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Shriram Krishnamurthi

A little-known fact about Mastodon is that when you move your account, it gets put on a truck and then shipped to the new server. Here, for instance, are users employing I-195 to move between servers.

Photo of truck reading "Mastodon Moving" on a highway.
101 comments
DELETED

@shriramk
OF COURSE it is true!
There is even a Toot about it!
๐Ÿ˜

Heliograph

@shriramk @Gargron c'mon Eugen the other button, use the other button!! :awesome: ๐Ÿ˜‚ #boost!

Ahri Boy ๐Ÿ’™๐Ÿ’›:blobhajtransprideheart:

@shriramk@mastodon.social it's not just Mastodon. Pleroma, Akkoma, Calckey and now Misskey have migration feature too!

Just Boby

@misc well, for one, theyโ€™re in the wrong continent for me :D

Jesse Baer ๐Ÿ”ฅ

@boby_biq oh I was just trying to suggest a third adjective.

Just Boby

@misc oh this joke completely flew over my head without me getting it ๐Ÿคฃ

Shriram Krishnamurthi

@misc @mastodonmoving This is amazing. I was so sure they wouldn't be that I didn't even check. Keep on movin', Mastodon!

rough af

@shriramk @moof never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of back up tape driving down the motorway.

dwxk

@shriramk incredible to think mastodon inc. has enough funds to pay the hard-working drivers and technicians that have to travel from place to place anytime anybody moves their account

Em :official_verified:

@shriramk

If this company ever gets a Mastodon account, it will create the most beautiful worlds-collision confusion ever.

Em :official_verified:

@shriramk @mastodonmoving
OK! I'm not in Massachusetts at all! Not in the US even. But I'm following them now because this is too good ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ‘

Happy you're here Mastodon Moving even if I don't know you at all! You might want to prep a template to reply to people that you are moving actual boxes and not Mastodon accounts ;)

Anyhow, warmest welcome! :mastodon:โ€‹ :meowBox:โ€‹โœจ

Jorge Stolfi

@shriramk

But what about accounts that are too big to fit in the truck? Do they get disassembled and reassembled for free?

Resting Facebitch

@shriramk But wait I thought the Internet was a series of tubes??

A lot has changed since the 2000s.

One Brave Peasant

@shriramk Depending on the account, that's either a very fast or very slow data speed.

Roland Giersig :vftrek:

@shriramk You sir are about 8 days late, sorry. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ

JazzyGirl

@shriramk ๐Ÿคฃ๐Ÿคฃ๐Ÿคฃ๐Ÿคฃ

Comfortably Numb๐Ÿฆ‹

@shriramk Here a Mastodon account shown arriving at its destination instance.

In 1956 a 5Mb hard drive (humongous box) being offloaded from a truck, while onlookers gawk.
David

@shriramk I learned this while I was studying for my Mastodon certification test.

Reiner Jung

@shriramk ah this is this new container technology for data. Cool. We should call it Mastocker or Docktodon or not ask a CS guy to come up with a fitting name for tech. Anyway, great to see that it works.

StarkRG

@shriramk @roipoussiere A modification of RFC 1149 to generalize it into IP over physical media utilizing an infinitely-variable packet size. The request is usually transmitted across more common routes. While this method of information transfer is uneconomical for all but the most enormous amounts of data, it has the benefit of being able to transfer actual, physical objects, a feat no other form of Internet traffic has yet been able to accomplish.

Antifa Tech Support

@shriramk I read that in the voice of George Plimpton and it was amazing.

DELETED

@shriramk thats why the follower are not included when you move your account. its illegal to transport humans in those trucks.

Parade du Grotesque ๐Ÿ’€

@shriramk

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck filled with hard disks and SSDs.

Laimis

@shriramk if by accident you get someone else's follower during the move, please return it to Mastodon Central Office. It's the right thing to do.

Badscrew

@shriramk hey I once seen Fedoraโ€™s packages delivered by van!

ElleDawgg (She/Her)

@shriramk

This is the best of ever ๐Ÿ˜Ž๐Ÿคฃ

Sibin

@shriramk Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway! ๐Ÿ˜‰

flappypaddle
That explains why it's userbase tends to have so much baggage. Hey-oh!
TundraWolf

@shriramk One of my lecturers used to say 'Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes'...

Shriram Krishnamurthi

@TundraWolf "AWS Snowmobile moves extremely large amounts of data to AWS. Transfer up to 100 PB per Snowmobile, a 45-foot-long ruggedized shipping container pulled by a semi-trailer truck."

Peter Nimmo

@shriramk @RickiTarr I would not be surprised if this was true, tbh ๐Ÿ˜‚

Peter Nimmo

@shriramk @RickiTarr to follow someone on a different server on #Mastodon, you have to cut and paste them. This has created an entire new industry of #hipsters who will paste for money

A man in a bucket hat and baggy camouflage clothing pastes flyers on to French style advertising pillar
Dave :koeln: :verialt:

@shriramk never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck packed full with drives, right?

Shriram Krishnamurthi

@Dave
AWS Snowmobile:
aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/
"AWS Snowmobile moves extremely large amounts of data to AWS. Transfer up to 100 PB per Snowmobile, a 45-foot-long ruggedized shipping container pulled by a semi-trailer truck."

Shriram Krishnamurthi

@toxtethogrady Genetically, maybe a bit more like this? (From Mainzer Fastnacht, 2015.)

Nuno & Lua :DsaprvingLua:

@shriramk makes sense since mastodons are too chonky to move in IP packets or avian carriers

Blaise Faint

@shriramk Now tell us how to prevent this truck getting stuck in a series of tubes...

juanejot

@shriramk SneakerNet has upgraded to competition with U-Haul, apparently.
Whatโ€™s the MPGB (mileage per gigabyte)?

jonathankorenโ„ข

@shriramk We did it people. We found the Internet's big truck.

Ike Rosen

@shriramk
๐Ÿ˜น๐Ÿ˜น๐Ÿ˜น๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ˜น๐Ÿ˜น๐Ÿ˜น

tsk

@shriramk If I find out they put a fedi data center in the old Swansea Mall (just off I-195) my head gonna xplode!!!

Shriram Krishnamurthi

@tasket Look out for any suspicious looking containers. (-:

David August

@shriramk feels like this falls into @lowqualityfactsโ€™s purview and expertise.

Sonnenkind ๐Ÿ’

@shriramk It reminds me of the beer protocol in Fido net some 30 years ago.

potatoxel
@shriramk o: but can they move from pleroma to another pleroma instance?
Leogorrus

@shriramk in fact, the need for admins to palletise and load the accounts is the origin of the 'forklift certified' meme

Deuchnord

@shriramk is the truck driven by John Mastodon himself?

small circle ๐Ÿ•Š in calmness

@shriramk in fact *any message* you send is shipped to a destination near you by a toot bus. I marvel about this intricate network.

A sign post of the TOOTbus in Paris, located near the Louvre.
Randy Noseworthy ๐Ÿ˜ผ :debian:

@shriramk
I just want to know how many accounts they can get into that truck?

thompsonize

@shriramk This reminds me of my favorite creaky old nerd bandwidth heuristic: will the upload you are contemplating finish faster or slower than loading a station wagon full of hard disks and driving it to the colo.

m'ughes

@shriramk brb starting an instance that conducts migrations exclusively through human-powered locomotion

Julian Crosson-Hill, ACC

@shriramk Somewhere, there is a congressperson taking this post seriously.

Shriram Krishnamurthi

@jcrossonhill My fame will be built on being utterly misquoted by a senator.

brucy

@shriramk HA, saw one of their trucks in the South End over the weekend and thought of this same joke.

Alex Chaffee

@shriramk

this is an upgrade from the earlier Avian Internet Protocol; mastodons have higher latency but much higher throughput than pigeons

๐Ÿ•Š๏ธ

kidding, not kidding:

datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/

web.archive.org/web/2014021413

Shriram Krishnamurthi

@alexch You're one of those still stuck on IPv4, aren't you. RFC 6214 or GTFOH.

Joseph Szymborski :qcca:

@shriramk "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

Andrew S. Tanenbaum - *Computer Networks*, 3rd ed., p. 83. (paraphrasing Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, University of Toronto Computing Services (UTCS) circa 1985)

nadin brzezinski

@shriramk @bobo_of_id thatโ€™s why itโ€™s so slow. Now we know, and knowing is half the battle

abhijith
@shriramk Wow... AWS Snowmobile with ActivityPub integration.
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