Once again, thanks to the talents of @Zoe O'Connell, our #friendica server is back running on our own little Pi, with a brand new and not totally shite this time SSD.
So a little problem with the Fediverse. Some platforms, such as #Friendica, which I cannot stop going on about, allow very rich content. Not just going over 500 characters, but tables, quoting of other posts, properly threaded replies, rich text, etc etc.
But anything you're gonna write is gonna get federated to the elephant in the room, which because it's pretending to be #twitter is very much a lowest common denominator.
Should we just go ahead and do it anyway, or should users of more compositionally capable #fediverse software limit ourselves to what we know is going to render sensibly on #mastodon and its various clones?
Itβs up to each #Fediverse program to handle all of the content itβs receiving, as best it can, in whatever way it thinks best for its users.
So yep, go ahead and post whatever you want in the format that makes the most sense for the content.
To hold yourself back for the sake of #Mastodon is to deprive all of the other clients of better content, while also maintaining that same, crippled status quo.
I also wonder whether there are different social norms between the platforms or whether that's kind of gone by the wayside since everyone expects their content to be federated freely anyway. (Does friendica have content warnings?)
mostly I think itβd be good to push it, to get people to appreciate fediverse is more than just Mstdn, and help nudge new client apps in right direction too. But nothing too ridiculous, to keep it as open as possible
Some federation statistics from my #Friendica server. #Mastodon is by far and away the biggest software platform we're federating with, but interestingly, Friendica is now number 2. I'm sure it was nothing like that last week:
Platform
Β
Instances
Mastodon
5309
Friendica
170
Hometown
114
Akkoma
21
Pleroma
18
Lemmy
17
GoToSocial
10
Pixelfed
7
Misskey
6
Honk
2
SocialHome
2
Peertube
1
WordPress
1
WriteFreely
1
other
30
Looks like Friendica is getting some of the recognition it deserves!
Thanks to Herculean effort from @Zoe O'Connell, our little #friendica server has dealt with the backlog of my post about GRA reform going viral (Friendica is REALLY bad at that) and then the cheap PoS SSD I bought failing half way through.
The offending piece of crap is pictured after I disassembled it. Even when working it was only as fast as an SD card. Truly dreadful.
Anyway, the friendica server is temporarily running in a data centre in Madrid (apparently itβs that easy to move Docker containers), but because the URL is fixed for all time when you create a server, the little Pi is sitting there acting as a concierge for that VPS and sending all data to it via an SSH tunnel. String and sellotape, whatever.
I have bought it a shiny proper branded SSD from Samsung that goes like shit off a Teflon coated shovel and we will likely be migrating it back this weekend.
Lesson learned: you CAN host a personal instance on an RPi on your home network, but please, for the love of god, do not buy the cheapest piece of shit SSD you can find. You will regret it if you do.
zoe@friendica:~$ sudo du -sh mysql nginx friendica
865M mysql
160K nginx
155M friendica
zoe@friendica:~$ docker image ls
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
friendica latest 7e3551926c66 43 hours ago 652MB
yobasystems/alpine-mariadb latest 0e44a1aef456 6 weeks ago 238MB
nginx 1.15-alpine dd025cdfe837 3 years ago 16.1MB
zoe@friendica:~$
I'm guessing for anyone on Mastodon that looks hopelessly mangled but should make some sense on Friendica. Also, I have no idea why I pulled such an old Nginx image. I should fix that.
The existing SD card knows nothing about Friendica or anything else, including permanent iptables rules. All it's had is a sudo apt-get install tshark for some initial troubleshooting.
Might as well put a fresh install on the new SSD if you have a spare Pi.
Hi! Had lots of follow requests on the back of my post about my work in Stonewall back in the day.
What I'm finding is that Friendica does not cope well with lots of followers in the same way Mastodon does, so I'm going to be limited in the follow requests I accept here.
But I will retoot interesting stuff on my Mastodon account: @Sarah, I promise!
In 2014, the UK charity, Stonewall, had a new CEO: Ruth Hunt.
Ruth wanted to make Stonewall trans inclusive. Up until that point it hadn’t been. Part of that effort was to recruit an advisory group from the UK trans community.
I was on that group. I ended up as its vice chair.
We spent the next year and a bit creating a document called “A Vision For Change”, which detailed what we thought the areas that trans equality campaigning should focus on in Britain.
Then the Brexit referendum happened and Cameron ragequit. Theresa May came in and it was apparent there was very little government apetite for the stuff we wanted.
But May, who was there when the same Sex marriage bill went through under the earlier coalition government had had something of a damascene conversion to LGBT rights issues. Stranger things have happened (but not many!)
So she wanted something from our list that was quick, easy, and uncontroversial. Obviously we were disappointed, but she was presented with bringing Britain’s antiquated
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A little story.
In 2014, the UK charity, Stonewall, had a new CEO: Ruth Hunt.
Ruth wanted to make Stonewall trans inclusive. Up until that point it hadnβt been. Part of that effort was to recruit an advisory group from the UK trans community.
I was on that group. I ended up as its vice chair.
We spent the next year and a bit creating a document called βA Vision For Changeβ, which detailed what we thought the areas that trans equality campaigning should focus on in Britain.
Then the Brexit referendum happened and Cameron ragequit. Theresa May came in and it was apparent there was very little government apetite for the stuff we wanted.
But May, who was there when the same Sex marriage bill went through under the earlier coalition government had had something of a damascene conversion to LGBT rights issues. Stranger things have happened (but not many!)
So she wanted something from our list that was quick, easy, and uncontroversial. Obviously we were disappointed, but she was presented with bringing Britainβs antiquated Gender Recognition Act up to date, and in line with other European countries, as something simple. We honestly thought it was. Itβs an administrative change of very little significant consequence, and actually no significance at all outside the trans community.
And it would have been simple, had an eclectic collection of unpleasant, obsessive arseholes with privileged access to the UK press not decided to start a culture war over trans people at that exact moment.
A culture war which, at least in England, they basically won. In part, this war was why I emigrated to Portugal.
Here we are, seven years later, and the result of Scotland finally wanting to implement a watered down version of the βeasy winβ we presented to Theresa May is apparently that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is willing to end the Union between England and Scotland over it.
So thatβs my story. I am part of a small, elite cabal of LGBT people who wrote a document that is poised to destroy the last vestiges of the British Empire.
Go me! If there are any other governments you want destabilising, my bank details are available on request. I provide reasonable rates.
Thanks. Its unexpected popularity has caused quite a bit of trauma to my poor little friendica server though. Itβs mostly died down now (occasionally getting a bunch of new shares which causes an hour or so of work, given it has to notify the 1300+ people whoβve already shared it), but initially it caused my server to run several hours behind for a couple of days.
@escapadesrpg @moh_kohn @MissScott01 a federated state where one state has a population of 56m and the others of between 2 and 5.5m is not balanced. Dividing by the old kingdoms can help address that without drawing completely arbitrary lines on a map and winding everyone up
In 2014, the UK charity, Stonewall, had a new CEO: Ruth Hunt.
Ruth wanted to make Stonewall trans inclusive. Up until that point it hadnβt been. Part of that effort was to recruit an advisory group from the UK trans community.
I was on that group. I ended up as its vice chair.
We spent the next year and a bit creating a document called βA Vision For Changeβ, which detailed what we thought the areas that trans equality campaigning should focus on in Britain.
Then the Brexit referendum happened and Cameron ragequit. Theresa May came in and it was apparent there was very little government apetite for the stuff we wanted.
But May, who was there when the same Sex marriage bill went through under the earlier coalition government had had something of a damascene conversion to LGBT rights issues. Stranger things have happened (but not many!)
So she wanted something from our list that was quick, easy, and uncontroversial. Obviously we were disappointed, but she was presented with bringing Britainβs antiquated Gender Recognition Act up to date, and in line with other European countries, as something simple. We honestly thought it was. Itβs an administrative change of very little significant consequence, and actually no significance at all outside the trans community.
And it would have been simple, had an eclectic collection of unpleasant, obsessive arseholes with privileged access to the UK press not decided to start a culture war over trans people at that exact moment.
A culture war which, at least in England, they basically won. In part, this war was why I emigrated to Portugal.
Here we are, seven years later, and the result of Scotland finally wanting to implement a watered down version of the βeasy winβ we presented to Theresa May is apparently that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is willing to end the Union between England and Scotland over it.
So thatβs my story. I am part of a small, elite cabal of LGBT people who wrote a document that is poised to destroy the last vestiges of the British Empire.
Go me! If there are any other governments you want destabilising, my bank details are available on request. I provide reasonable rates.
This is my Friendica server. Left to right, the boxes are: Power over Ethernet splitter, Raspberry Pi 4b (2 gig) in official case, 256 gig SATA SSD in a USB3 to SATA enclosure.
Thatβs it. Thatβs what this post youβre reading federated from.
I always thought servers were great big machines. Eye opening information. So does the 'black box' send info to a satellite or something? Or connect to other servers? No need to answer as I probably wouldn't understand anyway. But it is fascinating to see. Shame the cute little thing has died. Transplant required? Heart or kidney?
Love it. This feels more like how the internet should be, lots of fun little servers everywhere. The name "cloud" is ironic really since it means a whole lot of centralisation, just with redundancy. The real cloud would be everyone having a little server next to their router at home!
So a fun little update. The SSD in the picture was a cheap piece of junk, no faster than an SD card. It failed at about half past ten last night. @Zoe O'Connell was able to recover the data and weβre back in business, but lesson learned: do not buy no-name Chinese SSDs.
Some interesting thoughts here. Hashtag search and similar features are more or less useless on small instances, but there are other things to massively recommend them, and you can get around the hashtag problem on a #Friendica instance by following an RSS of the hashtag on a large #Mastodon instance.
And Friendica practically runs on thin air (mine is running on a 2 gig Raspberry Pi with a 256 gig SSD in my TV cabinet).
Setting it up was far harder than it needs to be though. If the work to make this stuff easy to install for someone moderately technically competent was done, then it could utterly revolutionise social media.
Iβm honestly a little bit in love with Friendica. You guys on Mastodon may have a slick UI, but you donβt know what youβre missing!
Iβm also aware I just quoted something from a non mastodon activitypub platform on another one. Iβm a quote-toot sceptic, but Friendica is not Twitter and doesnβt work like it, and itβs going to be interesting to see how diverse social media βtypesβ play with each other when youβre viewing something outside its intended environment.
You canβt migrate using the Mastodon migrate feature, but you can import your follows. For now, Iβm using both.
Some mastodon clients donβt work with it at all. Some like Metatext do, but present it as though itβs mastodon. The web interface on a phone looks like this.
Ok, so yesterday I tried to submit a bunch of photos. I'd turned the file size limit up on my #Friendica instance but it was creaking. When I got it to accept, the files were too large to federate.
This is a test with some of the same photos, but much smaller files. Hoping this one will federate properly. Facebook and Twitter marmalise your files when you upload them. Friendica doesn't.
Yeah but an Activity can encapsulate multiple versions inline (which would get transmitted server-to-server by ActivityPub) as well as a link to a version stored elsewhere.
The Guardian are asking about the experiences of Brits living in the EU, post Brexit. They have a form, which I have filled in. My answers are below:
Name*
Sarah
Where do you live? *
Portugal
Tell us a bit about yourself (e.g. age and what you do for a living)
I'm 49. I used to work in IT but now am in the holiday rentals business
Share your experience of life on the continent post-Brexit*
Not a lot has changed. Our old EU residency was no longer valid and we had to apply for new Article 50 residency cards. Portugal was very slow in issuing these and until we got them, we risked being deported if we travelled anywhere else in the Schengen area. A lot of Brits in Portugal are now working towards Portuguese citizenship, to get our rights as EU citizens back. This involves
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The Guardian are asking about the experiences of Brits living in the EU, post Brexit. They have a form, which I have filled in. My answers are below:
Name*
Sarah
Where do you live? *
Portugal
Tell us a bit about yourself (e.g. age and what you do for a living)
I'm 49. I used to work in IT but now am in the holiday rentals business
Share your experience of life on the continent post-Brexit*
Not a lot has changed. Our old EU residency was no longer valid and we had to apply for new Article 50 residency cards. Portugal was very slow in issuing these and until we got them, we risked being deported if we travelled anywhere else in the Schengen area. A lot of Brits in Portugal are now working towards Portuguese citizenship, to get our rights as EU citizens back. This involves having to learn Portuguese to an acceptable level and pass an exam, and the government/EU funded classes have become very popular. I passed my exam last year but need to wait a couple more years before I am eligible for citizenship.
Include as much detail as possible
How do you think you (and the UK) are now viewed? *
Honestly? It seems like the EU has more or less adjusted to the UK not being there and is just getting on with life. We don't think about you that often, and if we do it's usually about how the country has massively weakened itself. Brexit is very much a case "oh, they did that, bit strange, life goes on". While it seems like the UK is still obsessed with the EU, the sad reality is that the EU barely thinks about the UK at all. You aren't that important. Sorry, guys.
@zoeimogen I think if I ever reboot my long-form brain that's what I intend to do. I like the multi-column mastodon-deck style interface better than friendica for small chat things, but I can see how friendica's would work better for longer replies.
Context: my kid is mildly allergic to citric acid and citric fruit. Brings out eczema. And citric acid is in SO many things. And itβs painful checking ingredients lists for it.
This morning I wondered: can my phone OCR the ingredients list and check it?
My first thought was to make a little web app. But there doesnβt seem to be a OCR in web browsers yet.
Now this is interesting. A Fediverse platform developed by Cloudflare that inherently runs on Cloudflare without needing dedicated infrastructure.
The code is open source yet the platform itself is inherently proprietary. It's going to be very interesting how this unfolds given how unpopular Cloudflare is with many Fediverse admins
@Zoe O'Connell says that I need to post something. Here is a dreadful selfie taken in low light with the new @Raspberry_Pi@raspberrypi.social camera module version 3 with no IR filter. Haven't worked out how to do alt text in Friendica.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •bertrand π π¨βπ» πΈ
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Any example?
#fediverse #mastodon #Twitter #friendica
Sarah Brown
in reply to bertrand π π¨βπ» πΈ • •bertrand π π¨βπ» πΈ
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •volkris
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Itβs up to each #Fediverse program to handle all of the content itβs receiving, as best it can, in whatever way it thinks best for its users.
So yep, go ahead and post whatever you want in the format that makes the most sense for the content.
To hold yourself back for the sake of #Mastodon is to deprive all of the other clients of better content, while also maintaining that same, crippled status quo.
Sarah Brown likes this.
bertrand π π¨βπ» πΈ
Unknown parent • • •π€¦ββοΈ
Alexandra Lanes
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Alexandra Lanes • •It honours mastodonβs warnings. I believe it supports bbcode spoilers
a spoiler
like thisIan Patterson
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •