 ugh, this is pretty clearly a CAPTCHA being used to tune a machine learning algorithm. these are definitely ML-generated pictures and I imagine what's going on is they are adding some noise to a query for "cake" and then asking me to tag the cake-looking stuff. BUT! It means that it doesn't actually matter what I select. I picked a random assortment of stuff and it let me through just fine. Take THAT, training model!! :AngelDevil: Here's the current list of #hometown servers. Some lovely little places there. If you run a Hometown server and want to be on this list, let me know and I'll add you. https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki/Hometown-servers
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@darius I wish I could find a server from Trondheim, but apparently there're not much Norwegian servers here. @darius could you add nitecrew.rip? we're a small, private "general" instance full of goth weirdos and shitposters I absolutely love this custom notification when you go to sign up for the #hometown server https://pagan.plus Exactly the kind of intentional-growth mindset I wanna see from Hometown servers General #hometown development note: I am using the US holiday coming up on Friday to do a ton of Hometown work. Catching up on Github issues and PRs, and looking at the Mastodon v4 code to see how much work it's going to be to remain compatible there. (for those new here, Hometown is my fork of Mastodon with small community features, https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki )
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@darius When you write "Hometown is a light weight fork of Mastodon. ", am I correct that you mean that in the sense of not being very different? Or is it light weight in the sense of running more efficiently or not needing as many server resources? @darius Hooray! We are loving Hometown and look forward to its continued development. Years ago I tried to learn ActivityPub. I succeeded, but it was difficult. I wrote this blog post which is a "what I wish I knew before trying to learn ActivityPub" guide. It is basically "how to read the specs in a way that will make them make more sense".
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@darius You don't see this kind of document very often but they're darned useful. If nothing else there are lot of APIs out there that could use something like this to bridge the gaps between "here's all the things you can do" and "here's how to USE the API". @darius Couple years ago I wanted to build an ActivityPub application I hate to admit that I still don't really get the secret sauce of it, but it eats away at me to try looking at it again @darius Ooh, neat -- I'm starting to noodle with a new library and have the spec on my To Do list, so this is super-useful. Thanks!
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Wow. so before the latest influx of users this server would process about 150k federated events a day (not just posts but all activities: follows, favorites, etc). Most of this week post-influx we floated around 280k. Yesterday jumped to 410k.
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 Wow. Stats on federated events consumed by our server this week: Nov 3-5: 280k events each day This is a sustained increase over the course of about a week. I have never seen anything like it. Usually what we see in an influx is a one or two day bump and then dropoff. I have never seen a week of solid rampup before. This feels very different. I got a notification that a unit test failed today that was passing yesterday. No code has changed over the weekend. Check the logs: lol it's a timezone related test and it failed today because we had a time change in the US
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@darius I didn't finish the first sentence an knew it had to be TZ issues! Can't wait for tomorrow at work now. @darius not having to deal with daylight savings was the one (1) good thing about living in Arizona Oregon Sherrifs: our "we do not condone or support slavery" shirt is raising questions already answered by the shirt
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 @darius Can I ask a dumb newbie-to-Mastodon question? How do you get a "SHOW MORE" link in your post *and* a content-warning overlay? I was always under the impression that the "show more" was just some servers using different language for the content warning feature… but clearly this post of yours tells me that's not the case. Against Fast Fashion and Towards a Proletariat Revolution (the goods are poor but the poors are good) Pleased to note that I have updated @hhra, my bot that posts excerpts from the amazing Hip Hop Radio Archive ( https://hiphopradioarchive.org/ ) which is itself run by @laze. The bot now keeps up with the latest updates on the site, which means its library of shows to post expands every time the website's does! What this means in practical terms is the number of radio episodes it pulls from is now doubled, from ~450 to ~900! Please read about Alaa Abd El-Fattah, the activist, blogger, and open source software dev. He is currently on full hunger strike in an Egyptian prison. #freealaa In case anyone's curious about where I work, I'm at Meedan, a not-for-profit that develops open source tools for fact checkers. That's not the only thing we do and if you want to know more, you're in luck: our 2021 annual report is now available. Go here and scroll to the very bottom and click "2021": https://meedan.com/mission Or just go straight to the PDF: https://assets-global.website-files.com/615e270f23c94c3fc683f12c/636145d496e1e4746701a9a8_Meedan_Annual%20Report_2021.pdf  @darius That is a solid mission and the team page indicates that it's a global team. Looks like a sweet gig! @darius I thought you were retired and living the good life off of The Lottery Collective 🙃 If you are on Twitter and want to find people who have opened accounts over here, someone made a little tool that scrapes Fediverse handles (and email addresses, since a lot of people drop the leading @) from the Twitter bios and display names of people you follow over there
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@darius @darius It's not working today, it seems. However, I tried https://pruvisto.org/debirdify (mentioned at the bottom of your link), which worked well, thanks Trying to take the temperature here - if I held a zoom chat where I talked about setting up and maintaining a Mastodon or Hometown server, would you attend? I would put the video online afterward too. This would not be an in-depth how-to, I would be outlining general steps and talking about the time commitment and some things I've learned re: governance or lack thereof. Anonymous poll
Poll
I'd attend if timing works and participate
51
14.4%
I'd attend if timing works and lurk
80
22.6%
I'd watch the video after
157
44.4%
I don't know why I'm voting in this poll
354 people voted. 66
18.6%
Voting ended 31 Oct 2022 at 16:25.
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 @darius I would set up something like friend.camp (I already run a IRL community in Tokyo) but probably don't have the time commitment to dedicate to it. Really interested in how that has been for you. I also just want to get off the mastodon.social server to help it cope. Maybe I should just join dolphin.town :-D #mastoadmin Does mastodon dot cloud still have a massive unregulated spam problem? I silenced that instance a couple years back because it seemed like they were just not doing anything to address it. But I'm seeing legitimate new fedi users pop up over there now...  @darius Speaking selfishly (as a user of mastodon dot social who is blocked by some instances because m.s is too lightly moderated, and finds this mildly annoying) I wonder if there should be some Larger solution to this problem, like a shared-across-several-servers/group-moderated allow-list of "trustworthy users from lax instances" or something Checked our server queues and the 28th saw us handle double the federated events as we did on the 27th. We are officially in another influx spike. On track to double yet again today. It'll die down, it always does, but the Fediverse always comes out of these influxes a little more lively at baseline, and a little stronger (imo) @darius so far most people I’ve seen migrate seem to enjoy it, with a few differences to learn. Curious about how long they stay long term. On my to-read list: this open-access journal article about applying Confucian ethics to the design of social media technology: |
Gregory's Server
@darius Data poisoning in action. @nickmvincent
@darius Yeah, with hCaptcha, the secret is that the users are still the product, you're just using a different middleman. From their website: "When you use hCaptcha, companies bid on the work your users do as they prove their humanity. You get the rewards." Google mostly uses street view stuff in their captchas, but hCaptcha literally sells a data labelling service in which your users are the employees.
@darius That's a terrible training set anyway. They're looking for cake, but there isn't a single picture of Omni-man in there!