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Mastodon's default is now for registrations to be closed on servers. Great! And for servers with open registrations to automatically require moderator approval of new sign ups if the server has not seen a moderator/admin in a week. That should deal with these abandoned servers, I'm happy about these changes.


The spam wave seems to have stopped 16 hours ago, from all sources simultaneously.


I hadn't heard of any Streams repository (fka Zap, fka Osada, etc) people for about two months and thought it had just gotten quiet. Instead the forum and the people post quite regularly, but communication with them from my Friendica has broken down. When trying to reconnect I got all the errors about not being able to recognise the protocol (when it fails to load the actor definition). Not even individual posts load correctly when providing the url.

So I thought this could be a use for my Pleroma. But it also mainly fails to connect... :-( I can only load individual posts.

in reply to Gidi Kroon

At the same time I can't unfollow Guppe groups from my Friendica, only follow them. Even when they act as spam amplification...


Was wondering how you could consider communication using carrier pigeons secure, but of course it would be if you use IPoACs.

Clara Listensprechen reshared this.





I love how you can see on Yusra Mardini's face how much she feels at home at a swimming pool. She stopped competitive swimming a while back, but she's here now in an ambassador role.


#YusraMardini



I'm starting to think no remote content should be stored at all, just maybe cached, but I understand how, currently, received text of posts can be stored similar to an email inbox.

But do I understand(*) correctly that Mastodon stores remote media as well, in their own media storage, even when from unsolicited sources? That can't be right.

(*) It is cited as a side effect of the spam wave that some are running out of media storage.




From my perspective the spam wave seems to have subsided, or maybe this post brings it in again... What I did:

On Pleroma put the discord invite url and the hashtag in MRF as blocks. On Friendica I don't have MRF, so I unsubscribed from guppe groups. That seems enough, I haven't had to block any domains yet, may do so later if needed.

The hashtag should probably not be blocked forever, as it is the Japanese name of a legitimate business which may be the target not the source of the impersonation/defamation attack, as is the discord. But since I have no Japanese contacts, that's ok for now.

I always have private messages blocked from people I don't follow, and I recently started hiding followers/followed accounts, which I think also helps a bit to limit such waves.

in reply to Gidi Kroon

Forgot to unsubscribe from relays on my Pleroma... So that had still a few posts coming in. On Friendica I see that the gup.pe group I unfollowed, still keeps forwarding me the spam posts...
in reply to Gidi Kroon

By now any server still having fully open registrations and sending spam is clearly running unattended, I've checked some and there seems to be no local activity other than the spam, sometimes with the last local or admin post in 2022. So I've started blocking domains that still come in.


I think the fediverse is still in their naive era, like email and the internet used to be. Still too many ways to do spam multiplication and ddos, too much trusting what other servers do. Too little tools to handle the effects.


Pleroma's MRF feature proved to be really useful in the recent spam wave.


Hardly a 'crafted payload', more like a completely normal payload, just at another address...

Alice: hi, I'm Bob
Mastodon: hi Bob, you look different
Alice: never mind, I'm Bob, and I have changed my security keys. Please use these new ones when you validate a message from Bob, I mean me
Mastodon: will do
Alice: and by the way, if your user Carol sends a private message to Bob, send it to me instead, since I am Bob, as i said
Mastodon: fine, nothing suspicious there

(My simplistic summary of the recent disclosure. What is not stressed in the released details is that it doesn't change the profile of the impersonated user, Bob in the above, as its profile at the source is unaffected.)



It's that day again, the birthday of Stephanie Leonidas!

I choose Crusade in Jeans from my 'Watch for Stephanie' letterboxd list for the birthday rewatch. A long time ago I only knew her sister Georgina Leonidas and knew she was a very talented actress. I saw that her older sister Stephanie was also an actress and thought that even if she only had a fraction of the talent of her younger sister, she would still be worth watching. So I took a punt buying this dvd. That was a very lucky punt... Stephanie turned out to be one of the best actresses ever and I since try to watch everything with her in it!


#StephanieLeonidas #CrusadeInJeans #BirthdayRewatch

letterboxd.com/gidikroon/list/…

in reply to Gidi Kroon

Later of course she was more obviously brilliant in things like Defiance and Mirrormask... She should be the lead everywhere.
in reply to Gidi Kroon

A boy plays and loses a football match with the national team, then drops in on his mother who's building a time machine. He goes back in time trying to win, but ends up in the middle ages and meets love interest girl (winning after all) Jenne in a children's crusade.

The story acknowledges that the crusades as we know them were wrong. This children's crusade is strictly nonviolent.




Lotus: everything is a database table
Exchange: everything is an email
Tcl: everything is a string
Windows: everything is a folder
Linux: everything is a file


Apparently in Windows 11 you need to shift-right-click instead of right-click to keep your sanity.
#NoMoreShowMoreOptions


Today is the birthday (+44 years) of Christina Ricci. I'll be rewatching a film from my 'Watch for Christina' list to celebrate. The top ones I all saw recently and since I quite like to rewatch Sleepy Hollow, that one it is. I think it may also be the first film I saw her in.
#ChristinaRicci #SleepyHollow #BirthdayRewatch

letterboxd.com/film/sleepy-hol…

in reply to Gidi Kroon

The year is 1799. I didn't know they could already record moving images back then. What do you mean, films aren't documentaries? They aren't real?


When you make DNS changes and nothing breaks. Did the changes even persist?



Miranda Cosgrove / CBS's Mission Unstoppable for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (no autocomplete, not 'in Scotland') on their Instagram, calling to 'Bridge the gap'. The amount of women in science is nowhere near 50% and that has to change.

(I can't post video here, so the link's it)
#MirandaCosgrove #Science #IDWGS



Loving the SuperbOwl news today, but for a little bit of some actual SuperBowl thing in between: Jenna Ortega is going to be in an hilarious advert for Doritos Dinamita, see here.
#JennaOrtega #Doritos


Happy Birthday Chloë Grace Moretz!

It's her 27th birthday and I'll be celebrating rewatching a recent film of hers, Shadow in the Cloud, from my 4k blu-ray. It's such a powerful performance!
#ChloëGraceMoretz #ShadowInTheCloud #BirthdayRewatch

in reply to Gidi Kroon

It's all Chloë Grace Moretz... This is such a thrill throughout to get such a masterclass acting performance...

Love the ending and what it says. (But telling would be spoilers)

in reply to Gidi Kroon

And she got to do her English accent again, which she so effectively used to trick the director of Hugo to hire her.


Apparently you can't cancel or change a preorder at Amazon even more than a month before release, despite what they suggest. Chat bot/human just says it already started shipping. I don't believe that, with an estimated arrival listed in April... Is it coming by snail?

Guess I'll have the blu-ray and the dvd then.



Open APIs and endpoints should not have side effects on other servers. Like retrieving previews from websites or referred-to (replied-to, boosted, quoted) posts from other ActivityPub servers. This should be limited to other parties you trust.


Jenna Ortega's book It's All Love will be released in a German translation on 15 February 2024. That's years after she wrote it and years after it originally came out in English. I guess we can thank Wednesday for that.
#JennaOrtega #ItsAllLove


Jenna Ortega is going to be in a new film called Klara and the Sun.

Her film Beetlejuice 2 will be in the cinema 6 September 2024.

Both bits of news just shared by Jenna's mother.


#JennaOrtega #Beetlejuice #KlaraAndTheSun

feld reshared this.

in reply to Gidi Kroon

Though I guess the joke is that it isn't going to be called Beetlejuice 2, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice...
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Apparently it's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 2024 A.D. in full, according to this Deadline article. And this is the article about Klara and the Sun. Jenna plays a robot designed to prevent loneliness and when she finds that a little girl has a mystery illness goes on a quest which causes her to learn about human love. This sounds great!
#JennaOrtega #Beetlejuice #BeetlejuiceBeetlejuice2024AD #Beetlejuice2 #KlaraAndTheSun


Stephanie Leonidas is filming a new film called Marching Powder. She just posted photos from the set.

IMDb says her film A Very Venice Romance was released last year (it doesn't list as available for me) and 5lbs of Pressure is still to come.
#StephanieLeonidas #MarchingPowder




Copied my followed tags into a "Followed tags" channel and copied my followed searches into a "Followed searches" channel. This works quite well. I think this is going to be useful. Channels maybe a quite powerful new Friendica feature.

It's starting to feel like tumblr again, except tumblr would occasionally just delete all tags alphabetically after 'k'.

in reply to Gidi Kroon

Also thanks to Samsung's smart-select text extraction feature of the s-pen, otherwise this would have been a lot of typing.


@Tuta
I notice a difference in my mails shown to me in the Linux desktop app and the Android app. The former shows only one mail, the latter shows all mails that checking via a browser shows. I've checked that the filter is set to 'all emails' for all.

It seems related to the 'local data' setting which for both apps is on the default of one month and all missing mails are older than one month. So I've changed this to 366 days for both clients.

However, the old mails still do not show up in the desktop app. Is there another filter I'm missing?

How can I use the desktop client to see all mails I can see via the browser?

@Tuta
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Cold you report this to support via email? Then the tech team can look into this!


This, about RAM, is a much misunderstood bit about monitoring resource usage.

Also: cpu usage. When someone comes to me with 'panic, panic, your application is using 100% cpu', I'm like 'great, call me when it doesn't', for then there's a bottleneck elsewhere.


I'm not saying there's no such thing as software bloat (there is) but the reason that your computer magically always seems to use 80-90% of the ram no matter how much ram you install is that the computer understands empty ram doesn't do anything but ram being used to cache files makes your user experience much faster

this is a good thing! if your computer stopped doing this everything would suddenly feel very sluggish and stuttery!




Not sure what improvement this new 'night posting' icon is on Mastodon...

I don't think the old term 'unlisted' covered what it does (as it does more than unlist a post), but the current terms and icon aren't much better.

(I'm still thinking 'real unlisted' posts have a purpose)



"Heatwave"

That's the title of this Roswell episode.

The episode has a theme of temptation and giving in to desire and this opening scene with Shiri Appleby captures it so well in the non-obvious way.

That box is tempting...

But why resist?
#ShiriAppleby #Roswell

in reply to Gidi Kroon

Photos from my tv, so quality and framing are not original. Also Mastodon people are not going to get it, not having images within the post.


Artists have placed an artwork in front of my flat and it's one of those things where you'd accidentally and without intending any malice ask the artist when they are going to finish it.
in reply to Gidi Kroon

They placed two more pieces and I think it may be finished now.


Two girls see themselves on screen, except it's not themselves, but the other girl who is completely identical. They didn't know they were twins. It uncovers a long running scandal in Georgia. Story by BBC News.

Georgia's stolen children: Twins sold at birth reunited by TikTok video - bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68…

Clara Listensprechen reshared this.



US people: reminder that Miller's Girl, a film with Jenna Ortega in the lead role, is in your theaters tomorrow. I think it's going to be a good one!

For people in NL like me, we wait until 14 March.
#JennaOrtega #MillersGirl