On the Fediverse, the microblogs (Mastodon, its forks, Misskey, its forks, etc.) lack a group functionality. Since tagged posts generally only federate to servers who already receive posts from the originating server, a lot can be missed. Groups offer a bypass. If I follow ActuallyAutistic, it doesn't matter whether anyone on my server follows your server or not. When you @ ActuallyAutistic, I'll see your post.
While they weren't the only group host, a.gup.pe was the main one that people were using to host groups. This had issues because the software that a.gup.pe ran on didn't play well with non-Mastodon microblogs. Sometimes it would work with non-microblog platforms on the Fediverse but it was kind of spotty.
a.gup.pe, the flagship instance for Guppe, went down recently because the policy for .pe domains allows others to buy the domains out from under the owners during a window leading up to the domain expiration.
This serves as a primer about Group functionality. It also covers serious issues with our current options.
Mastodon folks are often unaware of the different types of software federating over the Activity Pub protocol. It's not just Microblogs emulating what Twitter was. One of the areas is Discussion Forums like Reddit but federated. This includes Lemmy and Kbin. Because the focus isn't on microblogging, these platforms can offer feature sets that are beneficial for more nuanced discussion. What you may not know is that you can interact with discussions on federated discussion forums from your Mastodon account.
This isn't a comprehensive guide. It's not intended to be one. It's just some basics you need to get started with a bit of an explanation as to why you'd want to.
There's nothing fundamental that most of us are doing on a computer in the year 2024 that requires 16GB of RAM or a brand new processor. Why has it become the new default? Why does your computer that runs fine today require a replacement to run Windows 11? There's not one answer but several.
This isn't either of the blogs I had planned for this week. I have a 90% written piece about why perfectly good computers aren't compatible with Windows 11. I also have about half of the background done on what I plan to be my first movie review here.
A relatively easy step can help your focus and reduce stress
When I got my most recent Mac, I created an account for everyday use but I also created a “local only” account. The everyday account has services and apps I log into. The “local only” account doesn't. The point of it is that I don't log into anything with it. I don't give it admin privileges either so any time I want to do anything like install software, I have to log into my regular account or my admin account.
I'm not sure whether folks will find this useful. Twitter didn't have bookmarks when I was using it. It's possible I'm late to the game and everyone except me already knows how to make good use of bookmarks. That said, here's how I'm using bookmarks on Mastodon. It's not “the right way” but you could find it useful.
