• 13 Posts
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Joined 6 days ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • Thanks for the info.

    In the meantime, I opened a new tab, input my instance, waited for the home page to load, searched for ‘elena rossini’, compared the top two results (her channels?), went with one, looked at its list of videos and saw that it didn’t include the video in question, went back, chose the other account and discovered it has zero videos.

    ???

    Saw your reply, tried new search: “Introducing the Fediverse”… 471 results with hers not visible among the top results. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

    Looked again at your reply, copied that video link that you originally gave and searched… and it works! (Although… how did you get it? I can’t see it anywhere else.) Finally I can upvote it. Sheesh!

    Also, tried searching for “fedifuture@videos.elenarossini.com

    • a search term that I think you can only find if you have already found the video? Catch-22?
    • finds the right channel (which is neither of the ones found in my original search)… but no videos… not even the one it just found when searching for that URL. Same when I’m on the page of the video on my instance ( https://peertube.wtf/w/64VuNCccZNrP4u9MfgbhkN ) and click on its channel name… no videos.

    ???

    So, there’s a chance of me being able to eventually interact with the video… if someone else somehow finds an underlying URL and helpfully gives it to me and I then copy and paste it into my instance’s search bar.

    Meanwhile with content on every non-fediverse social network, it just takes one click to reach and interact with it (comment, upvote etc).

    A social network system that breaks the basic building block of the web, the link, seems to be shooting itself in the foot. I hope the fediverse comes up with a much more user-friendly solution soon.





  • The important difference, though, it that Apple offer a service and release software that are black boxes that users and other interested parties cannot examine for backdoors and other issues.

    Canonical release open source software, the vast majority of it actually put together by other parties (like volunteer Debian packagers) and whose checksums are verified, which the FLOSS community can go through with a fine tooth comb.

    On a further note, while the Investigatory Powers Act and what the govt have been doing with it are very concerning, the very fact that we know about the Apple case and the recent XZ Utils backdoor have demonstrated/reminded us that large, well-funded, well-lawyered orgs in their jurisdiction are not the easiest target for intel agencies.

    The true low-hanging fruit, the weakest links in the chain are small, understaffed, underresourced, underappreciated but crucial volunteer projects.

    A. How many packages are there in a major Linux distro like Open SUSE? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

    B. How many developers contribute to those programs and utilities?

    C. How many people packages those programs and utilities?

    D. How many people approve those packages for inclusion in the distro?

    Add up A, B, C & D, and I suspect you end up with a very large number of people. Can Open SUSE (or any distro for that matter) guarantee that just because their distro’s HQ is in country X, that not one of those people is subject to the laws, pressures or inducements of country Y? E.g. how many packages in Open SUSE have some kind of involvement of someone in the UK subject to Investigatory Powers Act? It’s probably greater than zero.

    So while there are benefits to the distro’s HQ being in Germany, I don’t think it’s a guarantee.

    /TED talk