I love to see this but as a heavy Vitess/MySQL user I do fear the split focus from PlanetScale. Hoping to see continued improvements on the Vitess side as well.
Selfish doubts aside, congrats to Planetscale on the launch!
don't worry, we still give a lot of love to vitess. at the end of the day they are both databases. the beauty of doing both is we can take learnings from each product and apply it to the other.
yep, "just worked". Seems to be much better at properly categorizing some of the more stubborn corners of my library as well. Congrats to Jellyfin maintainers!
"Capitalistic" is, I'm sure, meant derogatorily. I disagree with the sentiment, and I think the Jellyfin maintainers deserve at least a living wage for their time and efforts.
The Jellyfin devs have chosen for it to be a community/hobby project in order to avoid perverse incentives. That's a completely valid choice. There's a reason JF is the only mainstream media server solution that's continuously improved without any signs of enshittification, and personally I'm inclined to agree with the devs that keeping it completely non-profit has been a boon to its ongoing health and popularity.
Agreed! To clarify: I think they deserve a wage for their work and have previously donated, and that 'capitalizing' on their work is more than justifiable. I also think it's fine that they don't care!
> deserve at least a living wage for their time and efforts
I agree with the sentiment
However,
> $24000 in the bank
I assume there are multiple developers. If the developers are based on North America or Europe that money does not guarantee a living wage for more than.. some months?
It's not a failing of society for someone to have a hobby they enjoy which does not pay them a living wage nor is it derogatory to say not everything in society need be done for capitalistic reasons.
I consider myself a general fan of capitalism as driver behind our primary incomes but I do wish there would be some more room left for the other parts of our lives to be driven by passion, community, or pure enjoyment without it being considered a tragedy to leave them that way.
I'm happy to pay for passion, for community commons, and I'm happy to compensate people for the work they do for pure enjoyment if I want it.
Trade and exchange are natural and human and friendly and cooperative and loving parts of the human experience. To think they're some artificial bolt-on is the derogatory implication.
If there are consequences they will be naturally arising, as there is no violation (that I'm aware of) here. It's _stupid_, and it _looks bad_, and it's _not a good idea_, and it _ended badly for Nixon_, but it's not illegal.
The open web is dead. The open web remains dead. And we have killed it.
I'm actually much less anti-Musk than the average HN commentator but it should be universally agreed here that a small handful of mega-corp websites dominating the majority of content on the web is a bad thing. Nitter was hardly a solution. Federated platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky are "culturally" closed, and "free speech" platforms like X are "technically" closed.
IMO we all need to start vibe coding PHP bulletin boards again. 'RETVRN' etc.
> I've heard that - what is your experience? Downvotes and exclusion? Are there more 'open' servers?
Fediverse has plenty of servers which are "free speech" adjacent, which most Mastodon servers close off since its easier for them to police what their users can see than let them do it themselves. The vast majority of them do not run the Mastodon software, and feel far more "wild west" with all the shitposters. But if you want to talk with actual hackers and are into that sort of thing, it's fun times.
https://fba.ryona.agency/ lets you browse instance block lists, sort by most defederated, who defederates the most, etc. There used to be FediBlock which maintained a centralized blocklist, but it doesn't exist anymore (gee, I wonder how something like that would end up eating itself?).
As far as reasoning goes, I think you can grasp how people would try and wield a tool like blocklists. A lot of blocks are merited, while some arent. I've had several blocks put on my instance from servers that I never even interacted with, for reasons that seemingly appear out of thin air.
Yeah, I do too; but it's just per-user. There are a couple instances that are so worthless that I'd rather throw all their posts in the trash than deal with their users individually, but I don't think that logic should be applied in general, which it unfortunately is.
Most instances of trolling can be dealt with by a single block, or reaching out to the admin, but basically no one puts in the effort to reach out if someone's causing problems (Hell, one guy even reported my whole site to my host without so much as a word in my direction, just for a couple inflammatory posts someone made).
And I don't think it's right to police what people are able to see and interact with if I'm running an instance with other people (if it were a single-user instance, that'd be different).
But hey, it's your server. You should do what you want with it. I just wanna do what I want with mine.
https://fedilist.com/ is a good instance browsing/monitoring tool maintained by the guy who runs fsebugoutzone.org, one of the more prominent and "fun" servers. He's a good dude.
You can browse by software, whether its open registration or not, allows tor, etc. You can glean statistics off of certain instances, which is really useful if you run one yourself. Most of the instances on the other side of fedi run the Pleroma software.
If we reflect on the debate from years ago about whether to nationalize Twitter, all the downsides we were warned about have come true. They censor / promote whoever the state wants anyways, the CEOs was literally in the cabinet for a time, but now they also have to enshittify and degrade the experience for the benefit of an also-ran AI lab.
All of the downsides you listed started with Jack Dorsey, and were significantly improved once Musk took over. X/Twitter still has its issues, though.
I’d tell you to check out the “Twitter Files”, but it seems Wikipedia has been completely compromised.
And I’m hesitant to recommend you read about it on Grokipedia (you’ll assume there is major bias), but it does seem to be the most accurate retelling of the scandal that I can find online. Here are both though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Fileshttps://grokipedia.com/page/Twitter_Files
Censorship-wise… Twitter was worse than Reddit at its peak (before being bought).
You can read the talk page yourself. Wikipedia's editors are annoying and impossible to work with, but their obsessions are weighted towards the truth. And while some editors have acted in bad faith for smaller articles; articles like that are generally treated with as much good faith as possible.
Though I also recommend reading the talk page, "weighted towards the truth" is not how I'd describe it.
Personally I found the debate on the Jordan Lasker talk page very enlightening. Mother Jones is of course a very reliable paper, practically Arxiv really, totally reasonable to have it as a single source for a biographical article with extremely weak quotation in the article text...
At a certain point it's just words; what makes those meaningful? Musk bans and limits distribution for people he dislikes or who criticize him, intentionally directs hate mobs, promotes hate and disinformation, ...
A lot of kinds of speech became allowed that weren't before. Old Twitter had banned several politicians including US Congress members for their views, sometimes for things like misgendering someone. Also banned NY Post.
Instead of rehearsing the same old arguments like a ritual, we know the heart of the issue:
(A) Freedom of speech is the highest value (that's applicable here), to simplify a bunch of stuff.
(B) Limiting antisocial behavior is valid 1) in any community, 2) especially when the behavior limits other people's freedom (e.g., by shouting them down or through intimidation or hostility), and 3) especially in the forum of a business that provides forums - they want their customers to enjoy the experience. There's some validity to a business with such widespread control of the public space respecting freedoms more broadly than they might privately like.
(C) Defining (B) in a way that respects (A) is the heart of the issue.
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I think the issues with (C) are realtively easy to resolve:
* I) Don't tolerate intolerance, to apply Popper (to my understanding). The social contract is I tolerate you and you tolerate me; that's freedom. If someone violates the contract, the deal is off and they're out. They're a parasite on the relationships. As long as people respect that, they can say what they want. That's how a free society works, and works very well.
* II) Relative power matters: Intolerance + Power = Danger; Intolerance + Powerlessness = Rudeness. For example, a room contains 20 Romulans and 1 Klingon: The Klingon expressing hatred of Romulans is obnoxious but can be mostly ignored (maybe don't stand too close), while a Romulan expressing hatred of Klingons is a serious threat to the Klingon. In a discussion, it's a good way to silence the Klingon. Obviously, you can substitute any groups you want in that room, and I think it matters who is powerful in the wider world - for example, the billionaire can go elsewhere and be safe, while the homeless person has little safety, little room to express themself, anywhere.
IMHO the biggest problem is people who seek disruption - trolls - being parasites on good faith. At (C) they see a weak spot in the social fabric and they press on it and tear at it, trying to maintain deniability about what they are doing. By now everyone knows it when they see it; the great majority can be removed with ease.
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> Old Twitter had banned several politicians including US Congress members for their views, sometimes for things like misgendering someone.
I didn't pay much attention to the issue - it was hard to find genuine (non-disingenous) information about it - so I don't know.
Generally I don't think being a politician gives you more rights than other people. You can easily have political debate without intolerance - without advocating against others' freedom. Do you have an example of the misgendering? A mistake is one thing; persistently doing it is harassment, an aggressive intolerance of someone's gender.
But the same goes for everyone - people can say, 'I think I'm either female or male, not both', and they shouldn't be harassed or silenced any more than people who say 'I think I'm neither female nor male; I'm somewhere on a continuum.'
There are always grey areas in everything in the universe, but I don't think these are hard.
The example I remembered was Jim Banks suspended for saying "The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man" in reference to a transgender officer.
Thanks for the link. Here's the site's full Jim Banks story; it's not incidental but aggressive intolerance.
On October 23, 2021, Twitter suspended Rep. Jim Banks' (R-Ind.) official account for fourteen days after he made two posts referring to Admiral Rachel Levine, a transgender woman and the United States' first openly transgender four-star officer, as a man. A Twitter spokesman said one of the tweets violated the company's hateful conduct policy, which prohibits "targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals."[30] After Banks deleted the tweet, Twitter restored his account on Nov. 5.[31]
Banks tweeted in response from his personal account, saying: "Twitter has suspended my official account for posting a statement of FACT. I won’t back down. I’ll be posting on my personal account for the time being … Big Tech must be held accountable!"[32]
Other stories there show I should add another criteria - safety. Dangerous advice ('eat rat poison') obviously should be removed, but of course there are grey areas of wrong but somewhat dangerous ('drinking a few glasses of wine a day helps arthritis'), of information of unknown accuracy.
The site's full story is missing the actual tweet that got him banned. He said the officer is a man. This is an issue lots of people disagree about, and Twitter wanted to force their narrative. Even if this is treated as a targeted insult, they allowed all kinds of those at the same time.
I'm not seeing the new Twitter/X doing anything like this, but would be happy if someone had an example. Last time I asked, it was just the airplane tracker thing.
> He said the officer is a man. This is an issue lots of people disagree about, and Twitter wanted to force their narrative.
I think that violates the golden rule of tolerance (described in the prior post). If Banks won't tolerate the officer's freedom (in this case, about their own gender) then Banks shouldn't be tolerated.
'Lots of people' isn't a standard. The point of human rights is to protect the minority; the majority is almost always free to do as they want. Conservatives say they are a minority on campus but should be tolerated and made safe, for example, and I agree as long as they follow the golden rule.
> I'm not seeing the new Twitter/X doing anything like this, but would be happy if someone had an example. Last time I asked, it was just the airplane tracker thing.
Others were banned, etc., including journalists, but I don't have much time now ... here's one story:
If he wants to call himself a woman then that is his freedom to do so, but it is unreasonable to expect everyone else to do the same.
He, and the management of Twitter at the time, should have extended tolerance to those who don't share his belief that men can become women by self-decree.
> it is unreasonable to expect everyone else to do the same.
There is nothing unreasonable about it. It's not hard and people change things all the time; they change names, phone numbers, job titles, etc., and other peope remember. It's just discriminatory.
> He, and the management of Twitter at the time, should have extended tolerance to those who don't share his belief
Here is where the rules I proposed upthread apply: The only thing not to tolerate is intolerance. They only deserve tolerance if they tolerate others - it's a two-way street. (Rather than repeat the whole thing, see the comment upthread or click here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49442308 )
Why do you believe this is the same sort of thing as changing a name, phone number or job title?
There is a discrepancy too in that most people who think this idea should apply to sex don't extend it to other immutable characteristics like race. Rachel Levine was celebrated for calling himself a woman, Rachel Dolazel was pilloried for calling herself black.
Has nothing to do with what I said. I'm aware Twitter got better for right-wingers under Musk. It would've gotten better for right-wingers under Trump nationalization anyways.
The difference is if it were nationalized they might still have some incentive to crack down on crypto scams, AI-generated csam, etc.
Nothing, fedi is extremely anarchic by design. If you don't like a server you can move to a different one, or start your own. The big Mastodon servers put in a great deal of effort to police what their users can see and interact with (see FediBlock), but it's impossible to shut certain people or groups out of the network entirely. It's a double-edged sword, but it's a net good for the kind of network it was intended to be, which is a hacker's network; it wasn't designed for normies.
Getting them federated properly was pretty tough a while ago (since any spammer could just set one up, there had to be a bar to clear), did that get fixed?
I'm not sure if it ever was that hard but if you follow a bunch of people the network effects will kick in eventually, you can also add relays to pull in posts from other servers if you're impatient. A fresh instance can take some time before the known network starts filling in, especially if you don't know who to follow (or have anyone following you), but fedi is a series of tubes: it only pushes and pulls stuff from places it knows. I didn't have problems federating outgoing messages to my friends' instances when I started, but I wouldn't be surprised if some Mastodon servers use some stupid anti-spam measure that keeps low peer count servers away.
I follow some people who have moved to single-user instances after the instance they were on shut down/etc, and I haven't seen anyone mention any trouble getting federated.
Maybe they're referring to defederation? It's quite common on Mastodon as I understand it, due to disagreements on things like moderation between server operators.
What does it even mean, period? MAGA losers are free to establish a community on Bluesky, the only difference between that and Twitter is that Bluesky isn't built to optimize for ragebait and culture war fighting. But they can still socialize among themselves on Bluesky even if no one else wants anything to do with them.
the problem here is, that a large large group of people do want something "to do with them" (and "them" not just being "maga losers"), but that for NORMAL users that sign up and use bluesky, there are others who choose that they must not socialize with them.
normal people dont understand how they can join specific communities or instances or whatever it is on the specific platform, they want something like "twitter" and then thats where they are, they dont want "some weird twitter instance thats not the main one"
Don't reinvent the wheel PHPBB, MyBB and others are still updated.
I hate the closed web purely for disrupting archiving efforts, you can add chat apps like discord, whatsapp, zoom and teams in that list as well. As a lot of communities have moved there.
My personal take-away is this: whatever you choose, make sure it's consistent across services (not serviceA behaves like X and serviceB like Y) and make sure eng teams know _how_ these are configured and what can go wrong. They'll figure out the rest.
You'd be surprised how many engineering leaders don't understand the CAP theorem and will fail engineers on interviews for picking the one they don't agree with instead of communicating their expectations clearly (dodged a bullet on that one ...)
Two arguments that have so far, been talking completely past each other with no desire to understand each other:
1) efficiency means "use software to identify and cut federal programs that could reasonably be taken over by either the State dept, States themselves, or the market"
2) efficiency means "add new software and programs that streamline existing processes"
As usual, we should be doing both in a careful and considered way, and definitely should not be accusing the other side of either fascism or communism. "Efficiency" is not a decision on funding or not funding federal science research, and everyone using that word to mean that is being knowingly disingenuous.
There was a huge amount of bloat in USAID, and I'm sure there will be a huge amount of bloat in NYC, and I'm sure there was a lot of good in both. Unless you're willing to discuss specifics and tradeoffs with a calm head, you're not helping just by virtue of being upset.
I don't know how it works in your country, but in mine, each time a public monopoly is given to the market, corruption creeps in, costs increases, and suddenly you have to pay twice as much for your water and trash than the neighbouring municipality.
Ten years later some guy get arrested, other have to pay a small fine, a tenth of made profits, new red tape gets added to avoid the exact same situation. Stuff becomes so complex than muni employees avoid touching anything they don't understand (which is every contracts), corruption creeps in, and a new 10 year circle starts again.
The only way to do something about it is to really spend time understanding each item on your service list, take control of every contract on public monopoly where you can't understand everything, and cut deals with the company owners "we won't talk about your corruption, you accept our break of the contract without penalties" (one of my uncle used to do that, France's BPI took over more than 200 private contract in 4 years. He has stories, and threatening letters :D)
No, DOGE only recommended personnel and contract changes within various agencies. Trump promised not to touch entitlements and to increase military spending.
Note this was not the point of the original comment or my reply. You can in fact reduce spending without addressing defense spending: the majority of the federal budget is entitlements. No presidents (D or R) is even remotely hinting at doing this; it would be political suicide.
While I agree with the sentiment that SpaceX today is not worth anywhere near 1T+, it's worth understanding that:
a) SpaceX is currently trading at ~>1.5T in secondary markets
and
b) most of what the market is reacting to is the _chance_ that SpaceX goes on to become one of the largest companies in the world.
Remember the reaction when Facebook IPOed? It was hilariously overpriced (at the time, on paper, based on existing revenues) and yet here we are. A 1% chance of earning a trillion dollars is worth 10B - SpaceX can more accurately be thought of as a 10% chance of earning 10T rather than a nominal everyday business.
Facebook's IPO was something like ~20x revenue and 100x earnings. If SpaceX IPOs at $1.5T, that's nearly 80x revenue and if you buy their 'adjusted' EBITDA figures, 230x earnings. Not quite an order of magnitude, but substantially 'worse' financially.
Selfish doubts aside, congrats to Planetscale on the launch!
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