norb

You can get some of this with a pi hole/vpn setup. There’s actually a really nice one you can get as a droplet (basically a virtual machine) on Digital Ocean.

https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/pi-hole-vpn

Once it’s up and running it can be a full tunnel vpn or just a dns solution (also over a split tunnel vpn).

Might not give the full tracking protection exactly but will kill most ads.

I really think that the corporate systems we’ve all grown used to have tricked people into thinking their data was “safe” just because some big company was “taking care of it.”

Also possible this person works for Reddit or something 🤪

I ran my own instance for a little bit, and I thought if you had servers you set up to “trust” (I forget the exact wording but there’s a field for it in admin settings) then bans can come in that way.

I could be completely wrong of course. ☺️

You’re welcome.

Stay strong and know strangers have your back, even virtually and anonymously.

Just wanted to say “this too shall pass.” Surgery is never fun but at least it’ll be fixed soon. Losing pets hurts but you have all the good times to think back on, and maybe a new pet to look forward to as well.

I have been one of those people who are pretty negative with their outlook on life. I started therapy because I was tired of being frustrated and angry and, frankly, depressed all the time.

One of things I learned is that if you aren’t naturally “happy go lucky” you have to work at it. Why I ever expected to just be happy now seems like a real “no shit” moment. But once someone told me that I’ve been able to look at my life in a different light.

I’m still negative as fuck, but at least now I can recognize it for what it is, short circuit my thought process a little bit, and not spiral as much as I used to. I’m a middle-aged work in progress but that’s ok!

Good luck, fellow traveler!

I don’t really have a recommendation per-se, but I did come across this site recently which might be interesting to you.

https://abandonwaregames.net/

They have installers for some of them, and links to Stream/GOG/etc. if you can still purchase them.

Maybe I do have one recommendation: https://abandonwaregames.net/game/star-wars-dark-forces (I think it’s $3)

Way to brighten someone’s day with something simple. Super awesome!

The other thing that I don’t quite get about it is, you can come across the “fragmented communities” either through random chance or consciously seeking them out, and just subscribe to them. Now you can participate in multiple communities from your home instance.

I get people are lazy and just want to have the stuff they like shoved in their face, but IMHO you get a much better result when you have to put a little skin in the game.

It also discourages some level of shitposting because shitposters have to work just as hard to find the places to make their dumb jokes and in my experience most of those types are not going out of their way to do that.

"Insert_Bad_Actor" is so widely vague that it can apply anywhere to anyone (slippery slope, I know, but this entire discussion hinges on some application of the principle).

Two months ago the rallying cry for federation/fediverse was "YOU CAN CONTROL IT" which very quickly has morphed into "YOU CAN CONTROL IT AS LONG AS YOU FIT IN THIS PARTICULAR BOX." A lot of this feels like it's coming from a place of fear, which is not a great place to make informed and logical decisions from.

A lot of the discussion I've seen here and on Mastodon around Meta/Threads/federating with a corporate entity seems to be circling around three issues.

1. Privacy. There is an assumption that as soon as Meta gets it's fingers into the metaverse pie they'll hoover up everything they can. My question to anyone that thinks this is, "How do you know they don't do it already?" Meta can very easily have a server setup somewhere to pull in ActivityPub information. IT'S THE ENTIRE POINT OF FEDERATION. You can't stop them, other than to block the instance. So unless someone figures out that Meta is running a particular instance and then announces it so that admins can block it, it's reasonable to assume it's already happening. This just means what you post already isn't private, and never should be assumed to be.

2. Ads. Somehow people think that Meta will abuse federation to sells ads to send out as posts. Which, if they do that, they will be quickly blocked and they've just ruined their new crop of eyeballs. On top of that, sending ads out into the void to end up next to god knows what content, on god knows what server, in front of god knows who, is not something that most ad buyers are going to spend money on. Any ad buyers want to know that they are getting value for their spend.

3. EEE, or Embrace Extend Extinguish. This is to me the most valid argument for keeping them at arm's length. The basic premise is that these huge corps can spend the money up front to build on top of an open standard, add improvements that will be limited to only their version, then once they have the market share/cornered pull the rug out by either defederating and hurting the whole thing, or by locking users in to their "better" service. This has happened a number of times in the past, and Facebook has been guilty of it themselves.

Whatever happens with this in the future will be interesting to watch unfold, that's for sure. But doing anything before the service even has the hooks to connect in and federate seem so premature to me.

Love this idea! Please share if/when you think it's ready.

Replying to recommend NewsBlur to anyone that’s looks for a reader. They have a free tier, and solid mobile apps (for iOS anyways). https://NewsBlur.com

Check out NewsBlur. It spun up out of the demise of Google Reader. https://NewsBlur.com