atomicpoet

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to reddit

Android Authority doesn’t get it.

Compared to #Reddit, #Lemmy sucks. And so does #Kbin. We all know that.

The #RedditMigration isn’t about any app being better than Reddit. It’s about a company that’s grown on the backs of volunteer labour now claiming ownership of that labour.

Reddit didn’t write those posts, draw those illustrations, make those videos. We did.

And Reddit sure as hell didn’t create those communities, nurture them, and moderate them. We did.

I agree with tech writers who say that the average person just “wants their memes”. But Reddit never made those memes. We did.

Content might be king. But who makes content? We do.

I have no doubt that the average person just wants content. But while we might be providing content for free, we’re not dancing monkeys. Who decides why content is made, how it’s made, and where it exists? We do.

The Fediverse doesn’t exist merely as an engine for content. It exists so that people can share what they love.

Why are people coming to the Fediverse specifically? Because we rightfully see ActivityPub as insurance for our content – which, again, is made by and for us.

Not Reddit. Not Big Social. Us.

If I’m giving my content away for free, then so long as it is federated, no one company can own it – putting up gates, demanding payment for my work. Instead, my work is out there, living on 24,000 nodes that presently exist.

Android Authority might dismiss this as “suffering the same fate” – what fate they perceive, I don’t know. But to me, the true “suffering” is when a company like Reddit claims ownership of my work, locking 3rd party developers out from API access.

For this reason, I’m locking Reddit out from my work.

Perhaps the author of this post, Dhruv Bhutani, doesn’t consider that he’s writing for a, well, blog. And that this blog exists on its own domain, with its own design, as its own property. He could have written this entire post on Reddit, but he didn’t.

Why? I suspect it’s because he believes his work has value, and Reddit simply doesn’t give him what he believes is his worth.

Same deal with me. I’m not looking to get paid for my work on Reddit. I do it for fun – always have. But if I’m doing something for fun, it’s still going to be on my terms.

Not all of us creatives are willing to be a cog in Big Social’s machine. That’s why I’m here on the Fediverse right now. I don’t give a damn whether the average person just wants memes. I create for me.

So yeah, Lemmy and Kbin suck. I can live with that – they will both improve. And I have no doubt that, with time, they might prove to be better than Reddit.

But this isn’t about how good Lemmy or Kbin are. Nor is this about the insatiable appetite for memes.

This is about my need to create on my terms – and I’m not alone here.

Decentralization is the killer feature here.

https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-alternatives-lemmy-3335429/

@fediversenews

atomicpoet, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

The Atari brand is fascinating. Over the past 51 years, it’s been in so many hands that you practically need a flowchart to understand it.

But here goes. I’m giving it the old college try.

The original Atari only existed for 4 years, between 1972-76.

One year after Atari’s existence, it created a Japanese subsidiary called Atari Japan. Deemed a failure, a little company called Namco bought Atari Japan – becoming one of the first Japanese video game companies ever.

In 1976, the original Atari was sold to Warner Communications. This coincided with Atari reaching its commercial peak with the Atari 2600, 5200, and 8-bit family of computers.

But then the video game crash of 1983 happened, and Warner Communications no longer wanted Atari. But rather than spinning out Atari as one company, they split it in two.

The “home” division was sold to Jack Tramiel, previous CEO of Commodore who was out for revenge against his old company. This Atari became known as Atari Corporation.

The “arcade” division became known as Atari Games.

At this point, two different trees of Atari came to exist.

Atari Corporation continued to make home consoles and computers. They released the Atari ST, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, and Atari Jaguar. As well, they published several well known classic games. They were also the rights holders for several 2600, 5200 and 8-bit computer games.

After the Jaguar failed, Atari Corporation tried to pivot to the PC gaming market as a publisher, but the Tramiel family wanted out of the business. So in 1996 they merged with a hard disk drive manufacturer called JTS.

Two years later, in 1998, this version of Atari was sold to Hasbro Interactive.

In 2001, Hasbro Interactive was sold to French video game publisher Infogrames, and Infogrames renamed itself as Atari SA. For awhile, this version of Atari was one of the largest video game publishers in the world.

In 2008, this version of Atari entered a joint venture with Bandai Namco (remember Namco?). One year later, several assets were outright sold to Bandai Namco.

Then in 2014, Atari SA went bankrupt. Due to this, the started selling off even more assets including Deerhunter, Battlezone, Star Control and others.

Miraculously Atari SA still exists and now makes 2600-inspired consoles, republishes old games, also publishes the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, sells NFTs, and is trying to get into the hotel business(?!)

Atari Games is the other Atari, and you can make the case it’s the most “real” Atari since the original Atari was all about arcade cabinets. This version of Atari became known for several classic arcade games such as Gauntlet, Paperboy, Marble Madness, Hard Drivin’, and Primal Rage.

Warner Communications spun out Atari Games as a joint venture between themselves and Namco, with Namco owning 60% of Atari Games.

But Namco got bored of Atari Games, so they sold a 20% stake in the company to Atari Games employees. As a result, Atari Games was owned 40% by Warner Communications, 40% by Namco, and 20% by employees. Since no one owned a controlling stake in Atari Games, it effectively became an independent company.

Atari Games noticed that the Nintendo Entertainment System was getting popular. But unable to enter the home market under the trade name “Atari”, they created a brand to publish games to home consoles. This brand was Tengen. And Tengen became known for a well known fight with Nintendo – that’s a different rabbit trail, though.

In 1989, Warner Communications merged with Time Inc, becoming Time Warner. At this point, Time Warner decided they wanted a controlling stake in Atari Games, so they acquired it. Because of this, Tengen became Time Warner Interactive.

In 1994, Atari Games, Tengen, and Time Warner were all consolidated under the Time Warner Interactive Banner.

One year later, Time Warner decided they didn’t want to be in the video game business anymore. So they sold Atari Games to WMS Industries, the parent company behind Williams, Bally, and Midway.

In 1998, the video game assets of WMS Industries were spun off into a new entity called Midway Games which gained control of Atari Games.

One year later, in 1999, Atari Games was renamed Midway Games West.

Shockingly, Midway Games West continued to exist until Midway Games went bankrupt in 2009. At which point, Midway Games West (a.k.a., Atari Games) was sold to Warner Brothers Interactive, who decided to re-enter the video game market. So now Atari Games is owned by Time Warner again.

So with all this intrigue, who is the “real” Atari? I would say three companies can reasonably claim the Atari lineage:

1- Atari SA: they own the rights to Atari consoles and computers as well as several computer games, and still use the Atari brand

2- Time Warner: they own the rights to Atari Games

3- Bandai Namco: they acquired Atari Japan as well as several Atari assets over a period of many decades

Atari and its brand are complex and more interesting than I could have imagined.

atomicpoet, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to fediversenews

101,525 people joined Mastodon in the past 24 hours.

To put that in context, 84,657 people joined Mastodon in the previous 6 days.

Twitter’s new “temporary” rate limit on reading tweets has caused a significant increase in Mastodon's popularity and user base.

Source: https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110645793505347332

@fediversenews

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to RedditMigration

The #RedditMigration just got spicier 🌶

#Lemmy now has 135,369 accounts. That is tracking with my expectations.

But while #Kbin had ~7,000 accounts yesterday, it’s just shot up to 30,930 accounts today.

While Lemmy is the 5th most used server software on the Fediverse, Kbin is now in 10th place and it’s growing at a faster rate than Lemmy.

A few days ago, I predicted that the #RedditMigration would result in 150,000-300,000 new accounts being created on the Fediverse. That expectation has already been met.

This #RedditMigration is fundamentally changing the course of the Fediverse. It’s moved the Fediverse from being primarily about microblogging to having more eclectic use cases.

While the #TwitterMigration validated that decentralized social media can appeal to millions of people, the #RedditMigration has validated that decentralized social media has man varied applications – both in the software and use case sense.

SOURCE: https://fedidb.org/software

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to threads

Turns out, the launch of #Threads hasn't really slowed down #Mastodon account registrations. In fact, for July, they're actually higher than they've been for any month this year! As of the latest count, we're talking about:

• 2,414 new registrations in the last hour
• A whopping 57,771 new registrations in the past day

This basically means that Threads hasn't put a damper on the demand for Mastodon. It's still going strong!

SOURCE: https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110668914730609156

@fediversenews

atomicpoet, 2 months ago to random

No one is using using Truth Social. It’s on the stock market entirely so that Trump can cash out and thus deal with his legal problems. DWAC interest is at 11% which means a whole lot of people expect it to crash.

It’s worth noting, though, that Truth Social is almost entirely based on Fediverse software – though it doesn’t federate – and its current valuation is around $5 billion.

Remember that for the next time someone says your Fediverse server isn’t worth anything.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-truth-social-stock-soars-in-first-day-of-trading-133705717.html

atomicpoet, 2 months ago to fediversenews

This is beautiful. 😍

If you want to know why Truth Social looks like so much like other Fediverse software, it’s because it runs Mastodon with a Soapbox front-end. In fact, the creator of Soapbox, Alex Gleason, used to serve as Truth Social’s Head of Engineering.

So why did Alex Gleason leave? Because Soapbox received a grant from…

drum roll

…former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/truth-social-head-engineering-leaves-220000904.html

@fediversenews

atomicpoet, 1 year ago to fediverse

When I look at the most active servers on the Fediverse, Mastodon isn’t dominating.

Here’s the actual breakdown of the 10 most active servers according to server type:

1. misskey.io (Misskey) - 3.9M posts per month
2. mastodon.social (Mastodon) - 1.7M posts per month
3. pixelfed.social (Pixelfed) - 754K posts per month
4. botsinspace.in (Mastodon) - 648K posts per month
5. mstdn.social (Mastodon) - 634K posts per month
6. nijimiss.moe (Misskey) - 627K posts per month
7. mstdn.jp (Mastodon) - 588K posts per month
8. misskey.gamelore.fun (Misskey) - 497K posts per month
9. fedibird.com (Fedibird) - 431K posts per month
10. misskey.cf (Misskey) - 425K posts per month

Once you expand to the next 10 more active servers:

• 8 are #Misskey
• 6 are #Mastodon
• 3 are #Pixelfed
• 2 are #PeerTube
• 1 is #Fedibird

What does this mean?

When we measure for activity – not accounts – Mastodon isn’t even in first place. Misskey is.

Mastodon is in 2nd place.

And other server types, like Pixelfed, aren’t doing so shabby either.

But what’s more interesting is what this all means when you also take into consideration account sign-ups.

It’s true that according to total accounts, mastodon.social is the biggest server on the Fediverse with 1,159,110 accounts. In comparison, misskey.io only has 183,549 accounts.

However, misskey.io is producing 2x more content than mastodon.social.

Some people wonder if this is because of spam.

As someone who actively monitors both misskey.io and mastodon.social, it actually looks like mastodon.social produces more spam. I have yet to encounter spam on misskey.io, nor have I received spam from there. I can’t say the same about mastodon.social – seeing how I received crypto spam to my inbox from there twice last month.

What’s going on?

First, I must acknowledge a fact. The Fediverse is simply more popular in Japan. When I look at the 10 most active servers on the Fediverse, 6 of them are Japanese. Yes, even the Mastodon servers.

And in Japan, it looks like Misskey is overtaking Mastodon. This is not yet true in terms of sheer account numbers, but the fastest growing servers are clearly Misskey. In terms of raw post production, though, Misskey has already overtaken Mastodon.

Something I often hear is, “So what if something’s big in Japan? Lots of bands are big in Japan too, and we don’t hear a whisper from them here in the West.”

While comparing software to music is silly, it is a mistake for Westerners to ignore the cultural impact of Japan and other Asian nations.

We live in an era where many Western kids grow up with Japanese video games, anime, and J-Pop. Many of them don’t even look at Japanese media as “foreign”. It’s simply part of their cultural rubric.

Why do I bring this up? Because while the majority of Fediverse accounts are from the West, the majority of Fediverse content is from Japan. And while there is a language barrier, it’s only a matter of time before that content finds its way out West.

But if you’re a content producer making stuff for the Fediverse, I also think it’s important to ask yourself, “What are Japanese content producers doing right?”

As it turns out, a lot. The Japanese Fediverse is less focused on technology and politics, more focused on art. And there’s a ready community willing to interact with that art.

This is not so true for the West’s version of the Fediverse. Over here, the culture is to deem art “unimportant”. There have been times when I’ve shared thoughts on video games and music, and someone came out of the woodwork to tell me I was wrong for doing this since some political thing in the USA was happening, and I was insensitive for sharing my interests.

For the Fediverse to take root in the West, it must be as much about art as it is about politics and tech.

All this said, there is a further fact that likewise underlies my contention: the 3rd most active server on the Fediverse is pixelfed.social, Pixelfed’s flagship server.

Why is this? Because #Pixelfed is based on images, not text. Which also means that, as a result of content filtering, it is more focused on art than politics and technology.

Interestingly, pixelfed.social is focused on English speakers. As it turns out, the desire to share art is universal – not exclusive to people who speak Japanese. Most people like art.

Don’t get me wrong, politics and technology have an important effect on our daily lives. But it’s art that makes life worth living.

My takeaway: if we want the Fediverse to be as big in the West as it is in Japan, we need to share art.

Source: https://fedidb.org/

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to random

Again, I’m not saying that you should federate with Meta. Go ahead and block them if that’s what you want to do.

What I am saying is that blocking Meta has nothing to do with whether or not Meta uses ActivityPub. It won’t prevent Meta from using ActivityPub. Blocking Meta doesn’t change that ActivityPub is open for anyone to use for any reason—even if those reasons are abusive and unethical.

Certain people are trying to argue otherwise with me. Those people either don’t know what they’re talking about or are blatantly lying.

Your server might block Meta, but that won’t prevent Meta from joining the Fediverse.

How do I know this?

There’s blatantly worse servers than Meta currently on the Fediverse right now. You might not see them, but they can see you. Just because they’re invisible to you doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

atomicpoet, 1 month ago to random

Quite often on the Fediverse – more often on other social networks – I find people talking about how things were so much better years ago.

And I’m telling you this is a trap. Don’t fall for it. Yesteryear is not better than now, it just feels that way because it’s over.

Progress exists. It’s important that we all acknowledge how things are better. More importantly, you are alive – enjoy this moment.

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to random

Hey there! I've been noticing something interesting lately. It seems like some activists have started responding to my posts from last week.

While their intentions are good, they're mainly just saying "Meta bad!" without offering any real solutions to the problems I'm discussing. Now, I completely agree that Meta has its flaws, but my suggestion goes beyond just pointing out those flaws.

What I'm proposing is finding ways to help people who use Meta services transition to the Fediverse.

It's important to remember that just because Meta is problematic doesn't mean that the people using it are evil monsters. They're simply unaware of alternative options at the moment.

That's why we should approach those who aren't on the Fediverse with more empathy and understanding.

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to RedditMigration

#RedditMigration results in 400,000 people migrating to the Fediverse within two weeks.

Media: crickets

Elon Musk breaks Twitter (again) resulting in 110,000 people joining the Fediverse in one day.

Media: Mastodon is dying!

atomicpoet, 6 months ago to random

Leave it to so-called “gamers” to generate the most absolutely mindless “controversies”. The problem this time?

There’s a woman of colour who’s a playable character in Grand Theft Auto 6. Which apparently means that Grand Theft Auto has gone “woke”.

I’m sorry, but have these dimwits ever played Grand Theft Auto before? The first game had four playable women of different ethnicities. That’s right, four!

But what makes this controversy even more asinine is that these fools don’t even want to provide representation for women of colour in a video game about crime – and according to statistics, women of colour are more likely to be convicted of crime than their white counterparts.

It’s as though racist fucks want to throw women of colour in jail. But at the same time, don’t want women of colour committing crimes in a fictional setting. No, that would be going too far.

Here’s where political discourse has gone: where Grand Theft Auto 6 is considered “woke” because you can play as a woman of colour.

https://thedirect.com/article/gta-6-controversy-explained-game

atomicpoet, 1 year ago to random

Reading this whole post from the Apollo developer, this Reddit fiasco is such a mess. Not only do I question writing apps based on proprietary APIs, I’m angry that I’ve provided so much content to Reddit after so many years.

You think I’m active on the Fediverse? I write a new Reddit post on r/Sizz 12x per day. This is a lot of work, all done for free, and it all goes into Reddit’s pocket.

It’s not even so much that I want to be paid. It’s that it’s I don’t think they have the right to charge so much money to developers for my contributions.

Let me be real. All I’ve ever wanted was to make stuff on the Internet on my terms.

I do pay for the privilege of running my own servers because, like it or not, every post I make on social media is actual work. And I should own my work.

Same deal with development of software. I donate lots of money to ensure that work on the Fediverse carries on.

Why? Because development is work. And more importantly, social media should be based on open protocols – not proprietary APIs.

The development happening right now is the building blocks for the future.

No developer should have their livelihood taken away from them because Big Tech wants to bankrupt them by charging outrageous API fees.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/

atomicpoet, 8 months ago to random

A few days ago, someone asked me in what way console gaming is seen as more regarded than PC gaming—and, in my view, undeservedly so.

Here’s an example. Do a search for a book about PC gaming, you won’t find much on Amazon. Sure, you’ll find lots of books on how to build a PC for gaming, but not a whole lot about actual PC gaming. You know, the games made for PC.

Theres lots of books about the history of Nintendo and PlayStation. But in terms of the history of PC gaming, not much is written.

And when it comes to a history of gaming in general, PC gaming gets a few mentions but not really a whole lot.

Because of this, an errant mythology is now believed about gaming as a whole. It goes something like this: Atari made video games popular. Then there was a video game crash. And then Nintendo “saved” gaming.

But that’s not exactly what happened.

In reality, there may have been a crash in the arcade and console gaming space, but not for PC. In the early 80s, the Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, and IBM exploded in popularity. And with it, interest in gaming too.

It wasn’t word processors and drawing apps that caused this explosion in growth. It was gaming. We all begged our parents to get a PC so we could do our homework. But in reality, we were using those machines to play Donkey Kong, King’s Quest, and Lode Runner.

Here’s what a lot of people don’t realize. In the early 80s, the console/PC divide wasn’t so cut and dry. A Colecovision was meant to morph into an Adam computer. A Commodore 64 could connect to your TV and could play cartridges. Even an NES had PC aspirations—in Japan “Famicom” was short for “family computer”.

It’s sad to say but the history of PC gaming is being forgotten. This is a damn shame because the majority of games have not been released for consoles. So many of them are still PC exclusive.

(Nowadays mobile gaming is becoming even more important.)

But this isn’t just about games. It’s about people. Yes, Shigeru Miyamoto is important to gaming history. But you know who is just as important?

Roberta Williams, the mother of PC gaming. She was the designer of King’s Quest, Laura Bow, and Phantasmagoria. You know what else she did? She co-founded Sierra.

And until the 90s, Sierra was the most important company in PC gaming. Its effects can still be felt today in the fact they published a little known game known as Half-Life—which gave Valve their own foothold in the industry, and subsequently, Steam.

More people need to know about folks like Roberta Williams. They made art that impacts nearly every person living on the planet today.

atomicpoet, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to fediverse

I’ve been around for a few migrations to the #Fediverse. They follow similar patterns.

First, some Big Social service does something bad, something so egregious it pisses off a vocal set of people on Big Social.

A bunch of people on Big Social realize they don’t want to be beholden to some company trying to get rich off their work, so they look for an alternative. They land on the Fediverse because it’s the one space that is resistant to centralized control. They want something specific: social media that is decentralized. This first group of migrants tends to be the most enthusiastic.

The next group of people who migrate don’t care as much about centralization or decentralization. But they like the first group, and they generally want to be supportive so they take the step of migrating.

After that comes a group motivated by FOMO. They see something happening, want to be part of it, and go where they perceive the crowd is going. They like the high of a mass movement happening, and love participating in something bigger than themselves. This group is very influential, as they generate hype and a sense that the Fediverse is “the hotness”.

Thereafter comes influencers, usually people who are influential on other platforms and want to go where they believe the audience is going. But not always. Some of them are wannabe influencers with dreams of grandeur, and want to be “first” at a space they perceive is in its infancy.

What’s next? Journalists. And to be specific, I’m not talking about journalists who are already active on the Fediverse, but those who come in cold, are already overworked, and are probably bitter about visiting what they perceive to be a convoluted nerd “site”. They don’t understand what’s going on, but they were given an assignment from their editor, and so they have to write something – anything – to explain it (what they perceive to be it) to the masses.

Finally, there’s the “mainstream”. These are people who read something in Android Authority or the New Yorker or the Washington Post, have minimal curiosity, and try registering an account. They give what they initially think is a “site” a glance, just so they can say they’re in the know. They now know what the big deal is, or think they do.

Most of these migrants won’t be here for the long term. And some of them might even become detractors, angry that the Fediverse doesn’t work like “everything else”. And that’s okay. The Fediverse can’t be all things to all people – yet.

However, there will also be some who stay because they realize there’s something about the Fediverse that speaks to them. These people become incredibly active, big evangelists for the Fediverse, telling people they know about its benefits.

Each migration builds the network effect of the Fediverse. Each migration builds awareness.

And more importantly, each migration builds further upon what is possible with the Fediverse.

atomicpoet, 1 year ago to random

Time to give you all a peek into what’s been happening with calckey.social.

I have been hesitant to talk about it, but since so many of you have put your trust in me, I need to be as transparent as possible.

The growth of calckey.social happened very suddenly and nobody expected it. Prior to this spike, we had more options. We had a database specialist on standby who could optimize things should we need it.

Unfortunately, just prior to the spike in traffic, this specialist suffered a medical emergency that took them completely out of action. As in, they couldn’t work at all.

And then, lo and behold, we had issues with the database. We made short term fixes, and got help from the community, but I knew that we had to wait it out before this database specialist returned to action.

Yesterday, as @kainoa and I were on the phone with this database specialist, calckey.social went down. And while this specialist was helpful, and we got a suitable path towards moving forward, suddenly there was DNS/IP address problems that prevented us from applying further fixes.

This morning @kainoa made a phone call, and the DNS/IP address problems were finally resolved.

During the outage, so many of you sent us messages of support. You have no idea how much this means to us.

Thank you 🙏

atomicpoet, 3 months ago to random

Mastodon culture is incredibly ugly right now. The relentless dogpiling and harassment is despicable. We were lead to believe that lack of quoted boosts would prevent this, but that hasn’t happened.

Nine months ago, I received death threats regarding a comment someone left on a post. Keep in mind, I didn’t say the offending remark—I was being punished because the offender replied to me.

Thankfully, I have thick skin and I’m not going to let certain entitled assholes rob me of my space on the Fediverse.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/contentnation-mastodons-toxicity/

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to RedditMigration

With this #RedditMigration, you know what people haven’t been talking about recently?

#Bluesky.

AT protocol was obviously not ready for a #RedditMigration, it’s not even ready for federation, and is years behind #ActivityPub.

Bluesky might be okay if you just want pre-Elon Twitter and to watch the old Twitter royalty do their thing. But it is not equipped to handle a variable use cases that can only happen through federation.

Each day Bluesky does not federate is a moment it’s ceding territory to #Mastodon, #Friendica, #Calckey, #Kbin, etc.

atomicpoet, 1 month ago to ghost

Looks like #Ghost may be joining the #Fediverse!

I hope this is real and not hype because Ghost is my favourite blogging platform – a great alternative to #Medium and #Substack!

They already got great email integration. Adding ActivityPub would be beautiful!

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/open-source-substack-rival-ghost-may-join-the-fediverse/?guccounter=1

@fediversenews

atomicpoet, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to fediverse

This month, the #Fediverse is at 1,646,492 MAUs.

The last time it was this high was in January 2023, which had 1,823,896 MAUs.

This is the 3rd highest month on record regarding MAUs for the Fediverse. And it is largely due to the #RedditMigration, which caused #Lemmy and #Kbin together to grow by nearly 350,000 new accounts.

https://fediverse.observer/stats

@fediversenews

atomicpoet, 11 months ago to fediversenews

Do you know there’s an XMPP-enabled version of the Fediverse? Here’s an example of one such site:

https://mov.im/

Also, you can set up Friendica to work with XMPP. To wit:

Server admins can configure their ejabberd or prosody XMPP/Jabber servers to authenticate against the Friendica user database. If configured this way, every Friendica account is also a XMPP/Jabber account and can be used with any XMPP/Jabber client.

See also: https://wiki.friendi.ca/docs/chats

So XMPP is a totally valid protocol you can use with the Fediverse right now. As for why few people do this, I don’t know. Maybe they really do believe that Google “killed” XMPP—which is, in fact, untrue.

@fediversenews

atomicpoet, 9 months ago to random

One of the most frustrating aspects of learning about European history is that, while the conquest of Asia by European powers is celebrated, the conquest of Europe by Asian powers is so glossed over that most people don’t even know it happened many times.

Where were the Scythians from? The northern Middle East and Caucasus.

Where were the Sarmatians from? The Ural Mountains in modern Russia and Kazakhstan.

Where were the Huns from? East Asia, where they were known as the Xiongnu by the Chinese.

Where did the Avars come from? The Pontic-Caspian steppe in Asia.

Where were the Bulgars from? Central Asia, in what is now Kazakhstan.

Where did the Magyars come from? Western Siberia, also near the Ural Mountains.

Where were the Mongols from? Obviously, Mongolia—but people don’t realize the Mongols conquered a huge chunk of Europe.

Where were the Turks originally from? Central Asia—where several Turkic peoples—including the Uighurs, who live in China—live today.

These aren’t the only examples of Asian peoples conquering Europe. It happened over and over again through multiple millennia. But for some reason, most Europeans are completely unaware of this history.

When Europeans do know about this, they dismiss these Asian peoples as “barbarians”. But that can’t be further from the truth. In the so-called “Dark Ages”, the most prosperous and learned parts of Europe were under the control of Asian conquerors.

A good example is Khazaria, which was a bustling hub of culture during the 7th century.

Of course, the Arab influence on southern Europe is also notable. Not enough people know that Spain, Malta, and Sicily were once conquered by Arabs. And many European intellectuals, such as Averroës and Maimonides, spoke Arabic.

Europe, and European culture, has always been influenced by Asian peoples.

atomicpoet, 1 month ago to random

Generally, I hate DRM because it doesn’t prevent piracy. It just penalizes customers for having the wherewithal to buy the product.

The pirates? They love DRM because there’s nothing they love more than the challenge of a crack. To them, DRM is literally a game.

For people who buy software with DRM, it just makes life more inconvenient.

atomicpoet, 3 months ago to random

Testing to see if Google is labelling all Gemspace sites as malware.

Don't click unless you have a Gemini browser.

gemini://smol.pub/