Lachlan, creator of lemmyunchained.net

  • 7 Posts
  • 150 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • A few years back, I moved into an old farmhouse in the countryside. It was peaceful, except for the noises that would come from the attic every night, a soft thumping like someone walking around. After a couple of sleepless nights, I finally mustered the courage to check it out.

    I climbed up to the attic with a flashlight. It was full of dusty old furniture and trinkets, probably from previous tenants. As I was examining a pile of old newspapers, my flashlight caught something - a pair of eyes glowing in the dark, staring right back at me. I nearly dropped the flashlight in shock. As I shone the light in the direction, I found an old portrait of a woman. The eyes were eerily lifelike. I convinced myself it was just the way the light was hitting it.

    The noises didn’t stop, but I learned to live with them. But the weirdest part was when I left the house a 6 months later. The movers came to get my stuff, and I told them to leave everything in the attic, I’d Grabe those items myself. I mainly needed movers for the big heavy stuff. Later, when I returned to pick up some remaining items, the portrait was gone.

    To this day, I still can’t figure out where it could have gone, why just that. Probably some completely logical explanation, but it still gives me chills when I think about it.






  • Lemmy is a federated social network, similar to Mastodon, where anyone can create and run their own instance. This means it’s not centrally controlled by one entity. The reasons for having many instances include:

    1. Decentralization: This reduces the power of any single entity over the entire network and prevents any central point of failure. If one instance goes down, others are unaffected. This design also helps resist censorship because content moderation is handled individually by each instance.

    2. Community autonomy: Each instance can form its own unique community with its own rules and norms. This can promote diversity of thought and freedom of expression, as different communities can have different standards and policies.

    3. Privacy and security: Having separate instances can provide a higher degree of privacy and security. The admin of an instance only has access to data from their instance, not the entire network.

    Regarding the concern of popular instances becoming like Reddit, it’s worth noting that decentralization inherently provides a counterbalance. If an instance becomes too dominant or its policies become unpopular, users can migrate to or create a new instance. In the end, the federated nature of Lemmy allows for a much more democratic and user-driven online community.






  • Sometimes, it’s surprising how life unfolds. I remember back in my second year at boarding school, we were all set to return for another term, standing on the train station platform. Fooling around, we missed the train.

    With no other options and perhaps a bit of youthful audacity, we took dads old ford and we ended up driving it all the way to school.

    The car broke down, we almost got caught. Then crazily, we crashed into a famous tree on campus.

    However, as wild as that was, missing that train might just have saved us.

    We later found out that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened around the time we were meant to be on that train. A deadly monster, a Basilisk, was slithering around the castle, able to kill just by meeting your gaze.

    Who’s to say we wouldn’t have bumped into it, had we made that train? With our track record of stumbling into trouble, it seems more than likely. It’s a chilling thought.

    Xoxo Ron