It’s a piece of cake for end users. It makes me really jealous lol. Just keep in mind that I’m making that claim based on using the ansible playbook that deploys synapse + element call and an element web UI. Some of our users like to use some combination of a web, desktop and mobile app. So having that come setup after deploying the playbook was really nice. The hard part for end users (for us at least since we’re running a private, defederated server) is pointing the client to the right URL. I made a PDF with a bunch of step by step instructions for how people can login with all of the apps.

That ansible playbook did make deployment much easier, but it’s still a ton of reading because of what a complex stack of tech is actually required to run a matrix chat server. I had originally tried doing it with a bigass docker compose file, and manually configuring all the reverse proxies. After two days of failing to get that working, I went with the playbook. It’s much easier than doing it completely DIY.

The only real difficulty I foresee with users down the line is what happens when people lose their recovery keys. Obviously there’s ways to log back in, but people probably won’t appreciate losing access to chat history. We’ll see how it goes, but generally the onboarding process is really easy. And it can be made easier by the fact that admins can just create users, so the whole registration process is optional.

I deployed a self-hosted matrix chat server recently (synapse + element call) for my probably-soon-to-be discord refugee group. I know it isn’t a 1:1 replacement for the average discord user, but honestly I’m really happy with it. It does the important stuff that we care about (private chat rooms and video calls). My only complaint is that it was an absolute pain in the ass to configure, lol.

I consider the simplicity of the available apps to actually be a good thing. We had moved to discord a few years back from google chat. After that, a bunch of people didn’t interact in chat a whole lot because of what a busy pain in the ass the discord UX is. Several users have also consistently had major breaking issues with the discord app over the years. The element X app doesn’t do a whole lot, but it does work, so it’s an improvement for those people.

Hopefully the recent interest in matrix results in it becoming a fully-featured discord alternative.

This is a good, detailed take. She’s not a scholar, just a witch doing her best. And this is more of an account of one person’s personal practice than a detailed, academic historical text. Still, I think she does a better job than most of what’s out there. As always (for anyone else out there following this thread) read with a grain of salt. Or a barrel of salt.

If you have good book recommendations, I think I speak for everyone lurking when I say please post them.

Closet Witch

Sylvaine

Frayle

Cellar Darling

Tristania

After Forever

Just to name a handful off the top of my head.

LOL. I mean, reading runes as a form of divination is basically on this level. The idea is that you fill a bag with runes, then dump it out on a surface and make your reading based on how they fall.

Personally I prefer to use spaghettios divination in my practice.

I think I used one of those just to get through February

I think you’re right, but I have hope. I believe in us lemmings, lol.

Using reddit makes me feel bad. It’s full of such inflammatory rage bate. Even in the niche communities I was part of, there were multiple posts every day just stirring the pot. Lemmy right now reminds me of reddit in its early days, back when people were trying to have actual, meaningful discussions.

After the api-gate, I had a moment where I asked myself “what things have I actually learned on reddit that I otherwise wouldn’t have learned?” And the answer was nothing. Actual, helpful, insightful discussions just don’t get attention over there anymore. I get way more mileage out of my RSS feed than reddit.

I’ve found the tone here on Lemmy to be more positive and more informative. Don’t change, y’all.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great writer. Highly recommend checking put his other stuff too, if y’all enjoy this one.

Bouncing like a model 3 off the side of a ravine, while sadly blaring its fart horn the whole way down.

It’s been crazy watching the markets over the last few weeks. I’ve seen stocks go from like 5% down to like 3% up by EOD, lol. So we’ll see. This seems like Tesla’s bad sales numbers are finally catching up to them.

I started self hosting my own RSS feed a few years ago, and I couldn’t live without it. It’s the best way to get timely info.

And then you can be the first one to post it on lemmy.

They’re asking their users to leave. Its about time we oblige them.

I spend more time watching markets than I probably should, lol. I haven’t been very active on lemmy, but I’ll start posting stuff. I suspect the next few years in the market will be… interesting.

I feel like I found a new reason to avoid amazon every time I looked for a product not being sold under some random fake brand name. I cancelled prime over a year ago and started shopping elsewhere. It costs more, but the quality of just about anything is higher.

I avoid amazon for the same reason I avoid walmart: everything is a simulacrum of an actual product. Somehow, amazon is even worse than walmart.

So yeah, boycott amazon and shop at places selling actual products.

The bristles are made from bundled pine needles. The handle is from a crepe myrtle tree. Basically, just a bunch of stuff I had laying around in my back yard lol.

Ex mormon here, and I had the same reaction. The shit that went on in that church is absolutely insane in retrospect. Like, it seemed “normal” at the time, but now looking back as an adult its all a bunch of “what the fuck” moments.

Like that one time I was a 15 year old kid, getting asked by a church elder if I looked at porn as a “purity test”. I have no idea how mormonism is even legal.

Same here. I figured it was a matter of time before reddit was entirely ruined after the api change and IPO. I stuck around for the niche communities, but they’ve all been overrun by bots.

RIP in pizza, reddit.

This is an interesting question for me. I used to be solidly in the “no” camp but became part of the “yes” camp due to some things I’ve experienced in life.

Life is strange. Maybe it’s nothing more than what is happening in our brain. Maybe it’s more than that. I choose to believe the latter, but I’m open to having my belief challenged if (when?) scientific study provides a better answer than what we have now.

Starsiege. No, not tribes. Starsiege, third game in the earthsiege series. Tribes was actually a spin off in the same universe that got much more popular (with good reason, tribes was awesome).

Starsiege was a pc game that came in a bigass box, complete with multiple books filled with lore from the game’s universe. It wasn’t as well received as mech warrior (another mech sim), so it didn’t have a big community. But those of us that played it loved it to death. I think you can still get the game running if you don’t mind fucking with a bunch of sketchy third party patches.

I was so excited to play the SC2 campaign when the game came out. Starcraft and Brood War was my life for years.

I was so disappointed by SC2 that, to this day, I haven’t even read the wikipedia summary of the expansion campaigns. Never bought either of them. I stopped playing around the time they introduced paid maps (in 2010 or something). Playing competitive was good, but UMS was botched just as bad as the campaign when the game was new. That was my most anticipated thing after the campaign. Even now people mostly only play the same 3 UMS maps.

The original game still holds up too. We got robbed of a good sequel. And don’t even get me started about diablo 3 lol. RIP blizzard.

Edit: did some googling and it turns out they announced, but did not implement paid maps in 2009. Map micro translation did eventually get implemented though.