Alex Vranas @Alex@vran.as

The only thing that would make it perfect is a Linux client. The Windows/Mac Clients are just electron Apps, so there are third-party wrappers, but an official release would be excellent.

I switched from Spotify to Deezer a little over a year ago, largely because Spotify wasn't adequately moderating disinformation and hate speech in it's hosted Podcasts, but if anything has made me love Deezer it is that I can upload my own MP3s and stream them everywhere.

I never have any issues with Deezer not having something that Spotify has, it's just nice being able to dump all my obscure tracks into one service so I can play whatever I want and make playlists using all of it.

People have largely forgotten how awesome diagonal scanlines used to look on a CRT monitor. All my Internet friends and I used to put a layer of scanlines on our forum singatures and pfps for that extra high-tech look back in the 2000's.

Looks terrible on a modern monitor. It just worked on a CRT.

More on this: Jack Dorsey donates money to White Nationalist groups.

The more I explore the various Twitter alternatives, the more I realize that they're all horribly flawed. Threads is just an Instagram feature with inconclusive usership. Bluesky is an undermoderated Twitter clone with unclear motives, questionable "federation" aspirations, and dubious marketing. Nostr is messy and filled to the brim with toxic dudes.

The Fediverse does alright though. It's not a perfect place, but it's the only place where I don't have to compromise on my principles.

So the #Substack moderation decision doesn't make any sense. Two quotes from their statement:

"we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away"

"censoring or demonetizing the publications would not make the problem of hateful rhetoric go away"

Cool, so it's not censorship. You admit (twice) that you don't have the power to silence Nazis with your actions.

So this isn't an anti-censorship stance. This is a pro-Nazi stance.

Welp, Jack Dorsey is defending TERFs and Nazis now...

lmao, I just realized that this is not a feature, I just never added any relays to my server.

Clearly I've been having a fine time for years without a relay, but I just added the three largest public relays to my list and now my instance is drinking from a firehose.

We'll see how much I like the additional content, exposure, and S3 costs of doing this. Might go back to the bubble I was enjoying.

Bitcoin is baked into the protocol in a really annoying way. It's not mandatory to hold any crypto at all to use the network, so you could theoretically develop a client that cuts out all the crypto features, but it's clearly designed to facilitate lightning network transactions between users.

The decentralized end-to-end encrypted DMs are at least a feature of their own, if you didn't want anything else from a client.

I've been playing with #Nostr. Despite the cryptobro user base the underlying tech is, in fact, not Blockchain based, which is nice. I like the idea of a serverless social network that stays afloat with volunteer-run relays. Very cool model.

Still, the user base is a hard sell. Here's the best description I've heard of Nostr internally, and it's not a motivator...

I'm actually prepared, I think, to start planning a trip to Europe next year, and my plan is to work the #RevisionParty2024 into it. Hoping to contribute something if I'm going to be there.

I have no idea what I'm doing as far as visiting Saarbrücken, but it sounds like it could be a fun first stop in a ~2 week trip.

So everyone gives Jack Dorsey credit for #Bluesky, but he doesn't even have an account. He has zero presence on his own site.

But he posts on #Nostr multiple times every day, mostly about Bitcoin.

Hard to imagine he has much faith in Bluesky as a decentralized Twitter alternative when he's clearly chosen his preferred decentralized Twitter alternative.

The "disagree and commit" principle is excellent for making business decisions. Everyone working on a project has their own opinion, but eventually you have to meet consensus and move forward, even if you didn't get your way.

But applying this principle to personnel decisions is a terrible idea. Employees are always going to stand up for themselves, and managers will stand up for the company. Demanding consensus when you're screwing the employees is just reckless.

https://apnews.com/article/amazon-return-to-office-jassy-remote-work-ce9cb14169f5ee1552868d1385ce2ec8

Mind you, Flipboard has matured quite a bit in the decade it's been around, and qualified news posts are a better solution than the loose network of RSS bots we currently have here.

While they are not even in the same ballpark as each other, Flipboard is a for profit corporation, so we should be wary of what they're actually going to bring to the fediverse.

Everyone's so distracted by the upcoming Threads federation, nobody is talking about how Flipboard, an app that started as Samsung Galaxy bloatware, is about to bring Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network to the Fediverse.

This'll be interesting...

Today is day one of my time off. I don't go back to work until next year.

Looking forward to relaxing, enjoying winter activities, and seeing family.