#Open-source Platforms

[mausgames]

I've made a simple and short precision platformer where you have to paint your way back to the top. 🦑🎨

You can play it on itch.io in your browser.

The game was made in a couple of so-called Mi'pu'mi days. At Mi'pu'mi on the first Friday every month we are encouraged to use this day to learn new things on our own, stay up-to-date with latest technology or collaborate with others on our own game ideas. On one of those days I decided to do a little game-jam. 🍓

The theme was randomly sampled from Christiaan Janssen's theme generator and turned out to be "Inferno".

Once again I was inspired by Dante Alighieri's Comedia and thought about being one of those unfortunate souls thrown down into hell, trying to get out of it again. The paint mechanic came from the urge to focus more on aesthetics this time and to highlight the difficult path of the player back to the top. It then evolved into sticky walls, which could easily be arranged and modified into many different twists.

After that I also planned to introduce spikes to avoid and coins to collect. I did not finish the spikes as I did not want to restrict the freedom of the player to move around as they like. When the player touched the spikes, the paint would have worked as a rewind mechanic. This is not in the game anymore, but the paint is still used later as a meaningful gameplay element.

Collectibles would have also made a lot of sense as secondary goal and for some kind of scoring system, but again placing them meaningfully would have introduced recommended paths or possible backtracking and I wanted the player to get to the top as freely as possible.

Originally the player should look like an ink blob, but it felt much easier to control and navigate with a silhouette which (literally) highlights the current direction.

The game was made with a custom open-source game engine and the art-style was a bit inspired by Busted Bayou from Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. 🐵

The music is by Tim Beek and arranged in multiple layers. The farther you go up, the more detailed and intense the music becomes. The sound effects are by Jason Steele and I think they sound like punching or slapping someone with a fish. 🐟

Splat textures are by Kenney and the font is by MJType.

As usual the source code is available on GitHub and GitLab.

Have fun!

[andypiper]

DevRel in the era of "Community Everywhere"

Last week, I had the pleasure of talking to the Dublin #DevRel Meetup, organised by my friends at Voxgig – all about Developer Relations in the era of “Community Everywhere”. I covered a range of the current and emerging social platforms where we can connect with our communities, and later in the session I talked more specifically about what’s new in Mastodon 4.2. What is “Community Everywhere”?…

[meliohy]

I've been thinking. I'm on tumblr way too much and want to make better use of my time but I do want to look at art and fandom stuff and queer discussions and things like that when I have time to kill. And unfortunately I really can't think of a better alternative than tumblr for all that.

I downloaded a rss feed reader but I don't have enough ideas of what to put in there and it feels more like something made to not miss an update or article rather than to have something to look at to kill time. It's technically not a bad thing since the goal is also to look at my phone less, and I could also kill time by reading random Wikipedia articles for exemple. But I think I'd still miss out on fandom. A forum like in the old days could be a good replacement but the downside is that it'd be fandom specific and I switch fandoms often.

Tumblr tagging system and the ability to add on posts with reblogs are just so good for community! I can't think of anything else having something like that.

The thing I'd add would be more customization of the dashboard. I saw some people suggest the creation of tabs with only posts with a specific tag from people I follow.

That'd be perfect for me to focus on what I really want to see and not just scroll for scrolling! Unfortunately that's exactly the kind of thing that social media has no interest in adding since it might go toward less time on the app. Unless they paywall it.

Still, I'd rather find an open source website so that there's no fear of losing it someday because some stockholders finally decided the site loses too much money.

[richardmhicks]

PowerON Platforms are No More

If you’re a follower of this website, you are undoubtedly familiar with PowerON Platforms as I have promoted their products extensively over the years. Dynamic Profile Configurator (DPC) is a clever solution that enables Always On VPN client configuration provisioning and management using Active Directory group policy. They recently introduced a cloud-based centralized reporting solution for…

[bitcoinversus]

Wikipedia's Hypothetical Market Cap Could Reach $100 Billion

In recent discussions surrounding the monetization of online platforms, Wikipedia, one of the most visited websites globally, has emerged as a focal point. Wikipedia attracts an impressive 1.7 billion unique visitors each month, generating roughly 240 billion page views annually. With this level of user engagement, Wikipedia ranks alongside major tech giants in terms of daily web traffic. If…

[pissmoon]

People with most mainstream tastes imaginable should not open their mouth on how anti piracy they are btw. Yea no shit you can depend on legal sources to watch Marvel and listen to tswift and Maroon 5. Thank you so much for signing the petition to close that platform that was the only one i could download this 2008 romanian dungeon synth ep from

[filehulk]

Cryptomator

Cryptomator is a free, open-source tool providing multi-platform, transparent client-side encryption for your cloud files. Compatible with nearly any cloud storage service, it integrates seamlessly into your workflow, allowing you to work with files as usual. It uses robust 256-bit AES encryption for security. Additionally, it is user-friendly and requires no separate accounts, key management,…

[crypto195]

DeSo Crypto Revolutionize Social Media with Blockchain Power

DeSo Crypto Challenges Centralized Social Media Giants In today's world, social media is dominated by a few powerful corporations that control what we see, how we interact, and even how creators earn. Enter DeSo (short for Decentralized Social), a groundbreaking blockchain built specifically to change this landscape by empowering users and creators through decentralization. Unlike traditional social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok, which are owned by private companies, DeSo offers a new way of managing social networks, putting creators and users in control of their data, content, and earnings. This shift from centralization to decentralization holds the potential to transform the way we interact online, opening the doors for developers, creators, and users to collaborate freely, without restrictions from big tech companies.

To Know More- Read the latest Blogs on Cryptocurrencies

[ent-is-indecisive]

Sometimes i look up a thing my boss wants to introduce and im like . Sniff sniff smells like a scam

[jonahyawi]

How to Get the Most Out of the Free WordPress App on the App Store

Want to know the coolest reasons why you might want to download WordPress App and why it is the best choice? Well, WordPress is a free and open source platform where you hear business folks flooding in nowadays to build their websites. Right? For the record WordPress Dominates the entire Website Building Industry and as of January 2023 it is led by far waiving 43% leaving the rest behind (below…

[techdirectarchive]

Install Proxmox VE on a Bare-metal [Beelink EQ12]

[aneddoticamagazinestuff]

NECUNO MOBILE: Now privacy is yours

New Post has been published on https://www.aneddoticamagazine.com/necuno-mobile-now-privacy-is-yours/

NECUNO MOBILE: Now privacy is yours

Necuno Solutions and KDE announce a community collaboration to offer Plasma Mobile on the Necuno Mobile, the truly open source hardware platform.

Plasma is a Free and open source graphical user interface developed by KDE. Their Plasma Mobile platform is an effort to bring the Plasma graphical user interface to mobile devices. Plasma Mobile is a promising, true open source alternative to the walled garden duopoly.

https://necunos.com

[getvalentined]

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed*. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

Response to the Update

Under the cut for readability, because everything said above still applies.

I already said this in a reblog on the post itself, but I'm adding it to this one for easy access: people read it that way because that's what you said.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.

People read it that way because that is what you said.

*The final results of the poll, after 24 hours:

136,635 votes breaks down thusly:

An algorithm based feed where I get "the best of tumblr." @ 1.3% (roughly 1,776 votes)

Chronological feed that only features blogs I follow. @ 95.2% (roughly 130,077 votes)

This doesn't affect me personally. @ 3.5% (roughly 4,782 votes)