@tithonium :oof: That's a regular occurence in this brain right here, too
@siina boosted if only because that domain name is rad
Back in the summer of 1999, thanks to a Slashdot post, I bought an X10 Firecracker kit and a bunch of widgets for home automation.
That was kind of a fun time of rigging up lights that turned on when I came home. Also nerdy shit like pushing a button in my pocket as I said "shields up red alert" to cause lamps to dim, red lights to turn on, and a star trek klaxon to sound.
Hearing news about IoT and home automation stuff now - over 20 years later - and I'm not hearing a single thing that sounds like a practical improvement over what I had in 1999.
Except for maybe it won't have cross-talk with the neighbors, who my roommates and I discovered were also big dorks playing with X10 gear thanks to Slashdot. That fall, we were turning each other's lights on and off all day.
And, like, now that I've been a homeowner several times over, I can't imagine physically replacing in-wall switches, outlets, or light fixtures with a collection of "smart" crap and then later trying to sell the house with that system somehow intact and transferred over to the new owner as a perk of buying the house. I'm annoyed enough that a couple houses we've bought came with Nest thermostats pre-installed.
This mini-rant brought to you by my listening to the Vergecast over breakfast wherein Nilay Patel says the best way to sell a smarthome is to just walk away and change your phone number and I felt that rather viscerally
It makes me giggle that it might cost $8/mo to get a blue check on Twitter but only $6/mo to get a whole hosted Mastodon instance to yourself.
Like, not the same, but it sort of is?
(And also this toot represents a failure to resist blurting something out about the birdsite. Which I'm trying not to do but {internal screaming})
@jrconlin @Jetengineweasel The closest I got to that was a house I wired up for Cat6 but I took the basement network gear with me, leaving all the cables dangling. I kind of felt bad about it but 🤷♂️ I've received worse in houses on move-in
@Macross Smarthome held together by literal caulk and bread twists
re: Conventions/Covid Anxiety
@MichaelKlamerus I had very similar thoughts about the Portland Retro Gaming Expo here, last month. I don't think there was actually any test, mask, or vaccine requirements there
@danhon Hmm, I thought the protocol was supposed to fire off requests per-server for federation and not per-follower. I'm either wrong or you somehow have a broad diversity of instances represented in your follows
@SpicyNugget Yeah, of course then you're taking care of a server, which is... not fun for everyone 😅
@mhoye@mastodon.social See... now that really does look handy! Now I suddenly want to buy a case of those
Oh hey btw SDF.org folks: I'm hanging out over here in hackers.town but I've been a long time fan of the ole SDF. Even ponied up for an ARPA membership a few years ago, even though I never use any services really.
Anyway, folks might appreciate these stickers I found in my ancient hoard...
@schykle @aimlessComposer Embrace the impermanence of all social media!
(he says, having 20 years of blog archives still online)
@SarahKL@mastodon.social This is exactly the right place for that
@rgegriff @thegibson @jmatheny @jb @bernie_manziel @KayEllen @tac0shell @dotornot @earthshine @inversephase @piratemoo @Synthe @nulliver @christoff @rexmondo I miss the days when the 🍍s ran free and wild
@ondra @twipped @sil I was playing with that a bunch of years ago. Current times are slowly dragging me back to playing with it again.
I think there's a huge need for something way simpler for single or very few users. This is what I had running under AWS S3 & Lambda for a handful of (barely) interactive bots. My intent was to eventually make it into my personal "instance"
@MrBuggles I think they also wedge in some "subspace relays" as an occasional technobabble thing to disrupt communications for drama's sake and whatnot
@thegibson you gotta keep that router fluid topped off too man
I wonder if having grown up socializing on dial-up BBSes makes this whole many-instances-of-mastodon thing easier for my head?
Like, we didn't even have a concept back then of "the place where all my posts and personal identity live". We maybe kept a semi-consistent handle between boards and sussed out the regulars that way.
Maybe one particular board had a good FidoNet feed or better Inter-BBS chat and we hung out on that one more? But I don't think a lot of folks fretted for hours over which BBS to call exclusively.
And, like, it was super common to call a BBS and find the vibe was all off and never call again.
Also, some kid might start a BBS up on a garbage PC and be around for a week til they got grounded and could no longer use the second phone line. So that BBS would go poof.
I mean, sure, some BBSes had more center of gravity for some folks and some tribal cliquey shit would coalesce. But, it could all be pretty fluid.
Anyway, these toots are getting close to me sounding like "me smart, them dumb" when really I think it's just "works for me, your mileage may vary, good luck out there"
@maddiefuzz @thegibson have i been putting the wrong fluid in the incorrect receptacle this whole time?
Some woman just wandered past my house belting out a song I don't recognize with a really great voice. My internet-addled brain wishes it could click a like button.
I think every Serious Mastodon Instance should host one (1) Major Celebrity.
Then, they periodically send that Major Celebrity off to engage in IRL hand-to-hand combat with the Major Celebrity representing a rival Serious Mastodon Instance.
Nobody gets anything if their Major Celebrity wins or whatever. It just would be fun to watch.
@twipped Oh yay, hope my scribblings do end up being helpful! And good fortune in your hackings, I'd be interested to see what you end up with!