Notices by SlightlyCyberpunk (admin@mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com)

Christ when did utility poles become cache that needs to be constantly refreshed??

These executives must be *freaked* if they're sending goons out to rip paper off poles every day...

@lauren stumbled into this lovely example of that at work recently...and no, I was not trying to use any AI:

@bmacDonald94 I have Signal on my Android phone without any Google account connected...?

@lfa What server software are you running?

What's the current consensus on secure decentralized chat apps? We still on IRC/Jabber/Jitsi or is that all old news?

Apparently people are thinking that storing a copy of the Signal app will be enough to prevent fascists from shutting down secure comms. But of course, Signal is centralized so it'd be relatively easy to shut it down server-side. And while the code is all open, Signal has gone out of their way to shut down other projects trying to build on that code, so it probably would not be easy to make use of that at this point...

So should I just back up some Jabber apps and throw a server together or what? :)

Corporate putting in all of these extra hoops to jump through for "security" just to have the admins responsible for these systems go "I dunno what you're talking about, I'll just give you root access and you can do it yourself."

Lovely, even after explaining that corporate policy prohibits me from knowing the password to this account the admins are demanding that I be the one to choose the new password. OK then, I guess I'll take that secret unauthorized privilege escalation if you're just handing them out like fuckin candy...

Our unix admins seem very confused by the concept of FUCKING SSH

We've been trying to get this issue fixed since last week. It's fucking Thursday. "This issue" is a goddamn expired password on a service account whose password should not ever expire it the first place (it shouldn't allow you to login with the password, we don't need that, but now we can't login even without the password because it's expired.)

BUT PRIVATE CORPORATIONS ARE SOOO EFFICIENT!

Oh god I fear I've gone full middle-aged suburban white dad. For a minute there I was seriously considering trying to 3D print some kind of utility belt for holding a coffee cup.

But like...it's cold, so I want to bring some hot tea for the walk. But it's cold, so I would like to put my hands in my pockets not have to be holding the cup! I mean I could modify a bag to keep the cup upright easily enough but it'd still be a two hand operation to get it out and put it back...with a belt clip it could pop right off with one hand!

Sometimes I can just pocket that shit...but only if those aren't already filled with books and electronics...

@briansullivan @skinnylatte Yeah they definitely scam this. I worked for Tata for a few years. The trick is, your job is not your job. I was either an application team member, or a level three dev, or a senior analyst depending on who you asked. You'll have two guys trading shifts doing exactly the same work but the guy with a year more experience is here on an H1B and HR says he's a level 2 and the American working the other shift is a level 3 so the guy with the H1B gets paid 15% less.

And they'll justify that with education or annual reviews (which are largely political negotiations between managers) or whatever, but the fact is they're both doing the same work but the H1B worker gets paid less. And usually they work way more hours too. Because if they don't, they might no longer be in the top x% of the team and they'll get sent back to the team in India and one of those folks gets sent over here to replace them.

@FediTips I remember learning this when they first introduced edits but I think edits weren't widely supported by clients yet or something, so by the time I started seeing edits in the wild I'd forgotten. Just tried it out and it is excellent! Especially when someone edits a reallly long post, after you've boosted it. You get a notification that it changed, but it's good to be able to quickly know *what* they changed that now got your pre-emptive endorsement. Thanks for the reminder!

@brianvastag Oh shit it finally happened...I've been wondering when this would become a thing.

See, if you had ever asked my father what kind of music he listened to, you'd get specific artists and a detailed listing of subgenres. If you ask my mom what music she likes, you'll get an answer like "something happy"

The musicians my dad listened to probably do alright, but they certainly aren't world-famous millionaires. The musicians my mom listens to are though, because it's just whatever is on the radio, whatever is popular. Always felt weird that you kinda get paid more to make music for people who don't give a shit than you do if you make music for people who are super passionate about it. The easier you are to replace, the more money you seem to get.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Spotify is doing a good thing...but it did feel kinda inevitable to me that something like this would happen eventually...the secrecy and fraud ought to offend anyone, but I'm sure plenty of listeners had no issue with the music itself...

I just pictured the outcome being cheap tracks for streaming platforms and more exposure for random garage bands. But I guess I should have predicted fake bands instead, this is capitalism we're talking about after all...

@mekkaokereke Adam Ragusea has a few videos that are very helpful here! Helps to see the technique in action.

I don't have kids but my gf is a culinary school grad and pancakes are one of the few things she always complains that she *can't* cook well. So I had to figure something out there. I mostly do them as dessert -- use a blend of almond flour and cake flour, both butter and oil in the pan, mix in some crushed almonds, hazlenuts, and macadademia nuts...then slap a thin layer of nutella between two of those and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top :)

@evan Well, it certainly is not *great* software lol...I dunno, people were saying we needed tools to help newbies find their instance and I had some thoughts so I threw something quick together, didn't seem to get much interest and I certainly don't need it myself so I lost motivation...and now I think Mastodon officially pushes people to particular big instances so there's far less demand for such a thing...

Links are in my bio, although I wanted to make sure it even still works as it's been a while so here you go (it was *not* quite working, but I think it's fixed, so good luck lol)
https://mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com/experiments/index.php

@evan Not sure what Takahē is other than a bird lol

And it doesn't use nodeinfo, it uses /api/v2/instance...if that's not implemented it'll ignore that host (the goal was specifically to suggest Mastodon hosts, so if it's not Mastodon-based I don't care about it lol)...so yeah good point, maybe the extra domains can just not implement that api, not sure how that might impact Mastodon itself though.

@evan There's a lot of tools -- including a somewhat crappy one that I wrote -- that try to recommend instances for new users who don't know where to register, for one example. The way mine works is by querying instance stats so it can see if registrations are open, what types of media or post lengths are supported, language, user counts, etc. So if users start bringing their own domains I either get my DB cluttered with fake single-user instances or I end up giving someone two dozen suggestions that are actually all the same server. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who has code that will need to be redesigned if that one domain per instance requirement gets broken. And it's a reasonable assumption to make if you're focused on Mastodon, since its configuration files (.env.production) only allow a single domain to be specified.

You could just use it as an alias though:
https://guide.expressional.social/guide/use-your-own-domain/

@evan yeah that is precisely the problem. What's the response when you hit the API on that domain? Does it appear to be a separate single-user instance even though it isn't, or does it provide the stats for the entire instance resulting in a bunch of false duplicate data?

Edit: Also, how's that work for defederation? The original instance gets a pass because the abusive user brought their own domain and nobody can easily tell who is actually hosting it?

@evan some of us already do :)

All the code I've written for fedi is fucked if we start getting a bunch of domains per instance though...

I was also wondering how many people there really are who own a domain but don't want to host things but based on the results so far apparently a lot!

So there was this news report talking about how the number of homes exploding has been on the rise in recent years. They go interview some expert who says "about half" of the home explosions he sees are caused by natural gas lines. The report then goes on to discuss the various dangers and some safety tips for homes with natural gas.

Certainly a good PSA, but like...I am well aware that this gas is explosive. What I cannot figure out is how that is only causing HALF of the homes blowing up phonomenon. WTF is the other half?? I know we got some folks stockpiling guns and bombs in this country but surely not THAT MANY of those are going up each year, are they? But that's about the only thing I can think of, I can't imagine they're putting something like a water heater -- even one at Mythbusters scale -- in the same category as a gas explosion...propane grills and space heaters maybe? Would that blow up an entire house?