Find the latitude of any place.  

I've put my three randomish ambient

I've put my three randomish ambient fog tunes, rainfog, freezefog and glowfog into a playlist for your convenience.

fog - one hour, forty seven minutes and one second of atmospheric order from chaos

fog


Our cute tiny Wood Mice are over wintering in the conservatory again

- animal wildlife

Find the latitdue and longitude of any place Good thing you've limited this to corporate platforms. Otherwise, strictly speaking, you'd have to start finding and blocking all Hubzilla instances.
Hubzilla has been decentralised before Mastodon even existed. But by default, new channels only federate through Hubzilla's own Zot protocol which only Hubzilla and (streams) understand. ActivityPub is one out of several optional protocols that have to be manually activated per channel.
Also, I've yet to see a public Hubzilla hub with hub-wide moderators beyond the admin(s), even though Hubzilla hubs tend to be small in comparison to Mastodon instances. On top of that, most Hubzilla hubs don't give you a link to the admin's channel/the admins' channels, not even on the Web interface. If you only use mobile Mastodon apps, you're completely out of luck.
Oh, and as if that wasn't enough, unlike Mastodon users, Hubzilla users aren't notified if you mention them out of the blue in a public post without being connected to them. You have to send them a DM, and you have to know that.
At least it's .
CC:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla For starters, there is the so-called "Threadiverse" in the shape of fairly young and , both launched as drop-in replacements for Reddit. Which means they largely handle like Reddit. I think LemmyBB, the alternate Lemmy UI that mimicks the look-and-feel of phpBB3, is discontinued.
is the oldest project in the ActivityPub-centred Fediverse, created by Mike Macgirvin in 2010, and it has been in active development ever since. Case in point: Its latest stable release is only a few days old and made it the only Fediverse project with full native Bluesky federation. It's quite versatile, and forums are part of what it can do see , for example. In fact, forums are nothing but regular user accounts with specific settings.
For completion's sake: , originally created by the same developer out of a Friendica fork, is a heavyweight jack-of-all-trades that has both public and private community groups/forums amongst the things you can use it as. The UI might not be appealing right now, but new UIs are being developed as we speak, AFAIK including one specifically for discussion groups.
Finally, technically nameless and brandless, is still being maintained and developed by Mike, and he's quick, especially if you run a development version. It's at the end of a string of forks of Hubzilla, and while it has a greatly reduced feature set, it has improved ActivityPub connectivity, it has improved access permissions settings, and it can still host community groups/forums. It's probably more convenient to start your own instance because finding one of the few public instances with open registration is .
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Groups #Forums #Lemmy #kbin #/kbin #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) "Image description" if it's an image, "audio transcript" or maybe "audio description" if it's audio, "video transcript" or maybe "video description" if it's a video, "media description" as a more general term.
Mastodon only refers to it as "alt-text" because that's where Mastodon users always put it. After all, alt-text gives them 1,500 characters per image, but the toot only gives them 500 characters minus content warnings minus hashtags minus mentions etc.
I use more appropriate terms and more appropriate places to put my descriptions because I don't have to worry about character limits here on Hubzilla.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #AltText #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MediaDescription #MediaDescriptions #AudioDescription #AudioDescriptions The question that nobody can agree on an answer to is: How detailed is the minimum requirement for media descriptions How detailed is optimal How detailed is too much, and is there such a thing as "too much"
I'm someone whose "optimal" for image descriptions is probably beyond "too much" for many readers and definitely "too much" for almost all writers, and it keeps getting worse. I can post a 37,000-character description for one image that took me over 13 hours to research and write and find it lacking in multiple ways afterwards. In fact, I've done so.
Now I'm wondering what'd be an optimal audio description for music. Since I'm also a hobbyist musician, I might try to approach describing music in a way that goes into similar detail as sheet music, only that it includes sounds as well. Something that involves describing each audio part separately, although I'm not sure whether I should use the time within the whole audio file, the time only for the song, the bar-based timecode for the song or two or all three of them.
So I guess reading my audio description for one song is likely to take longer than listening to the whole album, if not multiple albums. But it'd be detailed and hopefully informative. That is, if I find a way to describe individual sounds including what effects do to them that's satisfying both for people who have turned deaf and people who were born deaf, both being complete laypeople when it comes to music.
But whether that's the right way, still not sufficient or way overkill, I don't know.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #AltText #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MediaDescription #MediaDescriptions #AudioDescription #AudioDescriptions I do.
Not what most people think "The Metaverse" is, namely a.k.a. "Facebook's Metaverse" a.k.a. "Zuckerberg's Metaverse" a.k.a. "Meta's Metaverse" a.k.a. Horizons, though.
Not what the cryptobros want the Metaverse to be either, i.e. a cash grab based on blockchains, cryptocurrencies, NFTs and artificially expensive land in clunky, buggy 3-D worlds.
In fact, nothing that was hyped after Zuck's "Metaverse" announcement.
I'm using something non-corporate, free-as-in-free-beer, free-as-in-free-licenses, open-source, even decentralised that has been around since 2007 and established a so-far unique connection between worlds in 2008.
It's called , OpenSim in short. Basically, it's a free and open-source server-side re-implementation of Second Life's technology and used with largely the same third-party clients ("viewers") as Second Life. And it can be used without a VR headset on just about any desktop or laptop computer with halfway decent graphics performance.
And yes, I'm using what's called the "Metaverse". This term has been used in OpenSim circles before 2010 already, very likely as early as 2008 when the Hypergrid was established which makes travelling between OpenSim worlds ("grids") possible, maybe even in 2007 already.
By the way, there are quite a few OpenSim users in the Fediverse, and there are also Second Life users. Just check the hashtags #OpenSimulator, #OpenSim and #SecondLife.
#Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPostAbout time that Mastodon introduces groups. That'd be the only way to actually discuss stuff with Mastodon users.
Sure, Mastodon users can discuss in groups already, namely on Guppe, Firefish, Lemmy, /kbin, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams)... But seriously, the vast majority of Mastodon users never looks beyond Mastodon. They don't know that discussion groups/forums exist outside of Mastodon, or if they do, they find them too cumbersome and inconvenient to join because they can't do that with one click or tap. And not few don't even know that there's a Fediverse beyond Mastodon.
On the other hand, if there were Mastodon groups, they'd probably be populated by 99.9% Mastodon users, so there wouldn't be any insight from non-Mastodon users. Especially the users of projects that have their own group/forum functionality would be absent because they wouldn't need Mastodon to join a group. So next to nobody would even have a vague idea what the Fediverse outside of Mastodon is like. If I wrote about what things are like on Hubzilla, for example, that'd be totally unimaginable for most users. And I'd constantly be fighting "Fediverse = Mastodon" windmills.
So it's actually about time that groups started becoming compatible to one another and federating across the Fediverse, along with Mastodon introducing that feature. Just imagine your Mastodon app listing Lemmy communities, /kbin magazines and Hubzilla forums next to Mastodon groups. But not even Lemmy and /kbin are really sufficiently compatible with one another yet. These two are too different from Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams). And Mastodon is probably going to re-invent the wheel and intentionally make its own groups incompatible with everything else out there.
P.S.: The reason why this post is so long is because I had a lot to say. And it didn't matter anymore. I had a nice draft with 499 characters. Then I realised I needed a whole bunch of extra hashtags for those who use them to filter out any Fediverse meta discussions. And as I had to go over 500 characters anyway, there was no reason to limit myself.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Guppe #GuppeGroups #Firefish #Lemmy #kbin #/kbin #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Groups #Forums

When you turn in your quest but the questgiver kindda makes you flustered
"You have done well, Knight! You know how to please your *gorgeous* Countess! "

For MattTheToonCat

I sincerely hope it hasn't become an absolute requirement for everyone whose posts may show up on Mastodon to describe preview images automatically placed by Mastodon.
I know that accessibility demands that. And I'm usually someone who takes it seriously. My descriptions for my own original images have to be the longest and most detailed in the whole Fediverse by far. And I'm worried about triggering autistic users with eye contact if there's an eye smaller than 1/10,000th of a pixel somewhere in the picture. I've issued an alcohol content warning due to a strawberry cocktail that was only 4 pixels.
But I'm on Hubzilla and not on Mastodon. While this gives me the advantage of no character limit, editing in a description for an image that's only visible on Mastodon would be a huge endeavour that'd require checking two Fediverse projects, not to mention a timespan of probably multiple hours between submitting the post and submitting the edit.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
- And while we're on the algorithm topic, people on the Fediverse, should remember that what they're using here (probably Mastodon) doesn't have an algorithm. If they're anything they're not happy about their timeline in terms of content, well... They have the power to change it. Follow and Unfollow buttons are one click away. Mute and Block are only two clicks.

This can only be mitigated by immediately launching tutorials for new Mastodon users both on all official Web interfaces and in the official app. These tutorials would walk them through their first steps, including how to find interesting content, e.g. by following hashtags.
That way, there'd be fewer people who try out Mastodon and leave it again in frustration after finding their personal timeline empty. I mean, they were promised a 1:1 pre-Musk Twitter clone.
And overall, regardless of the platform, service or app you're using, go through the settings. Understand them. The number of people who never do that is scary.

I guess that's because the vast majority of Mastodon users is on phones, using mobile apps. And I guess the official app is so lacking that it doesn't offer access to all settings either.
At the same time, most of these people have never seen and will never see the Web interface of their instance. They might not even know that Mastodon has as Web interface and believe it's mobile apps only.
So they'll never in their lives come across these settings. Ever.
Also, people tend to be either too lazy to configure anything or too afraid of breaking something while doing so. They want their personal preferences to be either the default settings or hard-coded, regardless of what someone else might prefer.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon There are already projects in the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon that support long-form posts will all bells and whistles from unlimited character count to text formatting to embedding images within the post.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #WriteFreely #Plume #Friendica #Hubzilla #LongForm A large part of this is EU politics.
Meta wanted to harvest as many former Twitter users as possible, that's the reason why Threads exists.
The reason why Threads has implemented ActivityPub is mainly EU politics and EU laws. In America, IT corporations have free reign. But the EU requires at least newly-started online services to be interoperable with others, full stop, end of discussion.
When Threads was launched, it was completely banned in the EU. Totally inaccessible. You know when the ban was lifted It was lifted when Threads started federating. Even with that little federation, Threads sufficiently fulfilled the requirements to operate in the EU. For now.
And why the Fediverse Why ActivityPub Because a) established with lots of users already, b) open standard with no license fees to pay, c) not controlled by another corporation, and d) they had heard of it.
I mean, they could just as well have implemented Bluesky's protocol, but Bluesky is corporate and doesn't want to federate with anything non-Bluesky. They could have implemented the Diaspora* protocol, but Diaspora* isn't interested in external federation either, so they'd have to crack and reverse-enginner Diaspora*'s inner workings just like Friendica did a dozen years ago. They could have implemented OStatus, but hardly anybody uses that anymore. They could have implemented Zot or Nomad, but they don't know that either exists, not to mention that they would have had to bow to the will of one individual protocol developer who would not let them one-sidedly meddle with his protocol against his will.
That's why ActivityPub.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Meta #CWMeta #Threads #MetaMeta #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #EUPol #CWEUPol

Greenery ! by Sabina BD

s/Firefish/Sharkey because both Firefish and one of its official instances have been pretty much unmaintained for months, and some see the whole project in its death throes if won't come back.
But yes, Misskey gives you 3,000 characters, and all the Forkeys (Firefish, Sharkey, Iceshrimp etc.) give you at least the same amount because the admin can configure it.
And Friendica doesn't have a character limit at all. At least not a defined one. Neither do Hubzilla and (streams), all created by the same guy as Friendica. I've actually managed to post over 77,000 characters in one piece on Hubzilla a few months ago.
But be aware: Some Mastodon users are extremely irritated when they come across a post with something in it that couldn't possibly be written on vanilla Mastodon, e.g. over 500 characters. And they won't leave it at blocking you.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #Mastodon #Misskey #Firefish #Sharkey #Iceshrimp #ForkeysCome to think of it...
Imagine someone made an automatically generated instance filter list for Mastodon that tries to contain all instances of everything that isn't vanilla Mastodon. No matter if it's Glitch or Pixelfed or Lemmy or Sharkey or Hubzilla or Threads or whatever.
Imagine whatever created that filter list even scraped the Communities pages of (streams) instances and then started scraping the Communities pages of new (streams) instances it found there. That'd be the only way to discover (streams) instances. Imagine that scraper even went for the last remaining Osada, Zap, Misty, Redmatrix and Roadhouse instances.
What do you think, how many Mastodon instances would actually include that filter list How many Mastodon users would demand that list be used on whichever instances they're on if they find out that the list exists
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotMastodon #Blocklist #Blocklists #BlocklistMeta #CWBlocklistMeta #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta Dann hier nochmal der Block, der sich an dich richtet:

Ach ja, nur zur Information, : Friendica und Hubzilla sind keine Eindringlinge. Die waren zuerst hier.
Mastodon ist von 2016. Hubzilla ist von 2015 und umbenannt aus der Red Matrix von 2012. Und Friendica ist von 2010 und somit das lteste Fediverse-Projekt, das ActivityPub untersttzt.
Als Mastodon 2016 startete, sprach es sofort eine Sprache, die Friendica und Hubzilla zu dem Zeitpunkt auch schon sprachen: OStatus. Das heit, Friendica und Hubzilla haben sich nicht mit Mastodon verbunden, sondern Mastodon hat sich mit Friendica und Hubzilla verbunden.
Und als 2018 ActivityPub kam, hatte zumindest Hubzilla das auch schon vor Friendica.
Aber wenn dich so Sachen wie ber 500 Zeichen am Stck, Fettschrift, Kursivschrift, Codeblcke, , ...

...berschriften...



...und "komische" Mentions stren, dann steht es dir frei, durch die Instanzenlisten von allem, was nicht Mastodon ist, zu gehen und sie alle fr dich zu blockieren. Links zu solchen Listen findest du unter anderem .
Ich jedenfalls komme zwar Mastodon einigermaen entgegen, aber komplett verbiegen und mich komplett auf das beschrnken, was Mastodon 3.x konnte, werde ich definitiv nicht. Dann gbe es von mir nmlich auch keine Bilder mehr, weil ich meine Bilder nicht in 1500 Zeichen oder weniger beschreiben kann.
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#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Lang #LangerPost #CWLang #CWLangerPost #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta They can't completely redesign ActivityPub so that it becomes incompatible what we have now and then a) still call it ActivityPub and b) declare it the "official" version.
Meta doesn't own ActivityPub. If anyone owns ActivityPub, it's the W3C. Meta can neither buy ActivityPub from the W3C, nor can they buy out the W3C.
If Meta makes its own proprietary version of ActivityPub and implements it on Threads, then Threads becomes incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse. And the rest of the Fediverse will shrug it off, although I'm not so sure about Mastodon.
The very reason why Threads uses ActivityPub is because the EU demands interoperability between online platforms. ActivityPub was the easiest way for Meta to do that with Threads without implementing something owned by another corporation. It's all EU appeasement. If Threads becomes incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse, it becomes a centralised walled garden, and all the EU will ban Threads again.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Meta #MetaMeta #Threads #Fediverse #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #EUPol #CWEUPol Weil Mastodon doppelt soviele Nutzer hat wie alles andere zusammen.
Und weil 99,9% dieser Nutzer die ersten Monate ihrer Zeit auf Mastodon glaubten, das Fediverse sei nur Mastodon. Fr sie hat Eugen Rochko sowohl das Fediverse als auch ActivityPub erfunden. Und als sie erstmals erfuhren, da es im Fediverse noch was anderes gibt, weil sie einen "Trt" mit ber 500 Zeichen oder Textformatierung oder einem Zitat oder so sahen, empfanden sie alles, was nicht Mastodon ist, als Eindringlinge in ihr schnes, gemtliches, flauschiges Mastodon-Fediverse.
Genau diese Leute htten es am liebsten, wenn das Fediverse nur Original-Vanilla-Mastodon wre. Am besten das "gute alte" Mastodon 3.x. Alle anderen Projekte haben zu verschwinden. Das wird aber nicht passieren.
Okay, dann sollen die anderen Projekte eben zu 100%igen Mastodon-3.x-Klonen werden und alle ihre Spezialfeatures aufgeben. Das wird aber auch nicht passieren, schon gar nicht, wenn hinter einem Projekt ein Mike Macgirvin steckte oder noch steckt.
Tja, dann haben eben alle Mastodon-Instanzen alles zu fediblocken, was nicht Mastodon ist. Nur da das ein Katz-und-Maus-Spiel wird, weil man keine ganzen Projekte am Stck fediblocken kann und stndig neue Nicht-Mastodon-Instanzen auftauchen.
Also haben geflligst die Nutzer aller anderen Projekte sich so zu verhalten, als wren sie auf Mastodon. Alles, was ihre Instanzen knnen, was Mastodon nicht kann, haben sie zu lassen.
ber 500 Zeichen sind nicht erlaubt, weil man auf Vanilla-Mastodon nicht mehr als 500 Zeichen trten kann.
Textformatierung ist nicht erlaubt, weil Mastodon vor 4.0 die nicht darstellen konnte und man auch auf Mastodon 4.x sowas nicht selbst machen kann.
Zitate sind nicht erlaubt, weil Mastodon vor 4.0 die nicht darstellen konnte und man auch auf Mastodon 4.x nicht zitieren kann.
Quote-Posts sind nicht erlaubt, weil Mastodon vor 4.0 die nicht darstellen konnte, Mastodon 4.x die immer noch nur unzureichend darstellt, man auerdem auf Mastodon 4.x nicht selbst quote-posten kann und Quote-Tweets ja sowieso bse sind.
Hashtags fr automatisierte Content-Warning-Filter Darf man auch nicht benutzen. Vor Version 4.0 konnte Mastodon keine Content Warnings per Filter, also sind Content Warnings auf Mastodon nur als ebensolche im Content-Warning-Feld erlaubt. Ungeachtet der Tatsache, da andere Projekte Content-Warning Filter schon hatten, als es Mastodon noch gar nicht gab.
Ach ja, das Content-Warning-Feld ist das Content-Warning-Feld und NUR fr Content Warnings. Und fr nichts anderes. Auch wenn es tausendmal auf Hubzilla schon "Summary" hie, bevor es Mastodon berhaupt gab.
Wenn man auf Friendica, Hubzilla oder (streams) mehrere Bilder postet, hat man die a) nicht in den Post einzubetten, sondern hinten anzuhngen und b) die Bilder in umgekehrter Reihenfolge einzustellen, damit sie auf Mastodon wieder richtigherum sind. Auch wenn man einen Mastodon-Kontakt und 100 Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams)-Kontakte hat.
Friendica-Nutzer haben bitteschn keine Titel einzutragen. Denn wenn sie das tun, gehen ihre Posts nicht als Notes (= Mastodon-"Trts") raus, sondern als Artikel. Und Artikel kennt man auf Mastodon nicht. Also will man die nicht. Lieber einen Thread aus "Trts" von maximal 500 Zeichen machen, weil das der Standard im Fediverse ist. Oder noch besser: den 80.000-Zeichen-Essay, der auf Friendica problemlos in einem Stck postbar wre, auf maximal 500 Zeichen eindampfen.
Ich bin sogar schon dafr kritisiert worden, wie meine Mentions aussehen. Ich sollte bitteschn aufhren, so "komische" Mentions zu machen und statt dessen die ganz "normalen", die man von Mastodon gewhnt ist. Nur da hier auf Hubzilla die Form der Mentions hartgecodet sind, und zwar schon vier Jahre lnger, als es Mastodon berhaupt gibt. Und Mario Vavti wird einen Deibel tun, daran ohne Not was zu ndern.
Und da wundern sich einige, warum so manch ein Nutzer von Friendica, Hubzilla oder (streams) ActivityPub komplett deaktiviert bzw. gar nicht erst aktiviert hat. Sie haben einfach keinen Bock, auf einmal so zu tun, als wren sie auf Mastodon, sobald jemand auf Mastodon ihre Posts lesen kann, und auf all die Features, die Friendica und Hubzilla schon hatten, bevor es Mastodon gab, wegen derer sie berhaupt erst da sind, wo sie sind, zu verzichten.

Ach ja, nur zur Information, : Friendica und Hubzilla sind keine Eindringlinge. Die waren zuerst hier.
Mastodon ist von 2016. Hubzilla ist von 2015 und umbenannt aus der Red Matrix von 2012. Und Friendica ist von 2010 und somit das lteste Fediverse-Projekt, das ActivityPub untersttzt.
Als Mastodon 2016 startete, sprach es sofort eine Sprache, die Friendica und Hubzilla zu dem Zeitpunkt auch schon sprachen: OStatus. Das heit, Friendica und Hubzilla haben sich nicht mit Mastodon verbunden, sondern Mastodon hat sich mit Friendica und Hubzilla verbunden.
Und als 2018 ActivityPub kam, hatte zumindest Hubzilla das auch schon vor Friendica.
Aber wenn dich so Sachen wie ber 500 Zeichen am Stck, Fettschrift, Kursivschrift, Codeblcke, , ...

...berschriften...



...und "komische" Mentions stren, dann steht es dir frei, durch die Instanzenlisten von allem, was nicht Mastodon ist, zu gehen und sie alle fr dich zu blockieren. Links zu solchen Listen findest du unter anderem .
Ich jedenfalls komme zwar Mastodon einigermaen entgegen, aber komplett verbiegen und mich komplett auf das beschrnken, was Mastodon 3.x konnte, werde ich definitiv nicht. Dann gbe es von mir nmlich auch keine Bilder mehr, weil ich meine Bilder nicht in 1500 Zeichen oder weniger beschreiben kann.
CC:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Lang #LangerPost #CWLang #CWLangerPost #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMetaPersonally and regarding my Hubzilla channel here, I'm not too worried about Threads.
First of all, I'm not going to connect to anyone on Threads. Not even when more than those select few can be followed. As if there's anything going on there that's of interest within the scope of this channel.
Second, Threads users can't follow anyone outside Threads anyway yet.
Third, even if they could, doesn't mean I'd let them if I don't want to. It's up to me to decide who connects to my channel and who doesn't. I have to confirm each new connection, and if I don't, that actor doesn't receive anything from me.
Fourth, the typical incentive for non-Threads users to follow me isn't there for Threads users.
One of the two main reasons why Mastodon users follow me is because they expect me to explain the Fediverse outside Mastodon to them. Your typical Threads user neither knows nor cares for the Fediverse. They're on Threads because it's "Twitter by Facebook without Musk".
The other and even bigger reason for Mastodon users to follow me is because they've just arrived from , and they need some Twitter-like background noise in their personal timelines, so they follow everyone they come across. Threads probably forces loads of background noise upon you right away, so you don't have to take care of that yourself.
Fifth, a channel owned by a virtual world avatar that's primarily about obscure virtual worlds with no real-life information isn't worth data-harvesting. Especially not if I keep badmouthing Horizons and using the term "metaverse" for stuff that's both over a decade older than Horizons and more alive than Horizons because that stuff has been using that word for over a decade itself. Meta would probably rather block this channel before anyone on Threads finds it than harvest it. In fact, I could try to make this process quicker with a few well-placed memes.
Sixth, I can easily silence bad actors on Threads with Superblock.
I was about to ask what the odds are that Threads can federate with Hubzilla in the first place, exotic as Hubzilla is with its ActivityPub support through an optional add-on. But I've got in-bound connections from all over the place already now, from Diaspora* to Misskey to GoToSocial to micro.blog.
Then again, I don't know how Threads handles posts with over 500 characters. After all, it was designed to federate with vanilla Mastodon by people who at that point believed that the Fediverse is only vanilla Mastodon. It could actually be that Threads rejects posts with over 500 characters, just like Misskey and its forks reject posts from a certain length upward.
Finally, if bad came to worse, I wouldn't even have to move away. I could switch ActivityPub off entirely. Granted, that'd mean that I'd lose most of my connections, and I'd have to try and remake those to Friendica using the Diaspora* protocol instead. But that'd completely lock Threads out on a protocol level.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Meta #MetaMeta #Threads

But if "the best product" is only defined as "the closest Fediverse project for iOS users to pre-Musk Twitter" and/or "the project the most compatible with Mastodon", then Mastodon wins.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #Mastodon #Firefish Ironically, lock-in is part of why Mastodon is twice as big as everything else in the Fediverse combined.
At least for Western users, Mastodon is the only gateway into the Fediverse. Mastodon does little to mention that there's more to the Fediverse, much less what more there is. So people spend three to six months believing that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Long enough to see the other projects as intruders and want their nice and cosy Mastodon-only Fediverse back when they discover there's more to the Fediverse than Mastodon.
Third-party additions, be it Web services, be it mobile or desktop apps, are almost always built against Mastodon first and foremost. This is either because the creators started working on them when they themselves believed the Fediverse is only Mastodon, and when they found out about other micro-blogging projects, it was too late to implement support for these. Or it's because the creators think it isn't worth the extra effort to officially support anything that isn't Mastodon because nobody uses it anyway.
Mastodon itself keeps getting away with being half-incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse. Certain undocumented homebrew features on Mastodon almost only work within Mastodon itself, including obscuring sensitive pictures for which Mastodon has its own solution and refuses to implement the standard ActivityPub way.
Other features on other projects become half-senseless due to Mastodon's deliberate lack of support for them. Or if Mastodon supports them, the support is only half-baked, such as for quote-posts a.k.a. shares which Friendica has already had six years before Mastodon was launched, and which other projects have, too.
And when only displaying something is supported, but not creating them, it deeply disturbs those who believe or until recently believed the Fediverse is only Mastodon when they come across them because they also believe that this shouldn't exist in the Fediverse. Quotes, quote-posts, text formatting, embedded links or even only posts with over 500 characters. There are actually Mastodon users who want everyone everywhere outside of Vanilla mastodon not to use any features that are unavailable on vanilla Mastodon, and who block everyone who does.
If the best product by features won, most people would be on Firefish or even Hubzilla or (streams).
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #MastodonWhat all the discussions about whether or not to block Threads reveals is a very common attitude on Mastodon:
"I want my preference to be the default setting for everybody because having to configure something makes Mastodon too complicated!"
Or even:
"I want my preference to be hard-coded for everybody because adding one more setting makes Mastodon too complicated!"
I guess it isn't rare for either to go along with wanting the whole Fediverse to be either Mastodon proper or exactly like vanilla Mastodon. Maybe even exactly like Mastodon 3.x before certain features that are common everywhere else in the Fediverse were introduced to Mastodon such as full-text search, displaying text formatting or displaying quotes. Because it's so hard to wrap your mind around there being differences between Mastodon on one side and stuff like Firefish, Friendica or Hubzilla on the other side.
#Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #Threads #Meta #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #MetaMeta

For Wolfie Feral
Art by me

From the feedback you've received so far, it looks like you've found a good middle ground between the extremes.
One extreme would be what most people would do, namely only generally mention what the chart is about.
The other extreme is what I would do, namely

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #Accessibility #A11y #Graph As far as I can see, there is no general consensus or agreement upon what's the right amount of description for an image. I guess it also really depends on the image. Cat photographs can do with rather short descriptions while other pictures require descriptions so long that you couldn't possibly post them in one piece anywhere on most Mastodon instances. Good thing there's a Fediverse beyond Mastodon.
There are two things I keep in mind for my own image descriptions. One, if something is obscure and niche enough for average Fediverse users to not know anything about it, it needs to be described and explained. That'd better go into the post text itself, but since my image descriptions often grow extremely long, I put them there anyway.
Two, whenever an image description mentions what there is in a picture, blind or visually-impaired people are likely to want to know what it looks like. So any and all descriptions must include that. It's more ableist not to give visual descriptions than to give them and make the image description longer.
I myself tend to try to include whatever I read about that should be part of an image description. Just recently, someone wondered why so few people mention where they've taken a picture. Good thing I've been doing that ever since I've started writing detailied image descriptions.
It's just unfortunate that people rarely give feedback for image descriptions, especially without being asked for it first. My own image descriptions regularly grow so long that they exceed any idea of excessive. What few people have given me feedback so far, including one who has done it out of the blue, liked them, but such a small number of people couldn't possibly represent all of the Fediverse. Then again, I hardly post images anymore because of how long it takes me to describe them, and fewer images mean even less feedback.
But if it looks like I can get away with image descriptions that are way longer than some essays, I think it's hard for alt-text within Mastodon's 1,500-character limit to be too long.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #CharacterCount #Accessibility #A11y

THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

Read More from HERE


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There's a reason for this that's quite puzzling for people in the Fediverse who only know Mastodon:
The field that Mastodon users for content warnings was originally created for summaries.
Now you might rub your eyes in disbelief, wondering if you've actually read what you think you've read. Summary Why would a 500-character toot need a summary
Well, the whole Fediverse outside vanilla Mastodon and Threads supports post with way more than 500 characters by default. For example, Friendica, launched as early as 2010, several months before Diaspora* even, doesn't have a defined character limit at all. Neither does Hubzilla which started as a Friendica fork in 2012. Friendica supports summaries by means of a pair of BBcode tags Hubzilla has a dedicated field for them. And when Mastodon was launched in 2016, it was immediately federated with both.
Mastodon itself was originally based on OStatus which has a summary field in its specification. But since Mastodon was intended to be a micro-blogging service with no more than 500 characters, summaries were deemed unnecessary, and the summary field was re-purposed as a content warning field.
While Mastodon was capable of connecting to all kinds of StatusNet and GNU social instances (Pleroma started life as an alternate GNU social frontend three and a half weeks before Mastodon, by the way) as well as Friendica and Hubzilla, actually doing so was obviously never taken into consideration, much less advertised. So lack of compatibility could be shrugged away with, "Compatibility with what"
By the way, at least Hubzilla has its own solution for content warnings: It has an optional "app" that can generate them automatically - for the reader. It's a dead-simple text filter that has only got a text field for configuration. If any one of the comma-separated strings entered into that field is found in a post, the whole post is hidden behind a button, embedded images and other media and all.
Also, Hubzilla supports spoiler tags behind which parts of posts or whole posts can be hidden again, this can include embedded images, videos or whatever.
So from an old-school Hubzilla point of view, using the summary field for content warnings is unnecessary.
#ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #CW #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Fediverse #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

Here are 7 lessons on The Black Girl's Guide to Financial Freedom by Paris:

Book:


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Valuable lessons from the book "Make Better Decisions" by Helen Edwards and Dave Edwards

visit for 10 Lessons

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10 Valuable lessons from the book "The Perfect Day Formula" by Craig Ballantyne

Book:


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As long as AI can't always and 100% reliably...

...I'm not interested in using it for image descriptions. Thanks, but no, thanks. I'll go on writing them myself.
#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #AltText #AI #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost I'm not on Mastodon, and Hubzilla, powerful as it is, has no technical way of hiding a profile picture or a title picture behind a content warning, nor has it any way of making Mastodon hide it.
I mean, I could change my profile picture and my title picture to something that doesn't show me at all. After all, I rarely post pictures with eyes anywhere in them anymore. I have no way of making Mastodon hide them in any way either, not even when I have Hubzilla or (streams) users click three or four times, depending on their setup, until they see the picture in question in the very same post. And hardly anyone uses filters as automated content warnings, so even adding the hashtags #EyeContact and #CWEyeContact is pretty futile.
And I'm normally someone who takes the eye contact content warning and other content warnings very seriously. For me, eye contact is not only when a face fills almost the whole picture. It starts when there's even only one eye anywhere in a picture. I've been told that some autistic people are triggered by faces at a sub-pixel level, i.e. whole faces smaller than one pixel, if the context within the image reveals there's a face. I've issued a content warning for pictures with eyes in pictures in pictures in that picture which measure less than 1/10,000 of a pixel.
I've tested linking to images rather than embedding them into posts, and I've found out that Mastodon does not automatically generate a preview if I link to the image page. This makes viewing my posts more inconvenient, but it should reduce the risk of triggering someone. Unfortunately, the Fediverse being what it is, it doesn't remove the necessity of a full image description.
So yes, I might replace both my profile picture and my title picture with something which I hope is trigger-free. But I'll need to find something that a) fits the purpose, b) fits my channel and c) doesn't make spending hours upon hours on writing image descriptions necessary. I mean, my current profile and title pictures are still without a description I'll have to figure out where to put them where there's enough space.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

In ..
Buying from was stuped

55 bucks (with shipping)
I should've waited till 19th and gotten it at a local vendor

Then again.
I buy all my 1st party at ng ..

Guess thats the huh..
I need this game , so I can annoy my lil sibling to play it hahaha.


(This will be a very lol)

From what I've read, the best solution is always to have everything in one post.
I think there is a webpage about the Sendalonde Community Library. Sendalonde has an entry on OpenSimWorld, and the Discovery Grid has its own website. But all three are separate from each other. Also I'd rather not link to anything external, especially if I can't be sure that it's accessible. And anything about OpenSim usually isn't accessible at all.
Besides, it's cumbersome to have to navigate from website to website to understand what I've posted, on a phone much more so than on a desktop/laptop computer.
That said, I would never put an image description of 40,000+ characters into alt-text. At least Mastodon, Glitch, Misskey, Firefish, Sharkey and their other forks cut alt-text off at the 1,500-character mark and discard everything beyond. Even here on Hubzilla with no screen zoom on, it's hard to show even only the first 3,500 characters of alt-text or so because it can't be scrolled. And alt-text can't be navigated with a screen reader like the post text can be navigated. It isn't possible to jump back to a certain point in alt-text it's only possible to jump back to the beginning and start over.
Last but not least, information that is neither available in the post text nor in the image must never, under no circumstances be put only into the alt-text. There are people who can't access alt-text, for example due to physical disabilities. Any information that's only available in alt-text is inaccessible and therefore lost to them.
That's why I always put such image description into the post text body instead of the alt-text, and then I issue a content warning "CW: long (n characters)", and I add the hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong and #CWLongPost for those who use filters against posts over 500 characters. This saves people from having unexpectedly hyper-massive walls of text slammed into their faces, especially those using mobile apps which were built under the assumption that a) the Fediverse is only vanilla Mastodon, so b) folding posts up is non-sense if posts with over 500 characters are technologically impossible.
The alt-text contains a short image description so the image is described at least a little for those who don't want to open the content warning, and it mentions that the actual, full-size image description is in the post text.
#ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #AltText #Accessibility #Inclusion #Inclusivity #A11y

Alan Turner - As Long as the World Rolls On (1908)

So Threads is opening itself to the Fediverse
Remember, kids, that there already used to be a connection between what's the Fediverse today and what's Meta today. That was in 2011 when Friendica one-sidedly established bidirectional federation with Facebook. No, I'm not even kidding. Friendica was fully federated with Facebook. It did require a Facebook account, but still, you could use Facebook without actually using Facebook. People would mirror their entire Facebook timelines into Friendica.
This ended when Facebook found out and changed its developer TOS: Third-party applications that connect to Facebook were only allowed to send data to Facebook, but no longer to extract data from Facebook. This led to the slow death of Friendica's Facebook connector.
Fast-forward to 2023: Facebook (the corporation) is now Meta. And they've created their own micro-blogging service for the Fediverse, namely Threads. And now they're opening it to the Fediverse.
Remember that Friendica is still part of that self-same Fediverse.
And what do you know: One of the very very very first connections to Threads came from, wait for it, Friendica!
I think this calls for a variation on the good old meme.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Threads #Meta #Fediverse #Friendica #Facebook #Federation #Meme #FediMeme #MoeTossingBarneyOut #TheSimpsons #FediverseMeta #FediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #EyeContact #CWEyeContact To be fair, it's undeniable that there are these vastly different factions in the Fediverse.
The Old Guard, is one of them, has been around since long before there was even Mastodon. The Fediverse didn't start with Mastodon. The Fediverse as we have it now started in 2010 with Friendica, almost 6 years before Mastodon, and it also included Hubzilla which started life in 2012. Both projects which were and still are for extreme tech geeks because even Friendica is too unwieldy for your typical casual social media user.
So that Old Guard consists of absolute ber-geeks on Linux PCs and laptops, many of whom run their own instances without any help from Docker or Yunohost. From their perspective, it was Mastodon which had arrived and federated with Friendica and Hubzilla, not the other way around, because Friendica and Hubzilla had been there first, and Mastodon had always spoken a language which they spoke, too.
Needless to say that they find Mastodon ridiculously underequipped and underwhelming. In fact, Mastodon's refusal to even support certain features of other projects makes life harder for them if they want to stay compatible with Mastodon.
Then you have the millions of Twitter refugees, almost all of whom were mollycoddled and railroaded to their first Fediverse home with as little explanation as possible. They're completely different. They're mostly not very interested in technology, and more of them feel disturbed by Linux talk than use Linux. In fact, most of them are on phones.
Many didn't even know that Mastodon is decentralised until a few months in. Most thought that the Fediverse is only vanilla Mastodon for at least their first three months, during which they got used to their nice and cosy and fluffy and friendly Mastodon-only Fediverse with no posts longer than 500 characters and no text formatting and no quotes etc.
As they're so numerous, they managed to shape Fediverse culture around being non-tech and, worse yet, around the Fediverse being only vanilla Mastodon. And yes, completely disregarding the Old Guard because they knew neither the Old Guard nor the places where the Old Guard resides.
When they came across their first "toot" that looked "weird" because it wasn't a vanilla Mastodon toot, they were greatly disturbed. They felt like whatever project that post came from, Akkoma, CalcKey, Friendica, Hubzilla, whatever, had maliciously intruded into their nice and cosy and fluffy and friendly Mastodon-only Fediverse. And they wanted that to go away again.
They did not want to read what they were told then: Friendica and Hubzilla are not intruders. They were here first. They had been here years before there was even Mastodon. There has never been a time during which the Fediverse was only vanilla Mastodon.
It's such people who demand that the users of everything that isn't vanilla Mastodon limit what they do to what's possible on vanilla Mastodon in order not to disturb those who want the Fediverse to be only vanilla Mastodon. No posts longer than 500 characters, no text formatting, no quotes, no embedded images which don't work on Mastodon anyway, no embedded hyperlinks (only URLs in plain sight instead) etc.
I guess it's clear why the users of everything from Akkoma to Firefish to Friendica to Hubzilla refuse to let themselves be limited by the vastly more numerous Mastodon users.
Well, and then there's the third faction. It's those who have never really arrived in the Fediverse. They don't want anything different. They want Twitter without Musk. Now they're sitting on mastodon.social or another big general-purpose instance and patiently waiting for Bluesky to open registrations because Bluesky is much closer to Twitter without Musk.
These people use Mastodon exactly like they used to use Twitter. Official app only, no more than 280 characters, no alt-texts, no hashtags (what do you mean, Mastodon does not have The Algorithm), no content warnings etc. The only way they've adapted to Mastodon, if at all, was s/tweet/toot.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #TwitterMigration #TwitterRefugees You can definitely do both with Hubzilla.
For one, you can subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds.
And while you can't directly boost blog posts (Hubzilla hasn't re-introduced boosts yet), there's an optional feature called "Channel Sources". What it does is automatically re-post everything coming in from one or multiple selected connections. This can just as well be an RSS or Atom feed.
This has a few downsides, though. It's fully automated, so it isn't interactive. You have absolutely no control over what goes out, and what it looks like. Your Mastodon connections will have full-blown blog posts or news articles with tens of thousands of characters slammed into their faces with no content warnings.
Besides, Mastodon will mangle them, just like it mangles everything else coming in from Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams): It can't embed images within the text, so it rips them out and throws them after the end of the post in reverse order. And it can only handle a maximum of four images, so only the last four images will remain.
Lastly, AFAIR, Channel Sources does not create a link to the original, so any post or article coming in via feed and forwarded by Channel Sources will appear as if you've written it yourself.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #RSS #Atom #Hubzilla

Hamilton to go ahead with Macassa Lodge redevelopment despite soaring costs
City councillors approved an Emergency and Community Services Committee recommendation to proceed with building a new wing amid a $22.3 million bump in costs.
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