• 6 Posts
  • 911 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: April 27th, 2023

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  • all of computer science is based on the practical

    I don’t understand this at all. Computer science is based on theoretical foundations that were developed way before any actual computer existed. This goes back more than 100 years.

    We teach students computer science to make them into software engineers.

    That’s only true if you studied a very practically-oriented education. Such educations are usually called “Software engineering” rather than “Computer Science”.

    As a computer science graduate myself, my university definitely did not try to make me into a software engineer. It was very theoretical, with a clear focus on further research if that was what you wanted to pursue. You could get through the education quite okay and only ever write very little actual code. It was the maths that was the harder part to write.









  • What does that say about the sorting algorithms though? Should we sort posts based on votes then, or should we sort them based on something else? Do we want the posts at the top to be the ones the hivemind agrees most with and the ones the hivemind disagrees with should disappear at the bottom?

    Perhaps sorting should be based on total votes and not just downvotes? So downvoting is effectively still “voting” for it, just in a different way. I’m just spitballing here, I find the theory of sort/vote systems fascinating.




  • It’s weird to talk about the fediverse as a whole having a civility problem. The fediverse is a large and diverse place.

    It’s like asking “do bars have a civility problem?”. And like yea, some bars do. Other bars don’t. Depends on the clientele right?

    For example, on Feddit.dk we have quite a high standard of behavior and moderation is based on that. Feddit.dk is not a large instance, which probably makes it easier to manage. I would not say that Feddit.dk has a civility problem. Maybe other instances do. But then that’s a problem for those instances to solve.

    So I wouldn’t say the fediverse itself has a civility problem. To me, it seems perfectly possible to moderate an instance well and preserve civil behavior. If there is a civility problem, it lies with the specific instance that has that problem and their failure to moderate that behavior.


  • Perhaps you’re right, but this is what I’m most comfortable with.

    The vision (which is also still WIP) right now is a platform that combines the features of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Something that can interface with all existing fediverse services and handle all kinds of media (posts, discussions, microblogs, pictures, videos, anything, you name it). Ideally it should also be a place where you can bring your friends list and maybe even have a personal (non-anonymous) user. Imagine something that can replace Facebook, Twitter and Reddit all in one fell swoop. That’s the general idea.

    Now, that’s just the idea but a lot of it depends on execution. If you’re truly interested, I’d love to talk more on Matrix to see if there’s some shared alignment. Obviously I have a certain vision for the project so there needs to be some shared understanding of the direction. Technology-wise, the backend is Rust and the (very WIP) frontend is TypeScript/SvelteKit. But non-technical contribution can be valuable too.