There are still chinese manufacturer phones that have IR blasters, its just not a feature that really took off in America at least. I have a friend that was specifically buying chinese brand phones for this as of last year.
To me its kind of a gimmick as much as I used to use my phone as a remote when I lost my remote at times with older models. Its like NFC for phone to phone transfers, cool idea, largely unnecessary with shared access to cloud storage and high data speeds, but if I lived somewhere where censorship were higher or internet accessibility were lower then the more ad-hoc sharing of files over NFC directly would be super useful.
I want to join Mastodon but I have no idea what server to join. I honestly don’t even know what I’d look for in one. I think this might be the point where I peace out from social media and try to make IRL socialization my focus. I’ll always be on Discord and probably always be involved with this community at least on there, but I think I don’t want to socialize online enough to make the leap off Twitter and/or Facebook.
warning ahead: doing due diligence takes effort. honestly, i do this for social communities i join anyway, so don’t bother me if you have complaints. yes, there are accessibility issues.
as someone on the fediverse (mastodon), this would be my guide to picking an instance:
look at the server rules
– bare minimum: explicit rules against common discriminations
– good sign: list of limited and suspended servers (sometimes this is members only)
– privacy, funding, & governance policies (e.g. https://social.coop is a co-operative with bylaws)
look at server admin
– the bio & posts are a good way to get a sense of who the person is
look at admission policies
– invite only: is less restrictive than it sounds, but difficult for new users, basically you need a vouch
– application: this is probably the best for new users
– open: this is risky, open to bad actors, and usually employed by new admins with some learning curve ahead. migrating accounts is possible, but has some drawbacks for more established accounts. probably better to wait and see.
That’s a good list of rules. I can definitely say that most of the drama I’ve encountered second-hand would be avoided by following this advice.
The other option (which is unfortunately wealth-gated) is running a private instance just for oneself. I’m going to do that, but I know it’s not an option for everyone. Especially considering that right now all the easy hosting services are overwhelmed and prices are sky-high unless you’re willing to run it directly on bare hosting.
Ooof not a big fan of running my own instance of Mastodon after reading that documentation closely. It’s a step or two above a pre-modern-Steam CounterStrike server.
Well, some people on twitter think it’s a CIA front.
Though to be fair, some people on twitter think EVERYTHING except their very specific slice of the ideological pie are the CIA, and they’ve never managed to get it right so far, so I’m betting on genuine social media site.
I just tried to create an account via the app. It said I’d exceeded email confirmation request quotas on my first attempt. I tapped “resend code” and it said my device was now blocked due to unusual activity.
I think we’re all learning that fill-internet-scale development is hard.
Not just that - the dev team is a whopping…Two people. They are handling the massive influx better than anyone expected, but they are definitely having a bit of a hard time right now.
I meant to type full-internet-scale meaning “what happens if everyone on the internet who wants to suddenly appears on your site/service”.
There are only a few companies who have managed to tackle this problem successfully, and Twitter is one of them. After years of fail whales. I’m not sure any of the Twitter replacements will get there in time to take full advantage of Twitter’s current drama.
You can find me on the Toot app: @ thewhaleshark@mstdn.social. I’m currently hunting around to migrate to a different instance because the two main ones I’d eyeballed (scholar.social and fediscience.org) are currently closed to new accounts. I’m not in a particular rush to migrate though - while mstdn.social is gigantic, I haven’t seen anything bad come by yet. So, the handle will change at some point, but if you follow me now I’ll just migrate you whenever I actually migrate.
Really, Mastodon does feel a lot like Old Internet to me, and it’s less obtuse that I thought. Just had to poke around, get a feel for how the community works, that sort of thing. Listen to @no_fun_girl, their advice is spot-on and helped make my entry very smooth.
Also, for folks trying Hive, their password setup doesn’t mention all the requirements. It requires at least 1 capital, 1 lowercase, 1 number, and 1 special character, plus some have said has a maximum character limit.
Also encore, there’s a Hive separate from the Hive Social network that seems to be a Slack alternative, which might confuse some.
Agreed. I’m hoping it was a separate limitation they read as a length limit. When I signed up it didn’t mention the number or special character requirement and I had to just try and guess the problem.
Edit: After a bit of playing around, I can confirm the limit has to be higher than 113, if there is a limit. Still doesn’t say the requirements on the password reset page, though does at least alert to what you are missing now.
privacy, funding, & governance policies (e.g. 
