Sean Tilley

@ deadsuperhero @lemmy.world

Posts

84
Comments

146
Joined

2 yr. ago

I write articles and interview people about the Fediverse and decentralized technologies. In my spare time, I play lots of video games. I also like to make pixel art, music, and games.

1y ago

Threads Has Blocked Minds From Federating With Them
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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago
That's honestly hilarious, fuck Minds.com. Place is literally Gab Lite.

1y ago

How to Make Your First Loops Video

Lukewarm take at best. It's cool if it's not for you personally, but a lot of people use it, love it, and benefit from it.

I think the stuff that Loops is building out could eventually become a standard feature that a lot of Fediverse platforms optionally offer. That kind of interop for the people that want it is frankly a win.

1y ago

How to Make Your First Loops Video

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

They were for a while, but I think the process has opened up a bit?

1y ago

How to Make Your First Loops Video

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

You might want to try CapCut. It's by ByteDance, used by a lot of Tiktokers, and some of the better features are behind a paywall, but it's probably one of the brightest examples of an easy-to-use mobile editor for Android.

I still haven't found a whole lot of alternatives to that. There's some professional-grade multi-track editors, and some rinkydink open source apps that barely do anything. Honestly, it's kind of hard to find a good balance.

1y ago

First Look: Loops, by Pixelfed

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

Object Storage is relatively cheap, and goes a long way towards affordable hosting. Processing video, on the other hand...

1y ago

We Distribute Is On Temporary Hiatus

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

To be fair, it kind of bubbled up gradually over the course of several years. 😅 It did not happen all at once!

1y ago

We Distribute Is On Temporary Hiatus

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

Hey, thanks for asking! It largely boils down to money, people, and time. I'm currently a full-time student, and struggling to stay afloat.

Here's all the things I currently do:

Research / Testing (gathering info for stories, tracking down info for sources, testing apps and platforms)
Writing articles, interviews, guides, and reviews.
Content Editing pieces submitted by contributors
Scheduling for Podcast interviews
A/V Production
Podcast Distribution
Music Promotion
Graphic Design (thumbnails and such)
WordPress development (features and data)
Social Media Management (11+ accounts)
Instance moderation
Event coverage
Manage a Contributor Team
Fundraising
System Administration

I'm probably missing a few things. It's a lot! And, while I've been able to balance this out for a long time, my severe burnout has seen diminishing returns. I'm at a point where articles are getting finished days and even weeks after something has happened, which... isn't great.

All of this stuff is more or less being done for pennies an hour. It's not sustainable.

1y ago

Any peertube based podcasts on the fediverse?

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

We Distribute hosts a version of their podcast, Decentered, on PeerTube: https://spectra.video/c/decentered_podcast

1y ago

Evan Prodromou Launches The Social Web Foundation

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

Yeah, discovery remains one of the big domain area problems for the network. There's some promising work happening in the space, but it'll be a while before we see something.

Incidentally, our publication is federated, and can be followed at @news@wedistribute.org!

1y ago

Evan Prodromou Launches The Social Web Foundation

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

I don't disagree, but again, the listed platforms are launch partners who have opted to publicly support the organization on Day 1. It very well could be that they reached out to Lemmy and other projects, and didn't hear anything back.

1y ago

Evan Prodromou Launches The Social Web Foundation

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

The list of shout-outs in the main announcement pertains to projects who have partnered with the SWF, and intend to support it and collaborate.

It's also worth keeping in mind that there are more than 80 different platforms in varying states of development. Yeah, Lemmy is one of the bigger ones, and OG Threadiverse, but the list of platforms to name is absurdly long at this point. I think it makes sense for them to focus on the protocol, and immediate partners.

1y ago

Radio Free Fedi - sounds from the Fediverse to the Universe

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

RFF is amazing, and offers so much high-quality music. Historically, it's all been done by one guy, supporting 500+ artists.

1y ago

Radio Free Fedi - sounds from the Fediverse to the Universe

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

The connotation has more to do with the long tradition of Pirate Radio, not a bunch of random CIA stuff.

1y ago

sub.club Emerges to Offer Paid Fediverse Subscriptions

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

The difference here is that you literally sign in with your existing Fediverse identity.

1y ago

sub.club Emerges to Offer Paid Fediverse Subscriptions

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 1y ago

Some of the people in the space are tired of panhandling, and would like to actually get paid for things they do. This can include: covering monthly instance costs, selling subscriptions to premium articles for a newspaper, supporting a video creator on PeerTube, or donating to an open source project. A subscription system is one way of doing that.

2y ago

Flohmarkt is a Fediverse Marketplace

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 2y ago

Yeah, I'm aware. I think the Nostr space in particular is doing a really great job, and has some good ideas on how to make it work. Why this development is significant, though, is that it's happening in ActivityPub space. It's not as robust, and doesn't have all the answers. But, the existence of such a project means that people within the space are already thinking about how to make this concept viable for the Fediverse.

2y ago

Introducing Decentralized Social Icons

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 2y ago

Good question. For now, we have a basic process for submitting icons, which requires adding details about the project repo, information on the icon, and Copyright attribution for whoever created / owns the brand.

We recently incorporated a JS library that allows us to generate the font from the SVG files themselves, which also builds the preview pages that can be viewed at icons.wedistribute.org. With a bit of extra automation on Codeberg, we could basically update the preview page and generated set every time a new icon gets merged in to the main branch.

Our goal is to get to a point where new releases automatically get created, and an archive of the assets gets attached as well. That way, once a milestone gets completed, a new release will get put out with minimal amounts of work.

2y ago

Introducing Decentralized Social Icons

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 2y ago

Interesting insights!

The original reason we started this was actually for our own development. Our site includes project icons and colors in dedicated tags, which link to dedicated topic hubs. As we started working on this, we realized that there wasn't a really good resource, and that we would have to build something from scratch.

Those symbols that you see are typically Unicode. Icon fonts are generally a CSS hack, in that a collection of SVGs have been converted into a font. The Unicode strings can be thought of as "letters" for that font. You're absolutely right that there are accessibility limitations, but the tradeoff is that people get an easy way to use their favorite project icons to represent where they are on the Web.

At the very least, you won't have any uBO problems with our site, as the font is incorporated directly into the theme we're using. We'll likely explore making a WordPress plugin next, so people can add these to their profiles and menus and other places.

2y ago

Introducing Decentralized Social Icons

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 2y ago

Honestly, this is the first I'm hearing about it. Maybe we'll try to submit project SVGs.

2y ago

“Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

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Sean Tilley @lemmy.world 2y ago

That's not really enshittification, is it?

I was under the impression that Cory Doctorow's definition was largely based on how social media platforms entice people with "free" offerings, then gradually tighten the screws over time to make service worse. This usually happens when a platform becomes the dominant player.