1-7-25it got late and I almost
1-7-25
it got late and I almost forgor to post this
sketches, now with color!!
See more sketches like this at the $1.50 tier on Patreon and SubscribeStar: -> <-
1 to such extents that the actual alt-text only contains a short description where "short" means anything between ca. 900 and ca. 1,400 characters. The long description goes into the post, and it regularly measures several tens of thousands of characters. Also, I don't describe what's in the image as I can see it in the image, I describe what's in the image as I can see it at the place where the image was made, i.e. at an almost infinitely higher resolution and, if need be, with the ability of looking around obstacles.
Someone somewhere out there might be interested in these details and at the same time consider having to ask for further descriptions lazy or maybe even ableist.
What I no longer do, however, is describe images within my image at more details than visible in the place where I've taken the image. In one of my last image descriptions, I would otherwise have had to describe not only multiple images in my image, but dozens of images in one image in my image and probably even more images in these images.
3 to such extents that I even transcribe text that's unreadable in the image, but that I can read at the place where the image was made. Also, I've once had a sign (unreadable of course) in English, French and rather broken German. I transcribed all three languages character by character, and I translated the French and the German text into English right after transcribing each one of it. Another reason why my long image descriptions are so long. This irritates screen readers because they can't switch languages mid-text, but if 100% verbatim transcripts are the rule, then so be it.
The only thing I no longer do regarding this is transcribe all-caps as all-caps because screen readers may or may not misinterpret them. Also, I don't transcribe Roman numbers as such.
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Und etwas mehr edgyness und Shitposting wre schon cool.
Das wre doch das Stichwort: Wenn junge Leute scheij3epfostieren wollen, zeig ihnen das Threadiverse. Lemmy, Mbin, PieFed. Und entsprechende Lemmy-Communities oder, falls verfgbar, Mbin-Magazine.
Allerdings befrchte ich, da die schlimmsten Kantenfrsten sich auf lemmy.ml registrieren werden, gerade weil es von zwei Tankies betrieben wird und durch und durch stalinistisch-maoistisch ist.
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Oder mir ist es damals einfach nicht aufgefallen, weil ich glcklicherweise auf nettere User gestoen bin.
Du bist wahrscheinlich fast nur auf Leute gestoen, die von Twitter nach Mastodon abgehauen sind, nachdem Elon Musk angekndigt hatte, Twitter aufzukaufen. Plus ein paar wenige, die schon lnger auf Mastodon waren. Umgekehrt sind auch nur solche Leute auf dich gestoen.
Als du neu warst, hattest du also null Kontakt zu Nicht-Mastodon-Fediverse-Nutzern. Ich schtze, du warst sehr lange der felsenfesten berzeugung, da "Mastodon" und "Fediverse" gleichbedeutend sind, weil das Fediverse nur Mastodon ist. Denn das Verhalten, das du beschrieben hast, legen nur Leute an den Tag, die hauptschlich oder ausschlielich etwas anderes im Fediverse nutzen als Mastodon.
Ich selbst war schon auf Friendica, als es noch mit "k" geschrieben wurde und Mastodon noch lngst nicht mal eine Idee war. Ich bin insgesamt schon lnger auf Hubzilla als 99,9% der Mastodon-Nutzer auf Mastodon.
Mich strt es tatschlich, wenn jemand eigentlich das ganze Netzwerk meint, aber "Mastodon" schreibt. Denn das diskriminiert alle Fediverse-Nutzer, die nicht auf Mastodon sind.
Mich strt es auch, wenn jemand nur die Serveranwendung Mastodon meint, aber "Fediverse" schreibt. Denn das Fediverse ist sehr viel mehr als dieser Internet Explorer 6 unter den Fediverse-Anwendungen.
Mich strt es auch, wenn jemand sich wnscht oder gar fordert, da "das Fediverse" ein bestimmtes Feature einfhren mge, das Friendica schon seit 15 Jahren hat. Oder wenn Leute fordern, da "im Fediverse" ein Feature niemals eingefhrt wird, das Friendica schon seit 15 Jahren hat, z. B. Quote-Posts.
Ich wei nmlich auch: Je lnger ein Mastodon-Neuling glaubt, das Fediverse sei nur Mastodon, desto mehr gewhnt er sich an ein reines Mastodon-Fediverse, das es so nie gab. Und je mehr er sich daran gewhnt, desto verstrter ist er, wenn er erfhrt, da es im Fediverse auch noch andere Sachen gibt als Reintext-Microblogging mit maximal 500 Zeichen. Desto mehr wird er sich dagegen wehren. Desto eher wird er mich dafr attackieren, da ich Hubzilla (voll durchformatiertes Macroblogging mit 16,7 Millionen Zeichen und tonnenweise anderen Features) nicht exakt so wie Mastodon benutze und meine Post nicht exakt wie Mastodon-Trts aussehen.
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Da es hier keine jungen Leute gibt, hat gleich einiges an Grnden.
Fr das Fediverse zu werben, bringt gar nichts. Ganz im Gegenteil: Wenn irgendjemand ab 30 zugibt, es zu kennen und zu nutzen, indem er/sie dafr wirbt, dann halten sie erst recht dazu Abstand. Die jungen Leute mssen das Fediverse von sich aus fr sich entdecken oder zumindest einen Teil des Fediverse.
Das geht aber nur, wenn es etwas gibt, das a) bekannt genug ist und b) genau die Inhalte liefert, auf die junge Leute stehen. Aktuell htte allenfalls Loops irgendwie eine Chance, weil es ein TikTok-Klon ist. Allgemein kann man nmlich sagen: Baby Boomer und Generation-X-er nutzen Facebook, Millennials nutzen Instagram, Zoomer und die Generation Alpha nutzen TikTok. Aber Loops ist lngst noch nicht soweit, und eine Android-App dafr mit Millionen Downloads gibt's auch noch nicht. Owncast wre noch was, aber auch nur fr PC-Gamer interessant, oder gibt's eine Owncast-App fr die Nintendo Switch
Oh, und: Twitter hat in Deutschland nie eine so gewaltige Rolle gespielt, jedenfalls nicht in der Funktion eines sozialen Netzwerks. Im Prinzip wren damit smtliche Microblogging-Serveranwendungen raus, allen voran Mastodon (am ehesten knnte ich mir noch vorstellen, da die *keys fr junge Leute interessant sind, weil die dazu neigen, verspielter zu sein mit mehr lustigen Features wie Emoji-Reaktionen).
Die richtigen Inhalten in ausreichenden Mengen hat das Fediverse auch nicht. Aktuell bruchte es hochpopulre Brainrot-Videos in riesigen Mengen, um junge Leute auch nur halten zu knnen. Um sie richtig kdern zu knnen, bruchte das Fediverse, was auch immer nach Brainrot-Videos kommt. Jedenfalls wage ich zu behaupten, das ist Zeug, das ansonsten niemand im Fediverse haben will.
Dazu kommt: Ruhm und Followerzahlen sind fr Jugendliche noch sehr viel wichtiger als fr ltere Generationen. Sehr viel wichtiger. Einer der Top-Traumberufe der Generation Alpha ist Influencer mit Millionen und Abermillionen Followers. Nur trumen sie von mehr Followers, als das Fediverse berhaupt aktive Nutzer hat. Und das Fediverse lt sich nur schwer bis gar nicht monetarisieren.
Und dazu wiederum gehrt, da gerade junge Leute sich gern mit trendigen, hochwertigen Marken schmcken. Das ist nichts Neues, das taten sie schon immer. Aber zum einen hat das Fediverse selbst keine trendige, hochwertige Marke. Zum anderen rmpft der durchschnittliche Fediverse-Nutzer ber teure Marken die Nase. Wenn ein 16jhriger im Fediverse ber den aktuell fett krassesten heien Schei unter den AAA-Games fr Windows auf Steam schwrmt (und das werden sie), wird er einiges an Gegenwind von der FLOSS- und Linux-Community bekommen, aber annhernd null Besttigung.
Selbst wenn es etwas im Fediverse gbe, was fr junge Leute interessant ist, darf es auf gar keinen Fall beworben werden als "Teil des Fediverse". Die jungen Leute brauchen das Gefhl, ein Netzwerk ganz fr sich alleine zu haben. Sag ihnen z. B., da Loops und Owncast ber das Fediverse mit so Zeug wie Mastodon, Pixelfed und Friendica verbunden ist, dann heit das fr sie, da das dasselbe Netzwerk ist, wo sich auch die ganzen Boomer und Hippies und Altnerds rumtreiben, nur mit anderer Oberflche.
Und dann ist da die ganze schon angesprochene Regelwut. Die Fediquette, die ungeschriebenen Fediverse-Regeln, von denen die meisten eh nur auf Mastodon ausgelegt sind, usw. usf. Allen voran die Mastodon HOA, die mit aller Gewalt ihr Idealbild von Mastodon fediverseweit durchzusetzen versucht. Wer tatschlich glaubt, da Jugendliche sich an all diese Regeln halten, ist entweder sehr behtet aufgewachsen, oder die eigene Jugend ist schon zu lange her, oder beides. Jugendliche sind notorische Rebellen, und Regeln sind fr sie dazu da, gebrochen zu werden. Vor allem Regeln, die von lteren Generationen aufgestellt wurden.
Ich selbst bin ja jemand, der sich bewut ist, da das Fediverse ein Minenfeld ist, besonders fr die, die nicht auf Mastodon sind. Jugendliche werden, wenn sie das merken, mit voller Absicht auf jede Mine springen. YOLO.
# # # # # # # # It does work Fediverse-wide, i.e. as a Hubzilla user, I can send posts and other content specifically to those in a certain privacy group (= Mastodon list on coke and 'roids from before there was even Mastodon), regardless of where they are. They could be on Hubzilla, on Friendica, on Mastodon, on Misskey, on Pixelfed, doesn't matter.
But there is one limitation.
Most Fediverse server software out there will understand anything coming from Hubzilla with limited permissions as a one-on-one DM. This means that in a thread with limited permissions, e.g. Mastodon users will only be able to discuss with the thread starter, but not with the others who were granted permission to receive the start post.
If I have a privacy group with Alice and Bob in it, and both are on Mastodon, and I send a post to only this privacy group, Alice and Bob will both receive the post as a DM. They will only be able to have a conversation with me. Alice won't know that Bob got the post, Bob won't know that Alice got the post, and Alice and Bob will not be able to converse with each other within this conversation thread.
It's only Hubzilla and its still existing descendants, and , that fully understand this special permission setting because they have a permission system that's very similar to Hubzilla's whereas Mastodon & Co. don't have any permission system to begin with.
So if Alice is on Hubzilla, and Bob is on (streams), and one of them replies to me, the other one can and will see that reply and will be able to interact with that reply. Like, Alice can reply to me, Bob can reply to Alice, and absolutely nobody else in the Fediverse will see my post or Alice's reply or Bob's reply.
By the way: (streams) and Forte literally have "privacy by default". While privacy groups are an optional, off-by-default feature on Hubzilla, access lists (practically the same) are part of the core on (streams) and Forte. And all your posts go to an access list named "Friends" by default unless you go and configure your channel to post in public by default. Conveniently, all your new connections are automatically added to the "Friends" access list by default.
Is it part of the protocol That's where it should be defined
For the longest time, namely until last August, it wasn't available on ActivityPub-based software at all. For Hubzilla itself is not based on ActivityPub.
It was first implemented in an early "pre-cursor" version of Hubzilla from 2012 that was built on a protocol specifically designed by Hubzilla's creator for a) privacy by design and, especially, b) resilience against server shutdown. That was five years before ActivityPub was first shown and six years before it became a standard. The protocol was (originally) named Zot, and Hubzilla is still based on Zot6 with ActivityPub being supported via an optional add-on that's on by default for servers, but off by default for new channels. (By the way, Hubzilla was the first software to ever implement ActivityPub.)
There's also (streams) from October, 2021, a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla by Hubzilla's own creator which is based on what's actually a newer version of Zot, but which has advanced so much that it's incompatible with Hubzilla's Zot6, so it's named Nomad now. (streams) has Nomad as its base protocol, it also supports Zot6, and it optionally supports ActivityPub, only that ActivityPub is built into the core now and always on by default.
ActivityPub-based software with this permission system did not exist until August, 2024 when the self-same creator forked the streams repository into something new named Forte, ripped out any and all support for protocols that aren't ActivityPub and ported all of (streams)' features to ActivityPub.
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"As I say in the book, Andreessens manifesto runs almost entirely on vibes, not logic. I think someone may have told him about the futurist manifesto at some point, and he just sort of liked the general vibe, which is why he paraphrases a part of it. Maybe he learned something about Marinetti and forgot it. Maybe he didnt care.
I really believe that when you get as rich as some of these guys are, you can just do things that seem like thinking and no one is really going to correct you or tell you things you dont want to hear. For many of these billionaires, the vibes of fascism, authoritarianism, and colonialism are attractive because theyre fundamentally about creating a fantasy of control."
Termism
Add your location to a Google Map55 minutes of blazing abstract, ambient stereo audio (Soundtrack)
An orchestrated tunnel of flutes, strings and synthetic brass blown out of this world (Soundrack)
Echoing strings from another universe (Soundtrack)
Serene voices from inside a damaged robot's shrieking processor (Soundtrack)
IndiGo charts bold Europe push: Amsterdam key to connect US, EU CEO says carrier offers global twist on India
IndiGo is stepping up its international game with CEO Pieter Elbers identifying Amsterdam as a critical hub to
-haulservices
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San Jose Barracuda After Long Road, Cuda Captain Returns to NHL
Campground number three. Beautiful weather both days, a little chilly at night.
The Long Game: In a Rising Salary Cap World, Player Development is More Important Than Ever for the New Jersey Devils and All NHL Teams
Report: Hawks lose long time starter, last years key sixth man in free agency
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For myself, I prefer being on team "there's no over-describing or over-explaining if someone somewhere out there may actually need that level of detail", rarely as I post images for this very reason. Also, I'm on team "someone somewhere out there may attack or sanction you for being ableist if you don't deliver all information necessary to understand your image post right away".That said, I only explain everything once per post because my explanations generally go into the common preamble of my long descriptions or into the long description of whichever image shows something that needs explanation first, and the long descriptions go into the post right now.
Should I ever switch to long descriptions in external documents linked into the post, then each document will describe one image, and each document will contain all explanations because I can't count on everyone always opening the first document first. Likewise, if I have multiple images that contain the same key elements, I will describe them in each short description in alt-text because I can't count on sighted people always taking a look at the first alt-text first.
(In case you're confused: Yes, each one of my original images gets two descriptions, a short one in the alt-text, a long one in the post.)
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Russia targets Ukraines cities with cluster munitions, raising deaths
Amid stalled peace talks, 's increasingly attacking with , banned for indiscriminate damage to
Civilian casualties in in 2025 rose 37% compared with same period last year, mostly due to s use of -range explosive weapons including munitions in densely populated cities
Long Island Nets to be a big part of young players development, says Sean Marks.
Friendica has had full support for formatted long-form articles since its inception 15 years ago. The same goes for all its surviving descendants, created by the same developer: Hubzilla from 2015, (streams) from 2021, Forte from 2024. In addition, Hubzilla can be used to post federating long-form articles (which are automatically sent to Fediverse connections and Atom feed subscribers) and optionally also to post non-federating long-form articles (which aren't sent anywhere).Friendica has also been able to subscribe to both RSS and Atom feeds since its inception. The same goes for Hubzilla.
This is not new to the Fediverse at all.
See also my Mastodon vs Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte feature comparison tables here: . (By the way: This is a non-federating Hubzilla article.)
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Jaylen Warren contract projection: Will the Pittsburgh Steelers give the RB a long-term deal
The Pittsburgh Steelers let Najee Harris go in free agency this past March. The former first-round pick
-page -steelers-commentary -steelers-free-agency -steelers-news
June swoon leaves Royals with long-shot playoff odds
Jaire Alexander named long-shot candidate to win Comeback Player of the Year
The Baltimore Ravens added cornerback Jaire Alexander to be a mainstay of their defense in their surge for
-ravens-news -page
The long and winding draft rights of Georgios Printezis
OpenSim user for five years here.Little nitpick: OSgrid is not "the OpenSim grid". It is not even "the official OpenSim grid". There is no such thing as an official OpenSim grid, only 4,000+ big and small grids that are independent from both each other and OpenSim's development.
In fact, OpenSim, that's five spare-time hobbyists, a wiki, a code repository and a bug tracker. Nothing more. Everything else is third-party.
OSgrid was the first public grid. It's the oldest grid, 18 years next month. And it's probably the only major grid that runs vanilla code so that the OpenSim devs can debug their development code under regular conditions. AFAIK, the other big grids all run forks. In fact, OSgrid isn't even the biggest grid anymore. While it's bigger than Second Life, the Wolf Territories Grid is bigger than both.
If you want to know more, your blog post was the perfect opportunity for me to finally write that I had planned for a while now.
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Oh does this feel like my inner monologue when I post a photo. It is a bummer that it, at times, prevents me from posting more photos, but I hope this make me a little more quality over quantity.
I actually keep entire categories of things out of my images because I can't describe them up to my own standards. This includes realistic buildings. I would first have to look up loads of architectural terms to describe all details of a building, and then I would have to explain each and every one of these architectural buildings in a way that absolute laypeople understand my image description without ever having to ask me anything or look anything up themselves.
The last time I posted an image with a building was . I actually went around and looked for a nice motive for a new image post for quite a while. There was one harbour scene which I thought looked spectacular enough to show, but which was impossible to describe. So I fell back to this motive. I thought it's not too bland, not too simple and at the same time not too complex. Besides, the one building in the image is totally unrealistic and without all the tiny details that would make up a realistic building.
And then I ended up taking some 30 hours over two days to describe the image in over 60,000 characters. The building alone took up some 40,000 or so. This is still the longest image description in the whole Fediverse, I think.
My last image post before that was with still over 25,000 characters of description for one image, and I consider it outdated slop.
It was the last time that I described an image in my image with more details than visible in the original of that image itself. And that's where I got sloppy. I completely forgot to transcribe what's written on the license plate above the office door of the motel in that image in my image. And I couldn't be bothered to give detailed descriptions of the two 1957 Chevy Bel Airs parked in front of the motel because I really wanted to get that description done. In the actual image, all of this is sub-pixel-sized. You wouldn't know it's even there if I didn't mention it. I did describe the motel, but it's a fairly simple building, and I decided against describing what's visible through the windows with open blinds from the camera angle in the image in my image.
In the next image, the one with 60,000+ characters of description, I stopped describing images in the image beyond what I can see in the place where the image itself was taken. That was because one image is a destination preview image on a teleporter. The destination is a kind of teleport hub. The preview actually (if only barely so) shows over 300 single-destination teleporters, a few dozen of them with their own preview images.
So I teleported to that hub to describe it in detail. And I looked at the teleporters and their preview images. Turned out, not only do these preview images pretty much all have text in them and not necessarily few bits of text, but some of them actually have images within themselves again.
I would have had to describe that image in my image, dozens of images in that image in my image and a number of images in these images in that image in my image. For each of the latter, I would have had to teleport three times from the place that I originally wanted to describe. I would also have had a whole lot more text to transcribe. All on a sub-pixel scale several times over.
Not only would that have been a humongous task, but more importantly, it would have inflated my image description and my whole post to more than 100,000 characters. Mastodon would probably have rejected my post for being too long. And this would have rendered the whole effort futile. In the few places in the Fediverse that would still have accepted my post, nobody cares for image descriptions.
AI certainly can't get inside my brain well enough to write accurate descriptions. Even if it could would I hmmm.
I've only used AI to describe images twice. And in both cases, that was to show just how bad AI is at describing images about an extremely obscure and quickly changing niche topic at the level of accuracy and detail which I deem necessary for that topic.
I guess one problem that you're facing is that next to nobody in the Fediverse can even grasp what you're thinking about, what you're taking into consideration for your image descriptions. That's why you got next to no feedback upon your first comment in this thread.
I have one advantage here: What you're pondering, I have actually done. If I feel like people won't understand what I'm thinking about, I point them at one or several of my actual image posts, and/or I post a quote from one of my actual image descriptions. Still, almost nobody actually goes and reads through any of my image descriptions, but I guess they get the gist, especially when I post snippets from my actual descriptions.
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# # # # # # # # # # # Just for me to be on the safe side: What are your minimum requirements for alt-texts and image descriptions so you refrain from sanctioning a user
Full, to-the-point adherence to , the , etc., even though they contradict each other
Do you demand image descriptions be detailed and informative enough so that nobody will ever have to ask the poster about explanations and/or details because they're all already in the descriptions, no matter how niche and obscure the content of the image is
If there is already a lengthy image description in the post itself (imagine all character limits you know in the Fediverse it's longer than all of them by magnitudes), do you still demand there be another description in the alt-text, even though the alt-text actually points the user to the description in the post, because there absolutely must be a sufficiently detailed and accurate image description in the alt-text, full stop
In fact, do you sanction image descriptions in general or alt-texts in particular if you think they are too long For example, if you stumble upon an image post from me that has a "short" image description of 1,400 characters in the alt-text and a "long" image description of over 60,000 characters in the post itself (and I've actually posted such a thing into the Fediverse ), will you demand I discard two days and some 30 hours of work, delete the long description and cut the short description down to no more than 200 characters Maybe even while still retaining the same amount of information Lest you have me dogpiled and mass-blocked or worse
By the way, , and .
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First of all, your link is behind a paywall.
Next, I hope you don't honestly think that only two virtual worlds systems were ever made, Second Life and "The Metaverse" which many think is the official and trademarked name of Meta Horizon (very early on Facebook Horizon, a.k.a. "Meta Metaverse", "Facebook Metaverse" or "Zuckerberg's Metaverse").
On a sidenote: The community has been using the term "metaverse" for actually existing virtual worlds in its standard jargon since 2007, the year that OpenSim was first released. 14 years longer than Zuckerberg. In particular, , the first public OpenSim grid, the oldest OpenSim grid and until fairly recently the biggest one, has officially labelled itself "The Open Source Metaverse" since 2007. Also, there are things like the which resides in , another OpenSim grid, the which focuses on and is based in OpenSim, too, and entire grids like the . All of them predate both Zuckerberg's 2021 Metaverse announcement and the 2022/2023 Metaverse hype.
While the big Second Life hype was from 2007 to late 2008, it hasn't entirely faded into obscurity. And academics and psychologists aren't that big a part of its user base. Many Second Life users have stuck around since the late 2000s or 2010s, and most are hobbyists.
If you want an insight into Second Life without actually spending lots of time there, check Wagner James "Hamlet" Au's blog . He also covers other virtual worlds from VRChat to Horizon.
As I can't read your blog post, I do hope you've written it from the perspective of someone who actually knows a few things about Second Life, such as that it's constantly evolving, and that it's the one virtual world that's the closest in looks to Cyberpunk 2077, now that physically-based rendering is spreading. And not from the perspective of someone who only very recently discovered that Second Life was, surprisingly, not shut down in late 2008 or early 2009, and who thinks it still looks the same as back then.
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You say this like it's a bad thing.
Not at all.
One advantage is, as you've said, that the backend and the Web frontend can have their own developers, development of both can largely be detached, and they can be upgraded separately from one another.
Separate Web frontends can be developed by people who actually know a thing or two about frontend development and UI design. I mean, look at the Web UIs of some all-in-one Fediverse server applications. They're often the digital counterpart of random knobs and switches poked through a piece of cardboard and labelled with a ball pen, just so that these knobs and switches are there. Sometimes they're the equivalent of expecting all kinds of end users to operate DIP switches, but hey, they're still better than soldering and unsoldering wires.
Another advantage is that server software for which alternative frontends exist does not have to drag its default frontend around. There are Mastodon servers with alternative frontends, but they still have to have the two official Web UIs installed (the default one and the Tweetdeck-style one) because they're firmly welded to the backend. I guess we all know what a heavyweight Mastodon is, and I'm certain that part of the weight is caused by the built-in Web UIs. In stark contrast, you can set up an Akkoma server with Mangane instead of Akkoma-FE, as in without having to also install Akkoma-FE.
By the way, Hubzilla is an interesting case here. Not only is its default UI very configurable, but Hubzilla itself is highly themeable, and third-party themes almost amount to entirely new UIs. At the same time, however, practically all official development efforts went only into the backend for most of its existence.
Any Hubzilla UI has to wrestle an immense wealth of features, and not exactly new features were added over time. This, however, caused Hubzilla's UI to gradually turn into a jumbled mess because some of the new UI elements were seemingly added in totally random places. Not only was the UI never cleaned up, but the default theme is perpetually stuck in 2012 (the name "Redbasic" says it all, it was made for Hubzilla when Hubzilla was still named Red), it was derived from an early Friendica theme, and even Friendica wasn't pretty back then. Also, the documentation was completely neglected.
So the situation last year was that there was only one working Hubzilla theme left, and that was Redbasic. It was the only theme that was even only upgraded to work with newer Hubzilla versions. There used to be other official themes, but they eventually ended up so outdated that they were removed altogether. 's third-party themes were last touched seven years ago, that must have been around the time when Hubzilla 3 came out. At the same time, the official documentation was not only highly incomplete, but it was so outdated that parts of it were simply false. It partly referred to features that had been axed many years ago (tech levels) and features that simply were never there (four different mention styles), and parts of it even still spoke of Red. Thus, nobody even knew how to develop new themes for current Hubzilla.
That was when the community stepped in. sat down and . not only started working on his , but in the same process, he reverse-engineered Hubzilla's theming system to write documentation for theming Hubzilla which had never been written before AFAIK. Around that time, was dabbling with specialised themes for certain purposes, e.g. one very clean theme for Hubzilla channels used as long-form blogs. Later on, joined the fray with his now-popular .
Granted, Hubzilla still carries Redbasic around, not only as the default for new channels unless the admin chooses another one, but also as a fallback in case a new Hubzilla version doesn't support existing third-party themes anymore. The latter is becoming less likely as the Utsukta themes are being built against Hubzilla's development versions now. Besides, it's in Hubzilla's nature that everything on a hub is updated at the same time, including third-party repositories.
In general, the Hubzilla community is no longer that easily satisfied with a UI that "just works", and the devs have taken notice. Hubzilla 10.4, now a release candidate, will spruce up certain core parts of the UI. It will introduce a tree-style thread view as the new default instead of its current chronological view, something that Friendica, (streams) and Forte have had for significantly longer. That is, this is actually a side-effect of the introduction of "lazy loading" conversations to reduce the server workload. Also, upon user request, it will add a button to add images to comments.
If (streams) and Forte grow bigger, the same could happen there. They have two official themes to choose from, fairly new Fresh and an older version of Redbasic. However, they don't have a large enough community for all the same things to happen to them that happened to Hubzilla, although Pepe has said he'd rewrite the (streams) and Forte help as well, seeing as Mike had ripped them out entirely with no replacements as they were too outdated at that point. Maybe someone will even write a guide on how to adapt Hubzilla themes to (streams) and Forte.
That is, (streams) and Forte are both already the result of several years of UI and UX advancement and improvements and making them fit for a Mastodon-dominated Fediverse (where Hubzilla is still geared towards a Fediverse which it will dominate itself by the mid-to-late 2010s). This is stuff which can't be taken care of in themes because it concerns the UI engine itself, and it's partly tied deeply into the backend.
While Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte won't be able to do without their official themes anytime soon, the official themes don't significantly weigh them down. Still, they require some maintenance work to keep up with the backend.
Wouldn't Mastodon would be better if it specialised in developing apps, and outsourced the server side to people who know how to do back-end engineering
This makes me wonder which half Mastodon would be willing to outsource. I think they'd rather hold on to the backend and pass all the frontends on. Of course, this would come with the advantage of the official Mastodon mobile app actually becoming somewhat decent rather than remaining the "we need an official app, no matter how" kluge that it is today.
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The J. Arthur Keenes Band Overcoat Weather
CC BY-NC-ND ( Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives)
It belongs to the group of long-horned beetles, also known as cerambycids (family Cerambycidae). They are a diverse group of beetles characterized by their long antennae, often longer than their bodies, hence their name.
-horned Beetles It's similar for me, only that I always put a gigantic effort into describing my own images twice, once not exactly briefly in the alt-text and once with even more details in the post itself. Sometimes I find an interesting motive, but when I start thinking about how to describe it, I don't even render an image because it isn't worth doing so if I can't post it.
I haven't posted a new image in almost a year. In fact, I've got a series of fairly simple images for which I've started writing the descriptions late last year, and I'm still not done. So much about "it only takes a few seconds".
Before someone suggests I could use Altbot: I'm not even sure if it'll work with Hubzilla posts. And besides, no AI on this planet is fit for the task of properly, appropriately and accurately describing the kind of images that I post.
And then there's me who has managed to describe one image in a bit over ten thousand words last year. Good thing I have a post character limit of over 16.7 million. And I actually limited myself this time: I did not describe images within my image in detail, in stark contrast to about two years ago when I described a barely visible image in an image in well over 4,000 characters of its own, and that wasn't the only image within that image that I described.
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# # # # # # # # # # # So Pleroma and Akkoma (which, for some reason, is missing from the list) actually use the ActivityPub C2S API to connect their frontends Even though Pleroma predates ActivityPub and started out as an alternative GNU social frontend, much like Mastodon
I mean, they're famous for having separate repositories for the server and the Web frontend (same name with "-FE" attached). And they're equally famous for having servers that forgo the official frontend in favour of third-party stuff, most notably Mangane.
So if Mangane actually makes use of that API rather than a homebrew *oma client API, it could be used as or, if need be, modified into a sparrings partner for API-testing purposes, not to mention that it's living proof that the API actually works. As it integrates with Pleroma and Akkoma that well, I've got my doubts that it only uses the Mastodon client API.
In the cases of (streams) and Forte which are almost the same software save for protocol support, the Web UI is much closer to the server backend, as flexible and modifyable it is. In their cases, the question would be whether they could be used to test just how far feature support in the ActivityPub C2S API can possibly go, maybe even whether it'd be possible to use the ActivityPub C2S API to build an almost fully-featured (streams)/Forte client app (except, of course, Web UI configuration and (streams)' per-channel ActivityPub switch which might cut the whole app off the server).
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # First of all: You must never put line breaks into alt-text. Ever. (, )
Besides, that will certainly not be the day that I'll post my first image after more than a year.
It's tedious enough to properly describe my original images at the necessary level of detail, and one image takes me many hours to describe, sometimes up to two full days, morning to evening. Not joking here. I certainly won't put extra effort into turning at least the 900 characters of "short" description that go into the alt-text into a poem. And I definitely will not also turn the additional 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 characters of long description that go into the post into a poem as well. (And yes, I can post 60,000+ characters in one go, and I have done so in the past. My character limit is 16,777,215.)
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Last updated: 2025-07-08
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