap of being a boat builder first, sailor very distant second if you purchase a boat based on what you think you can make of it. There are many trite jokes about the money pit sailing can be. This is true as evidenced by vast majority of boats rotting at docks. As a fully committed lifestyle however, it really isn't expensive. The key is to be living the lifestyle. Adjust your expectations to the constraints of your current life to maximize the amount of time actually sailing. There will always be another good deal on the potential "ideal" boat with a "little" work when have the capacity and experience to take such a thing on.

From someone that has spent zero to well over 200K and counting on boats, my advice would be to maximize your budget for condition of the boat. As in, if you have a small budget, get a very small boat in very good condition. If you want a larger boat, wait until you have the budget for one in very good condition. It will always be more work and more money than you expect. You'd be shocked how many thousands you can spend on something as simple as stainless bolts.

Don't know your budget or starting expectations, but personally, if I lost it all and had to start again, I'd get $5K together and buy the nicest trailerable sailing/rowing dingy I could find; buy a tent; find a nice sheltered area with a couple of islands to explore. And just sail non-stop while squirreling away money for your dream. You'll gain more experience through pleasure over pain that way.

If you are a social type, there are often folks looking for crew. I was never one for that myself, but I suspect it is a far more sensible way to learn than "I wonder what would happen if I did this?".

The larger dream of living on the hook is totally rad. I encourage anyone that is committed to the idea.

Lemmy is still in very early development and there seems to be a lot of issue with signup (which sucks as most people will just give up). I've had it work sometimes in one browser, then not other times but work in another. Doesn't seem to be browser or platform specific, just timing or change in what values are being used. It doesn't return any user feedback to the user on validation or other error so all problems look the same at the moment.

Only PostgreSQL at the moment. I also don't believe it currently supports SSL connection to Postgres so you'll want to run it on the same machine or have a tunnel to your DB.

There is zero chance you'll get it running on anything else without significant code change.

Same here, same device.

I believe .world has, though it still shows up as linked: https://lemmy.ca/instances

However there is another thread here about .world federation issues. I tested it and .world isn't syncing here.

@smorks does the configuration or tool you are using for this reflect in the linked/blocked page or is it blocked on another level when this +10,000 user block kicks in?

*edit: tested from .ml which has more than 10,000 users and worked. However if it is by "active" user, .ml, behaw below 10,000 where .world is above.

Are you planning to open source it at all?

I am also wondering this myself. I don't fault anyone for not, but may have an impact on my long term commitment with where my interest in this space is.

Also latest updates seemed to fix the issue with fold type phones.

You're right, there is only up/down vote systems with a user base that is in no way verified or otherwise restricted to a single vote/real person, or corporate algos.

There are plenty of different models. Do I fault the Lemmy devs for using it? No. Is it ideal for content discovery? Not really.

This keeps on being asserted but it is far from true. If defederation happens or your local goes offline, posts/comment history/profile/votes will remain on other widely used instances and out of your control.

A large instance has already defederated with 2 other larger instances. If you run a personal instance I feel it will become very, very common to be be locked out of managing your data.

You can expect defederation to happen all the time as that is a deliberate part of the open federated model.

And that is to say nothing about federation simply breaking sometimes.

I already have been locked out of content that exists on other instances that will remain forever and I've only been around a short while. I don't care personally, but people keep asserting this claim that only bad actors or scrapers will dupe your data. Federated data is very different than a non-federated copy for many reasons and that matters to some people. Everyone should understand deleting your account, or modifying your content will often not remove your content outside your instance, and many people engage outside their local. It will likely exist in federated, Lemmy searchable form forever in some capacity (in the current iteration anyway).

Not trying to spread FUD, but if we want to maintain users they have to be educated as they will find out eventually and not be happy.

I have some working drafts on policies for admins to help them navigate and explain their responsibilities to their users.

It is a bit of a weird read outside of the context, but this is an optional primer I have drafted that will hopefully help explain the distinctions:

https://github.com/BanzooIO/federated_policies_and_tos/blob/main/optional-privacy-policy-intro.md