Technologies

What Is Mastodon, the Alternative Social Network Now Blocked by Twitter?

Learn everything you need to know about Twitter’s open-source competitor.

Since Elon Musk took control of Twitter on Oct. 27, the social network has been roiled by controversy. First, half the staff was laid off via email, and an ill-advised new implementation of its «blue check» verification system left the site plagued by trolls and fake «verified» accounts. Now, Twitter has banned accounts that Musk promised to protect and suspended several prominent journalists who report on Elon Musk.

Twitters users concerned about changes at the company are looking for other social media options, and the open-source network Mastodon has been a big beneficiary. Mastodon Count, a bot that tracks usage on the network, showed a 400% increase in the rate of new account signups on Dec. 15, when Twitter suspended the journalists who cover Musk.

The growing popularity of Mastodon might partly explain why Twitter is now blocking many links to Mastodon servers and suggesting the URLs are «harmful» or include malware. Twitter has also suspended the official account for Mastodon, prompting a joke from creator Eugen Rochko about never having to check Twitter notifications again.

Read on to see how Mastodon works, how to sign up, and how it compares to Twitter. For more, see how to delete your Twitter account, and get the latest on Twitter’s verification badge plans.

What is Mastodon and how is it different from Twitter?

Mastodon is a free social media service that functions much like Twitter. You can post «toots» (instead of tweets), follow other people and organizations, and favorite (like) and boost (retweet) posts from other people.

Mastodon was created and originally released in October 2016 by Eugen Rochko, the CEO and lone employee of the nonprofit organization Mastodon gGmbH. In May, Rochko explained the service’s oddly named substitute for «tweet.» He says the original button was called «publish,» but a committed supporter promised lifetime support of the Mastodon Patreon account if he would change it to «toot.» (On the iOS and Android apps it says «publish.»)

In an interview with Time Magazine, Rochko said he began developing Mastodon when he realized that «being able to express myself online to my friends through short messages was actually very important to me, important also to the world, and that maybe it should not be in the hands of a single corporation that can just do whatever it wants with it.»

Read more: Mastodon Is No Twitter Replacement

Instead of one town square for everyone, however, Mastodon is composed of thousands of social networks, all running on different servers, or «instances,» that can communicate with each other through a system called the Fediverse. The Fediverse also contains other social networks like PeerTube for videos, Funkwhale for music, PixelFed for photos and NextCloud for files.

Mastodon servers aren’t required to be connected to the Fediverse, In fact, the most famous Mastodon instance is Truth Social, the social network of former US president Donald Trump.

How do I join Mastodon?

The hardest part of Mastodon is getting started. Since there’s no one common Mastodon area for everyone — as with Twitter — you’ll need to register on a specific Mastodon server.

Servers can be based on a geographic location, subject interest, professional background or literally anything an administrator can think of. For example, the folks at dolphin.town are only allowed to post the letter «E,» while the literary buffs at oulipo.social are forbidden from ever using the letter «E» (in honor of OuLiPo writer Georges Perec’s lipogram «La Disparition«).

Two of the biggest Mastodon servers, aka instances, are mastodon.social — the official server of the Mastodon project — and mstdn.social, though both have temporarily paused registrations. Another large general server that I recently joined is mas.to. Other popular Mastodon instances include masthead.social for journalists and fosstodon.org for open-source software.

Don’t worry too much about which server you pick — you can join as many as you want and leave or switch servers at any time. And you can follow people across servers, so picking one doesn’t keep you from communicating with those on other instances.

One good place to find a server to join is the official Mastodon website at joinmastodon.org. The site currently lists about 80 servers that have committed to the Mastodon Server Covenant, an agreement to enforce moderation, make backups of the site and give at least three months warning before ever shutting down an instance.

Each server’s «about» page will tell a little bit about the Mastodon instance and list the server’s rules. If you don’t find a server that you like on joinmastodon.org, you can try other Mastodon directories, such as instances.social, which offers a wizard for picking a server as well as a sortable list of 16,412 instances.

Most Mastodon servers with open registration will only ask for your email address and a password to get started. Once you respond to a verification email, you’re ready to start using Mastodon. Other, more private Mastodon servers may ask you to make a request to join and then wait for an invitation.

How do I use Mastodon?

Like Twitter, Mastodon lets you post short messages to the world or to select people, but instead of tweets, Mastodon posts are called toots. And many of Mastodon’s other features are a lot like Twitter’s, too, with slight differences. Each post is limited to 500 characters (instead of 280), and you can include links, images (JPG, GIF or PNG, up to 8MB), audio files (MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC, OPUS, AAC, M4A and 3GP up to 40MB) and videos (MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM up to 40MB).

Your posts on Mastodon can be set to be public, only for your followers or completely unlisted from all timelines. You can create polls for your followers and use all your favorite usual emojis, plus custom emojis created for specific servers.

Any post can be marked with an explanatory «content warning» that requires a click before viewing, and Mastodon users take advantage of the feature often.

You can even edit posts on Mastodon. Each version of your toot remains available for review, and people who reblog your post are notified after it’s edited.

Just like Twitter, Mastodon uses hashtags that start with the «#» symbol, such as #Gaming, #Anthropology or #Veganism. Since there’s no algorithm to suggest your posts to nonfollowers, using hashtags to categorize your posts for people who might be interested is even more important than on Twitter.

You can follow any account on Mastodon, whether or not it’s on your own server instance, and the account’s posts will be added to your Home feed in chronological order. Know that for some accounts, you need to request permission to follow them.

Free web apps like Debirdify, Fedifinder and Twitodon can help you find accounts you followed on Twitter that have migrated to Mastodon.

If you don’t want a particular account following you, you can block them just like on Twitter, or you can choose to block an entire server.

Mastodon lets you «favorite» posts, but the favorites count doesn’t appear on timelines — if you want to promote someone else’s posts, you’ll need to «boost» or reblog them. Unlike Twitter, there are no «quote toots» on Mastodon, a deliberate choice to discourage «dunking» on other people’s posts. A separate «bookmark» feature lets you save toots on Mastodon without notifying the account that posted it.

Mastodon does have a feature called Direct Messages, but the name is a little misleading. Rather than providing person-to-person messages, Mastodon’s feature sets the visibility of a post to only the people mentioned in it. In other words, they’re toots that only certain people can see, rather than actual direct messages.

How do the Mastodon timelines work?

Whereas Twitter just has one timeline (sorted chronologically or by «top stories»), Mastodon has three: your Home timeline shows all the posts and reblogs from everyone you follow, your Local timeline shows everything from your own server instance, and your Federated timeline shows all posts from all Mastodon servers on which you follow someone.

Using a web browser, you can set Mastodon to look like Twitter, showing one feed at a time, or you can view multiple feeds and notifications simultaneously (much like Tweetdeck) by selecting «Advanced view» from your Preferences.

Are there any mobile apps for Mastodon?

You bet. Due to the open-source nature of Mastodon, you have a lot of choices for apps on both iPhone and Android.

Your first and easiest option is the official app from Mastodon gGmbH (for iOS or Android), but there are other solid third-party apps. The two most popular alternative Mastodon apps right now are Metatext for iPhone and Tusky for Android.

Mastodon apps for iPhone:

Mastodon apps for Android:

If you do get started with Mastodon, make sure to follow me @peterbutler@mas.to. (And say hello!)

For more about social media and Twitter, follow a timeline of the Elon Musk purchase and read about the big changes that could be in store for Twitter.

Correction, Nov. 7: A previous version of this story incorrectly described Mastodon’s features. Mastodon added the ability to edit posts in March 2022.

Technologies

TMR vs. Hall Effect Controllers: Battle of the Magnetic Sensing Tech

The magic of magnets tucked into your joysticks can put an end to drift. But which technology is superior?

Competitive gamers look for every advantage they can get, and that drive has spawned some of the zaniest gaming peripherals under the sun. There are plenty of hardware components that actually offer meaningful edges when implemented properly. Hall effect and TMR (tunnel magnetoresistance or tunneling magnetoresistance) sensors are two such technologies. Hall effect sensors have found their way into a wide variety of devices, including keyboards and gaming controllers, including some of our favorites like the GameSir Super Nova.

More recently, TMR sensors have started to appear in these devices as well. Is it a better technology for gaming? With multiple options vying for your lunch money, it’s worth understanding the differences to decide which is more worthy of living inside your next game controller or keyboard.

How Hall effect joysticks work

We’ve previously broken down the difference between Hall effect tech and traditional potentiometers in controller joysticks, but here’s a quick rundown on how Hall effect sensors work. A Hall effect joystick moves a magnet over a sensor circuit, and the magnetic field affects the circuit’s voltage. The sensor in the circuit measures these voltage shifts and maps them to controller inputs. Element14 has a lovely visual explanation of this effect here.

The advantage this tech has over potentiometer-based joysticks used in controllers for decades is that the magnet and sensor don’t need to make physical contact. There’s no rubbing action to slowly wear away and degrade the sensor. So, in theory, Hall effect joysticks should remain accurate for the long haul.

How TMR joysticks work

While TMR works differently, it’s a similar concept to Hall effect devices. When you move a TMR joystick, it moves a magnet in the vicinity of the sensor. So far, it’s the same, right? Except with TMR, this shifting magnetic field changes the resistance in the sensor instead of the voltage.

There’s a useful demonstration of a sensor in action here. Just like Hall effect joysticks, TMR joysticks don’t rely on physical contact to register inputs and therefore won’t suffer the wear and drift that affects potentiometer-based joysticks.

Which is better, Hall effect or TMR?

There’s no hard and fast answer to which technology is better. After all, the actual implementation of the technology and the hardware it’s built into can be just as important, if not more so. Both technologies can provide accurate sensing, and neither requires physical contact with the sensing chip, so both can be used for precise controls that won’t encounter stick drift. That said, there are some potential advantages to TMR.

According to Coto Technology, who, in fairness, make TMR sensors, they can be more sensitive, allowing for either greater precision or the use of smaller magnets. Since the Hall effect is subtler, it relies on amplification and ultimately requires extra power. While power requirements vary from sensor to sensor, GameSir claims its TMR joysticks use about one-tenth the power of mainstream Hall effect joysticks. Cherry is another brand highlighting the lower power consumption of TMR sensors, albeit in the brand’s keyboard switches.

The greater precision is an opportunity for TMR joysticks to come out ahead, but that will depend more on the controller itself than the technology. Strange response curves, a big dead zone (which shouldn’t be needed), or low polling rates could prevent a perfectly good TMR sensor from beating a comparable Hall effect sensor in a better optimized controller.

The power savings will likely be the advantage most of us really feel. While it won’t matter for wired controllers, power savings can go a long way for wireless ones. Take the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro, for instance, a Hall effect controller offering 20 hours of battery life from a 4.5-watt-hour battery with support for a 1,000Hz polling rate on a wireless connection. Razer also offers the Wolverine V3 Pro 8K PC, a near-identical controller with the same battery offering TMR sensors. They claim the TMR version can go for 36 hours on a charge, though that’s presumably before cranking it up to an 8,000Hz polling rate — something Razer possibly left off the Hall effect model because of power usage.

The disadvantage of the TMR sensor would be its cost, but it appears that it’s negligible when factored into the entire price of a controller. Both versions of the aforementioned Razer controller are $199. Both 8BitDo and GameSir have managed to stick them into reasonably priced controllers like the 8BitDo Ultimate 2, GameSir G7 Pro and GameSir Cyclone 2.

So which wins?

It seems TMR joysticks have all the advantages of Hall effect joysticks and then some, bringing better power efficiency that can help in wireless applications. The one big downside might be price, but from what we’ve seen right now, that doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. You can even find both technologies in controllers that cost less than some potentiometer models, like the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller.

Caveats to consider

For all the hype, neither Hall effect nor TMR joysticks are perfect. One of their key selling points is that they won’t experience stick drift, but there are still elements of the joystick that can wear down. The ring around the joystick can lose its smoothness. The stick material can wear down (ever tried to use a controller with the rubber worn off its joystick? It’s not pleasant). The linkages that hold the joystick upright and the springs that keep it stiff can loosen, degrade and fill with dust. All of these can impact the continued use of the joystick, even if the Hall effect or TMR sensor itself is in perfect operating order.

So you might not get stick drift from a bad sensor, but you could get stick drift from a stick that simply doesn’t return to its original resting position. That’s when having a controller that’s serviceable or has swappable parts, like the PDP Victrix Pro BFG, could matter just as much as having one with Hall effect or TMR joysticks.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Feb. 18, #513

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 18, No. 513.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition has a fun yellow category that might just start you singing. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: I don’t care if I never get back.

Green group hint: Get that gold medal.

Blue group hint: Hoops superstar.

Purple group hint: Not front, but…

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Heard in «Take Me Out to the Ball Game.»

Green group: Olympic snowboarding events.

Blue group: Vince Carter, informally.

Purple group: ____ back.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is heard in «Take Me Out to the Ball Game.» The four answers are Cracker Jack, home team, old ball game and peanuts.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is Olympic snowboarding events. The four answers are big air, giant slalom, halfpipe and slopestyle.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Vince Carter, informally. The four answers are Air Canada, Half-Man, Half-Amazing, VC and Vinsanity.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ back. The four answers are diamond, drop, quarter and razor.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Feb. 18

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 18.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s Mini Crossword is a fun one, and it’s not terribly tough. It helps if you know a certain Olympian. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.