Notices by Kevin Davidson (metalsamurai@mas.to)

Apple plans to update iPhones in-store without opening the boxes
I see the use case for this, but the ability to remotely power up a switched off iPhone, flash some firmware and then switch it off again, all with no physical access, seems… uh, risky? I bet the Cellebrite people are keen to see how this works.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/10/15/apple-plans-to-update-iphones-in-store-without-opening-the-boxes

@gr0k @shoq @atomicpoet @gruber I hope eventually knowledge about the Fediverse will spread, so there will be more general awareness that it’s one big social network, but you can choose your preferred on ramp. Like picking a set top box that supports your preferred streaming services, or having a favourite coffee shop (they all sell coffee, but the presentation and vibe is different).

@maegul @atomicpoet I’ve got accounts on Mastodon, Akkoma, CalcKey, Friendica (and a couple of WriteFreely instances). I almost entirely use mobile (iOS), so a good app experience makes the biggest difference to me.
So far Mastodon/Ice Cubes wins. Fast, slick, power efficient (I used to use Metatext and that drained my battery quickly). I’m missing long posts and emoji reactions.
CalcKey/Kimis is close. Give me post editing and updated Kimis and I might switch.

@markrprior @maegul @atomicpoet Once you’ve seen Emoji reactions and the parallel world you’re missing out on, it feels restricting to go back. CalcKey is promising to let me transfer all my posts as well (with different URLs, but that’s another issue the Fediverse as a whole needs to address).

https://calckey.social/notes/9dy99rogzb

@csolisr @maegul @atomicpoet @markrprior It’s a difficult problem. It’s one Bluesky claim they know how to do, but absolutely do not when you check into it. CalcKey is close to having a minimally functional version, with some of the problems I discuss in this post

https://metalsamurai.wordpress.com/2023/03/26/more-on-mastodon-and-portable-identities/

(They tried it and turned it off when they hit the timeline spamming problem I talk about in the post)

@IceCubesApp @goatsarah @atomicpoet @MonaApp It’s my current favourite as it’s so smooth and fast, yet also extremely battery friendly. And pretty much every time I’ve thought “I wish it would do this…”, then that appears in next, almost daily, update.
The non Mastodon platforms could certainly do with a slick iOS app.

@atomicpoet @MonaApp @fediversenews Disappontingly @IceCubesApp doesn’t spot that this is an ActivityPub compatible server and instead of showing the post as normal it switches to the internal web browser to display the page generated by your instance. Tried @MonaApp and it does the same.
It’s the same web experience that you can’t interact (like/follow/boost) from that point on.

@carlrj @sukima @atomicpoet @fediversenews @quephird I’m still salty because I thought we’d decided long ago that surrounding text with asterisks meant BOLD. But Markdown breaks that by treating it as EMPHASIS, which usually gets shown as ITALICS. As everyone knows, italics should be represented by surrounding the text with //.

#xkcd927 https://xkcd.com/927/

@carlrj @sukima @atomicpoet @fediversenews @quephird Again, leading and trailing underscores mean UNDERLINE*. I was so angry when I first heard about Markdown (from people’s glowing reports about how wonderful, simple and obvious it was). Just took existing conventions and scrambled them up for no reason.

* of course if you really wanted to underline ironically you’d follow each individual character with the ^H_ sequence.

@carlrj @sukima @atomicpoet @fediversenews @quephird The conventions I’m describing were in widespread use long before Markdown. If there are any text corpuses of Usenet posts or mailing lists from the 90s you’d find them in use everywhere, alongside old style ascii smileys. Markdown has now drowned out the old *bold* /italic/ _underline_ and I’m apparently now an old guy shaking my fist at the sky demanding the youngsters get off the lawn.

@AlisonW @carlrj @sukima @atomicpoet @fediversenews @quephird You predate me. I only discovered Usenet in the late 80s. I definitely did not imagine this.

It’s mentioned in this document.
http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/EmphasisPattern

@CommissarMatis @atomicpoet @Sarahp @fediversenews Bluesky was never real. It was vapourware to keep people on Twitter and stop anyone from exploring alternatives that actually existed and worked (like the Fediverse).
Now that Twitter is clearly dying they’re forced to “launch”, but it’s obviously unfinished after $millions and years of work.

@azzageddi @atomicpoet @fediversenews Bluesky was never real. AFAICT it was a Dorsey vanity project that would ring fence some Twitter money for him to play with and distract from some of Twitter’s failings with a vague promise of jam tomorrow. Millions of dollars, years of engineering and still nothing to show for it with basic issues like moderation left out. Only forced to “launch” by Twitter’s implosion.

@Stark9837 @buercher @user8e8f87c @fediversenews Shouldn’t be an issue. My instance has a limited post size (500?), but I see very long posts in my timeline all the time.

@buercher @user8e8f87c @fediversenews

https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

I feel like there must be other minimal ActivityPub code out there. @davew may be able to help?

@buercher @user8e8f87c @fediversenews Needing a whole Mastodon (or similar) instance seems like overkill. It only needs bare minimum ActivityPub support for follow/unfollow. Wordpress and other similar things support that.

@Stark9837 @fediversenews On the other hand I might want to be aware of some one re-boosting a call to arms (poll, go fund me, petition) because they still need responses and further publicity.

@Stark9837 @fediversenews I’m conflicted. It’s frustrating to see the same post dozens of times in the same day. It’s also annoying to start reading a great toot and then realise you boosted it yourself 3 weeks ago and it’s come back round again. I don’t need to read it again, but it might be nice to know the booster finally got a chance to read and appreciate it.

@AlisonW @sashafox @dalias @sam @atomicpoet @fediversenews A bot account you follow to opt in seems much better. You can block it. Your admin can fediblock it, and run a “safe space” (or maybe a ghost town if search is super popular and everyone wants to opt in).

@AlisonW @sashafox @dalias @sam @atomicpoet @fediversenews This stuff shouldn’t be in the bio AT ALL. It’s repurposing a free text field that’s intended for humans, not bots. If it really has to be on your profile, then one of the Metadata tags could be used to list the search/index engines you’ve opted in to. I still don’t like it.