Many years ago I read the D book and really liked many aspects of the language. What kept me from using it was the ecosystem. They had three compilers and two different standard libraries, none of which were fully compatible with each other which led to a whole bunch of weird problems. These days it’s probably better. Maybe I should give it another chance.

You asked about lemmy.world specifically. They are on lemmy but not on lemmy.world. People from different instances talking to each other is the whole point of lemmy (and the fediverse as a whole).

Which boils down to „running an instance is hard and thankless work“ and with more users and more legal restrictions it will only get worse.

Based on my income after taxes and mandatory insurances (health, retirement and so on):

• 25% rent (including water)
• 15% utilities (electricity, heating, internet, phone plan)
• 10-15% food (including comfort food like sweets)
• 5-10% insurance and stuff for my unemployed partner
• on average 5% other necessities (public transport, clothing, …)

Pretty much the same here. I have an old AX41-NVMe for applications (including mail server, mastodon and lemmy) and an even older one from the server auction for files (running Nextcloud with their storage boxes as the backend seems pretty fiddly). Both have increased around 3% so I’m fine.

They did send out emails with the new pricing a couple of months ago and I saw that some newer servers and especially cloud stuff get massively expensive, though.

They boiled before a bath because they wanted hot water, not because it was dirty. Central water heaters in lower and middle class homes are a relatively recent luxury.

Which is good. I’m just annoyed by the constant “What can we do to get all those people over here” threads that have been popping up the last few weeks because I don’t think that should even be our goal in the first place, no matter how unrealistic it is.

Apparently people who hope that social media bans will drive a significant amount of people to the fediverse. This is how this whole thread started. To which I replied that I don’t want the fediverse to grow too rapidly. I would be very happy with slow but steady growth.

There is a middle ground between pulling up the ladder and trying to get everyone in the world on board.

Everyone who is genuinely interested is more than welcome but the fediverse is currently not equipped to handle hundreds of thousands or even millions of new users. Let the general public find their own niche and concentrate on the ones who find us on their own or through friends.

And you overestimate the amount of bullshit the average instance admin is willing to put up with. Sure there will be a few instances who can afford lawyers, offshore servers, whatever. But the majority are hobbyists who think this whole fediverse thing is neat as long as it costs a few bucks for an off the shelf web host and a bit of free time to moderate. And if those people get legal threats, they will either comply or get out because running an instance with 100 users is just not worth the risk of ruining your life.

The fediverse wouldn’t die completely but it would for sure lose many smaller instances. We’ve already lost larger ones like lemm.ee for less.

It might be hard to enforce for every instance but even if only 1% of instance admins get strongly worded letters threatening fines if they don’t follow the law, I guarantee you that many more will just decide that it’s not worth the risk, they close their instances and we end up with even fewer users than before.

Between server costs, moderation effort, discussions whether certain instances should be defederated, and existing legal requirements (like removal requests for copyrighted or illegal material), hosting an instance is already a thankless job and most admins do it for free. The last thing we need is uncontrolled growth that attracts lawmakers’ attention as well as users that don’t share our values and require even more moderation.

Let the fediverse grow naturally. We don’t need to shut anyone out but we shouldn’t actively advertise to the whole world either. Recruit your friends who might be interested in the content and culture we already have. Let the rest of the world find their own thing. That way, we can maybe stay under the radar for a couple more years before the problems start.

I actually hope the fediverse doesn’t grow too rapidly. Otherwise we will also be forced to implement age verification.

Give me half a liter (about two cups) of milk. I can’t count how often I have opened a liter pack of milk for something and then had it go bad because I didn’t need it for anything else. There are a few premium brands that sell milk in smaller quantities but those are way more expensive than one liter of the cheap store brand.

Have you clicked the link? It’s literally the relevant passage from the „Jugendschutzgesetz“ (youth protection law) which is a federal law.

At home I use a 1L glass bottle with straight sides and a wide opening, metal lid and a neoprene sleeve. It’s cheap, easy to clean and does its job.

The obvious downside is that it’s heavy and can break if you drop it but I don’t travel a lot so that’s fine for me.

Median productivity goes up yet median quality of life goes down.

I also sent you a DM.

Cool! I’ll send you a DM.

To keep the advertising out of the main comment: the next event is during the last week of July, signups are open. We’ve gotten older (current core group is late 20s to mid 40s) but we still spend our time playing (and sometimes making) games, cooking and just hanging out. If you think that would be something for you and you have a way to come to the north of Germany, hit me up. Most guests are German native speakers but we’ve had international guests and almost everyone is comfortable switching to English if needed.

I feel that deep in my bones.

Way back in late December of 2006, I got invited to a community meetup for a forum that I was active in. It was in the north of Germany, about 600 km away from where I live but I had already met a few people in person, so I went. We were about 60 people, anywhere from age 13 to 30 sharing a rented location for a week, building RPG Maker games, playing TTRPGs and Wii Sports, cooking for ourselves and celebrating the new year.

Since then, I’ve been there at the same location, every time that event was held. Usually twice a year, except during COVID. People came and went. The original organizers resigned after the winter 2010/11 event because it had become too much work for them. A new team took over and in 2015 I was made part of that team. First as just one of many, then as second in command and eventually when the team lead left in 2019, I took his place.

The community has shrunk over time, many members are not active anymore because of their jobs, partners or children but I’m still holding on. Every summer and every winter, I take a train across my home country to give the 20-30 remaining guests a week where we can feel young and forget what happens in the outside world. In addition to that, I started an event closer to where I live. Kind of a woodlands retreat for 10-20 people over a long weekend in spring.

The team has shrunk to just my SO and me. I’ve been looking for someone who can help us or take over for us in case we can’t make it. So far, I have found nobody. It is a hard and thankless job but I know if I give up I might never see some of my friends again, so I’m holding on as long as I can. As long as we are enough people to pay the rent for a location that has become a second home for most of us. I have sworn to make it at least to my 20th anniversary this coming winter, even if I have to pay everything out of my own pocket. After that, we’ll see. I’m still hoping for a return of the old guard or an influx of new guests and maybe one of them is interested in learning how to do what I’m doing.