Permanently Deleted

  • SerLava [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    plz tell me how federation works, nobody has

    is it like shared profiles

    • InnuendOwO [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      it's like email

      your @gmail account can email back and forth with an @hotmail account even though they're not the same website, right? same thing, but its about Poasting instead of emails

    • throwawaylemmy2 [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      is it like shared profiles

      Yes, but also no.

      The closest way of describing it is like "crossposting" a reddit post to another subreddit: You basically are posting something and the "fediverse" is able to see that content despite being on another server. Someone comparing it to e-mail is also nearly correct.

      This means if you want to post on https://lemmy.ml 's server, you can with your https://chapo.chat account, provided they allow it.

      If they don't, it's like Gab on Mastodon, a totally separate server that can't talk to others that don't allow them.

      • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        The closest way of describing it is like “crossposting” a reddit post to another subreddit

        From what I understand, it's this, but if the subreddit mods were the top of the hierarchy.

        So the chapo chat admins and the admins of whoever is federated with this place will be on equal footing with no oversight

        • throwawaylemmy2 [none/use name]
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          edit-2
          4 years ago

          So the chapo chat admins and the admins of whoever is federated with this place will be on equal footing with no oversight

          Sort-of. If @Beatnik wanted to (for example) allow thedota.win (we all know what this means, right?) chud posts to be seen by C.C users, he's free to do that without anyone's dissenting opinion. [But this would lead to a revolt around here, obviously or a bunch of POST HOG CHUDS/kerry spam?] The beauty/strength of the Federiverse software (Lemmy, Mastodon, forgetting the Facebook clone) is that if people do not like this decision, they can say "fuck you Spez, Beatnik" and spin up their own server (provided they cover the electricity/bandwidth costs) with the Federiverse software (Lemmy, Mastodon, et. al.) and make their own Casino instance with Blackjack and Hookers! with content they want to see.

          The weakness though: You'd have to make another account on that new server and forget your old one because unless Beatnik and crew wanted to allow you to take your data with you (which should be possible, Beatnik with the ping: Answer this for me, plz?) you'd not be able to take that with you if they don't allow it.

          But that's also a strength: At any time if you yourself want to keep all your (and thereby others if you allow registration) data to yourself, you're able to spin-up and ask to be seen/cross-posted to other instances while maintaining your own server/database. But at the same time you can see other peoples login information/data so it's a matter of trust on their part on if they want to be hosted on your server/etc.

            • throwawaylemmy2 [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              I should probably add (and not to put words in the admins mouth) that generally now a days passwords are encrypted and not in the clear. So admins can't see passwords, but that doesn't mean the software/database/etc. doesn't allow it. Best practices is that people can not see other peoples login information and the like for privacy/etc. reasons, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.</paranoia mode off?>

        • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          There's a category of cryptographic algorithms called "asymmetric encryption." Basically the way these work is you generate a keypair which consists of a public key and a private key. Anybody can use your public key to encrypt a message which can only be decrypted by your private key. Conversely, only you, using your private key, can create a signature for a message which will verify by your public key.

          Bitcoin works due to two aspects. The primary aspect is the ledger. The ledger uses cryptographic signatures to create a distributed public ledger of transactions that anyone could independently verify. This is used to determine the balance of a bitcoin "wallet" (technically a cryptographic keypair, functionally an account). The second aspect is the "mining" process which balances artificial scarcity and inflation. If people can be the first to provide a solution for some arbitrarily complex computational problem, they get to submit their solution to the blockchain (ledger) and take ownership of one coin. From there, that coin can be subdivided and traded on the ledger.

          The key problem with bitcoin is that scarcity and inflation are tied directly to energy consumption for solving these arbitrary, useless problems. This isn't a problem inherit to blockchain currencies themselves, but it is an inevitable problem when you decide that using the entropy of the universe to settle inflation is superior to just having good communists govern (and quietly abolish) monetary policy.

          • culdrought [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            That's actually a good explanation, thanks! Another question if you don't mind — how (and by whom) are those complex computational problems generated, and why does it get progressively harder to mine cryptocurrency?

    • Awoo [she/her]
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      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Imagine an entire website like Chapo is a subreddit.

      Now imagine connecting all the subreddits(websites like chapo) up together so that all of them can cross communicate and share a single frontpage that users can subscribe/unsubscribe from the different websites in the federation.

      Federation functions to link up many different lemmy websites together and give them a "frontpage" like reddit while also enabling you to filter out the ones you don't like.

      It's an evolution of reddit. Taking the subreddit concept wehre reddit acts as the centralising fact and evolving it into entire sites where the federation acts as the centralising factor instead.