mike - mike@macgirvin.com

mike

Sun, 08 May 2022 11:30:55 +1000

$ cd pleroma
[macgirvin@stayton] ~/pleroma (develop)
$ rgrep hs2019
[macgirvin@stayton] ~/pleroma (develop)
$

I guess that explains why federation with Pleroma is broken again.

mike

Sun, 08 May 2022 12:41:29 +1000

I guess we need to do something like this:

Screenshot showing new security setting in Streams project

mike

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 09:13:35 +1000

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Oliver

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 16:24:38 +1000

As long as he's a good boss, he's a good boss.

mike

Sat, 16 Apr 2022 10:09:44 +1000

Fediverse server is down. Shrug. I'll just use this one. Nomadic identity FTW.

mike

Sat, 16 Apr 2022 14:59:35 +1000

And.... it's back again.

mike

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 06:44:19 +1100

In earlier years I might have questioned the wisdom of pushing a software release on April Fool's Day because some might think it's a joke. If you're still using a platform which gives total strangers the ability to totally destroy your online identity and erase all your content and relationships at any time, I'm afraid the joke's on you.

mike

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 07:58:41 +1100

This is interesting... my computer just automatically updated its clock for daylight savings. Only problem is - that's not supposed to happen for another two weeks. Australia/Sydney and Ubuntu 21.10.

This could be a huge problem for network infrastructure servers on this side of the world.

show all 18 comments

Tanja

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 22:10:14 +1100 last edited: Wed, 23 Mar 2022 22:18:52 +1100

@mike

I realized what confused me about this. After I saw your first reply to this post, where you explained what apparently happened, I looked up Brisbane. Then I saw your reply about Queensland not using DST, and it didn't immediately make sense to me - if Queensland doesn't use DST, why did your computer switch you over...? This morning I woke up with the realization that you must still be on DST with the switch back to normal time coming up. Sometimes the whole season reversal is still a little hard to wrap my mind around

Tanja

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 22:01:32 +1100

@mike

Use what works for you. Fuck war.

Absolutely. I used Ubuntu for over a decade, and I really liked it, and I would still recommend it to beginners. In the end, I didn't ditch it over ideology (much), but over Snap. I don't like Snap, mostly because it's inefficient, but I also don't like the lack of transparency, the closed-source server part, and the fact that Canonical keeps developers and users locked into their own app store. I still wouldn't have cared; the first thing I used to do on a fresh Ubuntu installation was to get rid of all snap dependencies. I could still get everything I needed through deb packages. Then I needed a browser other than Firefox, and apt install chromium-browser pulled first Snap and its dependencies, and then installed the Snap package for Chromium. I was one of the staunchest supporters of Ubuntu, when all the ideologists came along talking about FOSS purism. I wanted an OS that just works without too much hassle, and I also installed Ubuntu for users coming from Windows, because I knew there are very few updates that break things. But the Chromium / Snap deal crossed a line for me. They took my choice away, and in the end, that's what drove me off.

I'm now running Debian on both my VPS and my home server, and Manjaro on the desktop. I started my post-Ubuntu life on the Desktop with Debian as well, but they take forever to provide upgrades to some software that I use a lot, and when I found Manjaro, I was quite happy and stuck with it. There aren't any proprietary drivers for my ancient NVidia graphics card anymore, but for what I'm doing, the Nouveau driver works just fine.

I'm sure there are some Arch users who look at Manjaro the same way the hardcore Debian enthusiasts and militant FOSS defenders look at Ubuntu, but it does work, and out of the box, too.

frank schleusener

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 10:35:55 +1000

Use what works for you. Fuck war.

amen to that. i just want to throw in another distro i arrived at after i found that arch took too much effort to maintain: openSUSE tumbleweed. it's turned into a true rolling release distro eventually but is more stable, requiring less intervention & fixing than arch did. i've been using it at home for many years now with no serious problems. on servers i usually stick to ubuntu since it's more widely supported.

Einer von Vielen

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 07:50:47 +1100

I used Ubuntu for over a decade, and I really liked it, and I would still recommend it to beginners. In the end, I didn't ditch it over ideology (much), but over Snap. I don't like Snap, mostly because it's inefficient, but I also don't like the lack of transparency, the closed-source server part, and the fact that Canonical keeps developers and users locked into their own app store...

@Tanja For a couple of years now I keep switching from Debian to Ubuntu if I am not able to get a new hardware running and back to Debian if I get it running. I think I should give Manjaro a try as well. Thanks for the thoughts.

mike

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 12:31:02 +1100

I've got ActivityPub C2S (client-to-server) more or less working in my test site. It's safe to say that this functionality will be included in the Streams repository as soon as testing concludes.

Unfortunately you will not be able to use andStatus (the only known publicly available ActivityPub C2S client) as a client interface. What we will be offering is a generic service which complies with the ActivityPub specification and does not require any undocumented third-party APIs.

Project Roadmap

mike

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 11:55:44 +1100

Been a while since I published a roadmap. Here's where we're at...

Name:	Supported until:
Zap	2022-12-31
Mistpark	2022-12-31
Osada	2022-12-31
Redmatrix	2022-12-31
Roadhouse	2022-12-31

Streams is approaching public preview status and we're currently looking at a formal release date of 2022-07-01. Channels may be cloned to Streams from any other Zot6/compatible platform including Hubzilla, although the Hubzilla migration is one-time only and will not be synced. A script will be provided to upgrade your entire Zap (etc.) site to Streams.

Once installed, the name "Streams" vanishes and the software will take on the identity of your website or instance and provide a community actor to represent your site (and its users) in the fediverse. Your software will use multicode by default (html, markdown, and bbcode combined) and communicate using the Nomad and ActivityPub protocols and federate with every known fediverse/ActivityPub platform except Pleroma; who apparently do not wish to communicate with us --- and Diaspora; who do not wish to communicate with anybody but themselves. A Zot6 driver is also provided to communicate with software which uses that protocol. You'll get internet single sign-on, groups, aspects, private media, privacy/permissions/moderation/spam&abuse prevention, personal cloud storage, strong crypto, nomadic identity, and all the other features this family of software has been known for over the years, but with special attention given to reducing or eliminating unnecessary complexity. Additional customisations and special features are provided through addons and downloadable apps.

This software will require composer and PHP 8. You may continue to use a Zap-derived platform on PHP 7.4 until PHP 7.4 reaches end-of-life in November 2022. After December there will be no further security patches or upgrades to the Zap based projects. There will be one project and it will have no name (the project is virtual or ephemeral), but you can find it in the Streams repository on codeberg (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams). This project will not be open source or free software or closed source and has no license. It simply exists.

show all 10 comments

rekha

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 09:36:54 +1100

So does it mean that when php9x or 10x will come (or whatever they are numbered or called) Streams/Zap will no more work? Thanks @mike

mike

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 09:50:01 +1100

Not really. Anything greater than 8.0, assuming that PHP releases don't deprecate anything critical. That's a risky assumption based on the historical evidence, but one can be hopeful.

Papa Dragon

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 13:07:36 +1100

So, here's a translation of your post in french.

I will probably add a few comments or posts in french to explain a few things.

Project updates

mike

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 10:42:43 +1100

The differences between Roadhouse, Streams, and Zap have now become significant enough that we can no longer merge cleanly between them, so it's time for a hard fork.

For those who have any interest in this topic, Roadhouse now represents the future of multicode, and Streams represents the future of the Nomad protocol. Both of these projects are considered highly experimental and not yet recommended for general use.

Zap is still the recommended public facing project and the Zap engine still powers Osada, Mistpark, and Redmatrix.

Cloning and migration are fully supported between all six of these projects, including the experimental forks.

One of the first major changes will be to remove composer modules from the Roadhouse and Streams repositories. So if you are using one of these projects, you will soon be forced to run 'composer install' to load external dependencies. You should only need to do this once. A "composer update" or "composer update --no-dev" will be added to the update scripts, but you may need to do it manually if you upgrade directly via git commands. This change will likely happen this week, so that's what to do if you encounter problems. Folks using Zap and other projects powered by the Zap engine can safely ignore all of this.

Merry Xmas from Zotlabs

mike

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 20:27:06 +1100

Updates:
Zap              2021-12-22
Mistpark     2021-12-22
Roadhouse 2021-12-22
Redmatrix   2021-12-22
Streams      2021-12-22
Osada          2021-12-22

show all 6 comments

Sophie

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 09:54:55 +1100

Merry Christmas!

Michael

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 10:42:52 +1100

Happy Xmas!

el veciet

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 11:48:38 +1100

mike

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 09:05:32 +1100

BBE - Bloody Big Egg

show all 8 comments

mike

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 08:26:47 +1100

Followup: it was a double yolker, as was another identical monster egg (same chook) last week.

Hans

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 08:31:12 +1100

Do not scare them if you want normal eggs

mike

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 20:02:09 +1100

This is Australia mate. Hard not to scare them.

mike

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 10:19:52 +1100

[dev 76712bca0] libzot.py: more crypto

I just realised that I always tend to build the crypto first. Then permissions.

Always.

mike

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 18:12:05 +1100

This is an occasional reminder that the very first section of the ASCII table which is the root of every digital communication system is a model for representing data elements and groupings in transmission. Note especially the four at the end. It's a shame we don't actually use them any more. If we did, there might never have been a need for  JSON  or CSV files.

Ctrl    ASCII     Dec     Hex    Meaning
^@     NUL    000     00     Null character
^A     SOH    001     01     Start of Header
^B     STX    002     02     Start of Text
^C     ETX    003     03     End of Text
^D    EOT    004     04     End of Transmission
^E     ENQ     005     05     Enquiry
^F     ACK     006     06     Acknowledge
^G    BEL    007     07     Bell
^H     BS     008     08     Backspace
^I     HT     009     09    Horizontal tab
^J    LF     010     0A     Line feed
^K     VT     011     0B     Vertical tab
^L     FF    012     0C     Form feed
^M     CR     013     0D     Carriage return
^N     SO     014     0E     Shift out
^O     SI     015     0F     Shift in
^P     DLE     016     10     Data link escape
^Q     DCL     017     11     Xon (transmit on)
^R     DC2     018     12     Device control 2
^S     DC3     019     13    Xoff (transmit off)
^T     DC4     020     14     Device control 4
^U     NAK     021     15     Negative acknowledge
^V    SYN     022     16     Synchronous idle
^W    ETB     023     17     End of transmission
^X    CAN     024     18     Cancel
^Y    EM     025     19     End of medium
^Z    SUB     026     1A     Substitute
^[    ESC     027     1B     Escape
^\    FS     028     1C     File separator
^]    GS     029     1D     Group separator
^^    RS     030     1E    Record separator
^_    US     031     1F     Unit separator.

mike

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 08:55:55 +1100

Facebook is down.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

Decentralised social networks with nomadic identity and near realtime mirrors/snapshots. It's not just a good idea. It's a bloody great idea.

show all 4 comments

Sean Tilley

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 14:32:13 +1100

ðŸ” Repeated @mike's Note

el veciet

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 08:48:52 +1100

I remember that day, a dozen people who hadn't talked to me for about 1 year, appeared to comment: "what you always said happened" "You were right" "you predicted" ...

Then they all disappeared again. What a fantastic planet....

Hans

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 09:24:49 +1100

At least we know they don't have accreditation on 27001

That would have stopped it, or at least made it a point they should fix in some 6 weeks.

Then again, I doubt kema or other companies would like to test them

mike

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 17:26:57 +1000

I wonder how many people out there would be horrified that I'm using super high-precision trumpet valve and bell straightening equipment to "adjust" irrigation connectors in the mud.

Mario Vavti

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 17:28:51 +1000

I don't think there is a better tool for this task :slight_smile:

Oliver

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 18:12:00 +1000

The main thing is that it works

Adam Robertson

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 12:55:41 +1000

Trumpet players would. Anyone who grows plants and lives a great distance from the nearest hardware store would not

mike

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 09:37:11 +1000

At a basic level the current fediverse permissions model is akin to quarantine and forced lockdown. It mostly involves a chosen few protecting their communities at the expense of individual freedom. Communities are created primarily around compatible websites. If you disagree with the community policies or feel discriminated against your only choice is to leave the community; at a cost of leaving your content and sometimes your friends behind.

The Nomad permission model is more like being vaccinated; while being able to replicate your friendships and content wherever you desire, whenever you desire. Communities are provided primarily by using membership in federated Groups rather than membership in individual websites. Consequently an individual is more of a free agent and has the ability to choose to be a part of multiple communities.

We also recognise that no single solution is perfect for everybody. That's why we provide both.

mike

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 17:21:31 +1000

Copperheads about...

This one (right side just above center) just watched me work on fences for a while and then slithered away. I'll have to say It was better when I knew where it was than when I didn't.

coiled copperhead snake near  a fallen tree

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Stefan Haydn

Mustafar, Sun, 08 Aug 2021 19:31:21 +1000

@mike True. The climate change is definitely real. Greece is burning, we and other parts of Germany have unusual floodings, the east of Germany drys outâ€¦but â€žlucky usâ€œ have no dangerous animals which flee from those areas to pass us or want to stay here.

I havenâ€™t followed whatâ€™s going on in your area (still donâ€™t know where that is). This is the first time I get an impression about it. And it is still hard to understand how to cope with climate change (as this part of Bavaria is safe for the moment) with critters and rodents on top of that.

mike

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 08:26:59 +1000

I posted a lot about the climate emergency as it took hold here, but for personal reasons I dropped that channel last year and started over with a channel that's much more private by default.

I live on a farm that borders the Blue Mountains World Heritage area. We endured decades long droughts, the bushfires (which took out somewhere around 20-30% of the woodlands on the continent and closer to 80-90% along the eastern side of the continent), then we've had a couple of rounds of apocalyptic floods and a number of species plagues of biblical proportions (locusts and rodents for example) all while simultaneously dealing with waves of human pandemics and dust storms at continental scales.

Anyway, that's the background. But let me emphasize the part that over a billion animals died right over there (points finger) and for many of the survivors, their habitat will be uninhabitable for years to come. The survivors migrated anywhere that wasn't destroyed and many ended up on farms throughout the region. Some in pretty bad shape. We built an informal network of farmers and volunteers who have stepped up to rescue and provide shelter to animals. Had to. We were all overwhelmed. Kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, wombats, possums, echidnas, turtles, snakes, rats, birds of all kinds, bats, and even feral dogs and cats. There are wild emus and peacocks just up the road. Many critters have come through our property in the aftermath and some of the larger farms set up facilities specifically to house and care for the survivors. I would've built a wombat rescue centre personally (we see a lot of those) except these are large burrowing creatures and you need a chain link fence around a concrete platform that's buried 2 metres in the earth to contain them for rehabilitation. They can dig through anything else. I couldn't afford to do this, but one of our friends could and did - so we take injured wombats there instead. I know a number of people that deal specifically with kangaroo rescues. And if we don't know somebody personally, we take them to the local veterinary clinic as their help network spreads even wider.

But let's talk about snakes for a moment. During the bushfires, a copperhead sought shelter in our chicken coop. I was a bit stressed about this as I had to enter the coop to feed them every day, and kept worrying about this snake that had taken up residence, but left it alone. It eventually died there. When I inspected closer, it had burns all over its body. Poor bugger. Last year another copperhead got itself caught in our "snake-proof" fence and couldn't extricate itself. At the time I left it alone, thinking that I should just let nature run its course. Birds subsequently attacked it and pecked it apart as it couldn't run or hide. It died a horrible death, and it was all my fault - I built the fence. About six months ago another one got stuck in the same fence. My wife and I delicately cut the fence out around it to set it free. None of these critters deserved what happened to them. They didn't harm or even threaten anybody. They were just trying to stay alive.

All of this has changed me in a fundamental way. I used to be one of those armchair climate change activists worried about the collapse of earth's ecosystems in 2050, but no longer. Our predictions of what was going to happen in 2050 are happening today. The only thing we can individually do is - just. save. lives.

Stefan Haydn

Utapau, Mon, 09 Aug 2021 19:31:39 +1000

Oh, my dear @mike! I haven't known! Thanks for the background info. I have read an article about that in "The Guardian" as well after reading your comment. This is really terrible. You have the crisis right before your eyes.

As I said earlier, in this part of Bavaria we still live in solitude. Everything is far away, that's why a lot of people still see no evidence what is going on in the world. Also the floods in the south of Bavaria or in other parts of Germany don't seem to change minds at all. "Sure, it's a tragedy, but floods have been there for ages." they say. And still they vote the parties which could have taken measures a very long time ago. This is insane.

I think I begin to understand, that you don't see a dangerous animal in a copperhead anymore. You see a lifeform, which had to flee its original habitat because it was burnt down to the ground. You have my whole respect for that and your whole situation. I cannot imaging what you went through the last years and still have same fine humour, as I read in some other posts. May the force be with you, as one of my favorite quote says. Thank you for sharing your story.

mike

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 10:40:43 +1000

It would be negligent of me not to mention this, so here goes...

If you use a webtorrent service (such as #peertube), the default behaviour is to share "stuff" from your hard drive back to the web, bypassing firewalls and VPNs over WebRTC.

The claim is that webtorrent will only share things and fragments of things you download, but you need to be aware of this, and be alert because I haven't studied the security model closely and don't know if it can be bypassed. Even if it only shares things you downloaded via the same mechanism, it becomes public knowledge that your IP accessed a certain file.

I just remember trying Napster some years ago and found (to my horror) that the entire contents of my hard drive were being shared with the internet, without asking me, and through a firewall. I uninstalled it quickly.

In recent peertube releases this behaviour can apparently be turned off, but 'on' is the default condition and applies if you merely visit a peertube site and watch videos. I would recommend for Zap (etc.) folks to only watch these videos through the link we provide on your own site (which is an mpeg and doesn't involve WebRTC and webtorrent).

mike

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 14:22:34 +1000

Couple of little snow flurries this morning. Nothing stuck.

hEARt PhoniX

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 18:46:32 +1000

That means you can leave the slide in the garage.

mike

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 07:07:49 +1000

Dream up a great new software feature that is very likely to be unique in the fediverse

Spend half the night awake imagining how it will best be implemented so that it will just bloody work

Make some double strength coffee

Open the editor

Discover you had the same exact dream a couple of years ago.

Close the editor

show all 4 comments

mike

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 07:17:12 +1000

Yes I know. Might have to go work on livestock fences as soon as it gets light outside.

astabski

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 08:07:33 +1000

@mike , less coffee, more sleep and active rest (physical work) and ideas will be clearer - you know it well.

mike

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 09:13:13 +1000

C07012BF-CE8F-42B0-876E-991BC3D82872.jpeg?resize=465%2C262&ssl=1

mike

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 12:30:15 +1000

How you know when government has completely lost the plot...

Unnamed health officer: "People with Covid are going to their doctor. This has to stop."

hEARt PhoniX

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 02:11:55 +1000

Great speech.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv2SapQ0bD4