I like a lot of things about Elixir but I struggled with what felt like clumsy IDE capabilities. Stuff like 'go to definition' that I use all the time in other languages didn't work right. Lack of strong types makes autocomplete problematic. I've started to mess around with Gleam hoping that it spans this gap because I want to like this ecosystem.
Readit Newsmal-2 commented on Why isn't Bluesky a peer-to-peer network? pfrazee.com/blog/why-not-... · Posted by u/jakebsky
That's exactly what Twitter does. Why is this a differentiating feature?
Has this changed recently? When I was on Twitter a few years ago I often missed posts from my friends because the algorithm didn't show them to me. Same when I posted, often my friends didn't see it.
mal-2 commented on Why isn't Bluesky a peer-to-peer network? pfrazee.com/blog/why-not-... · Posted by u/jakebsky
Maybe French and German users have lower standards for good UX.
So tired of this take. There are so many frontends, besides just the built-in interfaces for Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma there's also web-based frontends like Elk and Enafore, and tons of different native apps on mobile.
mal-2 commented on Why isn't Bluesky a peer-to-peer network? pfrazee.com/blog/why-not-... · Posted by u/jakebsky
>> I don't really think until today I had anyone say to me, "Look, don't worry too much about which server you choose to start out with -- just pick one, because it's super-easy to switch later if you want to try a different one."
> I think that's fair, the resources around joining don't make this particularly clear.
It's also not actually super-easy to switch later.
It's fairly easy, it could be better but it's like three steps. Switching away from any other social media in comparison is monumental.
mal-2 commented on Why isn't Bluesky a peer-to-peer network? pfrazee.com/blog/why-not-... · Posted by u/jakebsky
> it's not that difficult to migrate between them.
If you've never used the fediverse before, you don't really know that, do you? I've heard of the "move your account" functionality before, but I don't really think until today I had anyone say to me, "Look, don't worry too much about which server you choose to start out with -- just pick one, because it's super-easy to switch later if you want to try a different one."
> What could federated services do that would make the obvious choice not feel lame?
I admit this is an inconsistency on my part, and probably only limited to people a lot like me: on the one hand, the whole promise of federation is that you can avoid massive centralization; so joining the One Biggest Instance seems kind of pointless. On the other hand, I don't want to join a random small instance which may not be well-maintained; and I don't want to join an instance which is going to pigeon-hole me ("A mastodon instance for developers!" "A mastodon instance for Christians!").
There are different parts of my brain that all want different things, each of which vetoes any particular decision. But this is very much what the "paradox of choice" is about: in many cases, having more options makes you less happy.
I do think it was good that Mastodon embraced this in a way that earlier federated options didn't (e.g., I believe at some point diaspora stopped new sign-ups to their main instance to "encourage federation"; from my perspecitve it encouraged was people to go elsewhere.)
So "what could federated services do better" to solve the paradox of choice? Nothing as far as I can tell -- if you want more choice, you're going to have the paradox of choice; Mastodon at least has already done the only thing I can think of which mitigates it somewhat.
> I don't really think until today I had anyone say to me, "Look, don't worry too much about which server you choose to start out with -- just pick one, because it's super-easy to switch later if you want to try a different one."
I think that's fair, the resources around joining don't make this particularly clear. Part of the problem is that 'Mastodon' as an organization is not very invested in making this widely known, they would rather people stick with the easy choice because they run mastodon.social. For people who are already on the network it's pretty well understood.
It is listed on this page, at the very bottom (facepalm) - https://joinmastodon.org/servers
This is a better resource if you want more information on it - https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-anot...
I do think there's a paradox of choice issue going on and I can understand why that makes it more intimidating to try it out. One thing that I wish was more widely known is that you can just create an account on multiple servers. If you're not sure you'll like the vibe of a server, create an account and try it, you can either migrate that account or delete it if you decide that server isn't for you. I hope this perspective might make people feel more curiosity and less decision paralysis, it's not a problem to have alt accounts.
mal-2 commented on Why isn't Bluesky a peer-to-peer network? pfrazee.com/blog/why-not-... · Posted by u/jakebsky
From my perspective, the biggest barrier to entry for federated services right now is the fact that right up front, before you've ever even used the network, you have to make this massive decision with no real information to base the decision off of: namely which server to use.
That's the main reason I'm not on it personally: It feels lame to just join the biggest instance, but none of the smaller instances really seem to "click", and I'm not really so keen that I want to run my own instance.
Having One Obvious Choice to join to begin with is the best thing federated services can do to encourage wider adoption.
I'm having trouble following, because the biggest instance would be the 'One Obvious Choice', but that choice seems lame to you? What could federated services do that would make the obvious choice not feel lame?
The decision isn't really that massive, a lot of users have alt accounts on different servers and it's not that difficult to migrate between them.
mal-2 commented on Posts, profiles, and user search are now available without login bsky.app/profile/bsky.app... · Posted by u/redsolver
The character limit depends on which Mastodon instance you're on. 500 does seem to be the norm. The one I use is 3000.
Partially true, but vanilla Mastodon does hardcode it at 500. Some forks make it configurable (I believe glitch-soc does), and some admins have edited the hardcoded value manually.
mal-2 commented on Posts, profiles, and user search are now available without login bsky.app/profile/bsky.app... · Posted by u/redsolver
How does Bluesky compare to Mastodon?
Bluesky has a 300 character limit, Mastodon has 500, non-Mastodon ActivityPub servers have a configurable limit. Mastodon can render markdown, has subject lines which are commonly used as content warning tags, can translate posts. It supports custom emoji and non-Mastodon ActivityPub servers support custom emoji reactions. Bluesky has more discovery features like community-curated lists and algorithmic suggestions of who to follow.
This is awesome.
Why don't more people self host / host everything themselves these days in the age of privacy?
How can we make more people self host their data rather than giving it to corporations?
A start might be to tell people to use extensions that are adblockers and to disable javascript on websites and even use and setup pi-holes to take back their data and privacy.
There must be more that can be done here but it is a start!
I think fediverse offers a decent compromise here which is that people can self-host an instance for other people to use. Some of the longest running instances have a few hundred users or maybe a thousand. So if one in 300 people is interested in self-hosting then they can support the other people who either don't have the skills or don't have the interest. It's not perfect but it's working pretty well for those servers.
- 1 Getting burned out by Nextjs slowness in a complex production project that shouldn't be that complex or slow on the dev side, (this was 2022 approx)
- 2 Taking a break from React
- 3 Moving back to classic server side rendering with python and Go and dealing now with template engines. Hyped with HTMX and loving it, but my conclusion after so many years of react was that template partials don't feel right to me and templates engines are somewhat not maintained and evolved as used to be. I found my self not feeling naturally inclined to reach for the htmx way and just let the coding agent do it the way they wanted AND stating to notice again the burn out.
- 4 Looking with some envy to co-workers using shadcn how fast they are getting things done and how good they look.
- 5 Wondering would be a way to use JSX with HTMX server side, I miss components, I don't want partial templates.
And then I found Astro, ahhh now I get it, Astro prioritizes generation over run time, and that unlocks a lot of gradual complexity where you can choose how to mix things ( islands ) you get something way more interesting than a template engine, and it uses JSX so you can benefit from React ecosystem.
This where I am now, but yet I have to complete a side project with it to know if I fully get it and love it.
So far seems to me is the answer I was looking for.