Hello, everyone!

I am a software engineer and consultant. I started out working in Assembly and Fortran, which will give you some idea of how long I’ve been around… These days I work for a company that provides internet solutions to non-profits. I love working with people who are trying to make the world a better place.

I have always been a gadget geek and have unreasonably large collections of multitools, knives, flashlights, pens, and similar things. I also know more about things like metallurgy, LED technologies, and ink chemistry than I have any need for, but it all keeps me entertained.

Ultimately, I like people. I’m something of an introvert, which makes it harder for me to make contacts, but I really enjoy talking with people. The extreme polarization of views we have at the moment is deeply disturbing to me, but I am trying hard not to hate the extremists as people, even while working to repair all the damage they are doing. I still believe that we have more in common than we do differences.

reddit was my primary online community for well over a decade. Now that I no longer want to be there I’m grateful that SDF is helping to provide a better venue. And I appreciate the rest of you for providing a friendly community.

SDF in 2004

Hello. I’m someone who’s previously/currently had accounts with 2 other nonprofit Unix shell account providers similar to SDF since approximately 1996/1997, and first found out about SDF maybe 10 years later while looking for other email-account-provider options. Then, last year, I saw SDF’s Mastodon instance listed on joinmastodon.org, and decided to sign up for an account there… which eventually (thanks to the email announcement that was sent to users registered there) led me to this Lemmy instance.

I suppose the main reason why I decided to sign up here is out of hope that ActivityPub/Fediverse will become similar to, but better than, the various types of discussion forum systems (Usenet/NNTP, mailing lists, mailing list archivers like Pipermail & MHonArc, phpBB/vBulletin-style web forums) that were popular in the '90s and '00s. Personal blogging/microblogging systems (Mastodon, etc.) aren’t an adequate replacement for newsgroups/forums, as far as I’m concerned; to paraphrase something I read elsewhere, too much of so-called social media is mostly about “look at me”, as opposed to “look at this” (i.e. organized by topic).

(By the way: Lemmy currently seems to have some sort of incompatibility problem with QtWebEngine and/or the Falkon web browser. I initially tried to post this from Falkon, but the “Preview” and “Post” buttons were disabled even after typing some text, so I ended up posting this from Firefox instead.)

We just made it past 1000 signups this morning. Nearly everyone joining had very thoughtful and meaningful explanations of why they want to try using this instance. It is an amazing time for the internet and we truly appreciate SDF being a part of this.

Hi SDF! I write programming books, teach programming, and have fun hacking on stuff.

Hello all! I became an SDF member a couple of years ago, at the time I believe I was disillusioned with social media, probably was also in a paranoid pandemic mindset. I am very excited about Lemmy and the traction it is getting, it’s a fun platform so far. I had tried Mastadon back when, but it just didn’t have any hooks for me, I was never a Twitter person anyways.

I had only heard about SDF from reading comments in Hacker News. But it’s really right up my alley. My first experiences on the internet was interacting through a local freenet dialup shell in the early 90’s and spending way too much time on MUDs, and downloading porn on usenet for view on my fancy VGA monitor.

Back in my day you had to work for your porn and imagine your video game graphics, and that’s the way it should be. :old man finger waggle:

Hello SDF,

Name’s Rosco. I’m new to Lemmy - and the whole Fediverse ecosystem as a whole. I’ve been interested for a while but hadn’t really done anything to discover it. I figured the Reddit debacle was a good opportunity to take the plunge: I recently nuked my old Reddit account, then created another one, then realized I was beating a dead horse.

I’m new to SDF too. I didn’t know it before searching for a nice Lemmy server I’d feel at home on. As an old Unix hack, SDF is right up my alley.

So here I am. Thank you for having me! I hope to contribute something of value on here.

Hello from my corner of the universe!

A fish wearing a bow tie is sofishticated. 😏

Hello! I’ve joined here to help you grow in userbase, share my love to technology and stuff with others. Something about me - I work for 3+ years in automotive space as system test engineer, writing tests in python, analyzing requirements and so on. Currently dabbling with DevOps related work and learning Nim and Ada in my private time, alongside sharpening my python skills. I hope that I will stay with you guys, just like with your Mastodon instance :)

Hi! I just joined up. I have an sdf.org account from forever ago, and when I saw that sdf had a Lemmy instance I knew that was the one to join.

Reddit is too stressful right now. I don’t know if my favorite client will remain functioning or if my subreddits will exist next week. Too much change and I don’t understand the point of it.

Hello SDF Lemmy! This is peron!

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Not much to introduce, I’m new, Hi.

I just wanted to say, you folks are all lovely. The sense of community you get in the posts and comments, the genuine care and respect for other people in the conversation.

I’m happy to be here, hopefully the vibe weathers the user storm.

Hi I’m Willard. I’ve been on sdf a long time, been on mastodon.sdf…org since Before Covid.

No clue what reddit was about, this is strange and different.

trying the “connect” app as the JavaScript client seems a bit heavy for my 2017 era tablet, so now I’m doubly confused. 🤣

Hi, all! I wish I had kept the snippet I included in my application to join this instance, but from what I remember, I expressed hope and trepidation about the future of the Fediverse.

My dream outcome would be for apps like Lemmy and Mastadon to create a norm where user content is stored in a client- and organization-agnostic manner, much like today’s websites tend to be accessible via whichever browser software you choose to use. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the human effort, knowledge and experience that is stored in replies and discussions on various websites were available to other websites and entities, rather than being under the control and whims of individual website owners?

My fear is that—as of today—the Fediverse remains fairly challenging for the average user to grok, join and participate in. I’m trying to think of ways to reduce the barrier to entry, but I don’t know how much I can really contribute other than my opinion. There are some who say that a high barrier to entry is a good thing, but I disagree. I don’t think we can use someone’s ability to navigate to (and within) the Fediverse as a proxy for the worth of their contributions to discussions,or their life experience they can bring to the table. But that’s just me…

One thing I know for sure: I found out about Lemmy during the Reddit Crisis of 2023, and in researching Lemmy I discovered SDF. I love this organization, I’m glad I found it, and I am really happy to be here. Thank you guys for hosting this instance!