Notices by Misty (misty@digipres.club)

I really wish it were wider knowledge that most of the content on Forbes.com is basically unreviewed blogging that didn't go through an editorial process. I still see a lot of people trust random posts they see there because they believe it's a business publication with actual reporters and editors. *Some* of the content is but a lot sure isn’t!

I don't blame individuals for not knowing, but I definitely think a lot of people'd be able to judge stuff better if they did.

Absolutely love this dive into why those old 88x31 banners are *exactly* 88x31. I always thought 31 seemed like a funny height... https://ultrasciencelabs.com/lab-notes/why-we-are-still-using-88x31-buttons

Wow, this Pixelfed bug is *nasty*. Allowed users to access private posts of remote users they're not following so long as another user on the same Pixelfed server legitimately followed that account.

If you're running a Pixelfed server, definitely upgrade immediately now that the vulnerability is publicly known.

https://fokus.cool/2025/03/25/pixelfed-vulnerability.html

I don't like it and I want to preserve the open web, but things can't keep going like this. Something has to change to stop/slow down these companies for people to be *able* to keep things open and accessible. And it's the smaller publishers and individuals who are being hurt the most and being driven offline or to more closed platforms.

I really can't overemphasize how destructive this is to the open web. The web is built just as much on a consensus on how to fairly do things as it is on technical measures keep things going, and AI scrapers have blown that up. https://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2025/03/ai-bots-are-destroying-open-access.html

I know Molly White wrote a passionate post recently asking people not to throw away open access just to stop AI scrapers, but many people *don't have a choice* anymore. If the old deal is broken, some people may be forced to take things private.

Overseas Canadians: now that an election's been called, I recommend getting registered to vote from abroad right away. This applies if you're just going to be on a trip on election day too. I've done it before, when an election was called while I was on my honeymoon, and it wasn't a difficult process at all. Something cool about voting from an embassy, honestly. https://travel.gc.ca/travelling/living-abroad/elections-faq

This license situation is getting too complicated. I'm going back to the Strongest License.
https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113765980154905389

I really can't get over how irresponsible it is for MS to tell people to throw away or recycle perfectly working computers. There are so many machines people *could* keep using for much longer if not for Windows 11.
https://mastodon.social/@dosnostalgic/114184937238415364

BTW I should mention that this is a screenshot taken via oldweb.today, a website that lets you emulate a bunch of old browsers to browse the wayback machine or even the live web. https://oldweb.today

It's a @webrecorder project, and *very* cool IMO.

Pizza Hut website (ca 1996, in NCSA Mosaic 3)

For years and years, I've been searching for a rare Canadian computer game - and I finally found it. Really excited to get to share Crosscountry BC.

If you grew up here there's a good chance you played Crosscountry Canada at school. This is the local BC version, made just for local schools, and tracking it down was *really* hard.

https://cdrom.ca/games/cancon/2025/03/18/crosscountry-bc.html

Really interesting seeing @mirlo prioritize keeping the service cheap to run for its users running their own instances. Often not a priority for this kind of open source web service. https://mirlo.space/post/222

"The Net's gotten so big that it's hard for people to find you." December, 1996
https://muffin.industries/@wayback_exe/114119227095914582

Wow, this is pretty: https://defector.com/its-snowing-sea-cucumbers-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea?giftLink=b15c1b7edf12030a6d7bf1c84800f30b

Trying to track down the source of stuff online is so weird these days. Ars Technica mentions the “Brother printers blocking third-party ink" thing that just started blowing up is I guess because someone made a video that's sourced from a three-year-old reddit post? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink/

So what's up with the "fediverse chick" spam anyway? It's relentless

Truly incredible moment in time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gay_Girl_in_Damascus

There's a Black Voices in Gaming event going on on Steam right now! Really nice seeing Spirit Swap right on the front page; *great* game. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/30894338-Media-Indie-Exchange/sale/bvig-bhm25

Discovered to my horror today that Python's unpacking can unpack characters from strings as though they were arrays.

a, b = "ab”
a #=> "a"
b #=> “b”

Managed to find one of my white whale CD-ROMs, and started writing a blog post on it... hoping to have something to publish soon. Really exciting find for me