sixfold

It's the only browser I have installed besides Safari, and my default browser but instead of just opening the link with my default browser, it advertises these other browsers to me and makes me click 'Default browser app' by default. wtf I'll be turning that off, should have never been a feature.

This is a jar full of only water (liquid and vapor). It boils at any temperature when you apply something cold enough to the top, like ice.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/2697716

I put water in a jar and sealed it while it was boiling, and now it boils at any temperature. Super fun demo to try.

Open source way to connect your devices together. I just got it and it seems pretty dope. Anyone used this, or something similar before?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/545045

Decentralization

Reddit is going downhill, Twitter is a mess, Youtube is making decisions that no one wants and Instagram/TikTok are creating algorithms to make you addicted to their content at the expense of your mental health. Before them there was myspace, digg, yahoo etc doing the exact same thing. The common thing is that the power on these platforms is 'centralized', meaning that a single company has the power to make any rule or change which the users will have to agree with if they want to continue using the platform.

'Decentralization' aims to return control to the people. Instead of one dominant entity governing the entire system, these platforms rely on smaller, user-operated nodes that communicate with one another. This way no single user or company has the power to make changes to the entire system, or to decide what is acceptable or not as each instance can have their own set of rules by which they run.

Federation

In simple terms, when two instances communicate and send data to each other, they are said to be 'federated'. An instance can thus federate with thousands of other instances to view and interact with the content hosted on them. You can even set up your own small personal instance and federate with every other instance to view data from the entire fediverse.

If an instance becomes unomoderated, hosts illegal content, has a bot problem or has just in general a vibe you don't agree with, an instance admin can 'defederate' from that instance, meaning you will no longer view posts from them nor can they view posts from you, effectively breaking any communication with them.

Fediverse

Fediverse, or 'federated universe' is the name given to the social media platforms that utilize this concept of federation and decentralization. While Lemmy and Mastodon are the most popular right now, there are many similar platforms. There is Peertube for example, which is a Youtube alternative, or Pixelfed, which is an instagram alternative. You can view a list of all such platforms on this site. Here's also a visual representation that might help.

Lemmy

Lemmy is the reddit alternative social media that is part of the fediverse. It works similar to reddit, in the sense that people can post stuff and other users can comment on these posts, higher upvoted posts rise to the top etc. The main difference is that communities (subreddits of lemmy) are hosted on different instances which can then all be viewed by a user from their home instance (provided they weren't defederated). So no single instance or admin has control over all communities, nor do the hosting costs skyrocket as ideally each instance will host some communities to balance the load.

Mastodon

The Twitter alternative and the first popular fediverse platform. it's pretty similar to Twitter so if you know how that works you pretty much know how Mastodon works too (apart from the decentralized aspect).

Kbin

While Lemmy and kbin are spoken of together nowadays, kbin is actually more of a hybrid between lemmy and mastodon. While you can use kbin just as a lemmy alternative with a different skin, it is also a microblogging site. This means that you can follow individual users, and people looking at your 'timeline' can even view posts you upvoted, similar to twitter.

Right now there is no way to interact with mastodon users through lemmy, but Kbin can view content from both. So it's upto you which kind of platform feels better to you.

Edit: Small correction but Mastodon can view lemmy content as well, so it's just lemmy who's unable to fetch mastodon content right now.

ActivityPub

ActivityPub is the protocol on which the entire fediverse runs. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and subscribing to content. All you need to know is that if a platform is part of the fediverse, then it must be using ActivityPub protocol.

FOSS

Free and Open Source Software. It's a more general term but thought it's relevant enough to be added since a lot of people might not have heard of it. FOSS applications are not only free but make their source code public, which means anyone can view exactly how each part of the site works and to check if nothing malicious is added. People can even modify this code to make changes and make the application better. Here's the source code for lemmy for anyone interested.

Aside from the terms I'll also try to answer some questions I've seen asked frequently:

Q: How is this entire thing monetized?

A: In short, donations. Decentralization helps by making the hosting costs manageable for a single instance, so donating even a little bit to your home instance can help them cover a large portion of their operating costs.

Q: What Instance should I join?

A: While I wish I could say join any one of them, in reality, each instance has a different set of rules and philosophy on which they operate. Some can be heavy in their moderation, trying to curate a very specific feed, while others are much more liberal, letting users have more free control. My advice to someone new would be to make an account on any instance just to get a feel for how everything works and if you like the concept of Lemmy. Once you've grasped how things work, then choose an instance to be your main home.

Q: Why do I see different amount of upvotes and comments on different instances?

A: If the comment is new, it can take some time to sync and be visible on other instances in general. However, remeber that you can't see upvotes and comments from users your instance has not federated with. So if your home instance has not federated with some instances, the upvotes and comments from users of that instance won't be visible to you.

Q: How do I discover new Communities to join?

A: I made a specific post just for this question.

Q: Are there any mobile apps for lemmy?

A: Yes, a lot of them infact. Here's a megathread that's being kept updated with all current apps.

These are the main points I thought a new user might find useful. If someone has anything they wish to be added, comment below and I'll update it with relevant information.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/545045

Decentralization

Reddit is going downhill, Twitter is a mess, Youtube is making decisions that no one wants and Instagram/TikTok are creating algorithms to make you addicted to their content at the expense of your mental health. Before them there was myspace, digg, yahoo etc doing the exact same thing. The common thing is that the power on these platforms is 'centralized', meaning that a single company has the power to make any rule or change which the users will have to agree with if they want to continue using the platform.

'Decentralization' aims to return control to the people. Instead of one dominant entity governing the entire system, these platforms rely on smaller, user-operated nodes that communicate with one another. This way no single user or company has the power to make changes to the entire system, or to decide what is acceptable or not as each instance can have their own set of rules by which they run.

Federation

In simple terms, when two instances communicate and send data to each other, they are said to be 'federated'. An instance can thus federate with thousands of other instances to view and interact with the content hosted on them. You can even set up your own small personal instance and federate with every other instance to view data from the entire fediverse.

If an instance becomes unomoderated, hosts illegal content, has a bot problem or has just in general a vibe you don't agree with, an instance admin can 'defederate' from that instance, meaning you will no longer view posts from them nor can they view posts from you, effectively breaking any communication with them.

Fediverse

Fediverse, or 'federated universe' is the name given to the social media platforms that utilize this concept of federation and decentralization. While Lemmy and Mastodon are the most popular right now, there are many similar platforms. There is Peertube for example, which is a Youtube alternative, or Pixelfed, which is an instagram alternative. You can view a list of all such platforms on this site. Here's also a visual representation that might help.

Lemmy

Lemmy is the reddit alternative social media that is part of the fediverse. It works similar to reddit, in the sense that people can post stuff and other users can comment on these posts, higher upvoted posts rise to the top etc. The main difference is that communities (subreddits of lemmy) are hosted on different instances which can then all be viewed by a user from their home instance (provided they weren't defederated). So no single instance or admin has control over all communities, nor do the hosting costs skyrocket as ideally each instance will host some communities to balance the load.

Mastodon

The Twitter alternative and the first popular fediverse platform. it's pretty similar to Twitter so if you know how that works you pretty much know how Mastodon works too (apart from the decentralized aspect).

Kbin

While Lemmy and kbin are spoken of together nowadays, kbin is actually more of a hybrid between lemmy and mastodon. While you can use kbin just as a lemmy alternative with a different skin, it is also a microblogging site. This means that you can follow individual users, and people looking at your 'timeline' can even view posts you upvoted, similar to twitter.

Right now there is no way to interact with mastodon users through lemmy, but Kbin can view content from both. So it's upto you which kind of platform feels better to you.

Edit: Small correction but Mastodon can view lemmy content as well, so it's just lemmy who's unable to fetch mastodon content right now.

ActivityPub

ActivityPub is the protocol on which the entire fediverse runs. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and subscribing to content. All you need to know is that if a platform is part of the fediverse, then it must be using ActivityPub protocol.

FOSS

Free and Open Source Software. It's a more general term but thought it's relevant enough to be added since a lot of people might not have heard of it. FOSS applications are not only free but make their source code public, which means anyone can view exactly how each part of the site works and to check if nothing malicious is added. People can even modify this code to make changes and make the application better. Here's the source code for lemmy for anyone interested.

Aside from the terms I'll also try to answer some questions I've seen asked frequently:

Q: How is this entire thing monetized?

A: In short, donations. Decentralization helps by making the hosting costs manageable for a single instance, so donating even a little bit to your home instance can help them cover a large portion of their operating costs.

Q: What Instance should I join?

A: While I wish I could say join any one of them, in reality, each instance has a different set of rules and philosophy on which they operate. Some can be heavy in their moderation, trying to curate a very specific feed, while others are much more liberal, letting users have more free control. My advice to someone new would be to make an account on any instance just to get a feel for how everything works and if you like the concept of Lemmy. Once you've grasped how things work, then choose an instance to be your main home.

Q: Why do I see different amount of upvotes and comments on different instances?

A: If the comment is new, it can take some time to sync and be visible on other instances in general. However, remeber that you can't see upvotes and comments from users your instance has not federated with. So if your home instance has not federated with some instances, the upvotes and comments from users of that instance won't be visible to you.

Q: How do I discover new Communities to join?

A: I made a specific post just for this question.

Q: Are there any mobile apps for lemmy?

A: Yes, a lot of them infact. Here's a megathread that's being kept updated with all current apps.

These are the main points I thought a new user might find useful. If someone has anything they wish to be added, comment below and I'll update it with relevant information.

had to mod it though.

The diagrams!! Such an awesome paper.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/426337

Awesome diagrams. They create an apparatus for tracking the field of view of a jumping spider to study what it's looking at.

cross-posted from: https://sullen.social/post/103

A short, approachable book to the theory of Quantum Electro-Dynamics based Feynman's lectures.

I love these old papers. The diagrams are beautiful, and the writing style gets me every time.

cross-posted from: https://sullen.social/post/104

The diagrams are awesome in this paper, and the results about split-personality are really interesting. sperry1968

cross-posted from: https://sullen.social/post/102

Home-shop OLED production! Such an incredible display of technical skill, and a home shop anyone would envy.

Companies have strategically undermined community driven projects in the past many times. We should all keep an eye out for corporate movements in this space. I felt the duty to spread this awareness.

[YSK about corporations' strategies to kill open source protocols] cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/571039

[https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html]

I saw this in another thread on /c/Showerthoughts. I think it's important for this to be circulated widely so that the broader Fediverse community is aligned. We don't want admins second-guessing their decisions when users start infighting. We should be united in our thinking and ready to protect our platform.

I'm sharing this post and it's thread because I've run into this issue of not being able to find communities, users, posts, or comments on other instances, or the communities are missing a substantial number of comments and votes even after interacting with these posts and receiving new replies. Is this functionality standard and desirable behavior? Why or why not? I'm trying to understand how it's expected to work, because it's not very intuitive starting out to explore other instances sometimes.

Maybe we could brainstorm a way to make it more intuitive. What are the trade-offs involved? Why does it work the way it currently works? Is there a better way?

The main point that has been brought up is the fact that users from smaller, newer instances will not be able to access the backlog of posts and comments from older more established instances. I'd say a lot of the value of the platform comes from this foundation of posts sorted by votes on a link aggregator site like this. Should new users be encouraged to join the older, more established instances in order to have access to the most content?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/357141

SOLUTION FOUND - thank you

There is a community called Tarot on lemmy.world, and I want to subscribe to it. The url is https://lemmy.world/c/tarot. I've been to lemmy.world when not logged in and I can see it there. But when I try to find it from here, I can't. I tried putting !tarot@lemmy.world in the search and got "no results found". I've been told that "someone needs to search for it, for it to appear", but I have already tried to search for it, many times. What else needs to happen for me to be able to see and subscribe to this community?

Or do I just have to make a second account on lemmy.world?