I'm taking some time to set up a mastodon account, and am currently confused about how following other federated accounts is supposed to work.

Let's use https://lemmy.world/c/comicstrips as an example. I go to that link and I see posts from other federated sites, as well as posts made directly on lemmy.world (I presume). I can also view all posts from that community in r.nf as well (https://r.nf/c/comicstrips@lemmy.world). I see all the same posts from the lemmy link.

What I don't understand is why, when I follow @comicstrips@lemmy.world on mastodon I only ever am shown replies and boosts from the account. I don't see the original image post, which I was expecting.

What am I missing? For what it's worth I'm using Phanpy to interact with mastodon, but am experiencing the same behavior on mastodon.social as well.

I have managed to install and configure something called NextDNS on both of my devices and most browsers, even though the documentation seems to be made with more tech-savvy people in mind. So far so good. I turned on all the available blocklists, but a lot of strange looking (to me) traffic is still getting through. I'm assuming some of it is benign, but how do I evaluate which addresses I should block or not? I'll list some examples below.

init.ess.apple.com
init-p01md.apple.com
bag.itunes.apple.com
gsp-ssl.ls.apple.com
gspe35-ssl.ls.apple.com
pki-goog.l.google.com
For these, the service offers the following information: 'Provides advertising or advertising-related services such as data collection, behavioral analysis or retargeting.' Sounds like something I wouldn't want to enable. When it comes to the iTunes one, I don't use iTunes and don't even have it installed (don't ask how I managed to get rid of it - it took several days worth of trial and error..). One of these, pki-goog.l.google.com is listed as 'dangerously prevalent (tracks 21.23% of web traffic)'.

Then again, the same general description is sometimes given to addresses that seem legit, such as:
time.apple.com
weather-data.apple.com

Some are indecipherable to me and don't come with any sort of description:
fp2e7a.wpc.phicdn.net
init.ess.g.aaplimg.com
get-bx.g.aaplimg.com
ocsp2.g.aaplimg.com
ocsp.pki.goog

Some descriptions are kind of vague:
a2047.dscapi9.akamai.net
apis.apple.map.fastly.net
'Content delivery network that delivers resources for different site utilities and usually for many different customers.'

Some seem to be doing tasks that are definitely wanted:
ocsp.digicert.com
'Digicert Trust Seal - Includes tag managers, privacy notices, and technologies that are critical to the functionality of a website.'

Then there's an Amazon Web Service, go-updater-1830831421.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com, listed as very prevalent (tracks 5.5% of web traffic) that has been contacting my phone even though I haven't done any shopping or product related searches. What is this and should I block it?

And so on and so on. Is there any logic to these that I can follow? I tried google searching some to no avail.

This is a question I eventually ask about every social media site I use(d). I like Tildes, and the discussions here are much more constructive than any other place I've seen, however I've seen it to be true even here. When one doesn't curate their feed, and use the default home page, the negative topics seems to dominate. I'm talking about the topics that talk about problems and what's wrong with something, often with titles implying the awfulness or emergency of such a problem. I think I don't need to elaborate on how this is much more prevalent and extreme on other sites. But nevertheless, it's a recurring pattern even here.

I know the argument that goes that humans are problem-fixing machines, and that there are psychological incentives to focus on problems. However, this seems overly reductive and lacking in explanatory power to me. Outside of internet, this is not a phenomenon I've experienced with people, unless they were mentally going through something very rough. Otherwise, people generally seem to talk about neutral or positive issues. And even while talking about negative issues, the tone often isn't grim, and doesn't leave a depressive aftertaste.

Even on the internet, in smaller spaces and more closed spaces, like chatting servers, this doesn't seem to hold true. Sure, there are politically-oriented, and therefore problem-oriented spaces even there, but most spaces don't seem to be that way. Back when I used Facebook too, while the posts were vain, most of my friends and acquaintances were just interested in sharing and commenting on social lives.

So I think this is a problem that is more endemic to "open" social media sites, with easily accessible and open-to-public spaces, rather than applying to the whole humanity or even every internet space. Its one of my biggest head scratchers about social media sites. So far I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation in the literature either. Doesn't mean there isn't, but I haven't stumbled upon such.

So, I'm interested in your opinions: Why do negative topics dominate on open social media sites, even here, unless curated against? Why is this such a strong recurring pattern for sites structured like this, while it's not in other online and physical spaces and interections I mentioned?

Added the qualifier to the title as web3 understandably earns a lot of eyerolls haha. At the same time, a lot of web3 focused places seem to have a specific mindset about what "should" be done so I wanted to ask here.

I worked in the space at startup (ironically making web2 services to assist in web3 so I’m still an extreme novice). But my time there was a constant push / pull between convention and money and innovation and the unknown. The company I was at would try to appeal to big companies in hopes of finding a product market fit, who looked to us for guidance on what to do in this new space where they hoped to make money. Trend after trend would pass and it would be entertained whether we’d jump on it because product market fit.

The most desirable companies were household names with non-web3 userbases because they meant unprecedented reach. But to make web3 approachable to them, you’d have to define a UX that didn’t exist and would be pulled in a tug of war between two forces. The first mindset optimises for the purest idea of giving the user power— UXs that were obvious about the concepts of transactions and transferrable assets. The other wanted to replicate web2 UXs in web3, to the degree that a user gives temporary control of their wallet to a developer so the developer performs transactions as them.

Then, there is the data and pseudonymity piece. Companies have been taught that data is valuable, and one of the values of a blockchain is an identity that exists outside of any one company. But if all of your assets are on a blockchain— either under your public key or perhaps under a few that might transfer assets only between each other— then your identity can be known (not so private) and also cannot be monopolized and sold (because your data is public).

In the background, as this all happens, is the decentralization argument. At the end of the day, my company used EVM nodes operated by another company (which themselves might be wrappers around something offered by AWS). What is meaningful decentralization alongside specialization of labor? What is decentralization in a world that has billionaires and enormous companies who has the means to buy resources and set up tons of nodes?

Being out of the space now, I do think a decentralized database with immutable scripts, user-managed transferrable assets, and transferrable identity has enormous value. But recently I’ve been wondering how much of that can be accomplished in the private sector. In my time there it felt like the startup needs (enterprise customers, increased ARR) constantly compromised the will for innovation efforts.

I'm not sure if anyone else here is into topre switch keyboards, but keycaps for topre are notoriously hard to find. Topre is niche within a niche, so options are limited. But for the last year or so, FKCaps in collaboration with 23_Andreas have been working to launch keycaps in a new profile specifically designed for topre called URSA, compatible with HHKB, Leopold, and Realforce boards. They have now opened for pre-order, scheduled to be delivered in January 2025.

I don't normally go for pre-orders or group buys, but I couldn't say no to this. The URSA profile and the caps themselves look great, and while I do enjoy the OEM keycaps on my HHKB, I also like having other options and trying new things. I've got a black HHKB Pro Hybrid Type-S, and I went with the black caps with legends. The mock-up image looks beautiful. I'm excited.

If you're unfamiliar with the HHKB, or Happy Hacking Keyboard, it's a Unix-style board that has been around for 25 years, designed by a Japanese computer scientist because he wanted a more versatile board for programming and working in the command line on multiple operating systems. What makes the layout special, and why I enjoy it, is because the caps lock key has been replaced by a control key, and delete/backspace has been moved down a row for easier reach and to allow the tilde/backtick key to live on the top right. It's designed so you can easily reach everything from the homerow, and keys like the arrows, home, end, page up, page down are on a secondary layer accessed by the function key. Further, you can change board functionality through DIP switches on the bottom of the board. It's just so fun and pleasant to type on. Build quality is superb and these boards are known to stand the test of time.

So if there are any other topre enthusiasts around here, I urge you to check URSA out. You can read more about the keycaps here.

Your Happy Hacking Keyboard deserves some fresh caps (Verge)

As the title suggests, I am looking for a free chrome or firefox plugin that can locally scrape data from multiple URLs. To be a bit more precise, what I mean by it:

• A free chrome or firefox plugin
• Local scraping: it runs in the browser itself. No cloud computing or "credits" required to run
• Scrape data: Collects predefined data from certain data fields within a website such as https://www.dastelefonbuch.de/Suche/Test
• Infinite scroll: to load data that only loads once the browser scrolls down (kind of like in the page I linked above)

I am not looking into programming my own scraper using python or anything similar. I have found plugins that "kind of" do what I am describing above, and about two weeks ago I found one that pretty much perfectly does what is described ("DataGrab"), but it starts asking to buy credits after running it a few times.

My own list:

• DataGrab: Excellent, apart from asking to buy credits after a while
• SimpleScraper: Excellent, but asks to buy credits pretty much immediately
• Easy Scraper: Works well for single pages, but no possibility to feed in multiple URLs to crawl
• Instant Data Scraper: Works well for single pages and infinite scroll pages, but no possibility to feed in multiple URLs to crawl
• "Data Scraper - Easy Web Scraping" / dataminer.io: Doesn't work well
• Scrapy.org: Too much programming, but looks quite neat and well documented

Any suggestions are highly welcome!

Edit: A locally run executable or cmd-line based program would be fine too, as long as it just needs to be configured (e.g., creating a list of URLs stored in a .txt or .csv file) instead of coded (e.g., coding an infinite scroll function from scratch).

Hullo! I'm very much a list person, but I'm also very much a visual person. So, I've found that simple grids of images work really well for me when I want to plan and organize information, aesthetics, etc. However, I've struggled to find my ideal website or program that allows me to do this.

My wants:

• To upload images with minimal clicks. (My workflow would likely be to find an image somewhere, get the image's URL, navigate to a page, and upload via URL, without necessarily needing to enter form fields or save an image locally first.)
• To display medium resolution images as clear thumbnails (e.g. anywhere from 200x200 to 500x500). Enough for detail, but not necessarily "HD".
• To offer the ability to crop (or even just display) images as square thumbnails (for the purposes of a neat and uniform grid) without me having to go through https://squareanimage.com (real website!) for every single image.
• To categorize images into groups (i.e. to display a set of images as a coherent little grid/gallery). I'm not picky about whether this is done via fixed category pages, or tags + filtering.
• To maybe add extra information attached to each image (e.g. descriptions, links, etc.) without necessarily cluttering the grid.
• As for whether the service is public or private, cloud-based or local, I don't really mind!

Some of the options I've tried:

• Wordpress: Really nice grid-based themes, but the "blog post"-based system feels cumbersome for what I'm trying to do (images only). So many clicks to add images and make new posts.
• Tumblr: Lovely for content discovery, the quick reblog feature saves a lot of clicks, and tagging is flexible. But, this has many of the same downsides as Wordpress (lots of clicks to upload your own images, post-based system), and Tumblr as a platform is so much more than what I'm looking for (don't want/need social features).
• Pinterest: 10/10 for content discovery -- their image similarity algorithms and image search are unmatched. Wonderful for quickly spinning up a collage of themed pictures. But, horrid for uploading new pictures, given that they'll become public pins with comments/links/etc. Too many clicks + unnecessary fields. I worry about attribution for artists with Pinterest specifically -- I don't want to perpetuate a lack of attribution with publicly re-shareable images. Also, the collages are very busy with ads and unnecessary text. Plus, it's kind of cumbersome to reorganize images between boards if you want to change your board scheme.
• Pinry: Open source, self-hosted version of Pinterest. Was a bit too rough around the edges the last time I tried to use it, but maybe it's good enough now?
• Are.na: A bit too... New York trendy? For my tastes. Also, the social elements aren't really my thing... Also, costly!!!
• Google Keep: Surprisingly good? Perhaps the best option I've tried? For image notes, it's very flexible with regards to grid-based layouts, tagging, adding optional details, adding multiple images to a single note, etc. My main criticisms are that uploading images and tagging notes does take quite a few clicks; the grid stops being aligned the moment your notes begin to differ (e.g. add images of varying size, add titles/details, etc.), so it can start to look a bit visually cluttered; the UI doesn't seem to be designed with many tags in mind; the default layout shows all notes (I never want this).
• Local files and folders: Dead simple, but with very few features. Thumbnail views in file explorers are really space inefficient compared to grid-based image galleries.
• Random photo organizing software: Largely geared towards actual photos taken with an actual camera (real life subjects, camera EXIF data, organizing by date taken, etc.). Too many unnecessary features for my needs, not enough features geared towards digital non-photo images (e.g. graphics).
• "Speed dial" new tab pages for browsers: Helps me organize bookmarks! I like being able to see the icons, like a desktop for webapps. I will use image grids for everything.
• Artwork grids in media libraries / tracking websites: Plex, MusicBee, Letterboxd, Goodreads, Anime-Planet... you are heaven to me.

Here is a gallery of screenshots for websites/services I have tried, to give you an idea of how I use these services. The first one (tumblr) is the closest to visually ideal (dense + uniform grid), but Keep is the closest to ideal feature-wise. Surely there is a website or service I'm missing that could be the best of both worlds!

Basically the title. I've been an Android user since 2012, but have have an iPad and a Macbook that I really like, especially how well they work together. My pixel 5 was on its way out, so I finally took the plunge and bought an iPhone 15 Pro earlier this week. I'm still getting everything set up, and I'm particularly excited to play with the different focus modes and shortcuts. I'm curious what apps and features should I be using to make the most of this switch?

I've been trying to reduce my reliance on all things Google, and one of the big ones is password management. I've tried several times to make the jump, but every time I start researching options I'm overwhelmed by the selection. There are a lot of popular options out there, and I really don't have the time/energy to endure a misstep. So without a clear idea of which manager will check all of my boxes, I end up bailing on the process and keep using chrome's built in option.

So to start, here's what I like about Chrome:

• Automatically offers to store passwords without extra clicks
• Autofills automatically where it can, and gives me an easy choice when it can't
• Works everywhere I need passwords. (basically everywhere I browse the internet since chrome works everywhere)
• Minimal overhead. This is hard to beat since Chrome just includes it, so I'm fine with a little extra setup if necessary.

I used to use keepass portable on a thumb drive (I want to say circa ~2009ish), but it became really inconvenient as my usage shifted more to mobile devices.

I see this as a first step to also reducing my reliance on Chrome so I can start to consider other browsers. Right now I feel locked in to Google's ecosystem, but I know I can break it up if I don't get too bogged down by choice. Much appreciate any help. :)

Back in 2022, Tildes helped me build my current PC (Thanks everyone!). Back then I knew that eventually I would have to replace my motherboard, which underwent corrosion and became unreliable. I never turn off or even put my PC to sleep because, otherwise, it won't turn on for hours. I'd like to change that. I'm pretty confident that is an issue with the motherboard, which underwent repairs before. Other components are much newer and my power source is top notch.

Here's the machine on PC Part Picker. Should I just buy the same motherboard again? I mean, I don't have any complaints, I just happened to live by the sea back then, leading to premature failure. But it's still working. It's cheap, too.

I might be up for a better processor, but price is a concern. What would be the next affordable step from what I have now? In any case, the CPU is rarely an issue for any of my tasks, and the only game I play that could use a more powerful processor is World of Warcraft, which I only play intermittently anyway. Maybe it isn't worth it.

I'm getting a 1TB SSD, those seem to have gotten much cheaper since 2022!

Because, unlike me, most Tildes users are in the US, Canada, and Europe, when taking prices into account, multiply them by 5 in your head to have a sense of what that expense means in my country.

Thanks!

It’s been a few weeks now since the release of iOS 17.4, which

[…] provides new options for app marketplaces, web browsers and payments for residents of the European Union. […]

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer in the underlying regulation to it, and have been ever since the possibility of this becoming a reality was in the Brussels air. But so far, I haven’t really been able to come up with a truly practical use case.

Furthermore, I haven’t seen any marketing for an Epic Store, Meta Store, or similar “app marketplaces”, but this may be attributed to the still rather… wobbly legal situation surrounding, notably, still having to direct payments to Apple while not using their store for app distribution. I don’t think there has been any follow-up from Apple (or the EU) that retracts these conditions.

So: Have any fellow EU resident ~tech’ies done anything fun or interesting with this new freedom yet?

To those not affected by this regulation, what would you like to “sideload”, or are perhaps already sideloading on Android?

Do any of you think big companies will move their entire palette onto an alternative store anytime soon, e.g. Facebook and sister products? To be honest, I doubt this will happen, otherwise it would’ve long occurred on the Google Play Store as well.

My ideas were:

• I’ve thought about trying to install Minecraft (the full version, probably using Pojav), or a game of similar caliber, on my phone just for fun and to see how well the iPhone GPU really fares against a “real” game, but didn’t find the time yet for looking into it.
• Also personally, I’d love to see a real “root-capable” shell on iOS, but I don’t think that will ever be a thing irrespective of how much sideloading Apple is forced to allow into their OS.

I already have the best ear muffers money can buy in my country, and it is still not enough. I cannot use ear plugs because of my tinnitus hearing aids. I'm in an area with a lot of noise and this is not going to change. The main issueI face is loud music. Could a noise canceling headphone provide some solace?

There are a lot of awesome open source projects that I'd love to donate to, however, I can't afford to donate to all of them.

It would be great if there was something like a charity fund (eg. GiveWell), but for FOSS. So a lot of people donate to it, and it distributes all collected money between some curated projects (most influential/important/promising/underfunded/etc.).

Do you know if something like this already exists? if not, could it potentially be a good idea to do? It seems like the idea of donating to open-source is currently more prominent in the community due to the xz backdoor thing.

The machine will be a laptop.

So let's say I'm doing this on Antix Linux or MX-Linux, which are both based on Debian. I already set up everything that I want. Now I wish to make that installation incapable of accessing the internet ever again -- even if I want it to. However, I wouldn't want to achieve that in a way that will negatively affect any application I might need. How can I do that?

You may be curious about my motivation. It is simple: that machine should be only for writing and nothing more. Maybe I'll use YLINAT, @Areldyb's Timasomo project.

For the purposes of my usage, it is nothing more than an electronic typewriter with a screen. That is a drastic measure but I have ADHD and I need to write. I'm afraid that if I don't do something about it I'll see myself in a difficult situation regarding deadlines. I'll just take the laptop with me to a quiet place and leave the cell phone at home.

Every day I will take my writing off the laptop via USB and back it up.