Notices by Terence Eden (edent@mastodon.social), page 8

SETI is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. They use massive radio-telescopes to search the sky for signs of intelligent life. But the sky is big. Where should we point the telescopes to improve our chances of detecting a signal?

Rather than point at random stars, or promising looking constellations, I propose a more scientific approach:

Find a planet where the length of the year is an integer multiple of the length of the day.

1/2

M*A*S*H Intro - despecialised!

This sort of shows you how much more you lose with the 16:9 crop.

Sure, there is a bit extra from the left and right of the frame - but not masses.

Interestingly, the scaling of the 16:9 version doesn't seem linear.
But here's a quick mock-up in GIMP to show what the *full* frame would look like.

This restores the extra picture at the top of the 4:3 version, and the extra picture at the sides of the 16:9 crop.

I can turn this into a video - but it's hard syncing to different video sources.

Idly looking at the difference between the original 4:3 release of MASH and the new widescreen version.

The newer version looks so much better - but crops a fair bit from the top and bottom.

But the original version is missing a bunch of stuff from the sides of the images.

Now wondering if I can correct the scaling of the 16:9 version and overlay it on the 4:3 to get the maximum amount of image 😆

@Gargron oh yeah. And every time they say sorry and pay it a few days later.
I don't need the hassle, so will drop them as a client. Life's too short to work with people who aren't professional.

@Gargron once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is <del>enemy action</del> incompetence.

@Gargron Printed very plainly on the invoice. And on the emails. And the contract!

🥰 I have a client who pays me on time *every* month.

😡 And every single month I have to remind them to pay the VAT.

I suspect I will not keep them as a client for much longer.

@evan thanks! I've just finished writing a PHP parser for verifying signatures. And I have Some Thoughts!

🆕 blog! “HTTP Signature Infinite Loop?”

I'm trying to get my head round HTTP Signatures as they're used extensively in the Fediverse. Conceptually, they're relatively straightforward. You send me a normal HTTP request. For example, you want to POST something to https://example.com/data You send me these headers: POST /data Host: example.com Date: Sa…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/http-signature-infinite-loop/
⸻
#ActivityPub #CyberSecurity #encryption #fediverse #http

Woo! #Matter plugs have arrived.

Plan is to connect them to a domestic appliance to see if I can use the power monitoring to detect when they have stopped.

Has anyone here used a #Matter smart plug to detect when an electrical appliance has *finished* doing something?

For example, I want to plug in my rice cooker and get an alert on my phone when its electrical use drops to zero.

Ideally using something like #HomeAssistant - but I'm not fussed.

(Looking for people with direct & personal experience; I know how to use Google. Also, not looking for your criticisms of #IoT.)

I can understand a small, cheap, lower power, minimal bandwidth device being restricted to 2.4GHz WiFi.

But I wonder if this really does *only* support #IPv6?

My router supports it - although my ISP doesn't. Fun experiments ahead!

#IoT #Matter

@snarfed.org nice - thanks. Gives me something to fiddle with.

🆕 blog! “ActivityPub Server in a Single PHP File”

Any computer program can be designed to run from a single file if you architect it wrong enough! I wanted to create the simplest possible Fediverse server which can be used as an educational tool to show how ActivityPub / Mastodon works. The design goals were: Upload a single PHP file to the server. No […]

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/activitypub-server-in-a-single-file/
⸻
#ActivityPub #mastodon #php

🆕 blog! “Internationalise The Fediverse”

We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/internationalise-the-fediverse/
⸻
#ActivityPub #fediverse #i18n #mastodon #unicode

Just saw someone arguing that Mastodon should proactively *prevent* people from posting selfies on the public timeline.

Apparently, people just do not understand that the risk the someone might do something nefarious with them is just too high.

The mind boggles.

@drdrmc @neil
I think you slightly misunderstand what it means to be an advisor inside Government. When I was there, we produced "negative" advice all the time. We pointed out the limits of what was possible, what didn't work, what the risks were of implementing something.

But, ultimately, elected officials make those decisions because they're the ones answerable to the electorate.

OK. Here's another "developing in the open" post.

I've written an #ActivityPub server which can be deployed as a *single* #PHP file.

No databases, no libraries, no dependencies, no frameworks. Also, no advanced features!

It is currently powering the user example@example.viii.fi

I am looking for alpha testers. All you need is a domain, PHP 8, and the ability to add a custom .htaccess rule to your server.

If you'd like to try it out & give me feedback, please drop me a message.