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.)

deleted by creator

Hello from my corner of the universe!

A fish wearing a bow tie is sofishticated. 😏

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.

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!

A post reddit signup. Just a casual weekend sort of nerd. Not an engineer, developer, sysadmin, sysop or anything of the sort. But I do appreciate yousall.

I am sad about reddit.

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:

Hi everyone. I’m just a very new member in the SDF family. Very new to the Fediverse too. Peace, Love, and Unix to everyone.

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. 🤣

Hello, I’m dctrud (over at lemmy.sdfeu.org). I’ve been around SDF a bit since 2019… 15+ years after I initially joined (with a long forgotten login) at university. Software Engineer by day. I enjoy messing around with dance music on vinyl, walking, and sometimes cycling for fun.

Since we moved back to Cornwall in the UK, after 11 years in Texas, it makes sense for me to be on SDFeu stuff, but will definitely see what’s up over here. Cheers!

Hi @SDF, I’m peron, a SDF user from #Argentina.

I’m an individual interested in historical operating systems, synthesizers, anonymity-respecting communities and cooperative electronic communication environments.

I certainly enjoy login into public machines, and meeting new friendly people. SDF provides a nice suite of free-access federated services, including its Mastodon instances, PixelFed and now Lemmy. Greetings to all my friends and kind people on the Telematic Fortress.

If anyone is interested in knowing a bit more about me, you can check this pseudoanonymous bio webpage. http://peron.sdf.org/whoami/

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     ConducTor / IndoctrinaTor / Ubuntu Peronista EdiTor / Hacker

Trigger Warnings: depression, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts

Reader discretion is advised.

Hi! I’m Marvin (well here I am Marvin, most people know me under different names), named after a depressed Robot with an immense intellect. I didn’t choose the name because of my intellect…

I’m getting paid pretty badly for being a sysadmin (but I don’t deal with glasspanes or fruits. Only penguins).

In my free time I sometimes code (mostly python, some webdev stuff, sometimes a little bit Rust), once in a blue moon strum some things on my guitar,go climbing, do some shitty woodworking and loads of other stuff. I think I might have ADHD because it’s hard for me to focus on most things and my interest in stuff quickly dwindles. That’s why I have loads of unfinished projects or ideas lying around.

I love metal music.

I’m pretty shy and suffer from social anxiety. I’ve been single most of my life and am kind of a loner.

The two times I’ve been in relationships were pretty abusive and left me yearning for death, a feeling I had throughout most of my childhood. I think talking to people I find attractive was hard before all that but it feels like nowadays it’s impossible. Also I have no clue how to tell if someone is interested in me. I never was. Only in hindsight.

I’m pretty lonely but too scared to do anything about it.

I’ve been clean and sober for almost 6 years now. Which doesn’t help in getting to know people. I know was way more talkative and outgoing when I drank. But I could never stop when I started.

Im in my midthirties and to be honest I still feel like the last years of school were the best time of my life.

I’ve been through a lot of therapy, which helped me a lot with my confidence and to deal with my thoughts and feelings. I’m a lot better than I’ve.been most of my life but life still sucks most of the time.

Here is something I could never tell anybody IRL: even though my life is pretty good right now and I have not had any suicidal thoughts in a long time I am pretty sure that I will be the one to end my life. It won’t be in the forseeable future but I can’t see myself getting old on this rotten planet with so many rotten peaople.

Sorry to be such a downer but it feels great to be honest. And that’s something that is really hard for me. Especially to people I care about and that includes myself :)

Hope you all are living your best life out there!

And as some pretty awesome musicians said: Rock on! And be excellent to each other!

Hello! The first computer I ever had was an Atari 400 with 16 KB memory and a 6502 CPU which I programmed in BASIC and later in Machine Code. Yep, I didn’t have an Assembler back then. And now you all know how old I am … oops!

I have to admit that I didn’t know sdf.org before I started looking for a nice lemmy instance, but when I found you, I just had to join. What a cool project!

Also, I am pleasantly surprised that lemmy.sdf.org appears to have an empty block list. 🎵 We ain’t afraid of no ghost, right?