You are probably looking for “scaling”

Why does that exclude the Chinese government from being authoritarian?

There already good recommendations, so i’ll just add that you shouldn’t make your work life harder for the sake of running Linux.

Definetly give it a go, and see if it fulfills your needs, but maybe hold off on nuking your Windows install until you are satisfied.

I use my Linux computer for personal stuff and some work stuff (web-browsing, email, office suite) and i have a separate Windows PC just for running applications specific to my field, which don’t have Linux versions or alternatives (or where it makes the most sense for me to use the industry standard)

I can’t find it now, but i’m pretty sure there exists smart home light switches that are powered by you pressing it.

IIRC they run Zigbee to communicate with the smart home and had a bit more resistance when pressing (= more energy).

Because they will quickly use up a ton of storage just for showing other instances content, or did i misunderstand you?

That is a good question, but methods like pruning old content from other instances might evolve into a path for solving this (very real problem).

Federation as it stands right now is a terrible system.

I beg to differ. Right now federation is an okay solution. My proof is that it at least works, and that the problem you mention isn’t killing the fediverse (yet).

We should not forget that ActivityPub is a W3C standard, (which itself is a huge milestone for a decentralized internet) and like other similiar standards (eg. HTTP) it can be iterated on and improved when solutions to new or old problems are found.

I believe we are reffering to two different, but related things.

As i understand your comment, you are reffering to “the platform is responsible for what the users upload to it”, or rather whether they are responsible and i am reffering to “(eg.) Torrent sites don’t host copyrighted content, they only link to it”.

My knowledge about the latter is from many years ago, so i might be wholly or partly wrong.

The former i think is a really interesting balancing act, since i believe that huge platforms that earns billions on hosting user content should be forced to use some of that profit to remove dangerous content, but if that obligation was put on small platforms like Lemmy instances or even the initial Twitter or Facebook, right when they lanched, they would be never be able to get up and running, which would cement the current Big Tech monopolies.

I am not very knowledgable about this specific topic, but i believe the European Unions attempts at solving this is distinguishing between the giants and everybody else, which again, is a great balancing act.

Base64 encoding is not a legal loophole, it’s a method to avoid automated content filters on platforms like Reddit and Discord. Encoding a link in base64 offers no legal protections.

Thank you for correcting me. It makes a lot more sense that you can’t just encode something to make it legal.

I must admit i don’t know exactly what is and isn’t in this community, but The Pirate Bay ended being closed because it “facilitated piracy” or something like that. (Of course it didn’t actually close but the legal loophole was closed, so legal action could be taken)

I don’t remember details but essentially it was decided (in some court, somewhere, i guess) that linking to illegally copied material was also illegal.

IIRC the new loophole became encoding the link to what ever you wanted to copy, for example as base64. That’s what’s done here, right? (Please correct me if i’m wrong)

My point is that this may, in a legal sense, actually be spreading copyrighted material, and the risk of being sued (no matter if you are in the right) is a very good reason to not run the risk, since the legal system favors deep pockets and good lawyers over challenging the limits of the law.

For good measure, i want to point out that i am absolutely for the free sharing of knowledge and culture. The whole world gains from free access to this. I just also sympathize with not wanting to be a martyr in this battle.

Also, as the person i replied to earlier made me aware, the admin of LW is apparently a homophobic asshole, so fuck that guy.

But it is hosted on your home server.

When you subscribe to a community, your home server downloads the content and passes it on to you.

This is not like when The Pirate Bay was allowed to live because it only hosted torrent files and not copyrighted content, in the fediverse, you copy the content to your own server, and pass it on to the client/user, which means hosting the content.

You already have some good suggestions, so i just want to mention openWRT which can be flashed on off-the-shelf router combo (just check their supported devices first, if you go this route)

There are a lot of “linux for beginners” blogs/videos/whatever. They’re a good way to get an overview and learn the first steps. Don’t get into a rabbit hole, though. Watch a couple and start trying it out.

You can try out Linux distros in a virtual machine (VM). You’ll have to use your web-searching-skills to find a program that can run a VM as i can’t recommend one that runs on Windows.

That program runs the operating system on top of the one you have now, so you don’t need to reinstall over and over again while you find a distribution that works for you.

A distribution is what we call “a linux”. “Linux” is just a part of the OS, and a distribution combines it with other software to make something your computer can boot. If this is a bit confusing, don’t worry, it’s not important, you just have to remember the word “distribution” (or distro)

I use a distro called Fedora, but between that and Ubuntu and Linux Mint you should find one that works for you. Don’t overthink it. They all do the same job in slightly different ways, so just pick one and start using it for the stuff you usually use your computer for. Ubuntu is the easiest to search for help for, and Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, so 99.9% of solutions will be the same for Mint. Distros not based on Ubuntu works with the same instructions 90% of the time, but that might be too annoying when you are justvgetting your feet wet.

Note that a lot of distros have multiple “editions”, “spins” or whatever they decided to call it. They mostly differ in the way your “desktop” is presented. Just look at some Youtube videos and some screenshot and try them out.

Now go use your computer with Linux. A lot of the initial friction is from having to learn stuff over again. Search the web for solutions and if you don’t find them ask for help.

Your distrobution’s forums are usually a good place to start, so is places like this. Try to give information you think might be relevant when asking for help and and help people help you by following their instructions and providing the information they ask for. Finding solutions to problems is like a seperate skill you need to train, so if it’s confusing or you feel dumb for not understanding something, don’t get discouraged, you’re just getting better.

Welcome to the Linix community, we hope you like it.

Pareidolia is what you are looking for, friend.