I think largely we are aligned on what we are looking for in a platform. The private blog idea is interesting. I normally consider blogs as public, are there private blog platforms?

So much of PhotoPrism is built on free libraries; the project uses something like 120 OSS libraries. How much of their income do you think they contribute to those projects who’s work their taking advantage of?

I don’t see it like that. OSS is people releasing their work allowing it to be used commercially without limitation (other , it’s what they wanted when they picked the licence, or they would have picked a different one.

Actually, I don’t have any issue with anyone charging for their software, either; it’s just that I won’t use it, and I don’t trust quasi-free projects. That’s just from experience. Most end badly, either by being bought out and going totally commercial, or just slow enshittification for the non-paying customers.

On the other hand, projects die when the maintainers lose interest. I would like a platform that I know is going to stick around. That’s a difficult ask though, if it’s a company like HumHub, it’s very possible if the company goes under it will just die. On the other hand, something like Zusam, if the maintainer loses interest it will likely also die. It would be nice to have some confidence in the longevity of the platform before diving full steam onto it. But I guess at this point, finding something that works is hard enough, without worrying about that!

I do have reservations about HumHub, but it’s the first platform I’ve seen that even comes close to being a familiar feel for users. I’m considering the other idea of using Dokuwiki as well, which I guess comes in as being more similar to your blogging idea.

I do see Lemmy.world admins take quick action when it’s raised to then. However, Lemmy does not differentiate between community and admin reports, so using the normal report function may not be enough. Lemmy.world has a separate process for when an admin needs to be contacted.

I have seen that issues raised on Lemmy.blahaj.zone get raised directly from their admin to to lemmy.world admins, and then there is swift action. Another reason blahaj is a good instance for someone who is gender diverse, the admin doesn’t hesitate to go in to bat for their members

It’s worth noting that instances can defederate from other instances and also remove specific content even if it comes from users on other instances. Instances can also ban users on other instances from their instance.

Using an instance like lemmy.blahaj.zone is likely to be a very different (and much more supportive) experience, even if they are federated with the same instances, due to the ability for admins to curate.

Just found this reddit post. A comment says:

F1TV did a tech talk recently where they measured some tire wear. I don’t know how many laps it ran, but the measurement was 0.6mm difference. If the pit limiter was calibrated to exactly 80kph for a new tire, that would equate to 79.87 kph on that worn one. I don’t think that’s enough for them to account for

I think 0.6mm isn’t enough, but we can expand on that. A search shows a new tyre might have 8-9mm of tread. And legal minimum is 1.5mm, so that’s 6.5mm or so difference, or about 10x the test above. Still, that would only make a difference of about 1km/h in the reading over the life of the tyre.

So seems 3km/h over is not explained by tyres. I guess F1 car tyres are smaller, but I’d think the impact would be smaller on larger tyres.

Actually, surely tires aren’t all the same size? Ours are recently installed and the measured difference hasn’t changed.

I thought you had to get the exact same sized tyres, because they had to fit the wheel.

Reddit seems to think it’s calibrated to the factory installed wheels.

Ooh that’s interesting. I have seen this in almost every car I’ve ever driven past one of those things. There’s actually one car that I remember borrowing one time that stands out in my mind as it matched the speed sign thing and that was unusual enough to still remember it years later.

I just assumed that since the speed is read internally (gear box or something?), as the mm if rubber come off the tire the speedo would over read more and more.

Ah I don’t have that many extensions in Mediawiki so I have probably had a smoother experience that you.

Thanks for describing your wiki setup. Being able to look back at all your events in a sort of giant scrapbook must be awesome. I’m not quite sure it will do the job I’m looking for, but I really like the idea so I think I’ll have a deeper play.

I have non-technical users doesn’t mean it won’t work for us, because I’m sure they can read even if they can’t edit, and that’s mostly what they would be doing with any solution. Looks like there’s also an android app.

I agree with you on how core emoji reactions are. They solve many problems and I at times I’ve also wished Lemmy had them, but given that I can’t even find a platform that is private by default and supports a good video user experience. It’s clear I’m going to have to settle in some respect.

Is federation or similar mandatory for you? As in, do you want something that allows your users to interact with users that are not part of your family and not on your platform, eventually able to completely replace the mainstream social media? Or is a completely closed platform ok, in terms of it’s only your family and friends, and people have to go elsewhere (e.g. back to facebook) to interact with others?

Personally I’m not as wary of HumHub just because of it’s commercial nature. Maybe a little, because some features are paywalled. But for example, I use Nextcloud, developed by a company, and trust it more for this task because of that. I use Photoprism, which the base edition is FOSS but they have proprietary extras that you pay for (like HumHub). I use Home Assistant, though I think they recently transitioned to a non-profit so maybe that’s a little different, but they charge for a cloud connected component. I use ente, who are FOSS but are a company that charge if you don’t want to selfhost.

HumHub have been around 10 years, so they aren’t exactly new. Plus as it’s extendable, perhaps one day a gfycat or emoji reaction plugin will be added (or if you have the skills, maybe you could make one).

I don’t even care about encryption (except normal TLS). If the intent is that it’s for sharing within the family, generally with people being able to see each others’ stuff, and I also control the server, it doesn’t seem that important.

Circles seems like it might fit much of what you’re after. It’s based on Matrix and is intended for this kind of use case, but I don’t think it’s mature enough to onboard everyone to just yet. Them having lost FUTO funding means it will also probably develop at a slower rate now that’s it’s back to volunteer time (with the main devs likely losing enthusiasm after having that funding cut).

Huh, some more crazy weather: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/529703/weather-heavy-rain-warnings-thunderstorms-snow-wind-forecast

Wow, good effort on that!

you can boost or favorite, but I am – and I think you are probably – looking for something with more variety, like emoji responses, right?

Honestly, this is low down on my list. Yes, it would be great, but I have had enough trouble finding something that handles uploading videos ok. Emoji responses are not a mandatory thing for me.

Pixelfed is an interesting suggestion. It always feels like it’s intended to be public. Were you thinking each user would have to configure default privacy settings? I can see how to restrict to followers but haven’t yet found how to stop anyone being able to follow you. I think for me, if a new user has to set up the privacy settings to stop them posting everything public, that’s probably not the right platform.

BTW there is PixelDroid as a dedicated Pixelfed app, but it’s only on Fdroid.

There are a few, but they all require Twitter API access (added cost).

Ah right, of course, AI advancements mean all the APIs cost money now.

Do you know of any companies offering fediverse hosting services?

There are some, like https://masto.host, but that’s not really the kind of thing i was suggesting.

This could be controversial among the diehard FOSS folks (and does pose an embrace-extend-extinguish risk), but it could also be a way to onboard more mainstream organizations who don’t want to deal with hosting themselves.

I didn’t think of this. If a company sets up an instance and starts posting their updates, other instances may well defederate them as spam. Like you say, you could onboard more mainstream organisations, but many Mastodon users are likely to think this is not something we should aim for. Your link also mentions that accounts that mirror twitter posts are generally not well received, so maybe it’s not the best idea.

I personally have a Mediawiki set up that my wife and I have used for years, but it’s not something I want to share wider. I haven’t found it hard to maintain, though (I’m using the docker version).

How do you use the Dokuwiki? Do you create a page for each family event with pictures and videos and things? Then other people can go and have a look? What kind of organisation structure do you use? How do others learn that there is a new page to see?

I’m in New Zealand, we just went into daylight savings time as we head towards summer so I believe we are UTC+13 now.

Oh I should investigate the plugins.

With your family, do you have non-technical and elderly users participating and doing OK with it?

Normally we are a small enough market that it takes a while to be worth sorting out whether they comply with our laws.

One that comes to mind is that data can only be used for the purpose it’s collected, so I suspect adding this and opting people in would probably not be allowed. Grey area though, as it’s not clear to me (IANAL) whether updating TS & Cs and telling people would be enough to be considered getting user consent. I suspect not, though, I think it would need to be opt in so you’ve actively got user consent.

So, most likely it’s because our privacy laws are a bit stronger than their threshold, but also possibly because a small country of 5 million people (where paypal isn’t that common) isn’t worth spending lawyers on to work out if they are allowed to.

In my experience, sites aren’t implementing their own credit card payments. Paypal and Stripe are common, and there are a couple of local payment portals as well.

If it’s not one of those I probably wouldn’t use it, but in general it would never be the case that you can’t pay with a credit card, where as PayPal is probably an option 1/3 of the time.

Might just be US for now until they sort out the legality of it in more privacy focused countries.

I’ve tried Flarum in the past, but it really doesn’t handle media well. Just looking on the demo site now, no option to add a video, and to post an image you need to use markdown to add an image URL.

Is that different when it’s not the demo site?

My Data & Privacy section doesn’t have anything that seems relevant:

Surely by now there would be tools that let them post to twitter and mastodon with one upload.

I think we should encourage companies to run their own instances (restricted to only their users). Companies don’t run around using gmail email addresses, why do they use facebook and twitter instead of having their own mastodon instance?

I know, I know, because it’s where the users are and therefore free advertising, but I think rocket lab employees should have mastodon accounts @mastodon.rocketlabusa.com or something like that, and other companies should do the same. Companies that offer email hosting services for companies should throw in mastodon accounts as well.