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laser

@ stefanlaser @slrpnk.net

Posts
3
Comments
14
Joined
3 yr. ago

Scholar of science and technology studies exploring ecologies of data centres. Intrigued by the lives and deaths of infrastructures.

  • As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch

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  • Tools help, and because the Fediverse API is completely accessible, folks have already come up with awesome stuff.

    • Populate your following list by finding friends, the Fedifinder still appears to work and helps find friends from Twitter on Masto: https://fedifinder.glitch.me/
    • Now find friends of friends, the wider social graph. Followgraph works wonders: https://followgraph.vercel.app/
    • Now you will likely miss posts, so try following updates of people if you really enjoy their content, plus of course pinning hashtags. PLUS. Up your game with an algorithm, either in the dedicated Mastodon app (trending posts) or with more customisation through the app Fediview: https://fediview.com/ Using Mastodon Digest (GitHub), you could also set up your own automation script.
    • Folks have created lists and groups you can mass subscribe. The most successful one I know is from and for academics, perhaps there is a field for you in there. Journalists have similar stuff. See https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon
    • There are many awesome apps out there to access your content, improving the experience. I recommend Phanpy because of its unique and sleek design, see https://phanpy.social/. If you miss Quote Tweets and other stuff, try an app like Elk.
    • Mastodon is only one option, if you want all of Twitter's tools and more cool stuff, try Firefish. You can migrate followers and posts. This way, you can skip many external tools.

    And that's just the beginning.

  • What's a good alternative to Gmail?

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  • Underrated comment. Posteo is awesome, cheap, and has all the tools you need for mail and calendar things. Proton may give you more, but that's a different query.

  • What are some simple ways to live a solarpunk life?

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  • To hell with it, I would even say N+1 bicycles. Ride the shit out of every bike according to the various needs you and others have. Share. Built. Assemble for group rights. Have fun.

  • If you value privacy, ditch Chrome and switch to Firefox now

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  • If you value privacy, ditch Chrome and switch to Firefox now

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  • And, crucially, security. It is far behind, on desktop and especially mobile. Process isolation aka sandboxing is superior on Chrome platforms. Unfortunately.

  • Self-hosting @slrpnk.net
    laser @slrpnk.net

    Resource-efficient fork of Mastodon—or go for other Fediverse packages instead?

    social.tchncs.de /@stefanlaser/110704666675722149
  • Green Energy @slrpnk.net
    laser @slrpnk.net

    Vietnam: Coal supply for thermal power plants to increase

  • Are you replacing Reddit with Lenny?

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  • Interesting, and apparently it's called Voyager now. Merci

  • The future cannot be 'the status quo but battery powered' because that future leads to disaster

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  • Haha, great response, I somehow knew that you were exactly on that line of thought. Preach

  • The future cannot be 'the status quo but battery powered' because that future leads to disaster

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  • There is a nice book on this topic, Against Purity:

    Why contamination and compromise might be a starting point for doing something, instead of a reason to give up.

    https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/against-purity

    But the last comment on the global south is odd, for many reasons. Empathy and support was on your mind, I suppose. 🤓

  • The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like?

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  • I agree with most of this. And our little Lemmy servers will certainly not count. We definitely should not care about individual consumers, or rather, it should not be about blaming people. It's more about experiments and learning. And fun.

    However, what I would like to do is to complicate the data centre narrative. Yes, data centres are superply efficient. But this is a relative measure. Companies demand exponentially more computing and storage power; more capacity to process data for 'intelligent' applications and provide ads.

    Ergo, the landlords of the internet build massive new data centres that do indeed need a considerable amount of electricity, water and all the new, resource heavy high tech chips were reading about in the news. Corporate social media platforms are part of this, too. 2 per cent of current global electricity demand comes from data centres. And scholars agree that this share is growing. But, yeah. This is an interesting field of research, because it's quite difficult when it comes to the concrete numbers.

    So this post here is a typical "let's improve our society somewhat" contribution.

  • Vietnam to get billions for climate change while jailing environmentalists

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  • Informative and unfortunate. Economic growth is the single goal of the CPV and guarantees its power. Climate and ecological claims endanger the social order, so 👨‍⚖️

  • The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like?

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  • I also plan to experiment with this (but, well, time and stuff). Do you have any clues on how to find the projects? There's probably a lot of network traffic that can be saved through tweaking

  • The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like?

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  • I agree with this. Efficiency vs cooling the infrastructure and updating hardware after a maximum of 5 years. Still, I'm not 100% sure about statistics. Do you know of any comparative studies or the like?

    Just one fitting side note. We had an interview with a local data centre manager and during the discussion, we somehow started talking about alternative setups, like a raspberry pi server. The interviewee reminded us of the efficiency of their virtual servers. He even gave us a tour through their digital dashboards and showcased the 1 watt used by a server (vs roughly 4 watts of a Pi, with much less performance).

    This is not to say that low-tech is not the way to go. Less mining and hazardous work conditions are always good and need no measurement for emphasis.

  • The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like?

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  • Can you share the instance? I've also come across a few Mastodon instances that do the same.

    Then I wonder how the material remains of hardware are addressed by providers. Or if virtual servers would be a better solution anyway.

  • Solarpunk @slrpnk.net
    laser @slrpnk.net

    The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like?

    www.easst.net /article/the-environmental-footprint-of-social-media-hosting-tinkering-with-mastodon/

  • There’s a deeper problem hiding beneath global warming - waste heat

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  • That’s a (probably foolish) dream that could be compatible with exponential growth beyond what is available on Earth.

    Sounds like a Solarpunk novel to be written. Let's put all incineration activities away. Yet, space colonization is here and serves capital accumulation, first and foremost. There's also the tiny part where rockets have to be shot to outer space with a little bit of energy and waste heat.