Notices by Zalasur (also David) (zalasur@mastodon.surazal.net)

For the past month and a half I've had to wear my "backup" sunglasses when driving. I was over at my in-laws' house and I figured I left the my good ones there. The backups aren't bad, but they aren't polarized lenses so they weren't quite as good for cutting glare.

We got over to the in-laws again today and asked if they'd seen my sunglasses and they were like, nope! I was confused until I reached into a forgotten pocket in my travel bag and... Yup I had them the entire time 😅

#Whoops

I'd like to make the following observation. Yesterday's Oval Office press briefing with Elon Musk was not a projection of strength. They are getting defensive. They know a lot of people are pissed at them and the walls are closing in.

I'm saying this because right now I'm seeing a lot of doomerism permeate the online discourse. This is not all inevitable. Keep fighting because whatever we doing, is getting to them. And it shows.

#USPolitics

I'm working on setting up a #mastodon instance and the most difficult part of it may be setting up a mail server. My last attempt ended in failure so this is basically my kryptonite. My question for #MastodonAdmins is: is it necessary to do that for a single-user instance or can I skate by without one, at least for the short term until I gather up the courage to try a second go at this?

@GottaLaff It's interesting that the front page placeholder says that President Trump will take care of everything (paraphrased).

But here is the thing. What if he doesn't? What if he *can't*?

Are the people mad at Biden for signing the law going to be mad at Trump next? Expectations are riding high.

@georgetakei It would appear that he's fine, but yeah that was a close call for him.

When the new #Mastodon update came out, I did not like the UI change to the Content Warning container.

Now that I've had a chance to get used to it, I've decided I *really* don't like the changes.

@georgetakei No, the worst part is when you parallel park and you get it perfectly, but no one sees it.

@mattwilcox American here. 👋

I could not agree with this statement more.

@mweston @tchambers @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews It's a private Zoom call being broadcast on YouTube

I'm going to suggest this account for fediblock. The US election is bringing out the "fake" accounts and this one is no exception. It looks like a satire account but the vibe I'm getting from the server in general is that it's not "friendly". It definitely looks like an attempt at impersonation.

at kamala at fuckgov.org

So I'm erring on the side of caution and recommending a #fediblock. I'll probably just block the entire instance.

#uspol #uspolitics

Just an FYI, there's an AI SPAM bot on dot social. Replying to posts on Mastodon claiming to rate your beauty. All you have to do is upload a picture of your face. I've reported it to the mods there but I'm posting it to the fediblock in case anyone else runs across this.

I'm guessing this won't be the last time we see this type of account.

@beautyfaceai@mastodon.social

#FediBlock

One thing I wish #PeerTube did was post a federated announcement whenever I went live. Right now I have to post things manually just like I did on Twitch which sort of defeats the purpose.

"But you can just create a new live video every time you go live and it will federate that" Do you know what a pain in the ass that is?

Ok fine, let's do this.

#StarTrekDiscovery #StarTrek

@RenewedRebecca @baldur Oh I know. I was there for that too. I was just trying to make an attempt at some light-hearted gallows humor 😉

@baldur "That now the only thing needed to get working software is to describe clearly what you want"

Ah, so our jobs are safe is what I'm hearing. 😂

@siege I'd be happy if they just picked Natasha Lyonne to narrate Civilization VII

@Dee Wait, if Linux distros are a gender, and text editors are also a gender, does that mean that gender is a multidimensional construct?

*takes notes furiously in vim*

A reminder that the guy who just got fired from OpenAI also wanted to scan everyone's eyeball with some sort of orb in exchange for Worldcoin, his pet crypto project. They told him that he was absolutely not allowed to do this in the US so he started spending a bunch of time in Africa and Southeast Asia in the hopes of finding enough suckers for his program.

Now keep in mind I do this for fun. I do not have any designs to doing this for a living. I play games but I also like to chat with people. So this is basically an expensive hobby for me and I'd like to make sure things don't spiral out of control.

I use #Linode for hosting and I have no complaints so far. The server hosting is about $48/mo for 4 VCPUs. This is because when I do a live stream, the transcoding process eats up two full CPUs easily.

That makes up the bulk of the cost. (cont'd)

I've got a few months of hosting a #peertube instance and have learned quite a few things. One thing that surprised me was that the cost of storage and network bandwidth was not nearly as much as I thought it was going to be. That being said, the cost of hosting a server capable of handling the CPU loads of transcoding a live #stream turned out to be quite higher than I was expecting.

I can afford it but it has me looking at what my plans are for the future with an eye towards cost. (cont'd)