You Can See Everything is as fantastic as everyone says, and there's not a person in it whose involvement isn't a source of mystery to me.

I expect approximately two people to fully get this joke, and one of them will be me stumbling across it in my post history a year from now.

Killer Mike: It'll be fine, because you didn't engage the roopidoop.

Nathan Fielder: …

Killer Mike: You didn't engage the roopidoop, right?

"… as robotaxis continue to spread to new cities, local officials are discovering more unintended consequences of their new robot residents, leading to even more rules and an ever-growing patchwork of complexity for operators." https://www.theverge.com/transportation/1013220/robotaxi-self-driving-car-laws

When your friends who only use corporate social media platforms ask what the fediverse is good for, tell them that, if nothing else, it's a good place to find out what legitimate speech the corporation is quietly censoring and suppressing on the platform they use.

finally read "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", recommended by @bisimilarJames

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

in short
- every group has some structure
- if not acknowledged, it is informal
- if it is informal, it can't be held accountable
- acknowledged and publicly described structure is better, but not perfect & existing models can be exclusionary
- accountability is critical to accessibility
- allocate tasks according to abilities, allow people to learn, and rotate who does what

#feminism

You cannot iron a cat the same way you iron a suit. Instead, have the cat stretch out in a patch of sunlight, and wait 10 to 15 minutes. Once the cat has warmed to a sufficient temperature, smooth out their coat with the flat of your hand. When the cat rolls over, smooth out the opposite side. This is especially important on days when the cat has a job interview or formal event to attend.

Different fediverse services provide different toolsets for enabling you to construct your own algorithm. And, as I pointed out here: https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/117456405580408518 there's room to implement tools that allow for even more customized personal algorithms. But it's important that we never lose sight of the fact that not turning control of our timelines over to a third party is one way the fediverse guards against the sort of manipulation and dark patterns that characterize other social media networks.

"No algorithm on the fediverse" is the wrong framing. "You build your own algorithm" is closer to the truth. Reverse chronological is the basic formula, and each person configures their account to build on that basis. Every followed hashtag, every filtered term, every account added or removed from a list, every blocked server or muted account changes your personal algorithm. What we mean when we say "no algorithm" is that there's no company imposing their algorithm on your account.

What if, and I'm just spitballing here, what if orgs and institutions deprived corporate platforms of the power to ban and demote by simply refusing to operate on them in the first place?

Malicious automated activities are hijacking accounts and then direct mentioning 30 to 40 accounts preceded by a URL that is a Google domain followed by a share dot google (URL-shortened) link (eg google.tld/share.google?q=VALUE)

IFTAS will refer to this activity as #sgSpam

This page will track helpful posts and mitigations for administrators and end users. See below.

DO NOT CLICK/TAP ANY LINKS ASSOCIATED WITH THESE MESSAGES – there are reports of these links serving malware.

For Administrators

https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/117457041484080186

https://social.lol/@neatnik/117456567939745803

For End Users

• Add two factor authentication to your account if your service supports it.
• If you believe your password may have been compromised (or if you re-use passwords) change your password. Longer is better than complex.
  • You can check to see if password associated with the email address you used to create your account has been compromised: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
• Where possible, use a password manager to ensure you use a unique password for every Internet service you use. EFF has good guidance on this decision.
• If your service supports filtering/hiding messages, filter “share.google” or “/share.google?” – but be aware this will filter/hide messages that contain non-malicious links from other people who use Google products to share links online.

Something To Add?

If you have specific guidance for Administrators or End Users you’d like IFTAS to review, please send it to @iftas or contact@iftas.org for review, please include the hashtag #sgSpam

Today I learned that a rice cooker works because of a specially designed magnet that loses its magnetism at just over 100C (Curie point).

When you switch it on, a piece of metal sticks to the magnet, completing the circuit and heating on high. Heat stays on high until all of the water is absorbed or boiled off, at which point the temp rapidly climbs and the magnet drops the switch.

There's a dust-up over an AI ad from Bookshop.org. But they didn't use AI; Meta's ad platform automatically created an AI "variation" of the original, non-AI content.

I went to disable this crap in our Shiraki Press ad account, and got served a popup *demanding a reason why*.

Fuck Meta for this. Consent matters. We've just pulled all paid advertising from their platforms.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@h4ckernews/117458897087491527

hero

There are major account take-over problems happening right now on mastodon instances - all appearances are that the actor is using stolen passwords, probably from malware running on desktops. I've suspended hundreds of compromised accounts over the past 48 hours, but only two on mine.

If you run a mastodon instance, here is a postgres query I use to randomize the passwords of accounts that have been inactive for 6 months or more. It also removes logged in sessions. This doesn't lock people out, just makes them perform a password reset. Yes, I wish I didn't have to do this, but here we are. I hope it helps someone else.

BEGIN;

CREATE TEMP TABLE dormant_batch ON COMMIT DROP AS
SELECT u.id AS user_id
FROM users u
WHERE COALESCE(u.current_sign_in_at, u.created_at) < now() - interval '6 months'
AND NOT u.otp_required_for_login
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM webauthn_credentials w WHERE w.user_id = u.id)
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM oauth_access_tokens t
WHERE t.resource_owner_id = u.id
AND t.revoked_at IS NULL
AND t.last_used_at > now() - interval '6 months');
UPDATE users u
SET encrypted_password = '$2a$10$' || left(replace(gen_random_uuid()::text || gen_random_uuid()::text, '-', ''), 53),
updated_at = now()
FROM dormant_batch b
WHERE u.id = b.user_id;

UPDATE oauth_access_tokens t SET revoked_at = now()
FROM dormant_batch b
WHERE t.resource_owner_id = b.user_id AND t.revoked_at IS NULL;

DELETE FROM session_activations s
USING dormant_batch b
WHERE s.user_id = b.user_id;

SELECT COALESCE(y::text, 'total') AS last_seen_year, count(*) AS locked
FROM (SELECT date_part('year', COALESCE(u.current_sign_in_at, u.created_at))::int AS y
FROM dormant_batch b JOIN users u ON u.id = b.user_id) s
GROUP BY ROLLUP (y) ORDER BY y NULLS LAST;

COMMIT;

#mastoadmin #fediadmin

Apophatic theology, often associated with Philo of Alexandria, is the tradition that seeks to elucidate the nature of deity by detailing what is not true about the divine.

For example, God Money is not:
• looking for the cure
• concerned about the sick among the pure
• not one to choose

Different era, and almost the polar opposite style-wise, but the end credits theme from WKRP is also a banger of a TV theme. https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_3805

Woke up with L.A. Law theme stuck in my head again. https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_5775

Dueling, high-profile documentaries about Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes — incarceration looming large in one, and conspicuously absent in the other — kinda makes its own point about who can get away with what, now doesn't it?

I'd be very curious to see a recording of Lugosi's performance in one of the stage adaptations of Dracula that preceded Browning's version. The film relies a lot on shadowed close-ups of Dracula hypnotizing his victims. I imagine a stage production would have given him more scope to, y'know… act. Unfortunately, I don't know of any recordings, and the state of film probably made it pretty impractical at the time.