sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
Percy has stolen Duchess's box and she has responded by... I dunno, whatever this is - sideways cat-loaf
Hi, friends.
I wrote an article on being a Mastodon moderator. I talk about the process, our mental health, the challenges of mutual aid, and more.
It leaves me a little vulnerable, but I think it’s an important story to tell.
If you like it, boosts are welcomed. If you have questions, feel free to reach out.
Okay, here goes…
https://markwrites.io/being-a-mastodon-moderator
#Moderation #Moderators #Mastodon #Fediverse #MentalHealth #IAmAnxiousWritingAboutThis
@markwyner > "There are three moderators on our team and about 185,000 accounts. About 12,000 of those are active monthly."
3 mods?! That's so little for such a big instance 😦 #Fosstodon has about 10k active users and we have a team of 20 - and believe me, it's necessary at times. Would it maybe be possible to invite some of your users to the mod team, to help with the workload?
This is an important topic, and personally relatable, thank you for sharing 💚 #Fediverse #Moderation
@Gina @markwyner this was my main takeaway too - we have 5 active staff on famichiki and we’re tiny in comparison but it means people can live their lives and not get burned out. Maybe mas.to could do with a few more folk on their team 😰
@Gina wow. That’s wild. I’m surprised at how different our teams are. I wonder if it has something to do with the differences in our communities and rules?
When I say our queue is manageable, I really mean it. We work across multiple timezones, and have most of a 24 hour period completely covered. So it’s almost like we’re working in shifts.
Anyway, I appreciate your weighing in. This is good community. 🫶🏻
@markwyner In our case there's been a flood of spam recently. Tbf, I think our queue would still be easily manageable if our team were halved, but it's nice to be able to mod as parttime as we want.
@Gina the spam waves are intense. But at least they’re so obvious that we can whip through them. It’s the ones that need reflection that hold up the queue.
I appreciate your approach of spreading out a thin layer of moderation. I’m sure your team appreciates that.
We’re well taken care of, too. We look out for each other. Even when we argue intensely about a moderation decision can’t agree on. 😂
@sam 😂
Yeah, I’ve heard Sam is a real problem. Fighting yourself is no joke. Just ask Tyler Durden.
Reminder: Many bsky links require a sign-in, and are, hence, useless to anyone who is not on bluesky.
I am not on bluesky. I have reasons not to be, that I won't bother rehashing for you.
If you want to share things on mastodon, you might want to consider using links that are usable by people who are on mastodon.
@sam not that BS needs me to leap to its defence, but this is a setting that BS users can opt into. So a subset of links, from non-opted-in users, do work for non-logged-in users.
It becomes particularly frustrating when the "outer" link renders, but the inner/quoted post link has opted into the setting.
Good morning
@sundogplanets It's really nice of you to keep goats to enhance your pony's environmental enrichment.
Not sure who needs to hear this, but #science cuts don’t just affect researchers.
They ripple out to the food we eat, the air we breathe, the safety of our water, and our health.
This is personal for you. Me. All of us.
And these #science cuts ripple out to the inventions that drive the economy.
Essentially all of the economic gains and wondrous things we've made in the last half century (and there really are a lot) have come from science investment (in #NSF, #NIH, #DOE, #DOD).
Also, very few (almost none) have started from intentional #TranslationalScience. They almost all start from basic curiosity-driven science, which turn out to have applications no one ever expected.
@Sheril I've noticed something interesting. Among many people -- and a huge amount here in America in particular -- people think of science as if it was a religion. They're taught to basically pick and choose what they believe about a religion from an early age. But science is just a process of observing and cataloging the laws of reality. It doesn't care about how someone *feels* about a fact. A fact is a fact.
And facts affect everyone whether they like them or not.
@Sheril
And you think #EpsteinsBuddy cares?
Scientists are also surprisingly often people who contradicted the rapist in chief in the past.
@Sheril
Related. Such a disaster on so many levels, from the individual to the national — and international. The ripple impact will last for years. https://www.science.org/content/article/my-academic-job-offer-was-rescinded-i-ll-keep-going-u-s-researchers-are-running-out
For both of these, I'm getting a status of "no link found" with summary stating " "summary": "The Microformats at the source URL do not contain a link to the target URL. Check the source URL in a Microformats parser such as php.microformats.io"
when I check on the php.microformats.io site, I'm not seeing these links either. It's very possible that I'm not understanding something or overlooking something simple.
You just have to write a link in the post text, like this one: https://webmention.rocks/test/1
404 Not Found (snac/2.81-dev)
This may be one of the single greatest astronomy questions I've ever been asked:
Can you drink Saturn's rings?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-drink-saturns-rings/
@badastro
You can drink anything if you get it hot enough under enough pressure.
Survival is a question, though.
@badastro Moving on, how much work would you need to put in to render Sgr B2 drinkable? A nice shot of Sagittarian space alcohol with a few cubes of Saturnian ice would certainly make for a novel cocktail.
@badastro in the next episodes of billiomairs do werid things: startup is going to freeze sperm in order to shoot it to space becoming part of saturns ring. one day, you will pass away, but uourt sperm will circle forever.
@badastro So the planet named after a god associated with drinking is surrounded by ice cubes? Well done to the astronomer ancestors.
@badastro
JFC don't tell Nestles!
They'll be there next year put in plant to bottling it.
Oh and, #FuckNestles
(also fed a dog in the park, but don't tell the cat!)
#sighnaghi #bodbe #georgia #notthatgeorgia #cat #cats #sakartvelo #saqartvelo
#sighnaghi #bodbe #georgia #notthatgeorgia #sakartvelo #saqartvelo
You know what, I am just gonna say it. If you ever want a former expert in planets and asteroids and stuff to read a science article and tell you if it is bullshit, just ask me.
Every time I inform someone that Avi Loeb is full of shit, a space fairy gets their wings.
@astronomerritt if I had a nickel for every time I had to explain the Avi Loeb situation to my dad when he’s excited about ufo stuff I’d have like six nickels…
At least in #Poland all the time I hear otherwise reasonable people who say “let’s make a deal with #Russia with US as a guarantor”.
This is easily dismissed as a trivial naivety, but why doesn’t it work? Because Russia never honors any agreements with parties it considers weaker. Russian elites largely follow code of ethics originating from organised crime, similar to Italian Omertà.[^1] In this system you’re either a “man”, whose word can be relied upon, or a “loser” (Russian: лох), who can be exploited in any way, including deception. And, as a matter of fact, not exploiting a “loser” and holding a word given to him is a honor offense for the “man” himself. Putin often directly or indirectly refers to the criminal “code of ethics” in his public speeches, and occasionally uses terms from the criminal jargon (Russian: феня). Russian popular culture in response started to popularize and idealize it, even in TV series.[^2]
Lesson about “making deals with Russia” had been hard learned by many countries. In 1945 in Yalta[^3] leaders of USA and UK made a deal with Stalin where in Soviet-liberated #Poland there would be democratic elections under international supervision. What Soviet did was first mass-arrests[^4], then entirely falsified referendum[^5] and then falsified elections[^6], which sealed Poland’s fate as a Soviet colony for the next 42 years.
From recent history, #Ukraine had written security assurances from Russia in Budapest Memorandum[^7], guaranteed by US and UK, and also mutual friendship treaty with Russia signed in 1997.[^8] In 2014 Russia walked upon both of them as if they never existed. Even more recently, the ceasefires agreed in 2015-2019 Minsk Agreements were violated by Russia on the next day they were signed - Russians simply never stopped their offensives. As an added bonus, all that time Russia allso pretended it’s not Russian armed forces conducting these attacks.[^9]
That’s exclusively because in Russian thinking you are allowed to sign any agreement and promise anything to the other party but you’re not expected to deliver, as long as you consider them “losers”. This is what Russia did - in Yalta, Budapest and Minsk they made promises because US and UK wanted them and it helped push Russian political goals. But they never intended to honour them for even a minute.
That’s why “making deals with Russia” alone won’t work as long as their enforcement relies exclusively on international law, which - no need to explain - Russia also consider for “losers”.
You can of course make a successful deal with Russia if it’s supported by hard reciprocal measures, such as anti-tank trenches, mine fields or drones and rockets targeted at Russian military installations. But anything signed exclusively on paper won’t hold.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0
[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy%27s_Word:_Blood_on_the_Asphalt
[^3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference
[^4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August%C3%B3w_roundup
[^5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Polish_people%27s_referendum
[^6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Polish_parliamentary_election
[^7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
[^8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E2%80%93Ukrainian_Friendship_Treaty
Another bug filed under 'once you see it, you can't unsee it' has been fixed in Ubuntu, this one concerns the curved corners on the desktop dock.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/07/ubuntu-25-10-gives-the-dock-a-rounder-radii?v1
@omgubuntu the cookie regime of your site is horrible. Please offer a "reject all" option. You know how. You have a "consent all" button.
@johnskk @omgubuntu
You can click on “Manage Options” and then disable all the options. Then, click on “Confirm Choices”.
@ThePfromtheO @omgubuntu thanks for the assistance. My criticism is that there is one click to consent to everything and about 18 to reject everything. It is clearly a design to have it their way.
@johnskk @ThePfromtheO I didn't build the cookie consent thing, it's the one Google provides to publishers. It's 5 toggles, IIRC, and then confirm. Tedious but, from using the same form on other sites, once you do it once it remembers it for like 30 days or something - and it's not as bad as the ones which make you toggle off 70 'legitimate interest' toggles one by one so #glasshalffull 🥛
@johnskk @ThePfromtheO Also, as counterintuitive as it is for me to suggest it, you can read the article without actioning the cookie thing at all if you're using a browser with reader mode: just hit the reader mode button or shortcut and it'll do its thing. I'm not sure how well reader mode picks up some of the in-page callouts I use (pull quotes, info boxes, spec tables) but, just an idea.
@sam @omgubuntu @ThePfromtheO I was at a machine I don't administer, so all of your kind suggestions that has to do with browser extensions or other browsers are not available to me.
And frankly and in respect for your responses, I'm building a habit of just leaving sites like that. Consent all or reject all should be one click as it is in well behaved sites. Otherwise why leave it up to the user at all?
@johnskk @sam @omgubuntu
“Consent all or reject all should be one click as it is in well behaved sites.”
I think this would mean for #OMGUbuntu to need to replace its tracking system, right, @omgubuntu?
@omgubuntu @johnskk
Even easier! I use #VivaldiBrowser's #adblocker, and I don't even see the popup :)
"Astronomers discover a cosmic 'fossil' at the edge of our solar system. Is this bad news for 'Planet 9'?"
The sednoid (Sedna-like object)'s orbit limits the possibilities for a large planet past Neptune. Its orbit means a large planet has to be much further out, or has been ejected, because otherwise the newly discovered sednoid's orbit would not be possible
2023 KQ14 is between 220 and 380 kilometers wide
As a "fossil," it is nicknamed "Ammonite"
Planet 9 assessed the situation, realized there was no intelligent life in this solar system, & quietly slipped away into the greater galaxy
even as we speak, Planet 9 is enjoying a pitcher of beer with those smug Voyager vessels that keep sending back messages announcing how far away they've fled planet Earth since the 70s & nah nah nah we can't catch them!
🤣
and if that isn't true, you can't prove it isn't true...
"I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better"
-found on Bluesky
hello again mastodon, i took a break. is this place still alive?
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services has some lists of accounts to follow by topic and other useful tips.
Yes, very much alive!
If your timeline seems quiet, there are lots of ways to discover people to follow on here: https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends
Sam, I think you mean my other account @FediFollows ? 🙂
CC: @avery@mastodon.sdf.org @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services
The answer to your paper title is an emphatic "No", Avi Loeb.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12213
BAHAHAHA oh gosh he's escalated to making alien doomsday predictions!! Though at this point I think many of us would welcome a "hostile" alien takeover in December 2025....
edit: It seems our new overlords might be space fairies! How cool! https://hachyderm.io/@astronomerritt/114867843138275867
@sundogplanets But what if he's right?
3I/ATLASSIAN ALIEN: Take me to your leader!
HUMAN: Uh, trust me, that's not a good idea.
ALIEN: What?
HUMAN: Let's just say you've come at a bad time.
ALIEN: But this is a historic meeting between species!
HUMAN: I know. And it's great you guys made the effort. But honestly, the best thing for everyone is probably for you to get back in your ship & keep going.
ALIEN: …
HUMAN: Come back in a few aeons. Maybe the octopuses will be in charge by then.
@angusm @sundogplanets
ALIEN: Thank you, but the giant Octopus has been our mortal enemy in eons past. We have to be armed against them.
HUMAN: You have weapons against giant Octopuses?
ALIEN: Errr, yes....
HUMAN: Oh, in that case, we have a big scary orange Octopus in human form that is...
ALIEN: We can deal with your infestation for you.
HUMAN: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
@Maker_of_Things @angusm @sundogplanets ALIEN: Wait? You still believe that getting rid of the ogre in the swamp will solve systemic problems?
HUMAN: What?
ALIEN: Look. If your society has problems with recurring ogre infestations, you should find out where the ogres come from and how they get into your swamps. Regular ogre hunts will not solve your problems long term.
@sundogplanets A lovely example of Betteridge's Law at work.
@ravenbait @sundogplanets My most-cited paper had a title with a question, but it is not a yes-no question, so I guess Betteridge's Law does not apply: "How Flat is Tibet?"
@EricFielding @sundogplanets That sounds super interesting!
@ravenbait @EricFielding That does sound super interesting. Paper link?
@sundogplanets @ravenbait The Tibet paper is at: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/22/2/163/206045/How-flat-is-Tibet Let me know if you want me to send a PDF as it may be still paywalled after 30 years.
@sundogplanets Steve D is sitting a few rows over from me right now furiously writing a response. He described it almost like an Onion article
@simonbp Woo! Go Steve!
Yeah I saw a talk by him a few years ago that started out with something like "Some people spent their time learning how to bake sourdough bread during the pandemic, I spent my time debunking Avi"
@sundogplanets oh gosh, I just looked the first author up. I mean... (I mainly did so to check whether this is screwing up the future of some poor PhD candidate. At least that's not the cawe...)
Adam Hibberd's previous interstellar object papers at least made sense - "how to get from here to there" as a mission concept.
I do not know why he has now decided to go with the "everything is a spacecraft" line.
It is not limited to 3I. He also lately promoted the pretense that the dark comet asteroids are spacecraft. Just like Avi Loeb.
Kagi Translate has a sleeker mobile interface and smarter language auto-detection.
It has been gradually improved overall with a ton of unique features, give it a try if you haven't already! https://translate.kagi.com/
And I've also brought back Mastodon's famous "toot" button. Yes, the one with the elephant 😏
Fediverse Report – #125
Mastodon has released a new major update with version 4.4, that come with a variety of tweaks to make existing systems smoother, focusing on profiles, lists and some improvement to navigation. The update introduces profile featuring, with adds a ‘featured’ tab to a profile, and allows users to highlight specific hashtags they post about and other accounts they want to promote. Mastodon has also reorganised pinned posts into a carousel, making it quicker to navigate between featured content and recent posts on profiles. Profiles now also show how many people you follow are also following that account. List management also sees some improvements, making it simpler to organise accounts into custom feeds. The audio player also has gotten a visual refresh with better controls and new keyboard shortcuts, and the mobile web interface now features a bottom toolbar that mimics native apps and provides more timeline space.
Mastodon is also adding the long-requested feature of quote posts. However, this will be done in two phases: the current update 4.4 properly displays quote posts made by other fediverse software, such as Misskey. In the next update, 4.5, Mastodon will add the ability to create quote posts as well.An important new features of this update is not mentioned in the announcement post, and are hidden away for server admins to manually opt-in to. Mastodon server admins can now set referral headers, which means that when people click on a link on Mastodon the other side will see that people came from that Mastodon server. Up until now other websites such as news organisations had no insight in how much of their traffic came from Mastodon, which makes marketing departments less likely to invest in platforms like Mastodon. However, since the setting is opt-in and not being promoted that it is worthwhile for Mastodon server admins to turn this setting on, it is unclear how many servers will actually enable the setting.
The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) will go into effect later this month, which has requirements for all platforms that handle user-generated content and have “links with the United Kingdom” to conduct and publish a risk assessment. If a platform is “likely to be accessed by children” and permits pornographic content, the platform is required to implement “highly effective” age verification. Bluesky announced their implementation of such an age verification system this week, and I wrote about the different responses from within the communities to the requirement and implementation. When I asked Mastodon on how they are handling the OSA for the mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers, Mastodon said: “Mastodon gGmbH has made efforts to understand the requirements of the UK Online Safety Act. As a small community-funded non-profit we are still aligning on a way forward for people in the UK who have accounts on our owned/operated Mastodon servers.” Mastodon also referred to work by IFTAS and the Open Rights Group as guidance for other server operators. I personally have found this guide by Russ Garret helpful in understanding the OSA as well. To me it seems likely that at least some fediverse servers would meet the requirements of the OSA to implement an age verification system (IANAL!), and that this will likely be a story that we’ll come back to over the coming weeks.
Link aggregator platform PieFed has added support for a plugin system. This allows people to build extensions and new features for the platform without it having to be integrated into the main codebase. Plugin systems can be powerful for social platforms, but also depend on what plugins people will actually build. Lemmy has also been building a plugin system, which will likely be released as part of their upcoming 1.0 launch later this year. PieFed also released a configuration for Anubis, a system to prevent AI scrapers from accessing a website. Meanwhile, the foundation which hosts the most popular Lemmy server, lemmy.world, has started a PieFed server as well.
Rimu, the developer of PieFed, has also released a demonstration of how scaling over ActivityPub can be more efficient, by bundling activities up in chunks. ActivityPub is a “chatty” protocol, which can quickly result in a large number of requests made over the network. As Rimu explains: “The problem is that if 20 people cast 5 votes and those votes are federated to 500 servers, the instance hosting the community needs to do 20 * 5 * 500 = 50,000 network requests.” By batching the activities into chunks, the number of requests over the network can be significantly lower, at the cost of less-than-realtime federation.
Independent fediverse developer Steve Bate wrote a long article on the state of ActivityPub, focusing on the Client-to-Server part of the protocol, that I think is worth a read. The ActivityPub protocol consists of two major parts: Server-to-Server (S2S) and Client-to-Server (C2S). The S2S part of ActivityPub is concerned with federation: making sure independent servers are compatible by providing a standard format on how different softwares can communicate with each other. This part of ActivityPub is widely used, and when people talk about the ActivityPub protocol, they are almost always exclusively talking about the S2S part of the protocol. The C2S part of the protocol is concerned with how clients (mobile apps for example) can communicate with any fediverse server. This part of ActivityPub is almost unused, and almost no platform in the fediverse supports C2S. Instead, all platforms have developed their own standards for how clients can interoperate with their platform. In practice this means that people building a new microblogging platform on the fediverse will have to implement the Mastodon API in order to make the current apps (for example Ivory or Phanpy) compatible with the new platform. The article by Bate goes into more detail on how this situation came to be, why C2S still matters, and how to move forward with C2S adoption.
The Social Web Foundation is experimenting with a geosocial ActivityPub client. It allows users to log in with their existing fediverse account and check into places. These places are tagged with geo-data, based on OpenStreetMap data that has been translated into ActivityPub format (ActivityStreams 2 objects, technically speaking). The goal of the project is to provide more exposure to parts of ActivityPub that have gotten less attention. It is also an illustration of the problems with C2S mentioned above: testing the new project of the SWF requires a fediverse account on a server that supports C2S, of which there are very few.
Upcoming social networking platform Bonfire is getting closer to an official release, and while the platform is working on getting the software ready for release, major new features are still being added. The latest update adds long-form publishing (the update itself was published on Bonfire), new custom feeds for events and blogs, and more. The challenge with Bonfire has never been a dearth of cool new features however, but to get the platform ready and used by the public.
StartHereSocial is an onboarding service that helps people pick a fediverse server to join. It asks the new user to make a simple choice for their biggest priority: communicating in their own language, connecting with people from the same region, connecting with people over a shared interest or place that is large and reliable. Based on this selection the service shows a curated list of servers to join. The service is created by IFTAS founder Jaz-Michael King, and King also published an accompanying blog post on some of the challenges with helping people onboard to a fediverse server.
GitLab will not be adding ActivityPub to their platform. GitLabis a popular code hosting and collaboration platform that has had a popular feature open for years to add ActivityPub, which also saw quite some work already done by the community on the feature. GitLab said that “While this feature may have merit, we need to prioritize our efforts elsewhere at this time.” Other code collaboration platforms like Forgejo are working on adding ActivityPub support, with some basic social features already implemented.
The WordPress ActivityPub plugin released their v7.0. The update mainly lays groundwork for becoming a fully-integrated fediverse platform, as it features the technical building blocks for managing and sending follow requests from WordPress. These features are not active yet, but show the direction the team is taking: that of making a WordPress blog a fully social part of the fediverse. The team also added support for the new standard for HTTP Signatures, explained in a new blog post.
FediCon 2025 is a new fediverse conference that will be held on August 1-2 in Vancouver, Canada. It features some well-known names within the fediverse community as speakers, including ActivityPub co-author Evan Prodromou, Pixelfed and Loops creator Daniel Supernault, Damon Outlaw and Sean Tilley of WeDistribute, Anuj Ahooja from A New Social, and many more. FediCon is organised by Charles Iliya Krempeaux, also known as @reiver.
The FediForum conference is expanding into the physical world, by partnering with SFSCON, an established free software conference held every year in Italy. FediForum will be hosting a fediverse track for the conference, with the goal of both educating potential new users about the fediverse as well as building more connections within the existing fediverse community.
The Fosstodon server is now owned by a new parent organisation, the Fosstodon Foundation. With it also comes a voting platform for the members of the Fosstodon. The Fosstodon server switched ownership in recent months after the previous admins came under criticism from the wider fediverse community regarding one of their moderators. At the time, I noted that fediverse servers need governance systems that can handle admin burnout better, and creating a foundation as the owners of a community server helps with creating a more sustainable ownership structure for the long-term health of the community.
The Canvas Event was this week, where people could collaborate on artwork by individually placing pixels on a shared canvas. The final result gives an indication of the wide variety of communities that participated and are active within the threadiverse side of the fediverse.
https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fediverse-report-125/
Feel free to leave a comment here!
#bodbe #sakartvelo #saqartvelo #georgia #notthatgeorgia #wine #village
Do I know a web designer/WP developer with a library or two in their portfolio? If so, and you are interested in pursuing a library website redesign project, speak up. This is an experiment to see if I can find someone here instead of on LinkedIn.
How many parked (unused) domains do you own? I have an idea and want to know if my assumption is correct.
Boost generously, please.
None: | 2329 |
1-5: | 2627 |
6-10: | 382 |
Over 10: | 233 |
Huge AI blocklist for importing into UBlock Origin.
https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist?tab=readme-ov-file
https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pixel-3575477/
Doctor Anderson woke up to her phone pinging. Careful not to disturb her husband she checked it, and saw that it was a new supernova. She slipped out of bed and went to the kitchen, where she logged into the observation database.
Almost at once she could see something wrong. The report only came from the visible light observatories. None of the radio telescopes - not even the wide-field one - had reported anything.
By morning it was clear that this was not any sort of object that was normally her field of interest. It was, however, not one she was going to stop studying. For starters, it was clearly inside the solar system - well inside the orbit of Jupiter. For another, it was accelerating - at about 1.5G if the repeat observations were correct. It was also getting brighter - a lot brighter, almost as if it were getting bigger.
Her husband found her staring at her laptop in the morning, a half-empty and stone cold cup of tea next to her.
"We have to get the kids up for school."
Without looking up "Can you? I've got something here" she replied.
He looked over her shoulder. "Um, that's not an FRB. Or a supernova," he paused, clearly doing maths in his head "That's a powered trajectory."
"Yep. It's not heading for us, we don't think. It looks like it is planning a slingshot."
"So how come you're heading it up?"
"I spotted the anomalous behaviour first."
"And by anomalous, that it was accelerating."
"And getting brighter. We're re-pointing a couple of the orbital scopes."
"I'll get the kids ready."
"Thanks - you're a wonder."
By the time breakfast was over, she was able to show her family a picture - a flower-shaped object, with a dark core, and fourteen bright petals around it. She printed three of them off, so that the kids and her teacher husband could take them with them.
"Our initial estimate is that it is about two hundred metres across. And it is holding a constant 1.5g acceleration. That is an insane amount of energy."
By tea time, there had been no response to radio transmissions, and there had been no change in the trajectory. The following morning brought a dramatic change, though. Overnight the acceleration had changed to a deceleration.
"It will stop just inside the Mars orbit around about midnight tomorrow. We've got a good look at it now, though."
The petals now appeared bluish, and the dark core now appeared to be a grey colour.
The following night, after getting the family up, all four of them clustered around the laptop watching the feeds from the telescopes as the craft finally slowed to a constant velocity. As they watched, the petals suddenly folded back. A few minutes passed - a sudden burst of violet light - and it was gone.
"Mummy where is it?" the youngest asked.
"I don't know, sweety. I just don't know."
"Did it explode?"
"There's no sign of debris, so no" It had vanished completely..
"Maybe they were recharging their engine."
"Maybe. Maybe."
Quite impressive that, even under a relatively large workload, #NetBSD's memory usage has never exceeded 240MB in the console environment. Most times, it's around 220MB or so.
And I'm talking a complex workload despite no X11, with tmux, multiple windows with lots of panes each running TUI applications, some as Python apps with a lot of overhead, browser with many tabs open, and even an ebook open to be read.
Yet, I'm not even close to the 512MB limit offered by this Pi1 Model B. This *is* impressive.
Thanks for all your work on snac!
⚠️ If you see a post or DM saying "your account is currently suspended for verification purposes", do NOT click on the link. It is a scam.
Fediverse servers do not ask people to verify their identity. There is an optional self-verification system, but that's just for those who want to use it. No one is ever asked to do it.
If you are in ANY doubt about ANY official-looking message, contact your own server's admin directly using their public email address on your server's website's "About" page.
Could you possibly share more info on this self verification please?
Yeah, it works totally differently to what the scammers are trying to do.
Self-verification works by linking to your account from your website in a certain format. More info at:
➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-verify-my-account/
It doesn't reveal your identity, it just confirms your ownership of a website or web page.
It also doesn't involve any kind of credit card, which is what the scammers are trying to get hold of. The posts I saw were trying to trick people into giving card numbers etc.
Oh I understand now I connected to my gravatar and that is why it shows up in green on my profile ...correct??
Yeah, exactly, if you link in both directions with a special tag in the HTML code called rel=me it turns the link green as verified.
Rel=me was designed to be a general standard used by all social networks and sites so people could prove they were the same person on different platforms.
Unfortunately Google, Meta, Twitter etc refused to use it presumably because they don't like open standards 😦
But Mastodon and some others do use it.
p.s. The scammers seem to be asking for people's credit/debit card details. Fediverse admins will never ask for anything like that.
(Admins might call for donations with links to Ko-Fi etc, but it's not connected to verification and they would never ask for anyone's card themselves.)
Mastodon's actual self-verification system doesn't involve any payment cards or personal identity. It's also totally optional and mainly just for people who own a website: https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-verify-my-account
p.p.s. If you see any kind of scam on here, click ⋯ below the scam post and then "Report".
When you report a scam, make sure you select the option to anonymously forward the report to the origin server so that they can suspend the account itself. Suspending an original account is the fastest way of stopping scammers.
@FediTips this is one of the fascinating things about Mastodon that none of other major SM platforms have: someone to report a problem to, ask support for, or verify an actual issue.
p.p.p.s. Attached a screenshot of the latest version of this scam post. It's similar to the original but slightly tweaked.
It's a scam, it isn't really from Mastodon support. The scammers are trying to trick people into giving them their card details.
Genuine server admins will never ask you for card details.
If you see this scam, please report it straight away by clicking ⋯ under the scam post and then "Report". Make sure you select the option to forward the report to the origin server.
@FediTips
I have to imagine the fediverse users must be the hardest to scam. 🚫
While Facebook users the easiest 🤔
@FediTips too late, i clicked it, now I'm locked out of my account! What can I do?
@FediTips But it is a testament to the rising influence that the fraudsters think to come here right?
Apparently something like that has been showing up on Facebook for a month ...
Two people I know fell for it because it said it was their Facebook and/or Microsoft account ...
The fact they were still able to use both didn't seem to convince them it was a fake ... and clicked ...
Guess I will hear from them what happened when it does ...
Good heads up!
FOR EVERYONE!!!!
to see
Thank you for posting the info for us..
See ya around 🌌 the verse! 😁👍🏼
@FediTips what is the self verification thing anyway? I have yet to figure it out. Is it the equivalent of the blue checkmark on shitter
I've done a guide to it here: https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-verify-my-account/
TL:DR - If you link to your website from your Mastodon account AND if you link to your Mastodon account from your website with a specific format, the link will turn green on your profile. This also works with two-way linking to accounts on some other platforms.
#saqartvelo #sakartvelo #georgia #bodbe #sighnaghi #kakheti #nottbilisibutheresahashtagfor #tbilisi
Boosting is really important on the Fediverse because it makes whatever you boost federate to the entire servers of all your followers. A boosted public post appears on your followers' timelines, but also becomes searchable to everyone on the servers of your followers.
Instead of an algorithm, the Fediverse relies on human beings sharing stuff they find interesting. This process creates a wonderful chain of discovery.
To boost something here, click the 🔁 or 🚀 button below the post.
@FediTips some people have a rocket emoji button for boosting? Cool! 🚀
It depends on which app they're using or which theme their server's website uses 🙂
@FediTips I still really wish there would be a silent boost or something. Something which would not clutter up my own timeline. I don't want to drown out my own voice to share stuff.
@FediTips I love that there is no algorithm. I notice that I have a much better head space when I use the fediverse. I also am less "hooked" and more intentional when I use these services!
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
But, it's very anoying to get the same post thru boosts again and again.
I wonder if there is no other way to spread posts.
There are many other ways to make posts spread, for example following an account means that person's posts end up on your server.
Boosts are automatically hidden if you've seen them before UNLESS 40 other posts have passed through your feed. In that case it allows the boost to be seen again. More about this at:
https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-stop-seeing-the-same-boosted-post-again-and-again-in-mastodon/
@FediTips this is what makes memes against what they once were: ideas travelling through the shared human psyche \ecospere because ppl appreciate said idea. Rather the 'computer said WATCH THIS!! NOW!!' variant.
Keep seeing the same post because it has been boosted?
You can turn that off and only see a post once in your timeline.
@FediTips You have a rocket button?
*spends the day jealous and distracted*
If your server offers the optional TangerineUI theme on its website it has a rocket 😀
If your server doesn't have it, you can tell your server's admin about it by giving them the link at https://github.com/nileane/TangerineUI-for-Mastodon
Some third party apps also use a rocket.
@FediTips
pet peeve of mine, when someone boosts a reply but not the original post, so now i can't see the context for this reply
If you click on the reply it will show you the entire thread that it comes from with the reply enlarged.
Mastodon help me out here
There's this quote, this proverb
"He who hesitates is..."
And then I can't finish it, I can't remember the word, I'm lost
That's what I get for not finishing read the last couple of words 😂
@CoastalCoasting It's ok I was setting up a chain joke and its working: https://queer.cool/@revndm/114809081090114338
Hesitating?
There's a UK-specific version:
He who hesitates is unlikely to win at “Just a minute”
@benroyce What if that’s the entire proverb? Like, you just say “he who hesitates…” to someone, then walk away and leave them perplexed!
@benroyce lost?
@Robo105 Yes I'm lost. What is the word I'm missing though?
@benroyce they who hesitates is Chris?
They who hesitates is a penny earned?
They who hesitates is neither a borrower nor a lender bee?
@benroyce He who hesitates is ... unable to see the missing word even though countless people have said it? 😄
@benroyce
“He who hesitates
Hallucinates, desegregate
Mediate, alleviate
Try not to hate, love your mate
Don't suffocate on your own hate
Designate your love as fate
A one-world state as human freight
The number eight, a white black state
A gentle trait, the broken crate
A heavy weight or just too late
Like pretty Kate has sex ornate
Now devastate, appreciate
Depreciate, fabricate
Emulate, the truth dilate
Special date, the animal we ate
Guilt debate, the edge serrate
A better rate, the youth irate
Deliberate, fascinate
Deviate, reinstate
Liberate to moderate
Recreate or detonate
Annihilate, atomic fate
Mediate, clear the state
Activate, now radiate
A perfect state, food on plate
Gravitate, the Earth's own weight
Designate your love as fate
At ninety-eight we all rotate.
Something like that.