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State of the Socials
The Fediverse continues to gain momentum, albeit slowly. Threads now let’s you auto-post from the Facebook app (seemingly not the Web site, though). More importantly, posts from Threads can be made available to read on the ActivityPub protocol. It’s publish-only so far, so no comments return to the parent post. Baby steps, I guess.
BlueSky keeps ( Read more... ) -
Networks Effects
People sure do talk about how they hate big corporations being in charge of their social media interactions, don’t they? But what is the biggest beneficiary of Elon Musk’s deliberate destruction of Twitter? Meta.
Network effects are a bitch. Threads launched with an automatic user base of “everyone on Instagram.” Since adding a functional web ( Read more... ) -
Eleven
At the 11th minute on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the armistice which was meant to end the War to End All Wars went into effect. As is typical, the guns didn’t fall silent at the appointed hour, and both sides continued shelling each other until sundown. The armistice was extended multiple times before the peace treaty ( Read more... ) -
GXAT
From Jeff Gordinier’s “X Saves the World,” I present the Generation X Aptitude Test:
- Do you want to change the world?
- Yes, and I’m proud to say we did it, man. We changed the world. Just look around you!
- Yes, absolutely, and I promise I will get back to doing that just as soon as the interest rates return to where they’re supposed to be.
- ( Read more... )
- Do you want to change the world?
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Where my POSSE at?
There has been a lot of discussion about federation in the past year, and for the first time it actually starts to feel like a thing that may happen, as contrasted with previous news blips. Tumblr was one of the first of the legacy social media sites to promise future integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that undergirds Mastodon, Friendica, ( Read more... ) -
Games for Six
I’m in a bit of a waiting period for some scenario development at work, so I’m looking at my stupidly large boardgame library.
In the past six months or so, the question of “good games that play six or more players” has come up a few times. I checked, and my collection includes over fifty games that claim to work with more than five players.
( Read more... ) -
Documents and Sensitivity
This is a great interview with a person who is incredibly well-informed and erudite on the subject of national security materials and vulnerabilities. There are a couple points that I think can stand to be emphasized:
- Any potential release or compromise of documents as sensitive as these must be treated as if they WERE compromised. The sensitivity ( Read more... ) -
Testing ActivityPub
Once upon a time, I tried to get the WordPress plugin for ActivityPub to work. I spent weeks, and failed every try. The plugin author was stumped, other than, “shared hosting on Dreamhost with LetsEncrypt does weird things to the .well-known path.” And so I gave up.
It looks like a kind person on the internet was able to find a fix. It involves ( Read more... ) -
Testing ActivityPub
Once upon a time, I tried to get the WordPress plugin for ActivityPub to work. I spent weeks, and failed every try. The plugin author was stumped, other than, “shared hosting on Dreamhost with LetsEncrypt does weird things to the .well-known path.” And so I gave up.
It looks like a kind person on the internet was able to find a fix. It involves ( Read more... ) -
The Beginning of the McCarthy Era
After claiming that the voters chose to take the country in a new direction (ignoring the Senate races entirely, I suppose), Kevin McCarthy made some interesting (some might say laughably unlikely or vague) promises in his first speech as Speaker of the House:
- Disagreements won’t be personal (good luck reining in the rest of your conference, buddy ( Read more... )