The case for Mastodon social

If you’ve known me for a while, you’d probably realize that I was a Twitter junkie. As a matter of fact, I’ve written a few blog posts about it. I spend hours of my screen on time on my phone on Twitter daily. If I had any free or idle time, Tweetbot is the first app that I open on my phone every time. I like Twitter so much, I paid for and later subscribed to a third-party Twitter app called Tweetbot. It’s a sleek little app that was miles better than the original Twitter app.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, I was a little bit optimistic but mostly indifferent. He did pretty well at Tesla and Space X so that's where my optimism came from. Best case scenario, he would make our collective Twitter experience better. The worst he could do is leave Twitter alone as it is and not make it any better or worse, right? That’s where we were dead wrong. In the beginning, he monetized the verification system, selling it as a feature of Twitter Blue subscription at $8 a month. Fine, he needed to recoup some of that $44 billion loan that he borrowed. He learned soon enough that letting just about anyone buy the verified blue checkmark without any verification is a recipe for disaster when about a dozen people bought the subscription and changed their Twitter username to impersonate brands and public figures causing some companies to lose billions in their stock price.

In early January, Twitter quietly killed the API connection to many popular third party clients like Tweetbot, Fenix and Twitterific (An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other).  Like I said earlier, the official Twitter app sucks, big time. The timeline’s not chronological, it follows some stupid algorithm and it’s full of ads. Third-party apps like Tweetbot is the opposite of that. The timeline is chronological and it remembers my last reading position and syncs between all my Apple devices. This is particularly important because I read every single tweet from the 233 people that I follow. Also Tweetbot lets me hide ads, mute users, keywords and hashtags and a slew of other interesting features.

Third-party apps were crucial in Twitter’s development. They spur innovation, creativity and tremendous growth for the platform. As a matter of fact app developer, Sean Heber created the first Twitter app, Twitterific way before Twitter bought another Twitter client - Twittie and made it as their first official app. The word “tweet” was first coined by Sean himself and he developed the “pull to refresh” feature which was adopted by Twitter and also many-many other apps outside of Twitter. To say that I was upset when Elon killed the API would be an understatement. I was enraged. If the idiot wanted the ads revenue in third-party apps, he could have easily enforced the API to show ads. Instead he just killed third-party apps altogether and forced every user to use his crappy app.

So what does one do? Rage-quit Twitter and social media altogether? The thought did occur to me but I’m still too weak and somewhat addicted to it. Instead, I started to slowly move towards another social media platform - Mastodon. What does an extinct proboscidean got to do with social media? Nobody knows why Eugen Rochko, the creator, chose to name this software Mastodon after the extinct elephant-like mammal, but you cannot speak about Mastodon without touching the Fediverse and ActivityPub protocol. The Fediverse (Federated universe) is a collection of thousands of independent social media servers that talk to each other seamlessly. They communicate with each other using a common technical standard called ActivityPub. One of the most popular types of Fediverse server out there is Mastodon, a Twitter-like social network but unlike Twitter it’s decentralized.

Imagine the emailing system. You have many-many companies providing free and paid email services out there, from the more popular ones like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo to personal private email addresses with their own domain (like khairul@sambalnyet.com). These many disparate email providers all communicate using a few different standards to send and receive emails such as POP3/IMAP and SMTP. But these standards enable us to send emails from let say Gmail to Yahoo and vice versa or to any other email providers in the world. The same applies to Mastodon. The first Mastodon server (or instance) is mastodon.social created by Eugen in 2016. People who register with mastodon.social can interact with other users on mastodon.social as well as people on other servers who use the same Mastodon server type for example mstdn.social or mastodon.sg or kopiti.am, just to name a few. There are thousands of servers to choose from out there, some you can sign up immediately, some you need to apply to be a member. Alternatively, you can host your own Mastodon server using your own domain and connect to the Fediverse. Let's say I’ve got the domain afif.com and I created my own Mastodon server and configured my server to connect to the Fediverse using the ActivityPub protocol. I can create any usernames such as @afif@afif.com or @abdul@afif.com and I can interact with anybody from other Mastodon servers either directly or with my posts (similar to tweets) appearing in the Federated timeline. If I want to, I can let anybody register to my Mastodon server, create a username and they can use @username@afif.com as their Mastodon username. Creating a Mastodon server requires some basic technical knowledge but it is relatively cheap and some of that server hosting costs from as low as USD8-10 a month.

And Mastodon is just one type of server in the Fediverse. There’s also Pixelfed, an Instagram like social network, PeerTube (YouTube), MicroBlog and WriteFreely (blogs) and Friendica (Facebook) just to name a few.. They all use the ActivityPub protocol and they are all decentralized servers unlike Twitter which is one company/server who controls everything (think a megalomaniac sociopath like Elon Musk). This is important because no one can buy and control everything on the platform or enforce arbitrary rules according to their mood or whim. Every server sets their own rules, they can block or allow only certain people on their servers. If a user would like to move to a different server for any reason, they could just sign up on a different server and move their current username to that new server in the Mastodon settings page. All your posts, favorites, boosts (retweet), followers and followings will be moved to that server in a short time. You don’t like one server because it promotes hate speech and homophobia? Move to another server. You actually like hate speech but a lot of servers like to block you? Create your own server!

After Elon Musk became a dick and killed Twitter’s API connection, many Twitter app developers who previously depended on the platform for their livelihood suddenly found themselves without a major source of income. The wise ones quickly turned their attention to Mastodon and in a short time, released some amazing Mastodon apps such as Ivory (formerly of Tweetbot), Ice Cubes, Woolly, Mammoth, Toots, Tusky and many more. As I said earlier, I loved Tweetbot very much and was outraged when Twitter killed third-party clients. With Ivory, it brought over the best features of Tweetbot plus many more since the Mastodon API has very little limitations unlike the Twitter one.

The only downside of Mastodon, at least for now, is that most of the people I follow are still on the bird app. The few people that actually signed up for Mastodon rarely toots (tweet) there so I had to start fresh and follow total strangers but with something interesting to post. That’s 88 people in total at the time of writing so I can finish my entire timeline within 20 minutes. I understand not everyone has the same kind of feeling or appreciation for quality third-party apps or they’re not a junkie power user enough to use anything other than the official app. So right now, I still go to Twitter from time to time to check the timeline but I also try to post more on Mastodon. If you want to crosspost from Twitter to Mastodon, there’s a way to do that using Moa Party to copy everything you post or retweet to Mastodon. Bear in mind though that Moa Party (and similar services) uses the Twitter API and with Musk’s erratic behaviour and mindless management style, that API could be killed any second. I guess not a lot of people realize the benefits of having a decentralized social network system. Elon Musk is one good example but with Mastodon, if one server goes down, the other servers can still communicate smoothly with each other using ActivityPub just like the World Wide Web. They don’t realize this yet but one of these days they need to learn to wean off from Musk’s golden titties (if you know what I mean).

So, did I pique your interest enough to try out Mastodon and join the Federation? There’s a couple of good guides about Mastodon out there, starting from the official Mastodon page and then FediTips which is where I got most of my reference for this blog post. You can pick a server to sign up from here and FediGarden provides a small curated list of servers to help new users decide before joining Mastodon. Mastodon.social used to be a good server to start with but it is now a bit crowded with over 950,000 users on it and had recently become targets of DDOS attack (here’s looking at your Space Karen). But if you still would like to sign up on Mastodon.social, you can use my private link here. Come join the Federation, it’s fun and less toxic than Twitter. Don’t forget to follow me at @afif@mastodon.social!

The dreaded Show more Tweets button. I read every single tweet on my timeline and when I tap this Show more Tweets button it will usually skip a few dozen tweets to the top which is infuriating. I had to tap on hold on the button and pray that it doesn’t skip forward. I don’t have this issue on Tweetbot.



The beautiful Ivory user interface, from the makers of Tweetbot. Comes with custom themes, app icons, customizable menu buttons, iCloud sync for reading position, cute sound effects, mute filters and most importantly, ad-free (there are no ads or algorithms on Mastodon unless you’re following a brand). Ivory for iOS subscription costs RM9.90 per month or RM69.90 a year. You need to pay for quality apps because these developers need to make a living. That said, Ice Cubes for is another great Mastodon for iOS/Mac app that is free but accepts donations through the app.



There are multiple timelines available the Mastodon interface. There’s the Home timeline where you see posts from accounts you follow directly. They can be from the same server (mastodon.social) or a totally different server. The Local timeline shows every post from all accounts on the same server/instance, in this example from mastodon.social. The Federated timeline shows all posts from many-many servers in the Fediverse, meaning servers that utilize the ActivityPub protocol. Bear in mind though, the Federated timeline only shows posts from servers that your server users have interacted with recently. It’s impossible to show every post from every server on the Fediverse because there are too many and the technical demand will crash the app or user interface.



The Ice Cubes app shows the instance (server) information. You can see how many users have signed up on this particular server, the admin contact info, how many posts have been posted and the rules enforced by the server creator/admins.



Pixelfed is an Instagram-like Fediverse server. Technically you can login to your Pixelfed account on a Mastodon client like Ivory here and view your local, Home and Federated timelines. The only catch though, Pixelfed for example only allows posting of photos plus text on the server and you will not be able to post texts only (without any photos) in your Pixelfed account. The same applies to Micro.blog which is a blogging server but supports the Markdown syntax so you can see hyperlinked and formatted texts in your timeline if you follow any users from the server. The default character limit for every post is 400 but some servers allow up to 1,000 or more. It all depends on the server admin but you will need to click read more to read the rest of the post.



There are no central verification or “verified blue checkmarks” for application or purchase on Mastodon. If you see any profiles with the blue verified icon, it is just a custom emoji that is supported on that server. Mastodon.social itself doesn’t support the verified emoji but it does support dozens of other emojis listed here. You can add a custom emoji to your own profile by adding :customemojiname next to your display name. In addition, you can verify yourself as the owner of the account by putting a simple link back to your Mastodon profile on a website that you own. For example, I just paste the link back above on any page on my Blogger blog and it will show the green verified icon on my user profile/bio.

Steam Deck review

Imagine being able to play your entire Steam library on the go. Not using a Windows tablet but a dedicated video game deck complete with controls. Well imagine no more because that’s exactly what the Steam Deck is. I have quite a number of games on Steam, purchased over the years (usually during sales) but never could find the time to play them, you know with work and other familial commitments. So they’re just stuck there in my Steam Library waiting for me to play them. I’m resigned to the fact that I could only play most of them when I retire.



So when the Steam Deck came out, it was godsend. This is perfect for me, I thought. But then they were released in a limited market and were priced prohibitively expensive. Fast-forward a year later, the grey import set has come down considerably in price and they’re readily available in the local market at the price of mid range smartphones. That’s when I know it’s time to save up and get myself this Steam Deck.



The basic 64GB eMMC Steam Deck costs from as low as RM2K here but I opted for the faster 256GB NVMe SSD at 500 ringgit more. The local drive is replaceable despite the DIY guide looking a bit scary. In addition to that there’s a microSD card slot which theoretically supports up to 512GB of external storage. If you put in a microSD card in there, it will be treated as a local drive so you can install games straight onto it. The console comes with a Valve-branded hard case so you don’t need to buy a separate case for it. There’s a small indent/hole at the bottom meant for you to store the charger and cable. The charger brick is US type because this is a direct import unit.



First impression: it’s a pretty big and heavy device, especially if you compare it with the Nintendo Switch. The 7” touch screen is flanked by a pair of controllers and small touchpad meaning to replace a mouse/trackpad. Powering the Steam Deck is a custom AMD APU (CPU plus GPU combined) and SteamOS which is a modified Arch Linux distribution. It also uses the Proton compatibility later that allows most games developed for Windows to be played there. The Deck loads the Steam app by default although you can switch to the (Linux) desktop mode with a few clicks. Going into the Steam Library brings you a new tab which lists games that are “Great on Deck”, meaning they were verified to be fully compatible to be played on the Steam Deck.



Now there are three types of games for the Steam Deck. Games that were fully verified will be marked as Verified, currently about one third of my Steam Library are marked as verified. The next type is playable, meaning the games should be playable on the Deck but certain parts of the games will require touch input either the built in touchpad or using the touchscreen. Compared to the verified type which can be fully maneuvered using the controller. The last type is unplayable meaning that games that still can be installed on the Steam Deck but may encounter multiple bugs and issues should you proceed to play the game.



My favorite game, Football Manager is marked as playable on the Deck so does Rise of Industry and Need for Speed. Horizon 4 which I just purchased is marked as verified and plays beautifully on the console. FIFA 22 which is part of the EA Play subscription is marked as unplayable but I installed it anyway without any issues. Launching the game however requires a few tries because it usually does not load on the first two tries. Once you get past the launch menu, you should be able to play FIFA fine on the Steam Deck. The built-in controller works fine and so does the PS4 controller connected via Bluetooth. Since the Deck is heavy, the external controller support is godsend. Apart from Playstation, it should connect to Xbox and Nintendo controllers fine too. Many games marked as unplayable employ some kind of anti-cheat controls or digital rights management (DRM) such as FIFA and PUBG.



As I remarked earlier, this Steam Deck console is quite heavy at 670 grams. The screen is pretty big at 7” but I usually connect it to my 24” monitor or big 55” living room TV for a better viewing experience. I just used a regular USB-C to HDMI adapter for the connection. There is a USD89 official Steam Deck dock but as you can see it’s pretty expensive and difficult to get your hands on. The connected display, scales reasonably well although you will see a double blank space on each side of your display for some games.





Apart from games from the official Steam library, you can also install games from outside the library like Epic or Origin and most of them will run fine. If you install an emulator software like Emudeck, you can also play all the classic NES, Genesis and Playstation games on the Deck as well. Portability is the major benefit of getting a Steam Deck although the battery does not last very long. Playing FIFA 22 for example will get from 100% to 16 percent in about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Other less graphic and processor intensive games should last a bit longer. Since the Deck requires 25W of power, you will need to plug it into the power socket often, unless you have a power bank/station with that much power output. Forget about regular power banks or in-car power supply.

Storage space is another aspect you should consider. The Steam Deck does come with up to 512GB of local nVME drive and up to another 512GB of microSD slot but PC games these days are huge and you could use those space up with less than a dozen games. I suppose the same can be said for desktop or laptop PCs but at least you can upgrade to multiple internal hard drives on those computers.



Gaming experience has been fine so far. Horizon 4, a supposedly verified Steam Deck game only hung on me once although it was connected to a monitor and my PS4 controller. Playing FIFA 22 is even more buggy, especially if you’re connected to an external display. If the display gets turned off, you will lose access to all external controller functions and you will not be able to resume the game with the built-in controller. That’s why I often save my FIFA game first before leaving it for long or just to be safe. Playing emulator games though has been nothing short of a pleasure, without any issues whatsoever.

Who is the Steam Deck perfect for? If you already have a sizable Steam library or other PC-based games library, yes. If you’ve been collecting Nintendo or Playstation games before, then you should probably stick with them, unless you want to play PC-based games as well. Yes it is portable but the battery quality is under par at the moment plus you might want to connect to an external display to make the screen bigger. If you already got a maxed out gaming laptop, then that could provide a better experience. But if your personal PC or laptop is medium or low specced then the Steam Deck is great for you.

One final tip: if you want to put a screen protector on the screen of the Deck, avoid using the matte type because it will make the screen less clear.

Ada apa dengan Melly? Live in concert

An expensive concert? In this economy? That’s what I first thought when my son suggested that he, my wife and I buy the tickets to the inaugural Melly Goeslaw concert in Malaysia last week. It was still 2 months before the concert and after I hesitated for a while, I gave in to my son and wife’s cajoling. A few days before the concert, we found out there was a back to school theme where everybody was encouraged to wear school uniforms to the venue. Being the good sport that we are, I bought a school shirt and my wife and son prepared their school uniforms. My wife borrowed one from our eldest daughter.

We actually bought the ticket from a reseller who bought it from another reseller. Normally I would be hesitant to do such a thing, buying tickets not from the original source but they have sold out a long time ago. Of course we did some thorough investigation on the seller and she did provide us some personal and social media credentials for us to validate. In the end the tickets were legit and the seller had in fact sold the tickets because she got some better seats up front.

We drove to the KL Convention Centre that evening, where the concert is happening at the Plenary Hall. True to form, we saw scores of concert-goers in their school uniforms. Ladies and gentlemen in all shapes and sizes flocking to the concert hall. The organizers really know how to hype up the event with a variety of photo booths and other gimmicks. Around 8:30 PM we started to proceed to the Plenary Hall. Thankfully, we passed the ticket inspection without any issues and got to our seats on level 3. It was the furthest seat from the stage but that’s all we can afford for the concert.

To be frank, this was my first concert in like 25 years or so? The last concert I remembered going to was the free KRU concert at Dataran Merdeka. This will also be my first one inside a hall. The concert started a few minutes before 9:00 PM. The atmosphere was electric and the crowd was alive with anticipation. Melly Goeslaw and Ada apa dengan cinta? the movie was huge during our teenage years. Going to her concert, listening and singing to her songs brought back a lot of sweet memories of that time. I remember me, Linda and her gang watching the movie a dozen times, chasing after Dian and Nicolas all around KL when the pair flew over to promote the movie. It felt like we were 21 again that evening.



Melly performed over 20 songs that day. Most of them were regularly played over here and a few not so well known tunes, at least for Malaysians. She sang pretty well for a 49 year old. Not so much dancing and jumping but her antics and jokes were entertaining. 3 hours really flew by just like that. Overall it was a memorable and captivating concert. I can speak for everybody that we were thoroughly entertained that night. There was a potent mix of nostalgia and memories from when we were young. Although not cheap (according to me) I do believe it was money well spent. Would I go to another concert again in the future? Only for a select few singers and bands. Sheila On 7, you next?