ajsadauskas
@sabreW4K3 Plume doesn't appear to be active, unfortunately 🥺
There's a notice on the official Join Plume website saying the former developers don't have the time to maintain it anymore. Most of the former public instances now throw up errors of various kinds.
WriteFreely ( @writefreely ) is alive and well. I was seriously toying with the idea of setting up a blog through its main instance, which is called Write.as Professional. The sticking point for me was that the official on-platform monetisation tool (Coil) appears to be dead, and doesn't support members-only posts (like Ghost).
Ghost, when federation goes live, looks like it will be the best option for my blog.
WordPress plus @pfefferle 's plugins is another great option, depending on what you want to use it for. (There's no shortage of WP plugins!)
As for Lemmy, I could see a blogging-focussed front end being created for it, in the same way FediBB put a traditional message board front end on it, but one doesn't appear to exist at present.
@trk @TassieTosser Knox City Council in outer-eastern Melbourne did exactly this: https://www.knox.vic.gov.au/whats-happening/news/keeping-your-cats-safe-and-secured .
The council did it because some of its suburbs (The Basin, Ferntree Gully, Upper Ferntree Gully, parts of Boronia, Lysterfield) border national parks and the Dandenong Ranges.
Younger cats can adapt to living indoors.
But the challenge was with older cats, who are used to roaming around.
The happy medium would be to phase it in over five to 10 years, where any new cats registered or adopted after a particular date have to stay indoors, but older cats can continue to roam.
@Dangdoggo @Rentlar Or allow it to be downloaded in a DRM-free file format that can be used with other apps, platforms, or services...
Also , if connecting a server is an absolute necessity and you are not longer going to maintain it, release the server source code as open source.
@Ilandar Most major platforms are based in the US.
A DMCA request basically means the flagged content is taken down globally, not just for the US.
If the person who uploaded that content is not a US citizen, it still gets pulled.
@shirro @MHLoppy @australia The irony here is that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a piece of US legislation that is regularly used to take down content globally. Even when it's posted by people who aren't Americans.
@shirro @tardigrada
Not just *would*, but *has*.
Here's the "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, in his own words, in 2023:
"The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country … If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws."
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/29/tech/elon-musk-twitter-government-takedown/index.html
@skribe @danbeeston @Salvo The other option would be to set up an official gov.au Mastodon instance, and give each government department, agency, and Parliamentarian an official account.
People can then have their choice of instance, whether that's community run or private (e.g. Threads).
In the longer term, there might be scope for some other government institutions — particularly universities — to set up their own instances as well.
@Ilandar @quoll You mean like the US government's Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
@DavidDoesLemmy @Zagorath Here's an article about a company named RedFlow, that has sold its fourth grid-scale long-duration zinc bromine flow battery to California:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/redflow-tapped-as-preferred-battery-provider-for-a-fourth-major-california-project/
Where's RedFlow based? Brisbane.
An alternative to bromine flow batteries is grid-scale lithium.
And where is one of the world's largest lithium minjng regions? Western Australia.
The Coalition's policy is to ban any further investment in grid-scale batteries from RedFlow or with WA lithium, along with banning further investments in wind and solar.
Instead, it wants to hand roughly half a trillion dollars to largely foreign-owned multinationals to build nuclear power plants in Australia.
Assuming the Coalition can deliver 7 large-scale first-of-its-kind infrastructure projects on time and on budget in Australia, it will take 10 to 15 years to build them. In the meantime, Australia will continue burning coal and natural gas.
And all this for an energy source that costs substantially more per megawatt hour than renewables, coal, or gas.