I might actually end up using Signal.
My issue has always been how it takes over your phone number...
theintercept.com/2024/03/04/si…
Signal’s New Usernames Help Keep the Cops Out of Your Data
Ephemeral usernames instead of phone numbers safeguard privacy — and makes the Signal messenger app even harder to subpoena.Micah Lee (The Intercept)
Any usage of "AI" detection is trash and accomplishes nothing but hurting innocent people.
youtu.be/7Av0w55Q6Ps?si=f6I3Yu…
Grammarly use lands college kid on probation | FOX 5 News
A University of North Georgia student is on academic probation after she says she used Grammarly to proofread her paper. After submitting her work through Tu...YouTube
This'll piss off 40k fans lol
youtube.com/shorts/KLOq2R8jUeI…
Vtuber learning about Warhammer with Twitch chat
Chat is teaching me all about the emperor and the bugs and stuff and I'm learning a lotStreamed live on my Twitch channel, come say hi! https://www.twitch.tv...YouTube
Sorry I've not been on here for a while. Been busy.
Mastodon vs the Fediverse
I don't mean this title as a comparison, but as an antagonistic relationship...
I've been off-and-on in the fediverse for longer than Mastodon has existed, I've followed the building of the fediverse since before ActivityPub ever existed.
I still consider it a blessing the explosive growth that happened within the fediverse... but I'm honestly sickened by the Mastodon effect of it...
So many of the new people hopped on Mastodon and thought that fediverse is just another name for Mastodon... some people even got so far as thinking fediverse is just another name for ActivityPub...
And people came with so many flawed views of what they think the fediverse is as well as completely unrealistic ideas of what it should be.
So many people see it as this miracle pill against all the evils of corporate social servers like Twitter, fixing every single problem that's ever existed in those communities.
... Those people are completely delusional... but they're loud and violent.
They get pissed off any time they run into the actual fediverse... they get pissed off when they realize there's platforms other than Mastodon that don't even remotely behave like Mastodon or especially their imaginary version of Mastodon.
And frankly... I'm getting pissed off at the entitlement of these people.
They think the fediverse is all about their consent on who can see their posts... this is like going to a waterpark and complaining that you didn't consent to getting wet... you went to a waterpark! When you post on the fediverse, you have consented... if you don't consent then you don't post to the fediverse. Reminds me of the annoying cycles of people sharing blocks of vaguely legal looking text to Facebook to try and override the TOS, thinking they can just say "I don't consent to the TOS" to get out of it when you explicitly consented by joining and you revoke that consent by leaving.
They think this is the place for private insular communities... because they walked into an empty park and thought "this public space is mine and will never have crowds of people wandering through". They get pissed at the idea of Meta joining the fediverse with Threads because it means there might be actually be a crowd walking through this public space...
They fuss about community as if their little tiny corner of the fediverse is the whole thing. They mistake their standards and agreements as those for the whole fediverse.
And worst of all these people will actively harass someone over expanding the federation of the fediverse in a way that's not only normal, but part of the specific design of how this place works... especially as these people are so damn clueless they think this is a single instance they can just tear down with pitchforks as opposed to just the one that briefly crossed their attention.
People who want to actively destroy the fediverse by isolating it, breaking it, and otherwise trying to "control" it can get bent.
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This. This. This.
Great read that breaks down everything wrong with the whole bridgyfed drama.
A libre networking project that’s designed to bridge protocol spaces together announced its progress and intentions, and Mastodon users freaked out.wedistribute.org/2024/02/tear-…
Jamie Booth reshared this.
Watching people freak out over someone making a bridge to another fedi platform...
Do people even know how the fediverse works? Interoperability?
Boggles my mind how much impact people think a shittily moderated instance will impact the broader system.
People flip over the idea of connecting to Bluesky or Threads... how many of you know about the trainwreck of Nostr and it's AP bridge? That's the worst network of them all and you still don't hear about it, which tells you everything you need to know.
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Call for help for emergency vet bills, thankfully my fur-nibling is safe now but my sibling Dandelion is under a lot of strain from this.
Hey friends: my dog got into something he shouldn't and I've been left with a $700 emergency vet bill. Doggo is okay now, thankfully, but I could use some assistance if anyone has anything to give. Venmo: @ronanjoem
#EmergencyAid #VetBills #Pets #Dogs
Vanessa likes this.
Ugh... Stress got to me...
Down with a low grade fever
Ugh... I am sick of finances right now... my cat had an emergency followed by my sibling/roommate having emergencies and I have been running in poverty mode for weeks now with at least a whole month to go...
Latest issue: gotta pay rent and my phone bill on the 5th, but only enough money to cover on... Need to scrounge up $150 or so before Tuesday ($10-$20 more if after Friday because some other things are hitting) or they're going to put restrictions on our phones (yes it's alot, it's 3 phone lines + 4 device payments). And it's not that I don't really have the money... I just have the money 3 days later...
Hey there, autistic with a special interest in intellectual property law...
Chime in below if you'd like me to actually debunk the misinformation going around about Mickey Mouse's public domain status.
I'm low on energy so I'll save my rant until I know someone actually cares to learn what I know...
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@Ga Schu You can find it here: foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095…
I think I feel confident enough that people may actually read this now:First of all is to throw out just about everything you've seen. Extremely few things are even mostly accurate, and the few I've seen of those bury the facts deep under fearmongering...
Public domain means you can use that version however you like... so long as you're not violating some other law (such as trademark) in the process. Copyright no longer applies and it's much the same as the works of Shakespeare, or the Brothers Grimm (which notably Disney used to build much of it's empire...)
Since Public Domain is as simple as it can get, that part is fairly clean and hard to distort... Trademark on the other hand goes way over many peoples' heads.
First, basic idea of trademark: it's specifically narrow in scope, does not prohibit others from using the trademarked property in general, only prohibits it's use in ways that would confuse people or would dilute the trademark.
Simply put, if a reasonable person would get confused looking at that usage of Mickey and could think it was something official from Disney... then it's a violation of their trademark.
Notably the trademark they have applies to the name Mickey Mouse (and names have no copyright) as well as the depiction of Mickey Mouse (in all versions, both copyrighted and public domain).
The reality is there's only really two things you can't do:
* Use Mickey in any way that's not clearly separate from Disney (and including things like a big bold "Unofficial" or "Not Licensed By Disney" or similar does cover that, just so long as they're not hidden).
* Use Mickey or a mouse reasonably confused for Mickey in your branding (this constitutes dilution, which means while people may not be confused it does make it so Mickey stops being associated with Disney)Notable odd details not usually covered:
* If you make a significantly different version based on this version. (For instance if you were to re-animate Steamboat Willie with entirely new art.) You own the copyright on that version, though your copyright only extends so far as the significant contributions you've made or the exact depiction (ie. if someone tries to sell your rendition of Mickey without significant changes to it... ie. you can't grab someone's fan art and sell it, but you can make your own similar fan art and sell that)
* This actually applies to Disney's own copyright on Mickey as well, all later versions retain only the copyright on their significant contributions. For instance depicting Mickey in color is a grey area (pun intended), but precident says it is allowable as "adding color" is not considered to be a meaningful contribution to the work. (The Fantasia Mickey of course is a prime example of a meaningful contribution as that depiction is very distinctive).
Ugh... I feel the dire urge to rant on topics that sadly I'd be lucky if 5 people even would read them, and I'm fighting emotional and physical exhaustion before I even start...
I'm so tired of people gaslighting left and right online... not remotely willing to learn basic details and instead repeating something that's already spent 12 rounds in a game of telephone... and that non-sense spreading like wildfire while basic fucking facts get ignored...
So very tired...
Holy shit... (yes this is real, it only applies to federal charges because that's all he can pardon)
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/p…
A Proclamation on Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of Marijuana, Attempted Simple Possession of Marijuana, or Use of Marijuana | The White House
In Proclamation 10467 of October 6, 2022 (Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of Marijuana), I exercised my authority under the Constitution to pardon individuals who committed or were convicted of the offense of simple possessi…The White House
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Dropout.tv, it's worth it y'all...
youtu.be/cS2vMUY1XVE?si=4Ha5fg…
dirty laundry out of context
all clips from dropout! also if y’all like this let me know cuz there’s definitely enough chaos in this show for me to make a part twoYouTube
Uuuugh
Had to wait days to get the server back online because the replacement hard drive appears to have been DOA so I had to get a replacement replacement hard drive, but the original drive failed entirely before that got here...
So... finally back up and running.
(I do have a Raid-5 style setup under LVM, so thankfully that means no data was lost... but it wasn't in a great position to run it in the mean time. I plan to try and upgrade it to RAID-6 style soonish so I can safely run it deprecated... as well as a few other configuration changes that'll help performance and reliability)
Just recently had to break it down in a group because it's been flaring up, figured a post would be nice.
This may seem like a Jewish specific topic, but it is important for non-Jews to know as well.
Zionism vs Anti-Zionism.
First of all, if you're a non-Jew it's best to identify with neither as for non-Jews is almost always antisemitic. (And yes I mean both).
This is a one of the biggest bones of contention in the Jewish community and is absolutely a loud argument right now due to current events. Worse yet, it's generally so because of a mix of misunderstandings and extremism.
Zionism
Originally this was the belief that the only way Jews could find some stability and safety would be to form a Jewish state. Once the state was formed, this turned into rabid support for Israel. For the milder of them, it basically boils down to patriotism... for the extremes it's nationalism
The loudest and most well represented of Zionists, however, believe basically that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic, even by fellow Jews.
(How can this be antisemitic for non-jews? Short answer without derailing: Nazis are often Zionist)
Anti-Zionism
Originally this was opposition to the creation of modern Israel, though each person had their own wildly varying reasons.
After the creation, many Anti-Zionists became Zionists. For the rest it mostly transformed into minimizing and addressing the damages caused by the creation of the state (ie. the occupation of Palestine). Many do dream of the potential of dismantling the state, but don't see it as feasible because creating a new humanitarian crisis to solve another isn't an acceptable solution.
They're generally painted by Zionists as if they want to abruptly end the state without addressing the crisis it would cause. (As such even mild Zionists often believe Anti-Zionism to be inherently antisemitic)
(Non-Jews can criticize Israel, but being/identifying-as Anti-Zionist is pretty much reserved for Jews; the exception being victims of Israel)
#IsraelHamasWar #Israel #Zionism #AntiZionism #AntiZionismIsNotAntisemitism #Hamas #Judaism
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@wboucek @Gary @Charlie Stross @jimkennedy the problem fundamentally is the specificity.
If you're specific to Israel it's impossible to divorce yourself from the antisemites without being a Jew. So the only real alternative is to call out the behavior.
It also addresses hypocrisy because many will call out Israel on it's bullshit, but completely ignore it when other countries do it.
I'm definitely an anti-zionist. Jews and Arabs and everyone else who calls that area of the globe home should be equally free to live their lives without oppression etc. Civilians don't belong in military prisons even if they are Palestinian. Etc, etc.
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Dear lord I can't win lately... NAS went down and I basically had to kick it to get it back up, likely related to a dead disk...
Here's the tally of my environment:
* 2 Proxmox servers
- 1 server failed, I need to send it in for a refund under the protection plan
- I bought a server to replace it already... that server came with a busted ram slot meaning it's already on degraded performance (need to refund it, but want to get a replacement before I send it off...)
- 1 old desktop running as a NAS
- 1 hard drive is throwing non-critical block errors, threatening to fail... I got the warranty exchange set up already but...
- 1 hard drive failed entirely after setting up that warranty exchange and now I don't have the parity to spare a drive, so I need to spare drives before I can start exchanging drives (those drives should arrive on Saturday)
And in all of this... spending way too much money I really shouldn't be spending at all...
And before someone thinks I'm throwing around a few K here... everything I'm getting is renewed, which is probably part of the problem but I sure as hell can't afford new. (Proxmox servers are around $100 each, drives around $45 each)
Shannon Prickett reshared this.
Oh, and the NAS going down is critical because those $100 boxes (a) don't have enough disk space for everything and (b) it's how I'm maintaining the ability to high(-ish) availability transfer between the two nodes (this saved me when the one proxmox system died).
Those are tiny form factor systems, but they have room for a second hard drive. I need to get a couple of hard drives to drop into them so they have better local storage, afterwards I can set them up as ZFS and use proxmox's features to sync the drives between the two nodes... that way they're not relying on the nas for anything that's not just large.
You want to know how to leave me completely dumbfounded?
Go on a christofascist rant in someone's comments, spout completely bullshit for _hours_ and then... practically out of nowhere... acknowledge your poor behavior and apologize.
... it's going to take me a looooooong time to process this.
You ever want to see how razor thin support and inclusivity is?
Tell people you're a Jew and hate "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" because they're faux inclusivity.
People come out of the woodwork that would normally say they're allies to tell you that the harms you experience aren't real, or that the fact that others like it means the harms you experience don't matter.
Let alone the people who don't remotely read said posts before replying...
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@Cass M 🇨🇦 :mstdn: oh wow I was out of sorts when I replied the first time, I completely blazed past calling out that "Judeo-Christian" is antisemitic:
foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095…
99% of the time "Judeo-Christian" is antisemitic. And yes, I will absolutely elaborate on this if asked.Credit: @Rabbit Cohen
Edit because this blew up far more than I expected and multiple people have asked for me to elaborate, here's a copy of my elaboration with follow up questions encouraged:
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
![Screenshot of a Tweet from Rabbit Cohen @[url=https://mastodon.online/users/BathysphereHat]Rabbit Cohen[/url] reading: Abortion bans are not "Judeo-Christian". They are ChristoFascist. Get "Judeo" out of your mouth.](https://foggyminds.com/photo/388477810964c4a3b847e0a701013240-1.jpg "Screenshot of a Tweet from Rabbit Cohen @[url=https://mastodon.online/users/BathysphereHat]Rabbit Cohen[/url] reading: Abortion bans are not \"Judeo-Christian\". They are ChristoFascist. Get \"Judeo\" out of your mouth.")
Linus
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Linus • •@Linus I'm all for relays just because they reduce the programming load... programming one system vs every different platform having to program a separate support. Notably few platforms do this anyways for other protocols (you don't see any mastodon instances supporting the diaspora protocol for instance). Let alone relays are better for interoperability, if I boost/reshare a post from a different network on Friendica it's basically going to disconnect it from the source... even other friendica instances won't see it connected like they would from a relay (let alone the fact that this bypasses moderation tools).
I definitely think it's the usual of people imagining a threat rather than actually perceiving one. We can readily block relays if necessary, and there's just as much risk of a new relay popping up as a blocked instance moving around, so it makes no difference in blocking.
And of course people freak out about privacy all the time. It annoys me to no end how little people care to learn about their privacy while still freaking out over things that have little impact on their privacy. They're posting publicly and getting upset that strangers can see it...
Linus
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •I concur. This might be a bit of a controversial take right now, since a lot of people are still riled up; but I feel the opt in/out consent issue also boils down to it being similar (or maybe technically identical, I need to look more into how the relay would work) to a new instance joining fedi. I understand people not wanting their posts on bluesky. but at the same time, the way fedi works, you don't need to get everyone's consent to spin up a new instance, that would be ridiculous. If bluesky decided to support AP or even spin up a dedicated AP instance (people would likely treat them similar to threads, moderating them to whichever degree they'd like), there likely wouldn't be a discussion about opting in or out of threads seeing your posts. It's just how fedi works X3. I also understand that there could be cultural differences between fedi and bluesky users, but once again that's a moderation issue that we have the tools to manage. If you don't want to interact with bluesky users, much like users of any other instance, you don't have to.
Also the relay being in the instance is totally just a convenience thing X3 you make a good point about the extra effort to implement and maintain an entire separate system, let alone getting them to work together. I'm gonna keep dreaming though!
Shiri Bailem likes this.
Some Guy Named Chris
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Kevin Karhan
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Kevin Karhan • •Vanessa likes this.
Kevin Karhan
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •I've yet to see credible evidence that #BlueSky would ever #decentralize and not be what it already is:
A #Twitter clone for people with #StockholmSyndrome towards #JackDorsey...
Also federation with the #Fediverse literally would require it to implement and support #activitypub
Needless to say not everyone wants to federate with them...
Vanessa likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Kevin Karhan • •Kevin Karhan
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •*pressing X for doubt re: AT*...
I've yet to see any functional implementation of it to this day outside of #BlueSky...
Also @jwildeboer already said everything that needs to be said re: #bridgy....
social.wildeboer.net/@jwildebo…
Kevin Karhan
in reply to Kevin Karhan • • •#TLDR: Fedi never asked for this and it's considered a as much as an asshole move as violating the #robotstxt and literally DDoS'ing a site with a Crawler like #ByteDance does regularly using #ByteSpider...
youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5sd3WEh0…
github.com/greyhat-academy/lis…
robotstxt.org
The creators of TikTok caused my website to shut down
YouTubeShiri Bailem
in reply to Kevin Karhan • •@Kevin Karhan @Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: this honestly doesn't violate the social norms of the community at large, just a very angry small subset who feel entitled to dictate the norms for a community that predates them and includes many many other groups who feel differently.
It's very telling to me that as usual the loudest voices are all on the least compliant platform of the fediverse...
Vanessa likes this.
Kevin Karhan
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@jwildeboer Hey, I'm just complying with the robots.txt and I think #BlueSky is just valueRemoving to the point that I in fact block their domain and bridges on my account...
Again: It's my personal decison re: my account.
Feel free to self-host tho...
Stephan Schwab
in reply to Kevin Karhan • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦
Unknown parent • • •@jwildeboer
And that's precisely what's different in Bridgy Fed - it will be bidirectional and allow true follow/response relationship over the networks - because both networks enable federated read/write/follow. That is qualitatively different functionality vs bridges to networks that allow read-only. It also means that a follow request implies opt-in as core feature.
A better comparison is Matrix's bridges to XMPP, Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, etc.
@shiri @kkarhan
Shiri Bailem likes this.
Kevin Karhan
Unknown parent • • •@jwildeboer There's a reason why a lot of instance block these #report-#bots like tweets.icu because they are seen as #ValueRemoving and #Spammy...
Tho these are just cluttering at worst...
Kevin Karhan
in reply to Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦 • • •@osma @jwildeboer Yes, and like these bridges, they are #ValueRemoving:
Maybe the idea of using i.e. [self-hosted] #Zulip or #XMPP is precisely not to have to deal with the #Enshittification of #WhatsApp and the inacceptable #ToS of it and it's competitiors...
If I want to use some proprietary & centralized garbage I would've made that choice, regardless if #Signal, WhatsApp, #Telegram, #Discord, #Line or whatever...
Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦
in reply to Kevin Karhan • • •No one is forcing you to interact with networks you don't want to. For people who value people over technology, bridges enable freedom from walled gardens, and denying the use of bridges by others is freedom-limiting. Your freedom to not use bridges is not more valuable than other people's freedom to choose them.
@jwildeboer @shiri
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Shiri Bailem and Vanessa like this.
Kevin Karhan
in reply to Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦 • • •@osma @jwildeboer
Again: You have the choice to #SelfHost and not limit yourself to anything whatsoever...
But one should also have the freedom to not deal with such spambots to begin with.
Whether that decision should be made individually, by vote.from the users of an instance of sole.discretion of the moderators is a discussion I'll not waste my time with, so I'll move on!
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •Just FYI, I've got zero interest in people bringing their whiny bullshit to my posts on the topic. So I'm just blocking strangers who bring the fight here.
I've had my fill of self-centered assholes who want everyone to bend over for their bullshit unrealistic vision of federation.
Your ideal version will never exist and your rage at finding out it doesn't can go fuck itself.