Notices by Matt Cengia (mattcen@aus.social)

I remember reading previously that one shouldn't switch an #ActivityPub server between implementations (e.g. from #Mastodon to #GoToSocial), but never understood why. I know a fair bit about AP but haven't read the full spec.
Can somebody please tl;dr this for me? Is it primarily due to the private keys used to sign activities, or something more complex?

Stop 👏🏻 emailing 👏🏻 OTP 👏🏻 codes 👏🏻 instead 👏🏻 of 👏🏻 prompting 👏🏻 for 👏🏻 passwords!
Latest culprit is Netflix. I have a password. It's in my password manager. Ask for it *before* sending me an unsolicited email and making me dig for the "just use a password" option! 🤬

Mathematical expressions can be represented as binary trees. For example, (1 + 2) can be represented with a peak node "+", linked to exactly 2 child nodes, "1" and "2".
In a slightly more complex example, (3 - (1 + 2)) can be represented by a peak node "-", which has 2 child nodes: a left child node of "3", and a right child node of "+". "+" also has 2 child nodes: "1" on the left, "2" on on the right.
In this way, every operator (plus, minus, times, divide, etc.) is a node with two children, and each value, or operand, is a leaf node (i.e. has no children).
Below are three expression trees.

@inthehands Firstly, consider what context a *sighted* person would need to know to understand a diagram like this for the very first time. Write accompanying text to facilitate that context. Then describe each tree individually (as separate images) verbatim. The context should not be part of the alt text; that gives more info to folks who read alt text to those who don't, which isn't the intent of alt text.
I'd take inspiration from places like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_expression_tree and https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/expression-tree/.

Hello Fedi, perhaps you can help me with a #USB #TTL #FTDI question:
I have two of these devices: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006150051861.html#nav-specification: The red USB-C version, and the blue mini-USB version. The red version has a pair of jumpers to control whether it outputs 3.3v or 5v, and this seems to work fine.
The blue version has a switch for the same purpose, but doesn't change the output voltage (whose pin is clearly labelled 5V rather than VCC). Is there another pin I'm missing that should be outputting 3.3vV

Hey @fastmail! This new "Show avatars" beta feature that's just rolled out… am I correct that's using (in the absence of a Gravatar etc), domain website favicons?
If so, how do I distinguish these from logos shown via BIMI?

@delta It's impossible to protect user metadata the way Signal does when you're constrained to SMTP as your protocol, though.

How the heck does Google let this happen? I don’t use Chrome usually, but was fixing someone’s computer today and switching their ad-blocker, and noticed that the second search result for “ublock”, which reviews describe as malware, looks more legit than the actual, not only because it’s the only one with a “verified” website badge, but it has a “featured” badge as well! Unbelievable.

I'm a bit disappointed to be missing #EverythingOpen this year, but I just can't justify attending a conference of that size without it having a strong health & safety policy. (While I haven't signed the @phpledge, I am aligned with its expectations in most cases. And I really don't want to catch #COVID again!)
It'll be the first #LinuxConfAU-shaped conference I've missed since I started attending in 2012. 😢

I *hate* it when companies do this. Of *course* this is *My* Telstra; it's my bloody phone! Stop prefixing all my mobile app names with "My" and making it hard to find them in the alphabetical list!

stop using discord for your open-source communities

I get that when you're working on stuff and not getting paid for it, it can make sense to seek the platforms with the lowest friction and barriers to entry, but between IRC, #Matrix (and by extension, Gitter), and #XMPP, there are plenty of options that don't include vendor lock-in.