cross-posted from: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/e2f22d06-fb76-4e90-8de7-26069a2d241e

> You asked for it, you got it. Here's what I think of Red Hat. > > > > Sorry this video took a bit longer than I'd like, since I'm working on finishing my basement (future recording space) at the moment. > > > > Anyway, I'm not planning on dwelling much on Red Hat beyond this- my plan is to move forward with community-driven distros in mind, and recommend those to customers in the months and years ahead. I hope Red Hat gets to a good place again. We'll see. > > > > Supporters make this possible. Seriously, nobody's sponsoring this video except you! > > - Patreon: https://patreon.com/VeronicaExplains > > - Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains > > - Buy my shirt: https://vkc.sh/merch > > > > Important Red Hat links referenced in today's video: > > - Their June 21, 2023 blog: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream > > - Red Hat doubles down on June 26, 2023: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hats-commitment-open-source-response-gitcentosorg-changes > > - "Our origin story" page on their website: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/why-we-choose-open-source > > - The "Appendix 1" PDF containing license details: https://www.redhat.com/licenses/Appendix_1_Global_English_20230309.pdf > > - "Our Code is Open" marketing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj_tLugpz8g > > - Guide for CentOS project code: https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2021/02/03/a-guide-for-using-centos-project-code > > - Embracing CentOS: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-centos-join-forces > > - Extending CentOS: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/transforming-development-experience-within-centos > > - Extinguishing CentOS: https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/ > > - CentOS Stream website: https://centos.org/centos-stream > > - Red Hat saying CentOS Stream is not for production: https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/centos-stream-checklist > > - IBM Q1 2023 results: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2023-04-19-IBM-RELEASES-FIRST-QUARTER-RESULTS > > > > Other important links referenced in the video: > > - Rocky's plan: https://rockylinux.org/news/keeping-open-source-open/ > > - Debian's "who we are" page: https://www.debian.org/intro/people > > - Debian's "who can contribute" page: https://www.debian.org/intro/help > > - LWN.net's Kernel 6.1 stats page: https://lwn.net/Articles/915435/ > > > > #linux #opensource #redhat > > > > Chapters: > > 0:00 Brought to you by corporate greed > > 1:02 #YARDE (Yet Another RHEL Drama Explanation) > > 3:08 Scars from CentOS > > 5:08 So what's next? > > 6:48 Why am I going all in on Debian? > > 8:11 The "culture" is the culprit > > 9:43 What about Pop!_OS? > > 11:13 Don't tell me what to do, Veronica

cross-posted from: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/41f5284e-b79e-4c84-97e5-664a6ac5a1ee

> Learn how to deal with a ransomware attack with this free whitepaper: https://bit.ly/44cNIcr > > Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en# > > 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: > Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: > > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join > Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment > Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/ > > Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp > > 👕 GET TLE MERCH > Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/ > > 🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: > Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com > > 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: > Website: https://thelinuxexp.com > Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP > Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick > PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos > Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd > > #internet #ads #marketingdigital > > 00:00 Intro > 00:44 Sponsor: Learn how to deal with ransomware attacks > 01:32 The ad-based internet > 04:08 Twitter: anything but the kitchen sink > 05:46 Reddit: shooting themselves in the foot > 07:14 Youtube: nickel and diming > 08:58 Alternative platforms won't save us > 11:43 Three possible outcomes > 14:41 The Ad Based internet is on its way out > 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux > 16:02 Support the channel > > Google has shown that with enough scale, just running ads on a website is enough to keep the content free of charge. But of course, as with everything where money is involved, it went way too far. This limited the ad revenue, and so websites decided to add more ads. > > To compound that, ads started paying less and less, so websites started chasing profits by making the internet worse for everyone. > > Twitter's revenue is 89% ads. It has existed for more than 10 years, and has never made any money. So even at that scale, ads are just not working to sustain a company. > > All the changes Musk is making to Twitter, like firing most of the workforce, charging for the API, limiting the number of tweets, Twitter Blue, it's all to try and turn a profit. So, the experience of Twitter is now ten times worse, because ads don't work. > > Now let's look at Reddit. Reddit is about as popular as Twitter. And Reddit isn't profitable either. They're kept afloat by raising money from investors. And so Reddit charges for their API now. Reddit made their site worse for everyone: the regular users, and also everyone browsing the internet and landing on reddit to see a "this subreddit is private" message, making any web search ultra inefficient. > > And we can also look at Youtube. Youtube is HUGE. And it's hard to know if youtube is profitable or not. The consensus seems to be that it is, but the actions of youtube seem to indicate that maybe it's not THAT profitable. For example, youtube seems to be planning some moves against adblockers. Youtube is also taking steps against third party frontends, like Invidious. They wouldn't do stuff like that if profit growth was awesome. > > I love alternative platforms, but they'll probably never replace the giant ones: they don't offer a business model for people to create content on them. > > As a user, you probably don't care about that. And the person running the instance of said platform maybe is ready to fund it out of pocket, but the people creating the content on these platforms? They're not making money from them. > > And so as ad-based internet models start dying off, I have a feeling we're going to be faced with 3 options > > First, the big platforms survive as-is with the ads, you can still have ads on your own website, but the platforms will start keeping more and more of the ad revenue. > > This is where we're heading now. People are tired of ads and their privacy invasion, and the over abundance of them, but platforms seem to think this is the way to go. > > Second option, the big platforms and websites evolve to another model, like paywalling everything behind a paid subscriptions like Youtube Premium. > > It would basically kill off an entire portion of the internet, but it probably wouldn't be the worst portion to lose. > > Third option, the big platforms and the internet as a whole can't find a new model to replace ad based ones, and big platforms and big websites die off. Content creation becomes a hobby mostly. > > This is probably the best outcome for the internet as a whole, as it would probably kill off most clickbait, disinformation, AI generated crap. We would have far less things to read and watch, but a lot of if would be higher quality.

cross-posted from: https://neat.tube/videos/watch/0f031b53-cbe4-465a-8e34-a4f41580baae

> Instagram Threads is the new Twitter/Mastodon/Bluesky alternative that just hit the world—unfortunately with several issues. From the timeline, to privacy concerns, to its ActivityPub integration, and more! Here are the several issues behind this Facebook/Meta product that I think should be considered before you open an account. > > Why Privacy Matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6_ZlkBYrxI > Why You Should Delete Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUQqHYjl2Pk > Why To Ditch Twitter for Mastodon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkRkTdm9efs > > 🔐 Our Website: https://techlore.tech > 🕵 Go Incognito Course - to learn about privacy: https://techlore.tech/goincognito > 🏫 Techlore Coaching - to get direct support: https://techlore.tech/coaching > 💻 Techlore Forum - to connect with other advocates: https://discuss.techlore.tech > 🦣 Mastodon - to stay updated: https://social.lol/@techlore > > We cannot provide our content without our Patrons, huge thanks to: > Afonso, Boori, BRIGHTSIDE, Casper, Clark, Cyclops, Eldarix, JohnnyO, Jon, kevin, Larry, love your content, NotSure, Poaclu, x > 🧡 Join them on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/techlore > 💖 Our Other Support Methods: https://techlore.tech/support > > 0:00 Setting the scene > 0:28 The Timeline > 2:28 Privacy > 3:32 Deleting Threads > 3:58 Meta/Facebook Monopoly > 5:27 Things I'm Looking Forward To > #instagram #instagramthreads #techlore

From the admin of TILvids. I quote

It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog update, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to update thoughts I’ve been continuing to have, about where I hope to evolve TILvids to going forward. If that sounds interesting to you, keep reading (and if not, well, thanks for stopping by).

HUB AND SPOKE MODEL If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you’ll know that my intention is to eventually create a hub-and-spoke model for TILvids; that is to say, I want to create a community that has a centralized entrance point instance that branches out to many connected satellite instances. These satellite instances will be run by creators who have come up through the TILvids community, or have been vetted by members of our community to indicate their goals are in alignment with our mission to provide quality edutainment content to the world.

There are a few reasons I think this model makes sense:

1. Resources. Running a large video community is incredibly resource intensive, and it’s mostly a problem of scale. When I started TILvids, I had roughly 40GB of storage space on a VPS, almost no traffic, no CDN consideration, and zero backup plan; hosting this was incredibly simple. As the site has continued to grow, it’s required more storage, addition of a CDN, and multiple backup strategies. I’ve been able to continue to scale so far, but there will come a point where this is no longer feasible, short of becoming a for-profit entity like YouTube, which runs counter to everything I want out of TILvids, and the spirit of the PeerTube community. By capping the direct growth of TILvids, it means there is a ceiling to the centralized resources required to run the entry-point of the community, and instead those resources can be distributed and shared amongst the creator community.

2. Creator control. As a creator of content myself, I’m incredibly empathetic to our creator community. As a creator using YouTube, or any medium you don’t directly control, one of the scariest thoughts to contend with is “What happens if my content disappears?” Maybe you keep backups of your content itself, but what about your network of followers? In a centralized model like YouTube, you lose all of that. If TILvids were to follow a similar model, attempting to become a centralized platform, then the same thing could happen, even if we hope never to do that. So, by encouraging creators to grow up through a semi-centralized entry-point like TILvids, our creator community gets a chance to grow and evolve with and from our community, and then when they become large enough, that community becomes part of them on their own instance. And as stated before, the complexities of running a smaller instance are much fewer than trying to run one massive instance (and it’s also something I hope a team at TILvids can help creators with as well).

The specifics of what this look like continue to evolve, but the sentiment behind it remains the same, based on the two points above. We need a way to scale in an ethical way, and we need to ensure creators retain control of both their content and their community.

ON FEDERATION I frequently have to field an answer to the question “Why don’t you just federate with all the other instances?” At a high-level, the answer is pretty simple: The mission for our instance is quality edutainment, and most other instances don’t align with that mission. So many instances act as general content instances, which more often than not leads to them being inundated with conspiracy-theory nonsense, crypto-scam videos, and just downright spam. This has started to generate the perception that PeerTube in a dumping-ground for anyone who was de-platformed by YouTube, rather than a federated community of content-creators.

At a more nuanced level, considering the hub-and-spoke model I’m looking to build, I do think it’s important for there to be a smaller number of well-defined entry-points for the PeerTube ecosystem. The best way to do that, at least in my opinion, is for these entry-points to be very selective on who they federate with, where their content shows up, etc. The world has been conditioned to only having a few centralized ecosystems for video (YouTube, Tik-Tok, etc) and trying to explain the concept of a federated ecosystem of video content simply doesn’t work. Rather, if you can say to your friend “Hey, do you like edutainment content? You should check out TILvids!” and have them hit this one entry-point, that’s a much easier proposition. The hard work of understanding and implementing federation should happen transparently in the background so that the general world can simply have a few easy entry-points to the content they want to enjoy.

Most of the time, when I explain this to people, they get it. The folks in our community love that they know what type of content to expect on our instance, and creators like that they don’t have to worry about their content showing up on other instances that they don’t approve of. For the few people left that don’t agree…I get it, and it is what it is. I’ve been a part of the Linux and general FOSS world for decades, and we’re not always going to all see eye-to-eye.

ON MONETIZATION One of the biggest hurdles to getting creators on-board with alternative platforms is monetization. There are a few awesome creators out there like Nick from The Linux Experiment who are happy to take a chance on federated video simply to support it, but many other creators simply do not care; they want to make content, and make some money in doing so. I get it.

So this is a problem to solve. Additionally, as we scale, we likely will get to a point where community donations won’t be able to cover all the costs. To this end, at some point I think TILvids will need some source of additional revenue. I very much prescribe to the idea of ads being the original sin of the Internet, and believe the worst thing we could do is what the existing video ecosystems do: mine personal data of our users in order to serve targeted ads during videos. That’s not respectful of our users, and is just a poor user experience to boot.

I think a better approach is instance-sponsoring. I’ve long been a fan of PBS (Public Broadcasting System in the US) and how they have no paid commercials, and instead have a mix of viewer support and corporate sponsorship. I’d like to eventually have something similar for TILvids, where the community continues to support us, but we also have a handful of sponsors that donate to the instance and are called out in some way. I’m not sure what exact for this would take (something respectful and tasteful). If you’re a company that thinks this might be interesting, feel free to reach out and we can talk about what that could look like.

In the meantime, our community support continues to drive our ability to run the site, so thank you to all our patrons!

ON INCORPORATION I’ve said before that one of my goals is to eventually incorporate TILvids as a not-for-profit. This is very important, because it removes the temptation to pursue monetization tactics that do not respect our community of viewers and creators. Additionally, if we want TILvids to be a semi-centralized entry-point to a broader world, I think it’s important to not be an entity driven by profit.

I think a very healthy end-state for TILvids would be to employ many dozens of people that help to keep the site running, keep the mission of the entry-point clear, help moderate the community, help new creators grow, and help established creators transition to a spoke in the hub. And these folks should all earn enough to have a good living, without some CEO or board member earning massive amounts of money off the backs of everyone else.

So that’s an update on where my head is at for all things TILvids. I don’t have all the answers, and to be honest, I’m often still trying to come up with the questions. But at the core of all of this, I want to build a video ecosystem that respects both our users and our creators in a way that allows us all to grow ethically together. Thanks for everyone that has, and continues to support that mission! Written on July 6, 2023

cross-posted from: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/7ec57164-aef3-4861-a33b-61dd7629faac

> Make sure your Python applications stay relevant for longer: https://bit.ly/3CyfKnL > Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux:https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en# > > 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: > Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: > > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join > Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment > > Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR > > 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: > Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nick_thelinuxexp/ > Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP > Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick > I'm also on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e > And on PEERTUBE: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos > > This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license. > > #mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia > > 00:00 Intro > 00:39 Sponsor: Extend the life of your Python applications > 01:30 The Fediverse: a network of social networks > 04:57 ActivityPub: all your social networks can talk to each other > 06:44 How Mastodon works > 08:33 How PeerTube works > 10:19 How PixelFed works > 11:39 Parting thoughts > 13:02 Sponsor: buy a device that runs Linux perfectly > 14:11 Support the channel > > Join Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/servers > Join Peertube: https://joinpeertube.org/ > Join PixelFed: https://pixelfed.org/servers > > PixelFed App for iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/5HpHJD5l > PixelFed App for Android: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pixeldroid.app/ > > List of Fediverse services: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ > > > Fediverse is a contraction of Federated Universe. It's basically a very large network of servers that form, well, a social network. But contrary to the ones you might be used to, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others, the Fediverse is composed of different services. > > The more well known are Mastodon, a Twitter-like microblogging service, PeerTube, a youtube-like platform, or PixelFed, an Instagram-like social network, but there are a TON of others. > > Each service is also decentralized, which means there is not one big server farm where everything is hosted: each service is split into instances, basically independent servers, with different goals. > > ActivityPub is an open standard, that lets all services on the Fediverse talk to each other. How does that work? Well, in practice, it means you can use your Mastodon app to follow a Peertube channel, or someone that posts pictures on PixelFed, or see new articles from a Wordpress website. > > And this goes a bit further: for example, if I comment on Mastodon on a post from Peertube, that comment will also appear on Peertube underneath the video. > > Let's start with Mastodon. Mastodon is basically Twitter, but open source and decentralized. It lets you post messages with up to 500 characters, it supports images, videos, polls, content warnings, animated avatar pictures, emojis, links, mentions, hashtags, anything you're used to on Twitter. Mastodon has 1.5 million active users, which might seem small compared to Twitter, but it's more than enough to have interesting conversations with a lot of cool people. > > To join Mastodon, all you need to do is pick a server, also called an instance. You can pick any server you like, and it will let you interact with everyone else on any other server. > > And then, you can use Mastodon on the web, by typing the address of your instance in your browser, for example, for me, it's mastodon.social, or you can use a mobile app. > > Now let's talk about PeerTube. It's a Youtube alternative, although it's much, much smaller. Peertube is also decentralized, being split into different servers, that are federated together, so you can follow people from different instances and still have a complete subscription feed. It also supports ActivityPub, which means you could subscribe to my peerTube channel from a mastodon account, and have a post in your timeline every time I publish a video. > > And as a creator, it also lets you sync your youtube channel to it, so you can auto-publish all your videos to Peertube in a few clicks, which is also a great help. > > To watch peertube, just type the address of your instance in your browser's URL, for me it's tilvids.com. > > Another cool service on the Fediverse is PixelFed. It's basically Instagram, without all the crap they tacked on lately, like reels, or lives. It's just pictures and videos. It's free software, it also uses the ActivityPub standard, so you can follow PixelFed users on Mastodon, for example, and it's ad-free. > > It also lets you add filters, just like Instagram, or crop, resize, adding alt text, and you can use hashtags, locations, or create collections, basically photo albums.

!image

TILvids 2023: Musings for a New Year

What a crazy year 2022 has been for tech. As we approached the last few weeks of the year, I kept thinking how different this year has felt. For most of the last two decades, it's seemed like the trajectory of the tech industry has been very much on the rails; processors get faster, devices get both smaller and more powerful, everything moves to the web or mobile, and a handful of very large tech companies are adored by both Wall Street and main street alike. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google...we even came up with an acronym for them, "FAANG".

But something happened over the last year or two: Many of these companies started to stumble. Facebook's user-base declined for the first time ever, sending their CEO on a Quixotic mission to find "the next big thing". Netflix is finding itself struggling in a rapidly competitive space. And Google continues its mission to eventually convert every service it has into a canceled messaging app.

And then there's Twitter.

Up until this year, Twitter just sort of...existed. It was ubiquitously uninteresting, somehow simultaneously both important and irrelevant. Then Elon Musk took it over and disrupted it in about the worst (or best, depending on your perspective) way possible. Throughout all of these developments, it's felt very hard to see where the trajectory of tech is going. What does the next ten years look like, if all of these infallible institutions are failing?

Right about now, you're probably saying to yourself, "All of this tracks, but what does it have to do with TILvids?" Which is a fair question, and one I've had to ponder myself lately. You see, originally I started TILvids, this PeerTube instance, as a reaction to being disillusioned with YouTube. I had been making content since 2007 for the platform, and while it once seemed so exciting to make niche content that could get tens of thousands of views just because other people cared about it, that feeling had largely disappeared by the time I stopped actively creating for the platform in 2017. I was tired of having to alter my content just to chase a constantly-shifting algorithm in order to get views. I just wanted to make the videos I wanted to make, find the people who used to enjoy that content, and share it with them. It really felt like I lost my friends, and they had been replaced by an uncaring AI that was optimized for something I actively despised.

So I started TILvids, as a way to go in a different direction. I love making and watching edutainment content, and that's why I made that the focus of our instance. But along the way, it's become more than that. I didn't have any notion of decentralization when I started TILvids, I just wanted to build a place that reflected what I loved. But as I've watched what is happening to the tech industry over the last year, it finally feels like I can sense where things are headed.

We're going to make the Internet weird again.

I grew up alongside the rise of the Internet. I remember web rings being the only way to discover content you were interested in. I remember downloading RealPlayer video files from random websites to watch South Park. I remember hopping on various IRC channels to talk to people. I remember the rise of Napster and feeling like "we the people" were collectively building something truly new.

And then everything started to change. Ads became a thing. The "weirdness" of the Internet was sanitized and scrubbed away. Google and Facebook, two scrappy startups, became so big and data-hungry that they knew everything about everyone, billions of us. It feels like it happened overnight, but really it took 15+ years of steady encroachment. And I don't want to completely disregard what they've done, because both companies have innovated, made some good products that people enjoy using, and the centralized nature of the companies certainly made it approachable. But the trade-offs were very large indeed, including all aspects of data privacy and control.

But it feels like the tide is beginning to shift in a new direction. I've felt this before. I remember downloading MP3s and recording them out to a tape-deck so I could play my own mix-tapes in my car in the late-90s. I remember buying a Windows Mobile phone in the early 2000s just so that I could load old SNES ROMs onto it to play games. I remember when I canceled cable in 2007 because I was so certain that the future was streaming videos. All of those times, I could so confidently feel the direction of where technology was going, even when your average person on the street was barely aware of these ideas.

And I feel that now too, with decentralization. All of us, on Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Matrix, and other decentralized services can feel it. And even if the larger world has no idea what we're talking about right now, it doesn't matter, because the we're already on the inevitable path forward. The future of decentralized services is very bright, and I'm honored to be playing a role in pushing it forward. As we head into 2023, this is what I'm going to constantly run on loop in my head.

As for TILvids, my plans for the community remain largely unchanged. The next year will look like:

• Continue trying to recruit content creators to share with the community.
• Work to scale the server(s).
• Try to continue bringing in donations in order to keep finances under control.
• Investigate and set goals for how to eventually transition the site into a community-run organization.

Thank you so much for all of the continued support. I've said before what a lonely experience the first year of running the site was. Every week, more and more people are reaching out, watching videos and leaving comments, and talking with me and providing ideas and feedback via Mastodon. The fact that people care enough to engage means a lot, and as long as that holds true, I'm going to keep pushing forward.

Happy New Year to us all!

cross-posted from: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/1b4cf977-9dd1-4163-b900-888cb62e5839

> Learn how to create a Bitwarden account.

cross-posted from: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/68fe75d8-8526-4200-9cdb-0b098b63251c

> we return to say goodbye to an old friend...