The new Social Media (or.. it should be)

I feel like there are some misunderstandings flying around. I wanted to write something to help. Part opinion and part technical. This post is meant to spread the word and maybe dispel some doubts around federated social media, commonly referred to as “The Fediverse

Ok, stop, a fedi-what?

Fediverse. Check the link above. It’s a word used to describe the whole of a new-ish movement for decentralized social networks. What’s that you might ask? Well, it’s what it sounds like. A social network that doesn’t depend on one dude and his intentions to operate, because nodes or instances within that network are not managed by one central entity. Those nodes talk to each other, or federate. This creates a FEDerated unIVERSE of systems all sharing these social interactions. Mostly over a protocol called Activitypub.

Wait, activitypub?

Activitypub is a standard by which instances in the fediverse (or most of them anyway) communicate, or federate. It’s the language any federated instance needs to understand in order to participate. These instances will track users activity on other instances, and pass those notifications off to their own users who they follow. The awesome thing about a protocol like Activitypub is, as longas all of the instances are using the same protocol, they can talk to each other. There are implementations of activitypub instances that mimmick many different commercial social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitt.. er… _X_, Youtube, even Twitch. So, if the platform you prefer is instagram-like because you’re into photography, or cat pictures, or sharing pictures of your butt, and someone you’d like to follow (or someone who wants to follow pictures of your butt) are on a different format platform… They can!

And on top of that, so far these implementations are all self-hostable and open-source. So, if you want to keep those pictures of your butt on your own server so you have a choice when you’d no longer like those pictures shared across the internet, you can!

So why does all of this matter?

I could go into all of the privacy and data rights rabbit holes that you probably expect me to right now. But I don’t think that’s what people really care about. I mean sure. Some of you probably care that you get control of your data, how open it is, and where you’d like it to live. But the average Facetwitgram user just doesn’t. If they did they wouldn’t be on those sites in the first place.

What does, or should, matter to those folks is the freedom to choose. Freedom to not be at the whim of a corporation. Let’s take _X_ as an example. For a very long time, privacy-minded folks, seemed to flock to Twitter. It was viewed as a safer and maybe cleaner place where you had a little more control over your identity and maybe even a little anonymity. Personally I was there for the massive Information Security community that existed there. Then they started with ads, and promoted tweets, and then they started mucking about with the chronological timeline, and inserting filler posts from folks you didn’t follow because they thought you’d (or they’d) benefit from you seeing them… It was on, in my opinion, a decline.. then E-Day happened. That is when Elon Musk was essentially forced to buy Twitter or spend time in an orange jumpsuit. He started making sweeping changes that seemed to make no sense at all, firing or laying off a huge portion of the staff, ending things like content moderation programs, and turning accounts back on for some of the worst and most offensive people that plagued the platform. The last straw for me was his insane re-brand from the Twitter brand that’s so ubiquitous that its become a verb, to _X_.

The point there is, that folks had come to rely on twitter. It was part of their life, they had made friends, met soul mates, exchanged ideas, built careers, around this platform. And now they had absolutely no say in its crumble into a platform that it is now. Many people had enough, and fled to Mastodon. Mastodon is an activitypub twitter clone.

The future of social networks

It is my hope, that the federated model is the future of social media. Meta, who owns Instagram and Facebook, has recently stood up an instagram-related service called Threads. I assume they wanted to cash in on the demise of twitter, because threads is basically a twitter clone that uses your Instagram login. But it’s run by Meta, so you can bet it’s having a field day with your data. Personally, I think Threads has a lot of similarities with Mastodon, except that you cant host it yourself, and it’s closed source. Oh, and its run by a corporation who’s sole purpose is to collect information about you and sell it. But it also federates…. Or, at least they say it will.

Let that sink in. One of the big problems with the fediverse isn’t the people who are there, it’s the people who aren’t. Early adopters of mastodon found the place quite empty. They couldn’t find anyone to actually interact with, and as a result went back to the closed gardens that they were used to. But… Imagine if you could follow your facebook friends from Friendica (a facebook clone in the fediverse), or youtube channels you love from your peertube instance. Well, if threads works out, maybe it’ll set the stage for other big social platforms to start talking activitypub. And if they do, you’ll be able to happily check out your nieces and nephew’s childhood pics on Instagram, or follow nazi’s on _X_, or chat with aunt Marge on Facebook from the confines of your chosen open platform.

The issue here is, that these large companies shouldn’t have any real motivation to federate. What do they get out of it? Sure their users get more reach, but they don’t care about their users. They care about their user’s data. So is this al a plot to help them siphon up information from us freedom loving fediverse users? I guess only time will tell.

So, for me…

Personally, I don’t see a reason to support any social network that won’t federate. We need to choose for ourselves what the future holds. If you’re on a federated platform, follow me @gangrif, and follow this blog @nate@www.ironsysadmin.com

A new world, I am the Iron Sysadmin.

Hi Folks! It’s me, Nate.

It’s been several months since we put the show in moth-balls. I’ve since started a new off-road related podcast, and I’m having a ball! But it’s left me wondering what to do with The Iron Sysadmin brand.

See, I still very much enjoy creating content for you all. It’s why I do what I do for a living, and why I also do it in the off-road space. I love sharing information, trying to make a dent in the industry, and doing it on my terms. The problem with the Iron Sysadmin podcast was, that it was a bit too tight of a box for the sort of content that I want to create now. Talking about being a sysadmin is hard to do when you’re not living the sysadmin life. At least for me it is.

That being said though, sys-adminning is very much a hobby of mine, and staying relevant in that space is very important to my day job, where I try to show the value of RHEL to an audience of admins and the folks above them who write those purchase orders. To me, it’s really important that the messages I send as a technical marketing manager for a product like RHEL are also genuine. I am a Sysadmin at heart, I’ve done it since my early days when we were called SySops, running BBS’s in my parent’s basement, and in learning BIND and apache so I could stand up the early days of The Underground. After leaving the daily sysadmin grind, i started bringing a number of the services I’d moved off-prem to various services back to my home lab. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, is that system administration is in my blood. I may not be doing it professionally, at least not officially, but my technical tool-belt needs to remain well oiled and operational.

So, what does that mean for The Iron Sysadmin? Well, it means we’re not dead. The Iron Sysadmin Podcast may be, but I am really starting to think about the future of The Iron Sysadmin as a whole.

I am the Iron Sysadmin, and there’s no reason the content has to stop. Early on I made the mistake of keeping my personal tech content and the Iron Sysadmin tech content separate. I don’t know why I did that, but you can see on The Undrblog that all through the life of the podcast, I’ve been creating blog content there around technology over there. I think that stops now, and that sort of content is now going to show up here! And I think video content will as well. I do blog and demo content all day long for the day job, and some things I’d like to show don’t really fit that venue, but no one says I cant share it myself, and really. Isn’t that WHY I’ve got sysadminning in my blood? Yes, yes it is, that desire to do it myself without limits and boundaries is exactly why I run sites like this.

So, Welcome back folks. I wouldn’t expect much of a schedule to all of this, but expect to see some familiar faces with their hands on keyboards producing wicked technical content.

So long, and thanks for all the Podcasts

Folks! Listeners! Bad rendition of disney tune lovers! We have some news we need to share.

Over the years The Iron Sysadmin podcast has evolved. On Episode 1 Jason and I were both working in IT ops in one aspect or another, and we started this show because we thought there was a gap in the current (or, at the time anyway) podcast landscape for content BY sysadmins, FOR sysadmins. We wanted to make a show that addressed some of the challenges in a Sysadmin’s life. Not just their day job, but topic slike work/life balance, staying healthy, and working with others.

We had 0 audio editing skills, and 0 budget. We started as cheap as possible, and grew over the years. I’ve done all of the editing myself, and coming in which absolutely no audio editing or engineering skills, it was tough. I did my best. Luckily we built a decent backing on patreon which allowed the show to expand the technology stack. Adobe audition, decent mics, the Rodecaster Pro mixer, Libsyn podcast hosting, Streamlabs for streaming, and Riverside for recording. Patreon covered all (or.. most) of that.

We’ve had some great times over the years. We’ve always tried to make this show entertaining, instead of just informative. And we’ve had a great time doing it! We’ve had hosts come and go over the years, a big thanks to Dustin, and Charles who both gave us their time, and then finally the addition of Unclemarc who’s been a staple on the show since.

So, why am I taking you on this trip down memory lane? Well, its because things have changed over the years. My role has moved further and further from daily ops, all of the active hosts have progressed their careers in fact. Marc is in management now, and Nate’s still technical but from a marketing perspective instead of an admin. And while we’ve all got a ton of industry experience, that unfortunately does not replace daily hands-on-keyboard relevance that the show really needs in order to be what we intend it to be. And that doesn’t even account for the amount of time it takes to organize a show. Figuring out topics to cover, researching them, finding news to talk about, arranging guests. It takes more time than you might think, and many times in the past 2 years or so that work was getting done hours before we went live, because we were having trouble coming up with good content. I’m sure in some shows that came through, but generally we’d call the show off if we didn’t feel like we had a valuable topic. The bulk of the show’s planning and engineering has always fallen to me. I’ve enjoyed it! It’s what I expected honestly.

But now the bad news. Every year we’ve taken a bit of a break around the US holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. This was mainly because show scheduling got tough with hosts having family things to attend, so we would just accept it and take an episode or two off during this time of year. And that usually meant we hit the new year feeling a bit recharged. In 2022 we’d even taken several weeks off around July when my Mother-in-law’s battle with Cancer had taken a turn for the worse. By the way, that lead to an accumulated $500 donation to the American cancer society fueled mostly by the awesome patrons. Oh, and I never got to make this public on the show, but through a program Red Hat gives me access to through my day job, I was able to DOUBLE that, for a total of $1000. Folks, have I mentioned what an awesome employer Red Hat is? But I digress. Taking these breaks usually has a recharging effect on us as the hosts. 2022’s breaks didn’t do that, and that worried me to the point where I decided to call a meeting with Marc and Jason this past Friday. Iron Sysadmin is mine, and it always has been, but these guys have given me two Thursdays a month for years, almost 6 years for Jason, and about 4 for Marc. They get to have a say in the future of the show. We decided together that it was time to end things.

Marc is now managing TAMs at Red Hat, I work in the Marketing team for RHEL, and Jason, well who knows what he’s doing, but he’s been all over the IT map for the past few years. Jason might have the most relevant day to day out of all of us, and we can’t carry the show on just one host who’s in the weeds. Personally, I’m finding it hard to be objective when my day job is to cast a positive light on one of the products we should be critical of on the show.

Patreon was paused over the weekend, I’ll close that up before the one month pause period expires. Again thank you so much to the patrons who have supported this show.

And let’s not forget all of you listeners! And our great guests! This has been an awesome ride and it wouldn’t have been possible without all of you.

Episode 133a – Insights Vulnerability Service with John Spinks!

Welcome to Episode 133a

Main Topic

 

 

Watch us live on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month! Subscribe and hit the bell! https://www.youtube.com/IronSysadminPodcast 

OR

https://twitch.tv/IronSysadminPodcast

 

Discord Community: https://discord.gg/wmxvQ4c2H6 

Matrix Space: https://matrix.to/#/#IronSysadmin:trixie.undrground.org 


Find us on Twitter, and Facebook!

Subscribe wherever you find podcasts!

And don’t forget about our patreon! https://patreon.com/ironsysadmin 

 
Intro and Outro music credit: Tri Tachyon, Digital MK 2
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/ 

Listen to epside:

Episode 133b – VR, Meta Verified, Violent Bing!, 3d Printed Housing, and news about news.

Welcome to Episode 133b

Announcements

Reviews

  • Nothing New

Chat

News

 

Watch us live on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month! Subscribe and hit the bell! https://www.youtube.com/IronSysadminPodcast 

OR

https://twitch.tv/IronSysadminPodcast

 

Discord Community: https://discord.gg/wmxvQ4c2H6 

Matrix Space: https://matrix.to/#/#IronSysadmin:trixie.undrground.org 


Find us on Twitter, and Facebook!

Subscribe wherever you find podcasts!

And don’t forget about our patreon! https://patreon.com/ironsysadmin 

 
Intro and Outro music credit: Tri Tachyon, Digital MK 2
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/ 

Listen to epside:

Episode 132a – Our favorite Linux Commands

Welcome to Episode 132

Main Topic

Our favorite linux commands (or utilities)

  • Nate

    • Sed and awk, of course

    • Nmap

    • Tcpdump/wireshark

    • Lsblk

    • Libvirt

  • Unclemarc

    • GUIs and web access are fine, but nothing beats a command line

    • apropos

    • Or –help

    • ssh for all the things!

    • grep, from whom all goodness flows 

    • The performance commands: uptime, vmstat, iostat, top, sar, watch

    • Not a command per se, but systemd drop-in files

    • And, of course, man

 

Watch us live on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month! Subscribe and hit the bell! https://www.youtube.com/IronSysadminPodcast 

OR

https://twitch.tv/IronSysadminPodcast

 

Discord Community: https://discord.gg/wmxvQ4c2H6 

Matrix Space: https://matrix.to/#/#IronSysadmin:trixie.undrground.org 


Find us on Twitter, and Facebook!

Subscribe wherever you find podcasts!

And don’t forget about our patreon! https://patreon.com/ironsysadmin 

 
Intro and Outro music credit: Tri Tachyon, Digital MK 2
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/ 

 

Listen to epside:

Episode 132b – AI, AI, AI, and RHEL on Oracle Cloud.

Welcome to Episode 132b

 

Announcements

Reviews

Nothing New

Chat

 

News

 

Watch us live on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month! Subscribe and hit the bell! https://www.youtube.com/IronSysadminPodcast 

OR

https://twitch.tv/IronSysadminPodcast

 

Discord Community: https://discord.gg/wmxvQ4c2H6 

Matrix Space: https://matrix.to/#/#IronSysadmin:trixie.undrground.org 


Find us on Twitter, and Facebook!

Subscribe wherever you find podcasts!

And don’t forget about our patreon! https://patreon.com/ironsysadmin 

 
Intro and Outro music credit: Tri Tachyon, Digital MK 2
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/ 

 

 

Listen to epside:

Episode 131a – Security in the cloud

 

Welcome to Episode 131

Main Topic

 

Watch us live on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month! Subscribe and hit the bell! https://www.youtube.com/IronSysadminPodcast 

OR

https://twitch.tv/IronSysadminPodcast

 

Discord Community: https://discord.gg/wmxvQ4c2H6 

Matrix Space: https://matrix.to/#/#IronSysadmin:trixie.undrground.org 


Find us on Twitter, and Facebook!

Subscribe wherever you find podcasts!

And don’t forget about our patreon! https://patreon.com/ironsysadmin 

 
Intro and Outro music credit: Tri Tachyon, Digital MK 2
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/ 

Listen to epside:

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