@pre@boing.world cover
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@[email protected]

Working on an interactive #vr #scifi story, that involves lots of #programming and #animation and #art: @starship

I sometimes talk about #left #politics and #anarchy.

Live in #london #uk

There's also the tarot show: @wordcloudtarot

And you can follow my links feed: @linkbot

#fedi22 #searchable #nobots

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@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar deadsuperhero , to random

One pain point here is the fact that Spectra has more than 1,000 users, but about a dozen or so accounts use the most storage space. The biggest offender takes up over 1TB of our object storage quota.

I'm tempted to start setting data caps, maybe to sell an additional allocation of storage space, but I'm only really comfortable with doing this after addressing the community and reaching out to the people who use Spectra the most.

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@deadsuperhero This is why peertube is such a struggle. Video hosting costs are incredible. Anything with unlimited open signup is going to bankrupt itself leaving the users without a host.

I think that Peertube and likely any video platform really needs, much more than Mastodon etc, to be self-hosted. Only if you're paying for your own storage do you really know if things are worth archiving and keeping in perpetuity.

@pre@boing.world avatar pre , to random

Okay, okay, I get it. Thanks Mozilla. I'll give Vivaldi a try at the weekend. Seesh.

https://stateof.mozilla.org/

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Oh. Its proprietary!?

https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/

Why has everyone been talking about Vivaldi being a sensible replacement for Firefox when it's not even open source and you can't install it on Arch?

😬

These chrome "Profiles" aren't nearly as useful as Firefox's Containers either. Can't segregate a tab to it's own cookie-jar at all. Only entire windows full of tabs.

The annoying side-panel can be hidden but keeps coming back whenever you view the bookmarks or the notes or the ReadList or todo or Translate dialogs etc.

Because they are part of that side panel I guess.

The mail app seems okay, but it's making up it's own contacts based on mail in the imap boxes instead of taking them from my nextcloud. Which means I'd not use it. Just continue with Mutt. Probably would just continue with mutt either way really.

Having the calendar built in is quite nice I guess. That does sync with the nextcloud calendar so would be useable.

Like Firefox, the "Send Tab To Device" function on Android relies on the notifications system, and so doesn't work when the phone is in Do Not Disturb. Which makes it annoying for sending what you're reading to the phone for bed coz the phone is automatically in No-Disturb sleep mode before bedtime for me. That's an issue with Mozilla too though.

Force dark-mode works okay, but is an overall setting not a per-site setting. Could see having to turn that off and on a lot.

The notes system is really pretty good. It could use a widget for the android homescreen. And indeed widgets for the calendar and readlist and todo list and other panel items.

It seems very nice, can be made pretty, has most of the things I use addons for in Firefox built right in there and more besides.

I was quite excited and really on the verge of switching to it for proper until I found it doesn't have an arch package so can't be easily installed on the steam machine, and can't even be built from source there because it turns out isn't even free software.

Do I need more proprietary software in my life? Definitely usually try to avoid that. Closed source is worse than unwanted AI. 😔

So I guess sticking with Librewolf for now. Hopefully they can keep the AI agent stuff separated as Mozilla enshitify further without becoming overwhelmed.

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One thing which is annoying about Vivaldi and also Firefox and presumably also all the other Android web browsers is the way the "Add To Homescreen" button works on pages like Mastodon which are Progressive Web Apps.

If you add the shortcut to the homescreen then it opens as a WPA which means the browser stuff is all gone and hidden. No back button. No way to bookmark. No way to launch a link in a new browser window etc.

Ought to be two separate buttons for "Add a link to the homepage" vs "Add this app as an app to the homepage" but there isn't.

You can get around this by turning on airplane mode and adding a link to the error page to the homescreeen, which then works as a link to the app when you're online again.

I did this to the links I use with Vivaldi before I realized it's proprietary and so will not do.

Trying to rebuild them as Firefox links again and sadly something is broken now. Won't add the error page. Tells me the pixel launcher is crashing.

So I can't have the old web bookmark links to pages in WPA apps. Boo. 😦

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I wonder if part of the reason that Mozilla are so confused about what their actual user-base want is that all the people who want to turn off the AI bullshit are also the ones who turn off telemetry so the bulk of people with

browser.ml.chat.enabled=false<br></br>

also have telemetry turned off so are invisible to Mozilla.

🤔

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Mozilla think that adding some controls to their settings to allow users to opt out of the AI features is good enough.

No sign of a separate build without them there at all, but at least a switch to disable them, in theory.

They say:

"Once configured, the AI preferences will persist across browser updates"

Though they do have a history of turning on telemetry over and over again even when you keep turning it off. Or inventing new telemetery for you to turn off each update.

One switch will turn off:

"AI-enhanced tab grouping with suggested names,"

Which sounds horrifying, but then I don't really like tab groups anyway.

They seem to be suggesting that this is all just for desktop though, and so the Android build will presumably continue to not even have a working about:config at all.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-will-let-you-turn-off-all-firefox-ai-features/

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The AI features are "Optional by default" which is a mad thing to say. What?

If you want to turn them off then just flip the "off" switch to the "on" position 😆

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD4LspntEmI

@onan@dobbs.town avatar onan , to random

Fellow moderators: When I get a report for "blasphemy" what should I do?

Blasphemy is universally agreed upon, and illegal in many countries. I should delete the post, ban the poster, and report the poster to the proper authorities.

Blasphemy is subtle, even if illegal in many countries. I should make sure the post is only blasphemous to the true religions, not the false or confused religions, and maybe report the poster to the proper authorities.

Ignore, hard.

:jrbd: https://SubGenius.com

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@onan Blasphemy is literally impossible. Any god who isn't powerless and weak would be able to prevent words said against them easily. If god allowed an utterance, s/he/it blesses it.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , (edited ) to random

Odd, I tried to get him and everyone else at Diem25 on the fediverse years ago but 🤷‍♂️

https://ar.al/notes/farewell-not-goodbye/

Do as I say, not as I do, I guess. https://todon.nl/@mar/114858718426096575

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@ajn142 @aral Crazy thing about the internet is you can be multiple places at once! You can even cross post!

@stux@mstdn.social avatar stux , to random

I only flew once in my life to Dublin and back and that's all within Europe so minimal checks

If I where to travel to a country where they would take my phone and demand my password I think I'm refusing

"Give your password if you don't have anything to hide" is just plain bullshit

Everyone has stuff to hide, even if it's a password or private note

We should not accept this authoritarian bullshit

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@stux Yeah, these days you gotta leave the phone at home if you're going abroad really. Not only if you're going to America. If you're crossing a border at all.

You can always buy or borrow a cheap burner phone at your destination and log in from that.

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@stux Snowden's reply to that was to compare it to someone saying "I don't care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say".

@stux@mstdn.social avatar stux , to random

LOL.

Yesterday in bed I kept wondering why the speed of light is exact 299 792 458 m/s

And ofc the answer turns out to be so very simple, I didn’t even think of it

It’s because the definition of a meter, in distance is based on the speed of light

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@stux The speed of light is 1.

Meters are weird, not light.

@pre@boing.world avatar pre , to random

Bluesky is cancelling accounts when foreign governments ask them to, and Threads is doing adverts soon.

The thing to understand about the corporate public messaging systems is that they do not exist to let you publish or to talk to people. That is not the point of them. That's at best just the bait laid to lure you into their trap.

They exist to make money for the shareholders. That's why Threads exists, that's why Blockchain Inc invested to keep Bluesky running.

Only one network exists in order to let people communicate as the point and reason for it's existence. Only one network has no shareholders and no owners.

Only one is fighting for the user, not the shareholder.

@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar atomicpoet , to random

It is actually harmful to say that Mastodon has no algorithms because:

  1. It's not true
  2. That belief is contradictory to how computer science works
  3. It leads to an idea that algorithms are evil
  4. Pushes a neo-Luddite belief that development of algorithms is morally wrong
  5. Ultimately undermines confidence in Mastodon when people realize that, not only does Mastodon have algorithms, you can change them

When talking about Mastodon, we can do so much better than spread a myth that's obviously untrue.

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@atomicpoet Seems like we're going to need a new word that means "algorithm which is an impenetrable black box written by corporations to serve their interests rather than yours" and unless we coin that word quick people are just gonna overload the word "algorithm" for it.

@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org avatar davidrevoy , to random

How my Firefox became a LibreWolf

New blog-post: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1065/how-my-firefox-became-a-librewolf

A comic strip in four panels: Pane 1. A small, exhausted Firefox is depicted with a loud sigh, blowing out the flames on its tail and extinguishing it. Panel 2. A strong wind causes the ashes to cover the little fox. Panel 3. The little fox, now completely gray and ashen, looks on with regret and disappointment, mourning the loss of its former self. Panel 4. In the evening, under the light of a full moon, the gray fox meets a wise and welcoming wolf, who greets it with the words "Welcome here, new libre wolf!" A wolf howls at the moon in the distance, a reference to the LibreWolf logo."
ALT
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@davidrevoy Yep, I switched on my main machine when Mozilla merged with an advertising company, which is to say the new combined entity is an advertising company.

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@davidrevoy 😞

There aren't any good browsers 💔

@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk avatar neil , to random

Switching from Firefox to LibreWolf

So far, it has looked like this for me:

  1. Install LibreWolf: https://librewolf.net/installation/debian/

  2. Find your Firefox profile: In Firefox, menu / Help / More Troubleshooting Information / Profile Directory.

  3. Copy Firefox profile to LibreWolf dir: cp -r /home/neil/.mozilla/firefox/b92lfaht.default-release-1 /home/neil/.librewolf/)

  4. Edit LibreWolf's profiles.ini to use the newly-copied profile

  5. Restart LibreWolf

  6. Start testing

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@neil I've been finding it mostly okay. When sites don't work it often just needs the setting for allowing canvas-drawing to be turned on for that site.

But that ain't enough for some of the more commercial sites. Supermarket sites don't work. Payments failing is more common. I find myself still launching Firefox when I know a payment is gonna be at the end of the transaction.

I presume this is mostly sites doing evil stuff that Librewolf is blocking for me.

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@kbal Is that with Librewolf, or with Firefox? Not sure if there's anything I can turn on/off in a profile in Librewolf to make it accept the site's dodgy practices.

Already using a lot of account-containers with both.

@gotosocial@superseriousbusiness.org avatar gotosocial , to random

Hi everyone!

We've just pushed a very important security bugfix release for v0.17.3 and below:

https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.17.4

If you are running on GoToSocial v0.17.3 or below, you should update to v0.17.4 as soon as possible. It's a very small update from v0.17.3 -> v0.17.4 as it contains only some code logic changes, and no database migrations.

In short, when a dereferencing bug is triggered under a specific set of circumstances it can cause loss of account data on affected instances. It's a rare thing to be triggered, but when it does happen it really, really stinks, and necessitates restoring from backup or manually editing the database to get things working again. (It's not possible to access or tamper with data by triggering the bug, only destroy it.)

We'll release a proper CVE for this in a couple of days when admins and packagers have had a chance to update.

Please note that folks who are already on v0.18.0-rc1 or latest snapshots are unaffected and do not need to do anything, as the bug occurs specifically in v0.17.3 and below. This means if you prefer to update straight from v0.17.3 to v0.18.0-rc1 then that's also an option; you can follow the release notes for v0.18.0-rc1 in this case.

So! If you know folks on GtS v0.17.3 or below, please let them know that they should take action! Link them to this post if you want! And please boost for visibility :)

Thank you everyone! <3 Computers!

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@gotosocial Thanks :D

Only thing I don't really understand is why when I pull from "main" and run the build script everything seems to work and database migrations run but "./gotosocial --version" still returns a string like "v0.17.0-rc1+git-f90aef4"

That's the latest git commit hash, so presumably it's all good, but shouldn't the version number get updated too? 😕 Don't really know where it's coming from.

@pre@boing.world avatar pre , to random

I read "Speech! How language made us human" by Simon Prentis, in which he explores some ways in which language affects what kind of animal a person is.

We can dismiss the idea that language is the actual stuff of thought, the thing the brain uses to think: My mum's typical sentence proves it utterly "Where did I put the thingy, you know, the whatsit".

She clearly thinking of a thing without knowing the word for it, so words aren't the base unit for thought.

Yet language is also clearly the thing which gives us such a deep and rich culture, and he is entertaining and enlightening as he goes though what some of that means.

He's really optimistic in the final pages, that our international agreement and commitment to law and human rights - a thing borne by language - can bring about some approximation of world peace.

Course, it was written before the start of world war 3 in 2022. Will we be able to talk ourselves out of it escalating? Or will we talk ourselves into another final catastrophic global meltdown?

That's the thing about language I guess. Could argue either side.

@rolle@mementomori.social avatar rolle , to random

From now on eggs will not be in one single basket. In other words: Glad to say we have now 4 admins in total, welcome @ikkeT @raikas and @lari :bunhdheart:

As I've been having some difficulties in life this year I though it's finally time to establish a proper administrative edge on our Mastodon server. Our 292 users deserve it. This ensures the continuity of everything and most of all gives me a peace of mind, because no longer need to handle everything alone.

PS. Nice to meet @ikkeT IRL by lattes, what a nice guy 👍

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@rolle @ikkeT @raikas @lari Didn't realize you had so many users! Nice one.

Agreed, backup admins required. Glad you found suitable people.

@pre@boing.world avatar pre , to Firefox

Firefox has added an optional side-bar for an AI chat and you can specify which model to use.

Has anyone made it use Eliza yet?

😆

😐 : Summarize this page
🤖 : Have you come to me because you want to summarize the page?
😐 : Yes, please summarize the page
🤖 : What does it mean to you to summarize the page?

I haven't turned it on, and I am eyeing forks of the software that are against this sort of thing, but if I did turn it on that model would amuse me most.

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Is asking questions about the contents of the page the main use of the sidebar? Is that what it's for?

"Please scroll to the part which describes the opening hours" or something like that might be useful I guess?

Struggling to understand why I would want it build into a browser rather than just being a bookmarket or plugin.

@pre@boing.world avatar pre , to random

So I turned off the new Firefox advertiser-friendly stuff.

But somehow I feel this isn't enough. I want to do more than just turn the feature off, I would prefer to submit poisoned and false data to it continually.

Anyone know a plugin that will flood this bullshit system with fake AI lies or anything like that?

In the page explaining why they silently forced this bullshit on me they say "Attribution is very important to advertisers"

Fuck advertisers. Fuck them. You get that Firefox? It is not your job to be kind to advertisers, it is your job to fuck them on my behalf.

Firefox's new "privacy" control: Website Advertising Preferences. Allow website to perform privacy-preserving ad measurements is now unchecked.
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@teezeh You reckon it's purely a bribe then. Anonym merges Mozilla, they pay them money to put malware on my machine.

🤔

I probably should seek something less compromised on it's funding I suppose.