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

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.

Hey, folks! I’m yet another Reddit leaver looking for a new home on the Internet. I initially wasn’t aware of SDF until I was browsing possible Lemmy instances to join and saw that this one had lots of tech-related communities. I thought it was a good vibe since that’s what I’m interested in as a photographer and gamer, but I had to know what SDF was, so down the rabbit hole I went.

I’m not a programmer or coder and don’t think I could have the patience for it, but this whole thing is fascinating and makes me want to SSH in to SDF! I’ve already ditched Windows for Linux on my home machine, so luckily I won’t be starting from scratch with a terminal. If anyone wants to provide tips or a resource, I’m all ears.

Three cheers for the fediverse!

It’s been a long time since I was on anything SDF; I remember it but that’s about it. I’m glad you’re here though doing this Lemmy thing.

I’m a 15-year Redditor looking for the next thing to USEFULLY sap my attention and my time! :-)

Hello everyone!

Hey, everyone! I’m Doug Anger / daanger. I’ve been on SDF for awhile. I’ll likely be a bit quiet here for awhile as I’m working on a master’s thesis, but I’m excited to get better acquainted with more of the community.

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.)

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 and thanks for hosting Lemmy and Mastodon instances👍

Another Reddit leaver here. I figured I’d go back after the original two-day blackout, but I’ve pretty much abandoned it; I haven’t seen that many tone-deaf responses in a row since I tried out for “Name That Tune”.

I had been vaguely aware of the SDF project before this, so I figured “okay, this is an instance that’s probably likely to survive, and perhaps a little less politically loaded than some other choices.”

My first Unix-flavoured setup was throwing Minix 2.0 on a 16MHz 286 clone in like 1998. Still have a bit of affinity for the vintage kit, but I traded away too many of the interesting Unix boxes I had back in the days when the local university would sell them as scrap for pennies, (HP 712/60, Sun Ultra 10), so now I have to just run FVWM with too many CDE-inspired visual features for the same effect.

I tend to find the Fediverse concept interesting because it decouples presentation from content. Right now, we’re obviously still very much following the prototype Digg and Reddit gave us, but maybe there’s an entirely new universe of ways to consume cat pictures we’re on the cusp of discovering.

Hello from my corner of the universe!

A fish wearing a bow tie is sofishticated. 😏

Hi, I’m Nisaea, and I’m here because this is really cool! Just joined and definitely want to support the coolness! (and maybe play Zork)

Hello SDF thank you being a good home for tech nerds like me!

Hi all! Just another ex-Redditor hoping to overcome my lurker inclinations and find some interesting new communities to join