Yep, ded. So sad.

I blame capitalism

It is a lot of fun! Right now I’m back to arch, since I don’t have a lot of time, but funtoo does right those older decisions in gentoo which do not make sense in these day and age. And the updates are fast, really fast, since they use git!

The downside is the docs aren’t as good. Not even close. The wiki for gentoo is a great source of information.

What about Zig?

Yes, and that is on purpose! It was always meant to be a joke on C++ :)

Gentoo isn’t cool anymore. You should switch to funtoo, so you can have fun too!

Being an ex yakuza

That works, until… Until the power goes out because everyone has their AC on maximum. After that, it becomes a fight of who has a bigger generator and more gas stored, or who has solar power for the AC.

Look normal? You have to look straight all the time, without moving much of your eyes (only your head)

Yeah, but now you’re moving trust from the instance into trusting masto.host…

Would that be possible? How would other (normal network) instances federate with you?

If you don’t trust your admins, you can host your own instance. That way you’d control what is federated and with whom.

Buuut your server ip would be public, so idk…

Some of the issues might be on the software side, so it’ll take some time until it can scale to more hardware resources. But yeah, I agree! What scares me more is the monetization path. Servers can become a really expensive.

It was late yesterday and I didn’t realize I made it sound scary! Yes to all you said! The heatsink is a great idea, too.

It is possible! But not so easy.

You need to build a “reputation” with other servers. If your server is online, then some instances lose messages or just plain fail to load your content. So, first off, you need to be online all the time.

And it takes a lot of bandwidth! Each message, like and post anyone makes on every instance might come from any other instance, so servers need to have enough bandwidth to talk to each other all day.

There’s also the problem of storage. You don’t only store your own content, but also a “cache” of other people’s content, so you don’t need to request it again every time.

There’s even a need for energy. Your server might connect to a lot of other servers, so you might need to have a beefy cpu to process all of that (so no running on batteries)

What you describe exists, actually. It’s called “peer to peer” (often called “p2p”). There are some p2p networks, like scutterbutt which runs on top of the “gossip” network.

They have their own problems, tho.

Federated networks, where you join a server and servers can talk to each other (instead of directly running on the users device) are a middle ground.

On a server only network, like reddit, means everything is controlled by one entity (reddit).

With a p2p network, you have the problems I’ve described before (and lots more)

And finally, a federated network like lemmy exists in between. You join a server, but are not limited to that server. If you don’t like something in your server, you can join some other server or even mount your own, and still be part of the bigger network. With the rules you desire to follow!

Please also be mindful. These old devices don’t receive security patches and are going to be connected to the internet. Any exploit or bug and you’ll have a compromised device with local network access and even gps in the hands of bad guys.

There’s also the battery as OP said. It’s better if you take it out, if possible. Do not leave it running on 100% all the time or you’ll have a fire in your house!

I’m sad to hear you did not feel like a good explanation of the fediverse was given. Is there something you’d still want to know? I’m no expert but I’ve been here for a while, so I might be able to help or at least guide you!

Feel free to ask! And if you don’t feel like commenting on here, feel free to DM me with questions too.

Glad to have you around here!

Thanks! I can’t wait to finish the campaign to play the community made content! I took a quick look and saw a lot, LOT of content! Makes me feel nostalgic for HL2!

I am currently playing Half Life Alyx with a Quest 2 and a cable to my PC. Incredible game, totally recommended. If you want to feel what Virtual Reality (VR) is about, please play that game.