pmk

I'm trying to understand the way Mastodon works. Back in the day I started with IRC and then the many php-based forums and then reddit which led to lemmy. I never used twitter or similar platforms.
My understanding (and this is where I need help) is that all of the above are topic-based, whereas Mastodon is person-based? What I mean is that on lemmy I subscribe to things based on topic and I don't really care about usernames or user profiles, I only care about discussing a topic. It seems to me like Mastodon is the opposite? You follow persons and what they might say about any topic?
Is there something I'm missing here? Are hashtags close enough to sorting it by topic that it works just like a topic based platform? Is this difference inherent or just in my head because I don't understand Mastodon?

... what should we do?
I guess it all depends on how it would be implemented, which is something I have a hard time imagining at this moment. How do you imagine day to day online life in a post-Chat Control EU world? Which ways of communicating would still be private? Is there anything we can do at this point to prepare for the worst outcome?

A video from openSUSE Conference 2024 about using distrobox on openSUSE Aeon.

I've been trying to navigate the differences and limitations in practice between the Arduino Nano ESP32 and Raspberry Pi Pico, and I'm at a point where I just want to get one of them and start experimenting. Possibly some other brand ESP32. My goal is to learn micropython and hopefully make some simple projects. My question is: is there a big difference for a beginner which I get in terms of online resources and ease of use, any pitfalls to be aware of or useful tips?

Turns out a misaligned mirror made the laser hit the lens in a weird way, and then bouncing off something on the way out to produce this double line. Probably. What kind of strange troubleshooting have you done and what was the reason/fix?

So, I'm just assuming we've all seen the discussions about the bear.
Personally I feel that this is an opportunity for everyone to stop and think a little about it. The knee-jerk reaction from many men seems to be something along the lines of "You would choose a dangerous animal over me? That makes me feel bad about myself." which results in endless comments of the "Akchully... according to Bayes theorem you are much more likely to..." kind.
It should be clear by now that it doesn't lead to good places.
Maybe, and I'm open to being wrong, but maybe the real message is women saying: "We are scared of unknown men."
Then, if that is the message intended, what do we do next? Maybe the best thing is just to listen. To ask questions. What have you experienced to make you feel that way?
I firmly believe that the empathy we give lays a foundation for other people being willing to have empathy for the things we try to communicate.
It doesn't mean we should feel bad about ourselves, but just to recognize that someone is trying to say something, and it's not a technical discussion about bears.
What do you think?

Congratulations to Andreas!
It seems like he has lots of ideas for how to improve things in packaging, and for communicating with other distros. Debian is a big ship to steer, and I personally hope the leader can facilitate people working together to reach our goals.

For example, I'm using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it "friendlier" for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be "the universal operating system".
I also think we could learn website design from.. looks at notes ..everyone else.

What do you think of the platforms?

https://www.debian.org/vote/2024/platforms/tille

https://www.debian.org/vote/2024/platforms/srud

The download page leads to install75.img, but the front page still says 7.4.