So, with high oil prices yet loads of renewables, we see very low electricty prices overnight.
Looks like we need more renewables and less oil to me.@U3ACommunities Computing #OctopusEnergy #electricy #energy
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The Death of Social Media is the Renaissance of RSSwolfgang (Smartlab)
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My MP just shared this with me
gov.uk/government/consultation…
I guess if you have a strong view worth filling it in.
#fediverse #frendica #mastodon
We are consulting on further measures to prepare children for the future in an age of rapid technological change.Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (GOV.UK)
The online advertising industry has built a massive surveillance machine, and the government can co-opt it to spy on us.Electronic Frontier Foundation
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My home electricty use continues to be negative cost (average -£3.06 per month). As spring rolls on, we are importing less with more solar.
Outlook is variable ... whilst standing charges look to come down in April, octopus intelligent go night rate is increasing (7p to 7.5p) and import reducing (15p to 12p). Also, it seems Trump has started a war ...
#OctopusEnergy #solar #myenergi @U3ACommunities Computing
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Its been a tough time for us ... my father has been very ill for a while and, recently, passed away. Just got back from the funeral.
There is a lot to sort out, of course, and you end up dealing with many companies and organizations.
The star has been @OctopusEnergy ... so helpful and careing. Got things sorted quickly with no fuss.
(has to be said, @O2 / @VirginMedia have been the worst)
National avg pricing for Octopus Energy Tracker Tariff (SILVER-25-09-02)
Recent Prices
Tue 03 Mar, Elec:27.06p, Gas:6.46p
Mon 02 Mar, Elec:23.32p, Gas:5.22p
Sun 01 Mar, Elec:22.21p, Gas:5.22p
Get graphs & pricing for all 14 UK regions: energy-stats.uk/octopus-tracke…
See today’s and tomorrow’s Octopus Tracker tariff prices for gas and electricity, updated daily with full price history and charts.Mick Wall (Energy Stats UK)
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The next u3acommunities computing talk has just been annouced ... email delivery.
We'll be covering why email is getting hard to get through, DKIM/SPF/DMARC/SRS/ARC standards, tools, debugging and some tips.
See u3acommunities.org/event/email…
#u3acommunities #u3a @U3ACommunities Computing
17th March @ 3:00pm – 5:00pm This month we\'ll look at email delivery ... what used to be pretty simple, in the age of SPAM its gotten to be more[...]\npeter (U3A Communities)
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I've recently been improving my self hosted email server for 3 (not for profit) domains - u3acommunities.org, u3a.social and plord.co.uk. This is a lot more challenging than it used to be !
ISP's seem to be dropping smarter hosts and commercial SMTP servers can quickly become expensive if you manage an email list for (free) events.
It also doesn't help if your ISP doesn't let you change the PTR record.
Basic issue with email, I suppose, is pursuading other email servers to trust you. There are so many reasons why they choose not to .... once youve got past SPF/DKIM/DMARC/SRS/ARC you can still be untrused ... could be your IP address, how long you've had your domain, changes in behaviour .... error messages can be less than helpful.
I think I'm now mostly working - I seemed to have pursuaded google & yahoo to trust emails from my server, sorted out forwarded rules that are more likely to be accepted and pass on the remaining few failures to a hosted service.
When did this become so hard ?
Still, lots of material for a new u3acommunities talk !
#SelfHosting @U3ACommunities Computing #u3a #u3a.social #toob
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Yes I've found the same. I wouldn't get a btinternet account.
On failure I try again through smto2go now.
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No.
smtp2go is a SMTP service (smtp2go.com/) ... there are others available. So if your email server failed to deliver, get it to re-try via smtp2go (smtp2go is more likely to be trusted by btinternet).
The free plan is likely to be enough for the few troublesome emails.
BTW, just annouced my next #u3acommunities talk in this subject ! See u3acommunities.org/event/email…
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No.
smtp2go is a SMTP service (smtp2go.com/) ... there are others available. So if your email server failed to deliver, get it to re-try via smtp2go (smtp2go is more likely to be trusted by btinternet).
The free plan is likely to be enough for the few troublesome emails.
BTW, just annouced my next #u3acommunities talk in this subject ! See u3acommunities.org/event/email…
Email deliveryStarts: Tuesday, March 17, 2026 at 3:00:00 PM UTCFinishes: Tuesday, March 17, 2026 at 5:00:00 PM UTC17th March @ 3:00pm – 5:00pm
This month we’ll look at email delivery … what used to be pretty simple, in the age of SPAM its gotten to be more complex. The background to the talk is the email configuration of u3acommunities.org and u3a.social sites.
As always, plenty of time is reserved for discussions.
Joining details will be emailed to subscribers. If you aren’t a member, it’s free to join here u3acommunities.org/subscribe-t….
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1,000,000+ people on Pixelfed. 🎉
No VC money. No ads. No algorithm manipulating your feed.
Just a community that believed in something better.
Thank you for being part of this. ❤️
(P.S - We're preparing a big release with many bug fixes and improvements, stay tuned)
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Sadly, the u3a trust declined to publish my article about the fediverse and u3a.social on sources.u3a.org.uk/ 🙁
I've puhsed back, of course.
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I had this conversation almost one year ago. Sadly things are just worse now.
#DataGrab a great book by @couldrynick and Ulises Mejias , that should should definitely read. #DataColonialism #BigTech
In this episode, Catarina Carvalho talks to Professors Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry about their book Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back [https://www.penguin.co.zencastr.com
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Friendly reminder:
NO ONE needs AI slop and more AI data centres
EVERYBODY needs clean water, affordable energy, and a habitable planet
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I'm wondering what we should talk about in our March meeting (this month is OpenSource software).
One idea is email delivery ... we've touched on this before and its on my mind at the moment with u3acommunities & u3asocial email deliveries !
Thoughts ?
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Also thinking about "vibe coding with generative AI".
Not something I want to use, but technology is interesting at least.
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Yes, email delivery will be next months topic.
I'm so glad you manage a domain, you should be able to add a lot to the discussion 😀
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Just got my Jan 2026 electricity numbers in ... the last 12 months I'm paying an average
of -£3.24/month (includes hot water + car charging at home). Still, its weird in the winter months to get an electricity bill !
However, gas usage is high.
Looking forward to sunnier days !
@U3ACommunities Computing #myenergi @Octopus Energy #solar #homeassistant
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I watched a few social web talks at #fosdem - fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track…
So great to see the #fediverse doing so well.
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What's the most common complaint I've heard about Linux?
Not the installation process.
Not finding a distro.
Not getting programs to work.
Not troubleshooting.
Not hardware compatibility.
The most common complaint about Linux I've seen is this:
For a normal computer user, asking for help is just about impossible.
They ask a simple question and:
People respond "Did you Google it?"
People complain that the question wasn't asked "correctly".
People respond "RTFM"
People get mad??? at them for making an easy mistake.
We can't expect normal people to know to, or even know how to deal with any of that stuff.
Search engines these days are awful, manuals are hard to read for most people (especially stuff like ArchWiki), and normal people make mistakes we think are easily avoidable.
The solution to making Linux more popular is not ruthless promotion. The solution is to actually help the people who are trying to use it. 
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I think this is called verbal abuse and Linux has a problem with bad management - "a fish starts stinking from the head".
RTFM means Read The Fucking Manual, which is a triple verbal abuse:
1) Ordering, which is verbal abuse (older version of Wikipedia: Verbal abuse)
2) The word "fucking", which is a curse word
3) Abusive anger. The phrase obviously conveys anger. Anger is an emotion which belongs to a situation where someone behaves unfair. But the user asking for help does not behave unfair.
Also another problem is that Linux is, in my experience, simply unreliable. When I boot up my computer, sometimes:
1) X doesn't come up, stays in text mode
2) X comes up with the screen at wrong smaller resolution and the picture is in one corner of the screen
3) Mouse doesn't work
4) Keyboard doesn't work
5) Keyboard has wrong repetition rate
6) When inserting a USB peripheral, USB hard disk disconnects and the system crashes
7) Manpages are missing important information
8) Fails to update between major versions with guarantee of functionality
9) System freezes to a grinding halt instead of managing the RAM resource when RAM demand from programs exceeds RAM size
10) Sound doesn't work
Also I would say 80% of solutions from Google don't work and 40% of them don't work and screw up your system and don't contain information how to reverse the changes after you did them and realized they don't work.
Asking "Have you tried Google?" is like a car mechanic asking a customer "have you tried unauthorized, possibly irreversibly damaging tampering with your engine according to the advice of a random, likely incompetent, bystander?"
Also another problem is that Linux is, in my experience, simply unreliable.
I don't know what distributive and hardware you're using, but I can't even imagine what needs to be done for Linux to work the way you described. I have two old laptops from the 2010s at home running Debian and AntiX. They have been working for many years with uptimes of 2 to 4 months without a single failure, and they only shut down when I leave for 10 and more days.
not true anymore.
With AI integrated in most search engine, you often get the right response from it.
One of the few benefits of AI is that it can basically customise the documentation to make it sensible to you. It becomes a kind of live documentation.
A simple how to fix … on [distro name] works 95% of the time in my experience.
Do not peddle AI slop as the savior here. AI is not helpful, it is not useful. It is a prediction engine of what sounds like the right answer. Not what is the right answer, but what will sound plausibly like a correct answer.
That slop is part of the reason why the kindness in the Linux community is so important right now. AI is putting a lot of bad information out there. It is making up urls for people to download packages from that malicious folk then go and register domains for to offer up malware to these trusting people. It makes up names of packages and programs that do not exist, sending users into forums asking for total nonsense because the pedo-bot or the bullshit engine told them that would fix their problem.
@CedC
> how to fix no sound on Ubuntu
I don’t even know how to do that and no AI one-liner is going to save any of us, let alone somebody coming from Windows who’s afraid of a terminal.
Let’s say most things are now easier for most people, but a knowledgeable human is going to have to deal with this question either way.
@CedC I might get hate from my Fedi ingroup for this but I find this to be an extremely good use of AI. I use Perplexity (a really nice AI search engine tool) for quickly learning technical stuff that would take me a ton of work reading scattered, sparse documentation otherwise
the trick is to only ask it for information that you can immediately test/verify
(with this said, I don’t financially support AI companies ever because I’m very worried about the risks posed by AI)
What's the most common complaint I've heard about Linux?
idk maybe try googling it first??? Didn't read the rest of the post smh
Linux has been plagued, from day one, by an elitist and ableist culture. If you don't understand, you're stupid and you don't deserve to be using it.
Want another feature? Make your own fork. The manual is too hard to understand? Write your own version. Making Linux user friendly is not our job and we don't care.
Mhhm, yeah. Perhaps giving positions of privilege to assholes just because they code well may have not been the best approach.
@yuki2501
I am not happy to say, but a quite similar behaviour can be oberserved in very different communities (entirely non tech) as well
It appears as a more general pattern of elitism "we have spent years of work to be there, we dont spoonfed you"
The funniest thing is when you google a problem and all the threads that pop up tell you to “just google it.”
Actual clown-shoes behavior. No desire whatsoever to actually understand the user, they think “PEBCAK” is the funniest concept ever.
Offer to pay for it maybe vOv
I hear you. I've been frustrated too. But you're asking people to share expertise for free when they honestly have already shared a whole crap ton of it.
Maybe people who can't understand that should stick to the proprietary platforms who are willing to monetize your soul as collateral instead.
RTFM = Read The Fucking Manual, in case that helps anyone besides me.
I try to do for initialisms and acronyms what alt text does for images.
I think this is called verbal abuse and Linux has a problem with bad management - "a fish starts stinking from the head".
RTFM means Read The Fucking Manual, which is a triple verbal abuse:
1) Ordering, which is verbal abuse (Wikipedia)
2) The word "fucking", which is a curse word
3) Abusive anger. The phrase obviously conveys anger. Anger is an emotion which belongs to a situation where someone behaves unfair. But the user asking for help does not behave unfair.
Yeah honestly, this.
The most hostile user base of all is Macs, Apple people truly hate each other. Issues are betrayal of the cult leader.
Then comes Linux, though it HAS improved a bit. You don't get "Just recompile your kernel!" to every single question about why your fucking wifi won't stay up or or your screensaver won't lock.
Then windows. The most shithouse OS on the planet actually has the most friendly help base, though it is often completely useless!
-> World <-
This. People like to waltz around all proud "I'm from the 'RTFM' days, kids these days, grumble grumble" and I'm thinking to myself... the problem ain't the kids...
"I'm tired of answering all these basic (author's note: not as basic as they think) questions. They can just find the answers themselves!" like, okay, then stop complaining on their questions on forums if you're so tired of it.
Or my personal favorite: being a seasoned linux user and needing a quick reminder on how to do something.
First search engine hit is a forum post of someone telling someone else to RTFM. Thanks for wasting mine and everyone's time.
Another common thing I've encountered is feeling like people aren't really listening to you or aren't willing to take the time to understand the situation before they start throwing stuff at you.
This is sometimes how people recommend Linux itself, as a solution to a problem in a situation where switching to Linux would either be unfeasible or where that'd cause a lot more headache than simply finding a workaround for now and look into switching to linux at a later date when you're not actively trying to solve a problem.
A lot of these issues, I feel like, come from an inability a lot of people have to admit they don't know something. That's why they feel the need to make it out like you're the one wrong for asking the question, or try and steer them towards something you do have an expertise in even if that thing isn't actually helpful in the situation.
No reasonable person is gonna think less if you just admit you don't know. "I don't know, but I'll try looking into it" is a lot better than bullshitting some answer or deflecting the question. And when it comes to computers in particular, I'm pretty convinced there are only two kinds of people: people who don't know what they are doing at least half the time and people who are lying.
I "earned" a year ban from the Linux channel on the IRC network I used for insisting I looked at the man page and didn't find the answer.
Most useful thing I learnt in that exchange was that "/" searches man pages.
Luckily I was already deep enough that didn't kill my enthusiasm.
People respond "Did you Google it?"
Actually understandable after answering the same question many times.
People respond "RTFM"
People get mad??? at them for making an easy mistake.
Above responses have been seen on antiX and MX Forums, the persons concerned were warned or in at least one known case banned.
The solution is to actually help the people who are trying to use it.
Agree which is why I and others are present as helpers on Linux forums, mostly antiX and MX.
As someone who has been involved in open source for almost 3 decades, this is it right here. It's actually among the reasons I don't participate in open source. The communities tend to be hostile.
As I saw someone put it not long ago: If one is going to push someone to use linux, one needs to be prepared to be that person's tech support. If one is unwilling to take on this role, don't push people to linux.
Thank you, I have been reading this thread with interest,as a Linux N00B. I like your final couple of lines.
I have a couple of decades working in IT.
Reading the Fine Manual is a solution if you have read the manual from cover to cover and comprehend the contents. It is hard to find a solution to your problem in chapter 19 when the manual is assuming you have the knowledge from the previous chapters 1-18.
Asking for help. Firstly, and I am suffering with this myself, you cannot ask a sensible question if you don't know what it is you are asking for. I've recently had problems in setting up an external drive for back-ups. I went through all the forums before I discovered it was a permissions thing - I think.
Secondly, answer givers, don't always respond to the poor question you asked but give you the answer to a question they think you asked. Also, the response maybe at a technical level beyond that of the person asking the question. One of my stumbling blocks, now, is understanding how to carry out even basic functions in terminal. I am scared to ask questions right now.
What, am I doing about my lack of knowledge. I've got as far as chapter 2 in the fine manual. I now know I'm am definitely not in Kansas anymore
Who are normal computer users? This is a genuine question. Don’t forget that non-normal computer users don’t magically know the answers to all your questions. They search, read the ArchWiki, and draw on past experiences.
Not the installation process.
Not finding a distro.
Not getting programs to work.
Not troubleshooting.
Not hardware compatibility.The most common complaint about Linux I've seen is this:
For a normal computer user, asking for help is just about impossible.They ask a simple question and:
People respond "Did you Google it?"
People complain that the question wasn't asked "correctly".
People respond "RTFM"
People get mad??? at them for making an easy mistake.We can't expect normal people to know to, or even know how to deal with any of that stuff.
Search engines these days are awful, manuals are hard to read for most people (especially stuff like ArchWiki), and normal people make mistakes we think are easily avoidable.
The solution to making Linux more popular is not ruthless promotion. The solution is to actually help the people who are trying to use it.
I spent years doing linux support, as a job and as a hobby. I may be old and tired, but I am still here and happy to help. I will continue.
Dealing with assholery is difficult.
Both to repress it within oneself, and to figure out how to prevent assholes from playing their disruptive, destructive role.
This is true in many fields.
But we have an obligation to others, to treat them well and make sure that others treat them well.
My first foray into Linux was 12 years ago. Those responses and related gatekeeping are why I never became passionate about Linux. Too many who are have become elitist twats.
I like Linux. I have no intention of switching to anything else anytime soon. But if I choose an OS based on the behaviors of the fans, I'd choose Windows every time, and I hate windows.
Some Linux users make me dislike being a Linux user.
I make it known to everyone I know that if and when they are ready to try out Linux, I am available as their on-call nerd anytime they run into trouble.
Very few takers. I did introduce some musician friends to #Zynthian and they bought one, but that's just cause it's an amazing project/product. They (musical couple) are now running Linux on one of their PCs, but they didn't need to ask for help lol
You hit the nail on the head. The problem isn't the technology, but the people.
Anyone looking for answers for Linux no longer asks in forums but resorts to any LLM. As a consequence, fewer and fewer answers will be found in forums in the future.
This also means that LLMs will have fewer sources, and therefore their answers will be even less useful in the future...
Years ago I found Facebook Linux groups to be like this, but all of Facebook is that way.
In more recent years, I've had good experiences in the Ubuntu and BunsenLabs support forums. Very nice and helpful people. No problems with elitism or being dicks to noobs.
I also avoid Reddit, so I have no idea what's there. The minute they sold out their site and members to AI, I jetted out.
Which is what I always go when I see a question and I know the answer. We all had to learn and I was grateful for useful answers too, 25 years ago.
Helping people with actual advice is the way.
It's always the same old story: Questions about Windows or iOS are handled unfriendly on the Internet also (have you ever seen a friendly printer forum 😂). This is not a Linux community problem. This is a behavioral problem on the Internet. But it's true, being friendly could be an extra chance.
I am helping the people around me who now have Linux instead of windows in the same friendly way 😀
But there is much less to do 😉😁
I have said it before in places, but one of my big motivations for when I write something up on my web site is those times when I, having used Linux as a primary desktop OS for a quarter century, can't easily find an answer to something I want to do.
*Because that happens!*
I even make mistakes from time to time.
And I try to channel that energy when others ask for help. And even when I don't have an answer, I try to be helpful in helping the person *find* an answer.
There are more than one side to this. Consider how you ask the question?
I have experienced
Questions asked in a "please just do it for me" fashion.
Question asked with a "this is just too complicated! Why is linux so hard!!!" (when really, it is equally complicated on Windows, just done differently)
If you ask a question and "people get mad", there could possibly be something in how you ask the question?
People get upset and frustrated because they have to invest a little time in figuring out how things work differently, and get mad because they don't get the answer in a "follow these simple step" fashioned, served instantly.
Yep. This is why my linux laptop is sitting in its box. You ask a question and get either snark or are inundated with techno-gobbledegook with is unintelligible to people who've only used windows for decades.
If I can't run my client's preferred software on it or get some kind of windows emulator to actually work, it's useless.
So far no help has actually been helpful.
And external hardware like pen tablets etc needs to be plug & play.
At least over here in Germany, there are dozens of dedicated Linux User Groups as well as most Hackerspaces offering public meetings and sometimes online communities. Many of these groups welcome guests and are usually happy to help with issues or at least know where additional help is available. I would assume other countries have a similar community. They’re definitely worth a try.
wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_… (worldswide map)
linux-magazin.de/heft-abo/linu… (German, partly outdated)
I think we agree all, that this isn't a special problem of Linux, but of asking in the internet for help. Being unfriendly and unhelpful is much easier and quicker to do there, especially if you are incompetent. The good answers arrive after you have given up your faith in Linux and humanity. Even here in the fediverse.
Somebody who is paid to be kind to you is maybe the better person to ask, but sadly, my experience says no.
Putting politeness aside (yes, that is an issue), there is complication: Those who write that software like to write that software but do not like that much doing support work. (Plus it's quite a drag: they already gave away lots of work, no time to give away other kind of work.)
Hence opportunity to those who are not able to write software but are able to help others use it: write documentation, answers support forums, coordinate with developers, etc.
Yes!
And this is why I'm involved with #LinuxCafé, #Linux #installparties, #Linuxdays, #diday ... events, giving #PIM lectures and talks and hopefully publishing a book on how to organize yourself and your data some day.
To me, it's all one common topic:
Helping people to help themselves without #lockin effects.
there is another point I would like to stress as versatile Linux user: the ergonomics are a catastrophe on Linux.
E.g., on #Debian you have to click on completely unrelated icons to find the Button for shutting down the machine. Some distros even disallow this and you need to be sudo to even have the possibility to achieve this. No one supports hibernation anymore. Every time I test a Debian derivative I have one WTF moment after the other.
This, attacking the questioner, is prevalent on all so called peer help sites on any topic. It is like 100s of thousands of users are on standby just to jump on a question and say "That has already been asked and answered!" Use them at your bane. A lot of modern distros have huge support sites, Like Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu etc there are people there at all levels that can help you. I am not a fan of Canonical nor do I endorse their products though they do have an extremely well done community support site.
As for some people still living in the 2000 ERA do not believe them when they tell you that you have to learn the terminal to administrate your system. You do not have to. Modern distros have GUI tools for about anything a typical user needs. Anything you might need to go to the terminal for is way beyond what an average user would even think of needing to do with their system. Do not listen to these people, they are stuck in the past and simply have no idea what they are talking about. Experience it yourself and see how wrong they are.
I would be glad to help anyone that is having an issue. Just make a post and tag me in it.
#mycauseuk #festival volunteering opens today ! Not sure exactly what time though. Hoping for #shambala at least.
Join My Cause UK as a festival volunteer and gain access to the biggest festivals for free, whilst having an impact for a cause you care about. Sign up now!anand (My Cause UK)
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Interesting story.
I always thought that when whatsapp say "end-to-end encryted" they really meant it ie
user <--- encrytption ---> user
But if this is to be belived, we have :
user <--- encrytption ---> server <--- encrytption ---> user
ie meta's server can see the plain text of your chats. Yikes.
If true, time to switch to signal ?
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Whenever I ask for technical assistance on the Fediverse, I get multiple offers of help within a minute.
Solutions in under 5 minutes.
There's nothing quite like it.
I'm just so grateful for you all ❤️
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Doug Engelbart (RIP) referred to such phenomenon as "collective IQ" (see: dougengelbart.org/content/view…) while attempting to adapt the crude nomenclature of his era.
Furthermore it was estimated that each additional perspective, contributed another 80 IQ points to the collective IQ, and that this was additive in nature, with no upper bound.
JCR Licklider, helped grant (D)ARPA funding to SRI (Stanford Research Institute) after he heard about Engelbart's so-called: "Mother of All Demos" (1968, e.g. archive.org/details/motherofal… ) for NLS (oNLine System, later more widely known as the Intergalactic Network of Computers aka Internet after some unwieldy intermediary naming of (D)ARPANet ).
Trivia: According to John Deneen (icannwiki.org/John_Deneen) Doug was terminated by SRI after his presentation (apparently SRI's management did not like the diversity of individuals Doug was attempting to include in his research group and tacitly it was understood that once Doug burned through the $250k or so that his grant afforded him in the Augment/NLS group and had given his presentation, they [SRI] would let him go), and was quietly re-hired after JCR Licklider approached them for (D)ARPA funding (so much for management's desires, when more money came knocking at their door!).
Many years later, JCR Licklider dropped such funding after speaking with Doug and being disappointed to hear that the Augment/NLS team had recently hired people (incidentally at the time, I think they were women?) to help train new users. JCR Licklider, apparently believed that A"I" should be training the users in how to use the systems without humans. To paraphrase Engelbart in an interview conducted by Robert X. Cringely many years later recounting that incident : "It's been a few decades since then and I have still never encountered a computer system which could teach its users how to use it without human intervention."
It's probably worth noting that SRI had cross-licensing agreements with SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab) and Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) so it's not as if Engelbart and his collaborators were operating in a vacuum devoid of state of the art A"I" implementations, quite the opposite.
It has been estimated by some that we only ever realized approximately 3% of the vision Engelbart had imagined for NLS. Yet, it seems plainly obvious to me now, as it presumably did to Doug then: real intelligence comes from other living beings, not LLMs and Markov mimicry.
Visit the Doug Engelbart Institute to explore his remarkable legacy and all it inspires (official site)dougengelbart.org
i think this also has a lot to do with who is asking and how.
"kindness is a boomerang"
thank you for being the kind person that (i think *) you are
*) not knowing you IRL
please I could use some of that help magic from anyone here..
birdbutt.com/@colinstu/1159653…
wtf am I doing wrong.. I have an App (under TrueNAS) I'm trying to host but I keep getting "client sent an HTTP request to an HTTPS server" when my #HAproxy tries to serve it up.Colin (birdbutt.com)
Just noticed the new friendica version has been released 😀. See github.com/friendica/friendica…
For u3a.social I'll be doing an upgrade on a test instance as soon as I can and then plan for the live upgrade (I'll also want to switch to native rather than docker database).
The nice thing about test upgrades is you get to test your backups !
@U3ACommunities Computing #friendica @Friendica Support #fediverse
We are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica “Blutwurz" 2026.01. In addition to several improvements and new features, this release contains fixes for secur...GitHub
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Anyone know how often Friendica fetches RSS feeds ? Is this frequency configurable ?
I'm seeing some big delays.
Thanks.
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Ah, I see, many thanks.
I just found adjustPollFrequency() in the source which adjusts the feed "rating" based on the number of recent posts.
The feed I was looking at has a rating of 8 (polling once a day) but other feeds I have lower ratings (more frequently polled). Thats consistent with what I see.
Thanks again.
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!U3ACommunities Computing Next months talk on u3acommunities computing group will be about open source software I'm thinking.
Any suggestions what to include ? So far I've got :
* Software build process and what gets shipped
* Some examples & popularity of open source projects
* Pros & cons
* What "free" might mean & licences
* Source code control, and especially what is a "fork"
* Getting help
* Building and contributing
* Funding & donations
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Thanks.
I'm aiming for "being aware of open source projects" really.
Forking I wanted to mention just because you see the term so much ( eg star office forked to open office forked to libre office etc ).
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Oh I see. I think then that the section "Building and Contributing" should be split into two separate sections.
To use open-source software, one can download and install the installation file, or download the source and build it yourself.
Contributing is much more involved, like installing the development ide and the necessary libraries, source code control, pull requests etc etc
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Fun career !
( I also started in electronics but ended up in software .. paid more if nothing else ! )
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If you've never heard of @FediTips@social.growyourown.services or @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services run by @FediThing@social.chinwag.org then do yourself a favor and go follow RIGHT NOW!
Everyone should suggest these acounts to new comers. They've been the backbone of help a LOT of folks onboard. Including me like 7 years ago.
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Aww, cheers! Thank you so much, I'm very honoured! 🙏
I would recommend people follow the Fireside Fedi accounts too, they make great long-form interviews with all kinds of interesting people from around the Fediverse 👍
!Friendica Admins I'm currently running friendica 2024.12 on a small linux server with both the app and mariadb database running in docker. I'm currently exploring the upgrade options to the next GA.
One option is to move the database from docker to natively running.
I've noticed some sluggish performances with the currently deployment, so I've enabled the slow_query_log and am seeing a few database queries lasting several seconds.
I've taken some of these SELECT queries and re-run them on both the docker database and a new natively running database (populated from the last backup). Query times roughly halve on the native database compared with the docker database.
Also, of course, there should be improvements with the new channel cache.
I suppose there might be possible docker tuning to be done, but native database looks to be a better option.
(query times measured with SHOW PROFILES)
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I do like to see #octopus intelligent go tariff in operation.
You can see here that I've plugged in my #electriccar and octopus has selected times of the day where the grid is cheaper/greener and they've send charging messages to my car. I use #homeassisant to monitor this and to make use of these times slots for the house as well.
In this example pretty much all of the days consumtion is charged at the lower rate.
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This is what we need much more of, people with privilege standing up in solidarity 💖🖖
I am glad you got to work with such a great soul!
I wasn't there when TOS was originally airing, but I assure you I've been a life-long Star Trek fan.
Due to this, you and the rest of the cast have been part of my life the whole time I've been here, a psudeo-extended family for me.
I feel lucky to have been able to watch everything you've done and witness the absolute stellar example of a human you are.
Thank you for this remembrance, thank you for being you, and thank you for continuing to hold your values.
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My tee-shirts just arrived 😀 (the other is bright orange!)
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Oooooh my custom made #TheFutureIsFederated sweatshirt has arrived at a pickup point! Going to retrieve it later today and I hope it turned out ok.
I intend to wear it at #FOSDEM on the big day for the Social Web talks.
All fingers and toes crossed it looks good and fits well. Otherwise I have two other Fedi t-shirts as backups 😅
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I've used Teemill with success in the past for one-offs. They're UK based though which might not be ideal 🤷♂️
teemill.com/custom-tshirt-prin…
They're the ethical / sustainable bunch behind Rapanui.
Upload your photo or artwork and create unique personalised t-shirts for yourself or to sell online. Sustainable organic cotton. No minimum order. Same-day shipping.Teemill
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Just saying "hi" 😀
I've recently setup u3a.social for u3a members and will be giving the first how to use it talk next week.
Wish me luck !
First emails for next weeks talk about how to use new u3a.social #friendica based #Fediverse site for #u3a and friends will go out about lunchtime today.
See u3acommunities.org/event/how-t… ... if you are interested in attending, please join here u3acommunities.org/subscribe-t… .
Please share to anyone you might think may be interested. Thanks !
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HTPC NZ
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