Notices by SlightlyCyberpunk (admin@mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com), page 2

@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?

@junior42 @Radical_EgoCom Yeah but as I said I also see no celebration there, merely a refusal to comply with the various media billionaires who demand mourning. Which you seem to be in agreement on.

Like I am honestly confused what part of any of these comments you see as celebratory...that is not the tone I am parsing from this at all man...

@junior42 @Radical_EgoCom Not the person you asked, but I see it as a refutation of the current media circus which wants us to feel sorry for him...while explicitly NOT feeling sorry for any of his own victims. If we should mourn him, then we must mourn his victims a thousand times more. If we should not mourn them, then we certainly should not feel a single twinge sympathy for him.

Jesus fucking christ can we stop telling people they should have voted for the "lesser evil" and start thinking about how we vote for the GREATER GOOD?

Like honestly what the actual fuck is wrong with these people...telling everyone that it is immoral to not be evil...ya'll need some professional psychological help...

@david_megginson @mekkaokereke Sure, but what happens when this person quits because they're working 14 hour shifts seven days a week because nobody can get anything done without running it by them first? I have seen these people get a coworker coming to their house and pounding on their door to get them to login to help with something on their day off. That shit gets bad very fast.

So perhaps your org can afford to say that this task is getting delayed a week because that essential person is out...but otherwise, if deadlines aren't gonna move for them alone, if whoever is there at the moment is going to be pushed to get that info however they can, then you need a different solution then just letting it all sit on one guy.

@mekkaokereke Well...we don't really want to reward that though. Having those people mean your org is in trouble. Get that shit documented so people don't have to waste a bunch of time asking around trying to find that guy.

@mekkaokereke While people here argue if "welcome packs" are OK, other people here have been putting such packs together for years already. @FediTips lists several on their website. I think a bunch of my initial follows came from https://fedi.directory/, they've been around for a while. The problem is not that we lack these things; the "problem" for a lot of people is that they are decentralized, and that means they require the new user to make some choices and seek things out.

And for a lot of people, that's an improvement. That's why we're here. To not have $15M in VC funding pushing its preferred content into our faces. But hey if you want the welcome packs they're right there, go use 'em.

@seachanger I dunno. It's tempting to say that Mastodon is too focused on not repeating the mistakes of other social media that they aren't replicating the good things either, while Bluesky is so focused on replicating the experience of other networks that they're repeating a lot of the same mistake too.

But that cash issue is not just a cash issue. It's an exploitation issue. As far as I can tell, "trust and safety" on other platforms simply cannot be done without mass abuse and exploitation, *even with* millions in VC money to burn. They have such "good" moderation by giving impoverished people PTSD every day in exchange for a one dollar wage. The secret isn't an algorithm, it's sweatshops full of people watching children get abused all day long. There is no tried and true solution Mastodon can use here. There is nothing they can learn from other networks. "Fuck that, we're not doing that here" is absolutely the best thing that can be learned from how other platforms handle content moderation.

Could Mastodon Gmbh do more experimentation to try to find a better solution? Sure. Always. Could other people who think they have a great solution just implement it themselves? Also yes. Several are actively doing that, with varying degrees of success. I kinda prefer that, personally. Especially considering that I have yet to see any solution that is not a centralized system. Mastodon is centralized enough already, but at least we can have multiple centers for multiple tasks instead the entire damn thing under one single company for most users.

But it is a Very Fucking Hard Problem.

@br00t4c Fun thing about this is you can put any word or phrase you want in place of "private equity" there, the answer is still no.

@w3c @evan @tomcoates @mallory Uhh...so why does the footer of that site link to Twitter and Meta but NOT to any Fediverse profile? How the hell does this org expect to be taken seriously talking about "increasing use of the fediverse" when they don't even use it themselves?

Please don't promote these kinds of scams, W3C...

@aral am I missing something? The "terrorist attack" you mention is the pager bombs from this week, right? But the quote you give is is from about two months ago, not after this particular attack (although there were certainly plenty of other Israeli war crimes happening at that time)

(not saying her ads aren't a fucking scam either, just want a clear timeline of her bullshit)