sadteaparty

probably still getting by.

i hope you're well.



Cohost's impact on my life has been somewhat indirect, but positive. It did a great deal to encourage me to reach out to people who are gracious with their thoughts and knowledge and just say thanks, which doing on other networks always felt more daunting.
I've learned the numbers really, really do suck, and I don't want anything to do with them as much as I can help it.
Mostly I've just learned to broaden my exposure to more cool stuff. And I hope the diaspora carries its energy into the RSS zone.
It did get me to write again, and although I did never become a Poster, the act itself has been cathartic and good for me. That's easy to keep up, since nobody was seeing it anyway.
It did not make me a Poster; I'm still a bit of a social network recluse. Whether or not I do end up making a spot to actually Post is an open question, but wherever it happens, there won't be numbers if I can help it.

it really was like a website in here.

thanks.



staff
@staff

also the August 2024 financial update, but I’m trying not to bury the lede.

Hi everyone,

We have come to the decision to cease operations of cohost and anti software software club due to lack of funding and burnout. As of today, none of us are being paid for our labor1; all of our money in the bank, and any money coming in from people who buy our merch or don’t cancel cohost plus, is going towards servers and operations — paying the bills so we can turn the lights off with as little disruption as possible.

cohost will become read-only on Tuesday, October 1st. At this time, we will make best-effort attempts to keep the servers online through the end of 2024.

Development focus has immediately shifted to data export. We have offered minimal data export for GDPR compliance for a while now, but this is a barebones system that doesn’t meet our quality standards. We will be improving this system over the next few weeks and will issue full data exports for all users when the site goes read-only. We will continue to offer downloads of your data export through the end of the read-only period.

When the read-only period concludes, we will delete all of your data from our servers without a backup. Even now we want to reiterate that we think “data brokerage” and other common practices of the software industry are inimical to who we are as people, and we would never consider selling your data to others or asserting any rights to stuff you posted under any circumstance.

Majority control of the cohost source code will be transferred to the person who funded the majority of our operations, as per the terms of the funding documents we signed with them; Colin and I will retain small stakes so we have some input on what happens to it, at their request.


  1. on that note, we’re looking for new jobs. we’ll each be posting about that bit individually.


sadteaparty
@sadteaparty

as someone who never had much cause to post, and probably too much anxiety, cohost was also the first place i really felt comfortable commenting, even small things. learned so much here, from so many folks i'd have never been able to encounter otherwise. my only attempt at a real post being about a dying mobage feels weirdly appropriate i guess, getting a rerun of that energy now.



is a pain in the ass, if you live in America. It doesn't seem to be sold by the publisher here for some reason.

As lovely as the physical version looks to be, I just can't do long reading comfortably with them any more. Also, this version is complete-complete in a way that you cannot duplicate with singleton purchases, thanks to all the extras.

So here's the hoops I went through to buy the ebook. If you're not already doing DeDRM stuff for other purposes this may just not be worth the effort. It's honestly an annoying amount of work to Do The Right Thing.1

  • Managed to dig up the link, used this one: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/the-books-of-earthsea-the-complete-illustrated-edition
  • Used my normal Kobo account, but changed my Billing Address to London, didn't even require a post code
  • Added to cart, went to purchase, but did have to basically re-pick paypal as my option of choice; for some reason the cached info was failing out on the quick buy, but I just re-selected paypal and it did the link-up again and then everything worked fine
  • Opened Desktop kobo app, which, handily, grabs purchases made from other stores without issues
  • Used Calibre and Obok to accomplish the DeDRM and import, and then side load onto the ereader

In retrospect it'd have probably been equally ethical to just buy the physical version and acquire the digital one, also likely dramatically easier 🙃 but also wasteful, so, who's to say.


  1. Shout-outs to this four-year-old reddit post and its subsequent comments to point me in the right direction and simplify things. Might end up being useful trivia for grabbing other stuff now that I know the process. Sure wish I didn't have to do the process. E-ink ebook readers are probably my favorite piece of technology, they're absolutely wonderful, and everything about ebook purchasing is some of the worst.



erica
@erica

god going from multiple feeds that have like 8-10 posts each that are separated by accounts /interests/purposes to just one feed that fits like sorta 3 posts-ish at once because i used an extension to make everything as small as possible on my 1440p screen fucking sucks so fucking much

i said it in reply to a friend yesterday but this truly feels like the worst breakup i've ever been through. it's so hard to let go. i spent like 14 years of my life there, man ! it feels like i'm packing my shit but doing it one box every day because it's so grueling to think about leaving in the first place.

i want to be upset at people going to places like Bluesky or whatever but i can't. i get it. if they can manage it, that's fine. if they think that place is better than that's on them to deal with the eventual blowback. i'm just sad that like, the way i took in the world for a third of my life is essentially over because now it's broken apart across multiple websites in a way that isn't good and extremely inconvenient.


sadteaparty
@sadteaparty

This post hit me and got me to think about how twitter actually fit into my life, and for some reason compelled to post, if just to exorcise a thought. I'm not a Poster, or a social media user much in general, I've been carrying around the same online friend groups for decades and my social media use has been almost entirely passive. In spite of being extremely online I'm mostly a digital hermit. Not going to make any excuses for twitter or the damages it has caused, and the damage of The Algorithm and social media behavior in general, but it did one really specific thing that did a lot for me for a lot of years.