sixfold

It's the only browser I have installed besides Safari, and my default browser but instead of just opening the link with my default browser, it advertises these other browsers to me and makes me click 'Default browser app' by default. wtf I'll be turning that off, should have never been a feature.

This is a jar full of only water (liquid and vapor). It boils at any temperature when you apply something cold enough to the top, like ice.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/2697716

I put water in a jar and sealed it while it was boiling, and now it boils at any temperature. Super fun demo to try.

The internet is a series of tubes, try not to get lost.

This community is dedicated to the most interesting engineering/science projects and papers out there. Lots of youtube videos, along with scientific papers ( <3 https://www.sci-hub.st/ <3 ) and book recommendations that are not only Interesting, but also Rigorous to some degree, without being exclusionary.

sullen.social/c/series_of_tubes

!series_of_tubes@sullen.social

https://sullen.social/c/series_of_tubes

More people ought to feel allowed and able to think about ideas that are worth thinking about!

https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/425110

cross-posted from: https://sullen.social/post/59233

Really great description of the american sprawl. These issues eat away my soul every single day, and this guy wrote about it in 1973.

Some of my favorite excerpts:

The invention of the personal automobile, and destruction of public transportation, was a triumph of capitalist drug-peddling; suddenly, all at once, everyone’s personal mobility became dependent on a single, new commodity, gasoline. Without it, we are unable to function, since urban sprawl and suburbanization now means we can’t even walk to work if we wanted to.

“The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes .Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren’t restricted to asphalt roads.”

You’ll observe that automobile capitalism has thought of everything. Just when the car is killing the car, it arranges for the alternatives to disappear, thus making the car compulsory. So first the capitalist state allowed the rail connections between the cities and the surrounding countryside to fall to pieces, and then it did away with them.

These splintered cities are strung out along empty streets lined with identical developments; and their urban landscape (a desert) says, “These streets are made for driving as quickly as possible from work to home and vice versa. You go through here, you don’t live here. At the end of the workday everyone ought to stay at home, and anyone found on the street after nightfall should be considered suspect of plotting evil.” In some American cities the act of strolling in the streets at night is grounds for suspicion of a crime.

No means of fast transportation and escape will ever compensate for the vexation of living in an uninhabitable city in which no one feels at home or the irritation of only going into the city to work or, on the other hand, to be alone and sleep.

https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/1364150

What even is our economy made of anyway.

Open source way to connect your devices together. I just got it and it seems pretty dope. Anyone used this, or something similar before?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/818250

The simplest and fairly well thought out idea behind OceanGate's failure. With demos!

I don't have kids, but this looks like an awesome way to raise them.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/545045

Decentralization

Reddit is going downhill, Twitter is a mess, Youtube is making decisions that no one wants and Instagram/TikTok are creating algorithms to make you addicted to their content at the expense of your mental health. Before them there was myspace, digg, yahoo etc doing the exact same thing. The common thing is that the power on these platforms is 'centralized', meaning that a single company has the power to make any rule or change which the users will have to agree with if they want to continue using the platform.

'Decentralization' aims to return control to the people. Instead of one dominant entity governing the entire system, these platforms rely on smaller, user-operated nodes that communicate with one another. This way no single user or company has the power to make changes to the entire system, or to decide what is acceptable or not as each instance can have their own set of rules by which they run.

Federation

In simple terms, when two instances communicate and send data to each other, they are said to be 'federated'. An instance can thus federate with thousands of other instances to view and interact with the content hosted on them. You can even set up your own small personal instance and federate with every other instance to view data from the entire fediverse.

If an instance becomes unomoderated, hosts illegal content, has a bot problem or has just in general a vibe you don't agree with, an instance admin can 'defederate' from that instance, meaning you will no longer view posts from them nor can they view posts from you, effectively breaking any communication with them.

Fediverse

Fediverse, or 'federated universe' is the name given to the social media platforms that utilize this concept of federation and decentralization. While Lemmy and Mastodon are the most popular right now, there are many similar platforms. There is Peertube for example, which is a Youtube alternative, or Pixelfed, which is an instagram alternative. You can view a list of all such platforms on this site. Here's also a visual representation that might help.

Lemmy

Lemmy is the reddit alternative social media that is part of the fediverse. It works similar to reddit, in the sense that people can post stuff and other users can comment on these posts, higher upvoted posts rise to the top etc. The main difference is that communities (subreddits of lemmy) are hosted on different instances which can then all be viewed by a user from their home instance (provided they weren't defederated). So no single instance or admin has control over all communities, nor do the hosting costs skyrocket as ideally each instance will host some communities to balance the load.

Mastodon

The Twitter alternative and the first popular fediverse platform. it's pretty similar to Twitter so if you know how that works you pretty much know how Mastodon works too (apart from the decentralized aspect).

Kbin

While Lemmy and kbin are spoken of together nowadays, kbin is actually more of a hybrid between lemmy and mastodon. While you can use kbin just as a lemmy alternative with a different skin, it is also a microblogging site. This means that you can follow individual users, and people looking at your 'timeline' can even view posts you upvoted, similar to twitter.

Right now there is no way to interact with mastodon users through lemmy, but Kbin can view content from both. So it's upto you which kind of platform feels better to you.

Edit: Small correction but Mastodon can view lemmy content as well, so it's just lemmy who's unable to fetch mastodon content right now.

ActivityPub

ActivityPub is the protocol on which the entire fediverse runs. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and subscribing to content. All you need to know is that if a platform is part of the fediverse, then it must be using ActivityPub protocol.

FOSS

Free and Open Source Software. It's a more general term but thought it's relevant enough to be added since a lot of people might not have heard of it. FOSS applications are not only free but make their source code public, which means anyone can view exactly how each part of the site works and to check if nothing malicious is added. People can even modify this code to make changes and make the application better. Here's the source code for lemmy for anyone interested.

Aside from the terms I'll also try to answer some questions I've seen asked frequently:

Q: How is this entire thing monetized?

A: In short, donations. Decentralization helps by making the hosting costs manageable for a single instance, so donating even a little bit to your home instance can help them cover a large portion of their operating costs.

Q: What Instance should I join?

A: While I wish I could say join any one of them, in reality, each instance has a different set of rules and philosophy on which they operate. Some can be heavy in their moderation, trying to curate a very specific feed, while others are much more liberal, letting users have more free control. My advice to someone new would be to make an account on any instance just to get a feel for how everything works and if you like the concept of Lemmy. Once you've grasped how things work, then choose an instance to be your main home.

Q: Why do I see different amount of upvotes and comments on different instances?

A: If the comment is new, it can take some time to sync and be visible on other instances in general. However, remeber that you can't see upvotes and comments from users your instance has not federated with. So if your home instance has not federated with some instances, the upvotes and comments from users of that instance won't be visible to you.

Q: How do I discover new Communities to join?

A: I made a specific post just for this question.

Q: Are there any mobile apps for lemmy?

A: Yes, a lot of them infact. Here's a megathread that's being kept updated with all current apps.

These are the main points I thought a new user might find useful. If someone has anything they wish to be added, comment below and I'll update it with relevant information.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/464181

Succinct intuitive introduction to antenna theory.

had to mod it though.