Nostr notes by arcanicanis

I'm not sure if you're stating that you know [nearly] all ...

2026-07-30T07:33:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…aq5c
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I'm not sure if you're stating that you know [nearly] all the people shown in the video, or if you're inferring it from appearances. If the latter, mentionably, you're only seeing what journalist had a fixation on showing (typically fursuiters, and probably other stuff they misinterpreted as furries), as well as just one person interviewed, and just one reoccurring event at one geographic location.

Additionally, I'd argue there's a gradient of different cohorts of people:

People that have ONLY engaged online and have no interest in any sort of in-person gathering
People that used to engage in-person, but displaced, and mostly online-only at this point
People that engage more exclusively on VR platforms
People that engage in meets and maybe a convention or two
People that questionably have their life revolve around several conventions

There generally seems to be certain categories of people, that are more commonly exclusive to one of those cohorts.

Alternatively, there's a lot of folks just plainly displaced by new people. I had noticed a local-ish meet that started getting questionably younger, to where people stopped attending and/or split off to their own separate gatherings, where it was practically high school kids left (wat? Where in the f'k did all these high school kids come from?).

There needs to be a term for this term of zoomer furry who only goes to meetups and engages with the culture purely to socialize and not out of an appreciation for drawing animals. (...)

Are you sure not just describing Zoomers plainly, which have a profound abundance of free tools and resources available than has ever existed before, but can't bother to focus on a hobby?

Oh I already have 82 hours into that, before this latest wave of ...

2026-07-25T19:06:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…lqv2
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Oh I already have 82 hours into that, before this latest wave of interest post-1.0 release.

I am a bit concerned about my gravitation to the game ...

2026-07-25T19:01:59Z

I am a bit concerned about my gravitation to the game 'Casualties: Unknown'. A lot of it's really miserable, yet I cling right back to it, in an addiction that I don't fully understand. I was first playing it nightly from my Steam Deck, which was even more of a challenge (could only reasonably progress as 'Relaxed' tier; while 'Normal' is only progressable on desktop).

It should come as no surprise that when you try to dumb-down the ...

2026-05-07T20:54:55Z

It should come as no surprise that when you try to dumb-down the responsibilities (and cheapen) an IT role, that you're only going to ensure retards are going to be running everything. The substantial scope of outages and data breaches in recent years should make it pretty self-evident, but I don't know if management types will ever learn anything.

It's also conversely weird where people hold the belief that ...

2026-03-09T09:01:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…7s27
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It's also conversely weird where people hold the belief that if they were insanely rich, that their life would be substantially better.

Yes, you would no longer have financial stressors (then again, if you're not stupid and blow it all and end up broke..), wouldn't have an obligation to work, but then some people also start to lack finding purpose or function in life on their own. You've 100%ed the game, what objectives are left?

But even moreso is all the fake people. That you could be a center of attention to a crowd, but where it's not genuine. It's not where [at least most] people even actually care about you personally, and are more interested about being in your proximity just for your status and money. If you're too notable, you can't live as a nobody anymore. You're also a magnet for the occasional crazy person that you've never met.

I remember there being a news article about one notable figure that had made it very big, that they felt essentially alone and depressed. There was such a condescending public response, of people mocking said person, as if it's like impossible to be a multi-billionaire and also be depressed, even as a genuine person (not like someone that faked their way and used people to get to their status, whereas in that case, it'd certainly be due).

I'm speaking from my out-of-box experience on Kubuntu 25.10, ...

2026-03-08T10:14:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…040p
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I'm speaking from my out-of-box experience on Kubuntu 25.10, 32GB physical, +4.3(?)GB swap. I'd be totally fine with my userspace stuff being forcibly killed on OOM rather than having an unresponsive system that's hiked up with activity on shuffling things in and out of swap under pressure, with SysRq reset being the only option out.

As is the situation of hitting OOM whether you have swap or not. ...

2026-03-08T09:50:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…a7vr
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As is the situation of hitting OOM whether you have swap or not. Swap just slows down the time of getting to the threshold of the OOM killer being invoked. If you're pushing into the situation where you "need" swap, it's usually going to saturate swap too, unless you have like a +8 GB or so swap volume or something, whereas as far as I'm aware, most people only have a 1GB swap by default.

Let the kernel kill a process in an OOM situation and continue to ...

2026-03-08T09:30:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…xqfn
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Let the kernel kill a process in an OOM situation and continue to run just fine? Use a userspace OOM killer earlier before the kernel has to step in?

I love swap completely slowing down the process of reaching the ...

2026-03-08T08:27:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…rxwz
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I love swap completely slowing down the process of reaching the threshold to trigger the OOM killer to be invoked (if at all, and hopefully not stuck in the limbo in-between), thrashing my NVMe or SSD with useless activity for several minutes into hours, to sit and watch a system be so dogged down, that you can't even log into a virtual tty without it timing out (all while the kernel is actually responsive to immediately respond to magic SysRq keycombos). It's great.

https://arcanican.is/blog/2026/no-fun.php Had a stream of thought ...

2026-03-02T08:17:59Z

https://arcanican.is/blog/2026/no-fun.php

Had a stream of thought that I needed to get written down, as presented above. Just expressing a mix of thoughts I've had in recent years, and not to seek out sympathy or anything. I'm sure there's some other folks involved in hobbies or communities that feel the same.

Oh my. I think I've just hit a new revelation for a software ...

2026-02-25T22:12:49Z

Oh my. I think I've just hit a new revelation for a software architecture that should be a lot more servicable, stateless, and more practical to host with just static files, and possibly still be able to do federation (through a second layer atop, for converting NDJSON streams and ID references, into standard ActivityPub objects/collections).

I was working on a sideproject of a web-based yt-dlp frontend (and media platform), but may be able to 'kill two birds with one stone' with the idea.

Time to throw almost everything out again and see if this one sticks.

If there's a future time where I have availability, I may try ...

2026-02-09T21:09:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…9lre
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If there's a future time where I have availability, I may try to take a stab at implementing it in an XMPP client. If that goes somewhere, I could then try to see if it could be done ActivityPub side too (for private messaging) and have it interop, is my general vision.

@nprofile…nptm Possibly to your interest, if you haven't ...

2026-02-09T20:55:42Z

silverpill (nprofile…nptm) Possibly to your interest, if you haven't seen it already: https://autocrypt2.org Apparently only 25 pages long, with seemingly clear and specific steps and some code examples (at least in cursory skimming): https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-autocrypt-openpgp-v2-cert/

I guess someone beat me to one of the pet projects I had in my ...

2026-01-29T00:53:57Z

I guess someone beat me to one of the pet projects I had in my pile (although probably far too literal of a recreation, I would have made some artistic liberties to make it distinct): https://github.com/processone/fluux-messenger

I'm sure OMEMO or other amenities will naturally follow, in time.

The gTLD expansion [lottery] itself is practically like AOL ...

2026-01-17T00:28:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…7g39
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The gTLD expansion [lottery] itself is practically like AOL keywords, just with an extra word needed, given companies can just own their own brand TLD now e.g. .google, .microsoft, .netflix, .pfizer, .scjohnson, .skype(?), .toshiba, .vanguard, .vistaprint, and so so so many more)

I guess that also serves as punishment for a particular VR ...

2025-12-25T08:02:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…mcxf
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I guess that also serves as punishment for a particular VR platform forcing EAC, just to auto-moderate against ALL forms of client modding; while the better alternatives openly allow modding (as long as it's not for malicious purposes).

I guess I don't really know what I want anymore. Despite ...

2025-12-24T10:38:26Z

I guess I don't really know what I want anymore.

Despite having all the simple necessities, as well as plenty of positive social interactions and other things lately (even much more social/active than I normally am), I still don't feel 'completeness'?

For 'career', it gets draining at watching much of it being rotted out for exclusively overseas hiring, much of it being oversaturated by the MLM and 'get rich quick' types running it, and very little of anyone caring anymore.

Finding some Significant Other or "gf" or whatever is something that's barely on any list of priorities, just something to only cause more problems, I haven't cared about it (nor bothered) at all far beyond a decade now, and I only see plenty of divorce and separation now. Add to the fact that Gen X usually characterizes it like they were lucky, "like getting on the very last helicopter out of 'nam."

It'd be cool to make more friends, but online there's a sizable portion that refuse to associate if you don't adhere to like 95% of their political platform, others that feel 'walled off' by being opaque and always distant, or those that just want to fuel division/drama and 'whisper networks' (sometimes even over people they haven't even talked to...)

Usually my lead motivating force is making demonstrable progress in my professional/hobby projects, but now I'm sputtering out. I had made a stint on some fun creative side projects, but that doesn't help get the important work done. Social activity isn't filling the gap either.

I guess in the worst case, if I continue to feel some level of incompleteness or mood fluctuation or whatever, that I could maybe finally get around to having some blood work tests done, just to make sure it's not neurochemical antics.

I usually try to avoid touching any sort of "self-pity" subjects, given that social media is a TERRIBLE enabler of creating professional victims/whiners. Of course I'm highlighting plenty of the negatives, but there are also plenty of positives too.

"It is what it is" or whatever.

I thought that was the whole point of everything being dumbed ...

2025-12-24T08:52:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…4z7d
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I thought that was the whole point of everything being dumbed down even further to Passkeys? (at least per my rant at https://were.social/notice/AxdaKM2AnM2pEVU8SO )

https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/terms/#synced-passkey

But at the same time, I've given up really digging into the details anymore, given I've been trying to advocate real (not just "send you an SMS/email") two-factor auth since like 15 years ago, and it still barely ever having traction in any form.

I keep building a pile of side-projects, and I'm sure that ...

2025-12-19T09:53:46Z

I keep building a pile of side-projects, and I'm sure that probably dries people's patience/hopes on earlier projects getting done (but I definitely will return to doing more ActivityPub and XMPP stuff again soon).

I guess I have a clearer set of ideas and design choices to make something more worthwhile to compete, for one niche that needs to be filled, and finding a decent middle-ground in expectations. Here's the design constraints/ideas I have:

Some video/voice conference system, reachable by some URL permalink, as a WebRTC web application, but intended for social/gaming use (not a formal 'professional' presenter-led conference system)
Real-time chat would be completely ephemeral and there would be no concern about enforcing log retention at all (maybe past 60 messages at most)
Instead, when there isn't a call, the same URL would serve as effectively a "sticky note board" where folks within the group would leave comments of when the next hangout is, or for folks to leave comments of not being able to make it next time, or that they'll be a little late, etc
Could also have basic polls or go in deeper extremes like offering a 'mutual date/time planning' calendar system (timezone aware), for planning the next meetup time
It would NOT intend to be another thing to add to the list of applications you keep open 24/7, and would by design be something you'd intend on peeking in at on occasion, usually where some reoccurring event/hangout/meetup is the foundation to a group
This could also serve in auxiliary function to things like tabletop sessions (or VTTs, like Foundry) and alike too
Or completely absent of using the video/voice call system, could be for in-person meetups also (and still provide a platform that someone could 'conference in')
There could be an out-of-band notification system (email, instant message, etc), to ping about announcements or provide reminders, but meant to be infrequent and not spam your inbox

This is to avoid creating another catch-all, please-all, multi-purpose do-everything chat system that nags your attention and expects you to "just install the app" to maintain functional usefulness of it.

And more importantly to help keep folks together, to actually be doing stuff together, and not adding to the pile of messenger crap they have to 'maintain' attention on.

Would there be anything else worth adding, or existing ideas to refine further?

Here's some test fixtures you can play with: ...

2025-12-18T01:21:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…8zft
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Here's some test fixtures you can play with:

https://arcanican.is/fedi/tests/25/timestamp-good

https://arcanican.is/fedi/tests/25/timestamp-bad

Try manually pulling each URL using the 'search' of your instance. First should work, the second is the date you describe. The latter fails on Pleroma apparently, as Blurry Moon (nprofile…pvqa) had mentioned.

I also have a query tool at: https://arcanican.is/tools/activitypub.php

I guess by which context (server/client)? At least from what I ...

2025-12-17T23:48:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…r6ay
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I guess by which context (server/client)?

At least from what I remember, most things are pretty tolerant. Sometimes shown in the order it was discovered in (at least in a timeline).

You can always toy experimentally with this by just static files of the JSON-LD context, as long as the correct media type is served. Mastodon (out of all other implementations) just tends to be the most fickle, expecting WebFinger resolution and a few other prerequisites (in terms of "test labbing" with static JSON files), while most others just simply need a resolvable actor object.

Uh-oh, I guess my fate is sealed: apparently I've been a ...

2025-12-17T06:39:23Z

Uh-oh, I guess my fate is sealed: apparently I've been a wirehead for a sizable portion of my Steam activity this year.

I just gave up on Minecraft entirely after the forced Microsoft ...

2025-12-16T08:24:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…36ae
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I just gave up on Minecraft entirely after the forced Microsoft account migration. That's after having bought it in probably early 2011, and probably at least 400+ hours into it.

I've ended up just using Luanti with VoxeLibre to satiate my periodic itch for it at times, and it's rebuilt everything I remember of it, plus plenty of the newer content that I hadn't ever experienced in Minecraft itself after ditching out.

I think it's been substantially more performant, and also modding as a first-class citizen (you can even just join a server, and it can auto-download the mods or custom assets used).

And oops, I hope I didn't ruin that for you >.< No, ...

2025-12-16T05:09:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…k4zc
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And oops, I hope I didn't ruin that for you >.<

No, it's fine. I just mean in terms of 'spoiling' it for myself by leaving it up to being an open world sandbox, not knowing the mechanics or sequence of events in advance.

Even just intentionally avoiding referencing a map (externally) can add to the humoring experience, because now you're completely lost, in middle of nowhere, sometimes in the dead of night, and having to unravel yourself from a pretty basic everyday mess. And that's what I appreciate about the game, is that it goes in the opposite extreme away from 'convenience' of a lot of modern games.

I understand. I just generally had treated it as a blind ...

2025-12-16T05:02:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…qz72
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I understand. I just generally had treated it as a blind experience, trying to avoid finding any methodical guides or tutorials; only digging into surface level details at first to maybe get a little bit further without 'spoiling' much.

Even just starting with the moped at the beginning was also an exercise.

Old mansion, for skipping ahead and getting tires quicker on a ...

2025-12-16T04:56:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…0n85
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Old mansion, for skipping ahead and getting tires quicker on a fresh run. There are ways to handle the bees, just sometimes a little finnicky; or also I think time-of-day stuff, but I can be impatient. Invariably, it's still all a humoring experience anyway.

I still haven't even fully finished the first game still, ...

2025-12-16T04:51:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…u6me
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I still haven't even fully finished the first game still, after about +68 hours of playing only permadeath mode. :P

Perhaps I should return to trying to pull that off yet. Those heckin bees in the abandoned shed though..

Oh nice. I guess I'll have to plan on not getting as much ...

2025-12-16T04:47:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…ujg4
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Oh nice. I guess I'll have to plan on not getting as much work done in late December/early January then.

Ooo, I am genuinely eager for the [eventual] release of My Winter ...

2025-12-16T04:36:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…sqx2
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Ooo, I am genuinely eager for the [eventual] release of My Winter Car. It's very rare to find the folks that appreciate obscure titles like MSC.

But the long-term plays out a whole lot differently than you ...

2025-12-16T02:02:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…ktzd
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But the long-term plays out a whole lot differently than you expect from the short-term you envision.

Even if say such an incident happened, how do you hold with such certainty that no force is going to sweep in, use the 'opportunity' as an excuse for something even more of an 'authoritarian' powergrab, 'fascism', or some of the like?

There are plenty of examples in just the few recent decades of how an incident can be weaponized into something else.

I don't know. I don't have any single person I could name that warrants any sort of termination, and usually it feels like a warning sign of someone not seeing the broader sociology of things, or being constantly fed an extremely tilted worldview, especially when they're gauging someone solely by public appearances, of the snippets they see. Even in partisan politics, there's still nobody on "the other side of the fence" that I'd be cheering for the fatal demise of.

I hold a great disdain for mainstream media, and their capacity to grossly distort, mischaracterize, and even flip public perception on situations (e.g. like "the repeat felon that curb-stomped babies is actually the real victim here" kind of crap). Even in my most dark psychopathic fantasies, I still cannot logically see any situation where some 'politically-motivated assassination' turns out to a net-positive, because there's all that capacity to turn it into a weapon that can be used back against you with even far greater force.

My Modus Operandi I'm probably not a socialite nor a regular ...

2025-12-16T00:02:22Z

My Modus Operandi

I'm probably not a socialite nor a regular to social media, most of my interaction occurs through chat or other realtime mediums instead (I should be 'approachable' on any platform regardless). I can be totally silent here for weeks, while still actually being here almost daily. I don't know the 'unwritten rules' in microblogging, so I'm sure I break supposed decorum plenty.

I'm very selective in who I follow, typically only following "low frequency posters", while I do very much manually navigate interesting "high-frequency poster" accounts periodically, by checking their posts [anonymously] directly on their instance. If you're a high-frequency poster on an instance that prohibits anonymous viewing, then you're unfortunately invisible to me.

While I may carry a negative sentiment towards specific subsets of people, it does not mean I carry those sentiments towards individuals (e.g. while I hold a disgust towards, say---Microsoft, it doesn't mean I automatically hate your guts if you're a Microsoft employee/contractor).

Debates/arguments are emotionally compartmentalized. If I'm arguing over something, or if you piss me off, it's almost never held against you. Sometimes my writing might read a lot more charged than what's intended. You can be diametrically opposed to me on almost every belief, and I can still be mutually friendly, as long as I'm not being routinely dragged into every "whataboutism" of the day, or expected to act as the spokesperson to every clickbait headline.

I usually don't try to initiate interaction with people across instances, unless it's clearly some informational prompt that I might be able to assist in. Otherwise if it's just social, I usually keep my distance: because there usually seems to be a hidden "social barrier" of being walled off from others, that I usually don't bother much anymore.

I am vulgar, but I will sometimes try my best to match the respective tone. If it's a professional context, I'll try to remain professional. If you're a bad actor just trying to play an optics game, I will just inherently be a dick back.

DO NOT ever try to control who I'm "allowed" to communicate with, what I'm allowed to participate in, etc. Sometimes I do have a hidden motive of trying to lead people away from dark places, meanwhile people aimlessly trying to disrupt that in some 'social justice!' agenda just end up f'ing it over entirely, and just produce a net-negative outcome all around. Invariably, expect that I may periodically jump in on some 'colorful' discussions, or interact with unusual characters.

I am fairly hard to 'weird out' (where it could almost be a sport in itself), so don't worry too much about impressions, if you reach out. You could literally come out of left field, talking about what my blood type is, life history, etc, and I'm not going to panic or anything. I have/had folks that could be categorized as stalkers (locally), and I manage to befriend those too. Just don't be the type to be showing up at the home of any of my family/relatives; nor just be some coomer seeking out someone to RP with (or something?) at all costs, with no substance in even basic conversation (as I've encountered when I had a character...).

I have a different tilt on this subject, but I'll address the ...

2025-12-15T22:13:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…kmpj
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I have a different tilt on this subject, but I'll address the foreground points first:

Yes, FOSS is just as prone to supply chain attacks as proprietary software is, though I argue you still have more transparency than a proprietary project
OpenSSL had very plenty of folks arguing the project was an unmanageable mess (for all the #ifdefs everywhere; sometimes even nested by several levels) long before Heartbleed, just nobody bothered to back any alternatives, I assume just because nobody'd back something "not as popular" as OpenSSL?
I hold plenty of spite with some of the PR around Signal, as well as sentiments by Moxie Marlinspike, or even the latest "but we 'NEED!' AWS, why can't people understand this..." cope post; but that's probably a separate dissertation entirely.
I have annoyances with the Signal client itself, of how rapidly they shove out updates (I assume bumping library versions, etc), that I doubt I'd have the patience to keep up, if I wanted to pull the fools game of completely picking it apart (and I doubt anyone defending it has audited it for themself).

I just prefer small, minimalist solutions, and where libs are only imported unless absolutely necessary, and where there's not more risk in creating an ad-hoc in-house counterpart (e.g. I probably wouldn't trust myself to safely implement ECDSA sign/verify myself, maybe)

Culturally the parts that piss me off with open source and free software (but not anything to make me forego or stop supporting it):

It's almost all about "free as in [free] beer" now, people generally don't care about the "freedom" part in it anymore. Corporate influences are also obviously trying to steer people away from free software licenses too.
A lot of big projects now are just effectively as indistinguishable from proprietary software in terms of modability. Even sh't web applications like Mastodon, as far as I understand, require a rebuild of the software just to change a favicon even, and sometimes made very specifically to prevent you from making deviations.
Much of it's in corporate style development practices, of such class-heavy design patterns, like the design patterns you'd use to dumb something down enough to throw at an army of code monkeys to chug through writing, rather than something focusing more succinctness, minimalism, etc.
The "I'm going to shut off my brain, and import any lib, that solves my problem, without having to exert brain power". Queue the memes of someone importing a Nodejs module to uppercase/lowercase-transform text. This is the crap that exacerbates sourcing attacks, as aforementioned. It's even hilarious when people import something for a role, having zero idea of the capabilities of said thing. Wait a minute, you say Markdown supports inline arbitrary HTML? Surprise! You now probably have an XSS vulnerability you weren't expecting, because you didn't read the freaking tin.
The weird sort of monoculture that people try to force. People will actively try to talk you down over making a competing open source project, because "Z exists, it's already 'good enough', why are you bothering?" Same also with the herd mentality of people only clinging to whatever is "the most popular", viewing anyone that uses something else as weird, even if there's a broad divide where alternatives carry far more meritocratic value than the "most popular" option.

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY ABOVE ALL:

How utterly, thoroughly, lazy and apathetic people are now to just writing any code at all (outside of career), and all the people that are so eager to be backseat project managers who probably have barely even written any code at all.

The bar is so, SO low for anyone to start poking around with software development, but they don't.

People may complain about some project lacking a feature or functionality, or some way to do something different, but they will NEVER ever take any actionable effort to actually doing anything. They've uttered it, they've snapped their fingers at someone, and that's all the exertion they will do, ever.

A high school aged kid in present time could trivially make a Discord replacement with video/voice WebRTC calling, with all the resources and existing backend tools that exists, pieced together, with a little bit of code glue here and there, but people don't. You might see one or two projects pop up (a la Revolt, etc), but everyone will just be sideliners, observing from the outside, but never take action themselves, but always armchair critique instead.

I don't know if it's just the constant supply of all these VC startups with introductory "free" offers, that have made people so grossly entitled, to just sit back and expect everything to just 'appear' for them, with no effort, but it's depressing how unwilling people are to MAKE things anymore. e.g. I can find plenty of chats with protocol discussion, but no action on implementation, almost ever.

As in to just traverse their outbox and save all the posts in ...

2025-12-15T21:18:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…lj3v
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As in to just traverse their outbox and save all the posts in bulk (with/without attachments); that should be a trivial one-day project. Unless you mean storing the HTTP Signature also, now that's a separate story.

I'll probably draft something then, post it for something to ...

2025-12-11T20:48:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…nskg
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I'll probably draft something then, post it for something to sit around for 2-3 weeks for comment, and if no complaints, "formally" submit as a FEP draft then.

@nprofile…d3ed Are there any FEPs for object expiry? Had some ...

2025-12-11T01:51:29Z

silverpill (nprofile…d3ed) Are there any FEPs for object expiry? Had some ideas recently, while also peeking at Nostr, which has their counterpart: https://nostr-nips.com/nip-40

There would be no expectation as some privacy/'security' feature, as it would be MAY rather than SHALL, and generally just to keep databases from permanently storing superfluous ephemeral events. This would be in scope primarily with servers and not so much with affecting client behavior.

This specifically would be ideal for things of short-term or instant messaging contexts with ActivityPub; perhaps also outlining some recommended defaults. e.g. instant messages that have an expiry of 30 days, music/game scrobbling events of a 5 day expiry, etc.

Nonetheless it would help cut down clutter and make it less painful for using ActivityPub as a transport for ephemeral content too.

I guess one effect I still miss from the Beryl/'Compiz ...

2025-12-08T01:39:51Z

I guess one effect I still miss from the Beryl/'Compiz Fusion' era of Linux compositors, was being able to use Ctrl+Scroll to adjust the transparency of a window. So I could have a movie playing, drag a terminal over top, make the terminal semi-transparent, and be able to mentally switch focus between the two, without having to look between screens.

I worry that you might be trying to force a conclusion to prove ...

2025-12-04T23:54:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…tyj8
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I worry that you might be trying to force a conclusion to prove an argument point; but also, trying to narrow to only two 'extremes' being possible.

The reason 'why' a person wouldn't go "all-in" (assuming that's what's implied) is: because it's fun. If the measure of your results in a creative project is assessed only by the quality of it's outcome, then you've already killed some of the fun of it.

(queue the Mr Rogers snippet that people usually reshare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7hT_VlIyiE )

In fact, I've even been drafting a little short story since about 2 weeks ago (which came completely out of nowhere), also poking a little on some of these subjects (I can PM if desired), and for context: I don't even read fiction, I haven't even written anything remotely fiction in probably +15 years (back to the forum days), and my work is probably rife with errors, but I don't care: I had plenty of fun and a momentary 'escape from reality' in making it.

Similarly with artwork: I have a whole graveyard of projects that never see the light of day, primarily including a lot of Blender sculpts, but I think some of it's getting better over time. Some of it also leads down other paths, like just yesterday I was trying to 'Frankenstein' different portions of skeleton models together, and warping and shifting things to meet more neatly, to see if I could make a believable canid taur skeleton (and probably even go deeper) for shape reference. But again, this isn't seen, because it's usually small [often unfinished] concepts.

Meanwhile, in respect of generative AI and such tools: I argue that there's the capacity to use it in an augmentative fashion; where you're not necessarily "replacing" people (maybe freeing up some people from 'bitchwork', for certain grindy tasks), but letting an artist speed up certain portions of a commission. Where is the ethical/moral qualms in: 'training' some tool on your lineart style, and then using it to speed up lineart work, as long as it's clearly disclosed and agreed with the commissioner first?

Also I struggle with some aphantasia sometimes as I can vaguely mentally visualize things, but it's usually a narrowed focus and not a holistic picture. Unless I can layout a very specific color/detail reference, I'm probably going to end up driving the artist goddamn insane (e.g. my last commissioned work). Whereas if I can generate some more specific mocks, wasting AI's time instead of the artist's time and patience, I'll opt to save the artist's time. (I am also texture painting a taur model to try to settle on a final coloring; I can also feed it through img2img and perhaps get a better preview of the colors and fur/scales pairing; to then finally settle on commissioning a new character sheet)

For the design of the format itself, or just simply the user ...

2025-12-04T22:20:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…09el
_________________________

For the design of the format itself, or just simply the user experience (e.g. not universally supported in all OS-provided image viewers)?

Nonetheless, at least JPEG-XL is getting hopefully another chance.

Oh it has for keyboards? That's neat. I probably wondered ...

2025-12-04T22:13:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…enyz
_________________________

Oh it has for keyboards? That's neat. I probably wondered about that too, but never really dug on it.

Speaking of Wacom and mice: I'm still idly curious why ...

2025-12-04T22:11:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…a963
_________________________

Speaking of Wacom and mice: I'm still idly curious why nobody's bothered to make a "pressure-sensitive" mouse (e.g. with soft actuation, and the pressure would be measured like pen tablet input), for cases where breaking out a drawing tablet might be excessive (e.g. some Blender sculpting tasks). I wouldn't be surprised if Wacom (or somebody) sits on a weird patent for something like that.

I think some of the argument could be constructed off of not ...

2025-11-30T07:43:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…j7sa
_________________________

I think some of the argument could be constructed off of not pinning down specific styles, LoRAs or other factors, and just generally prompting it broadly. Because without that, you're probably just getting the full "sum average" of all styles blurred together, in a way. Also considering the "guidance" control (where you control the dynamic of: either sticking to prompt as tight as possible, versus having liberty to add variety, chaos, or wandering off just a little)

I think part of that could also be because of some of the earlier ...

2025-11-24T13:58:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…c0cz
_________________________

I think part of that could also be because of some of the earlier stuff might have been by folks more familiarized in publishing, given a lot of the pre-internet fandom stuff was actually through "zine" culture, of folks sending in their artwork (by physical mail), someone compiling the submissions into a publication, and publishing essentially an art-centric indie magazine. But of course, a lot of that's far before my time.

Honestly, the more I look at this listing, the more it pisses me ...

2025-11-20T00:00:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…3r5e
_________________________

Honestly, the more I look at this listing, the more it pisses me off:

2-4 years of 'relevant' experience Knowledge of sysadmin and Linux skills

Contrast that to US job postings, for substantially lower entry-level positions, you'd typically be seeing memes like "4-year college degree, 10 years experience in X, 5 years experience in (technology that's just 2 years old), at least these 3 certifications (that cost like $600 each, to take)"

So while Cloudflare had their latest hiccup, apparently a ...

2025-11-19T23:54:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…4xvn
_________________________

So while Cloudflare had their latest hiccup, apparently a customer wants to use Backblaze instead; so I do a quick query: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/backblaze/jobs/4771111008

Uh yep, I guess they'll just hire someone from there, to one of the higher privileged roles in that company.

Then a local friend that apparently holds a head IT position in a local regional chain of hospitals/clinics: apparently all their coworkers were just laid off and replaced with outsourced 'talent'.

I'm pretty certain my XMPP server has far more uptime than ...

2025-11-18T20:35:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…e22q
_________________________

I'm pretty certain my XMPP server has far more uptime than Discord has had, my fedi server has more uptime than X has had, and my self-hosted email more than O365/Azure has had, all by just not using Cloudflare and just running on a basic VPS.

I love the irony of the situation so profoundly more, because of ...

2025-11-18T20:30:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…4wm0
_________________________

I love the irony of the situation so profoundly more, because of the dumbest exchange I've had with a customer, in this week, and later hearing today of Cloudflare go down just warmed my cold, dark little heart:

A vendor wanted an arrangement for handling backups for their webserver, for all their hosting customers. They mentioned their concern, specifically highlighting about all the recent cloud outages.

I offered a plan of $40/month of managing backups for the whole server (meanwhile, they currently charge their customers ~$100/month, each; of approx 40 customers so far; that's ~$4,000/month revenue they get, with just hosting; and they pay for just one $24/month Linode VPS, as their costs) for a max of 500GB. They didn't want that, they clarified that if I physically possess the server (or they physically possess it), "then it's not a real backup".

Instead, they wanted to find "the cheapest" cloud storage, and despite heavily warning and prefacing the ways that object storage can be mishandled and other risks, that Cloudflare R2 could be one option. However, I will not give any uptime/availability/warranty assurances to the service if it's on Cloudflare or other providers (because I don't run Cloudflare, I don't run Cloudflare's servers) instead of my infra, but apparently that's not good enough of an agreement and they'll be finding an arrangement elsewhere.

I'm so tired of trying to negotiate, with people that have such irrational logic, that also charge an extraordinary amount to their customers, reselling off of someone else's platform for cheap, and then turn around and nickle-and-dime me over anything I offer.

Retvrn, with SerenityOS ...

2025-11-15T03:23:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…yrha
_________________________

Retvrn, with SerenityOS

That could be an interesting concept/trend: hosting providers ...

2025-11-14T06:39:52Z

That could be an interesting concept/trend: hosting providers where the users of a hosted service could just directly donate towards the provider (on behalf of the hosting customer), while having some mechanism for attestation on-platform that they were the donor of said funds.

I was recently contemplating ways to get a person's ...

2025-11-12T02:06:13Z

I was recently contemplating ways to get a person's "currently playing" info (given there's no local API to query that directly from the Steam client, for example), then it crossed my mind that a Steam game's AppId might be passed through launch arguments, and apparently that's the case (for example, ATLYSS):

somebody 576533 0.1 0.0 29480 23876 ? S 20:40 0:00 /bin/sh -c /home/somebody/.steam/debian-installation/ubuntu12_32/steam-launch-wrapper -- /home/somebody/.steam/debian-installation/ubuntu12_32/reaper SteamLaunch AppId=2768430 -- '/home/somebody/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_sniper-arm64'/_v2-entry-point --verb=waitforexitandrun -- '/ext/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Proton - Experimental'/proton waitforexitandrun '/ext/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/ATLYSS/ATLYSS.exe'
somebody 576534 0.1 0.0 29004 5756 ? S 20:40 0:00 /home/somebody/.steam/debian-installation/ubuntu12_32/reaper SteamLaunch AppId=2768430 -- /home/somebody/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_sniper-arm64/_v2-entry-point --verb=waitforexitandrun -- /ext/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Proton - Experimental/proton waitforexitandrun /ext/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/ATLYSS/ATLYSS.exe
somebody 576843 10.3 0.1 232648 60504 ? Sl 20:41 0:00 /home/somebody/.steam/debian-installation/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayui -pid 576734 -steampid 3248 -manuallyclearframes 0 -gameid 2768430

Then I was having a concern of whether I'd have to query third-party platforms (e.g. SteamDB), just to infer the info about a game, from just it's AppId, but I guess there's actually an open, unauthenticated JSON API to query that data directly from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=2768430

So as it stands, it wouldn't take much for a person to write a plugin to whatever XMPP (or etc) client, to push out that data, for those that want that visible.

Meanwhile, for open source launchers (e.g. Lutris), I'm sure someone could probably devise some userspace D-Bus API or something that a person could push that info locally (versus having to infer it off of running processes and their args).

Just doing some restructuring and refinement of my personal ...

2025-11-09T10:03:29Z

Just doing some restructuring and refinement of my personal website thing, and got around to writing out one article I've been meaning to for a while now: https://arcanican.is/blog/2025/toxic.php

Title: The Catch-All Brain Shutoff Word: Toxic

I wouldn't even say it ends with switches to macOS/ChromeOS. ...

2025-11-08T19:50:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…lvhl
_________________________

I wouldn't even say it ends with switches to macOS/ChromeOS. I'm saying the people that claim to holdout on their 'preferred' version of Windows, it always ends up like: "oh shoot, my computer died, and I needed to 'be able to get work done', so I had to get a new computer with $NEXT_WINDOWS_VERSION (or sometimes it can be as shallow as some new game release that's not supported by their holdout option)

Usually it's the people that don't make that claim, that usually will simultaneously pursue other options (macOS/ChromeOS/Linux/etc), before any sort of disruption or whatever. Whereas for the other type, the "I'm holding out longest I can", will virtually ALWAYS compromise on their claim, as an ever-continuing cycle, whether its from Win7, Win10, etc

I think the most consistent lie I've heard over the years is ...

2025-11-08T19:33:28Z

I think the most consistent lie I've heard over the years is "yea, I'll holdout on my current copy of Windows until it's no longer viable, then I'll switch to Linux".

Adding to the broader subject: I don't even know what barriers are left for Microsoft to cross to alienate it's customer base that it hasn't already done. I think the only thing left they haven't done yet is just blatantly turn into ransomware, demanding you to do some action in limited time, or else face total data loss.

Had to update a few things ...

2025-10-30T06:52:49Z

Had to update a few things

Great, the "non profit" ICANN is opening up another gTLD ...

2025-10-20T02:01:41Z

Great, the "non profit" ICANN is opening up another gTLD expansion in 2026, for companies to ~buy~ "bid" more new TLDs for possibly a couple million dollars each (if I'm not grossly misunderstanding or skimreading it).

https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/en/application-rounds/round2/agb

https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/en/application-rounds/round2

Whichever amount makes sense (3 is fine; or front and back ...

2025-05-28T19:09:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…dphq
_________________________

Whichever amount makes sense (3 is fine; or front and back isometric flats for coloration, 3rd for angled perspective of standard posture or something). Normally I dump at least $350+ equivalent on character sheets, so whatever would be fair in that budget.

I do have a character sheet commission that I would likely take ...

2025-05-28T18:37:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…stsq
_________________________

I do have a character sheet commission that I would likely take you up on that offer (when open), whenever I get to a more complete idea (still trying to fine-tune details on color pattern and palette; but generally it'll be some form of a scalie canid, which there aren't too many of)

I don't care if a commissioned artist leans on AI for ...

2025-05-28T18:22:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…aseq
_________________________

I don't care if a commissioned artist leans on AI for insignificant details (e.g. background details, basic pose, etc), it's more about whether: they're reachable outside of sh't platforms (e.g. not staying exclusive to FA notes for commissioning or something similarly absurd), they have an art style I hold interest in, and they accept some form of semi-anonymous payment (e.g. not PayPal, whereas most cryptos would probably be fine).

It's generally the last detail that's the primary blocker of why I don't commission much anymore.

I assume it's probably some over-/misapplication of it, of ...

2025-05-13T17:46:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…3akl
_________________________

I assume it's probably some over-/misapplication of it, of companies trying to use it as an 'every' tool, spammy notifications/reminders, various integrations of counter-productive value, and probably a boat anchor to self-host (for those that do anymore, given it sounds like they've cornered everyone into their SaaS offering).

But this is just my second-hand interpretation of what I passively observe off others, I don't interact with it myself either.

I assume Owncast doesn't have any sort of functionality for ...

2025-05-08T05:06:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…nl0f
_________________________

I assume Owncast doesn't have any sort of functionality for seeding streams between viewers yet?

The "insult to injury" in all this, is that I just want ...

2025-05-04T02:15:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…v8v4
_________________________

The "insult to injury" in all this, is that I just want to write a plugin for Cockpit that's visually consistent with the Cockpit itself.

But I also can't use the Cockpit's copy of PatternFly, because they keep switching between versions, and evidently it's just 'too hard' to simply ship separate major versions as separate files; ergo you can't use Cockpit's copy, you have to ship your own. Originally on v3, then v4, v5, and now it's moving on v6.

They even complain about breakage within a major version, but yet this is all entirely within the same company (RedHat): https://cockpit-project.org/blog/cockpit-221.html

Instead of writing my plugin, most of the time will probably be wasted with just dealing with the CSS UI framework itself.

And of course when I do npm install on the demo plugin, it pulls in 214MB for effectively a "hello world" project.

..."modern" CSS frameworks feel like a mental illness. ...

2025-05-04T02:04:30Z

..."modern" CSS frameworks feel like a mental illness.

I guess I'll participate: ...

2025-04-30T17:16:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…japy
_________________________

I guess I'll participate:

I mean even with FrontPage you at least had some direct ...

2025-04-24T03:36:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…7f2v
_________________________

I mean even with FrontPage you at least had some direct correlation with the output HTML (aside from the extra cruft it'd add), versus this present day of people that call themselves web designers that don't even know what HTML/CSS even is, and scoff at the idea of ever learning any of it. Or those that cannot solve anything without some framework to 'think' for them.

I started poking around with HTML when I was like 9 years old, using a site builder program that was preinstalled on some early WinXP-era HP prebuilt, that tries to funnel you into using Tripod/Lycos as a hosting provider at the time.

The difference is that I grew up and I always seeked out new things to learn, and to expand deeper into learning anything I can in any of it. Meanwhile most of this damn present-day 'web design/dev' industry is people still riding around with toddler training wheels, solely to stay within their comforts, and they somehow manage to be taken seriously.

There's another local that is trying to run a webhosting company (that they bought out), effectively treating it like no more than a free money machine, and they don't even want to try running a homelab server to try to learn any entry-level Linux sysadmin stuff. It's so demoralizing when this is all I'm surrounded with.

It's exceptionally vile how saturated the tech industry is ...

2025-04-23T19:42:36Z

It's exceptionally vile how saturated the tech industry is with people that have no idea what they're doing, that act as if they're a "pro!", when they are the very reason there's major security incidents, or end up as another statistic of a botnet.

Everything is entirely about comfort to them, they don't want to adapt or learn, they just want to slap everything together with options that make them feel comforted and empowered, and never call in specialists where necessary.

Just as how dangerous a point-and-click Windows sysadmin with heavy Dunning-Kruger effect is, there's very much the same counterpart with the average idiot calling themself a web design agency because they know how to install WordPress (if at all, if they don't lean on something else to do that for them).

For something that could be done effectively in 50 lines of code (or sometimes basic sysadmin knowledge), they will instead go out to find a scatter of 3 different plugins to accomplish the same task, of dubious authors/quality.

Because they don't know how to code, and because the built-in block-based visual editor is "too confusing" for them, they will instead install a whole suite of another entire visual editor (Beaver Builder or Elementor), all entirely around their comfort. This crap can take up to 1GB of RAM to fulfill one web request, and they never see this as an issue (contextually: 1GB to generate +150KB of output).

Latest exhibit is an unfinished e-commerce website, that's had two other contractors they went to first, whereas after each contractor they'll pull me in solely to be the janitor and clean up others' work, usually starting as a call in middle of the night (phone ringing at 11pm/midnight in US Central), but they'll always cancel any subsequent work that needs to be done, and go with someone else instead.

Same thing happened again: they call me in to be the janitor in the middle of the night, they can't even be bothered to remember my email address (and ask for it to be spelled out for the +10th time over the phone), and when I check out the same project now, it's even exceptionally worse.

First time I've had to "fire the client" (after 2 years of this across other situations), and here's a video meme I've made of the actual plugin list they've amassed for a site that's supposed to be 'trusted' to process credit card information. (For context, only ~5 plugins would be necessary, if done competently. One plugin name is censored, because it has a contractor's name)

Just even the state of boot firmware on mobile devices is insane. ...

2025-03-03T20:45:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…5fyz
_________________________

Just even the state of boot firmware on mobile devices is insane.

Imagine if new desktop motherboard's firmware were hardcoded to ONLY directly boot Windows 11, ONLY in a very specific partition layout, specific to that motherboard (at least in the case of a prebuilt). Antitrust enforcement would probably be all over Microsoft on that; meanwhile this is the state of mobile devices, and Apple/Google get a free pass (presumably because it's a duopoly and not monopoly).

And I'm not even speaking about SecureBoot, I'm saying the boot firmware of these devices are specifically that: just an OS bootloader right in the firmware; no configurable MBR/UEFI pre-boot environment anywhere.

Free market would allow someone to make something better, but either everyone's spineless or careless, or perhaps Google contractually obliges handset vendors not to (in exchange for Google Play Services licensing or certain logo certifications).

Just as I was rotating keys, I peeked around and noticed this is ...

2025-02-19T05:16:57Z

Just as I was rotating keys, I peeked around and noticed this is a currently ongoing project: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-openpgp-pqc/

Yes, that would be an option, but I lean more heavily towards ...

2025-02-18T00:39:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…qetp
_________________________

Yes, that would be an option, but I lean more heavily towards "less is more" and minimalism. A drawing canvas is generally like one of the beginner textbook example projects for HTML5 canvas stuff. The only possible source of complications is UI accommodations for mobile.

Maybe 480x360 might be more workable for a canvas, as drawing to a square might be weird.

I think just a flat non-layered raster is all that's needed. A bonus feature could be some basic animation option (like up to 10 frames or something) that'd maybe export to an APNG or whatever format is stable/workable (or just plain ol GIF), which I'm sure would be like crack to animators (given Flipnote or whatever was popular in previous years for that).

I mean more in regards of the design considerations: Should it be ...

2025-02-18T00:11:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…e0vm
_________________________

I mean more in regards of the design considerations:

Should it be raster or vector?
Anti-aliased brushes or not (or both)?
Full color or pallettized to a specific set of colors?
Should there be a standard resolution or a resolution limit?
Option to import/remix other folks' drawings, etc

Because otherwise a basic thing could be done in like <100 lines of JavaScript and <canvas>, meanwhile the selection of design choices either makes or breaks it.

I live too deep under a rock to know how Miiware or other successful social stuff was designed.

What would be some worthwhile constraints and features, if it ...

2025-02-17T23:18:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…ee6k
_________________________

What would be some worthwhile constraints and features, if it did?

Or mentionably the stance is even far beyond Stallman himself: ...

2025-02-17T19:38:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…4uj9
_________________________

Or mentionably the stance is even far beyond Stallman himself: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that case, I think the user need not take cognizance of whether the device contains a processor and software, or is built some other way. However, if it has an "update firmware" button, that means installing different software is a normal part of use, so it is a computer.

After all, there are a lot of things that could be confused for ...

2025-02-17T19:24:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…aacj
_________________________

After all, there are a lot of things that could be confused for an autism diagnosis

The subtext is: "trusted" sources haven't published ...

2025-02-17T19:14:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…c4ra
_________________________

The subtext is: "trusted" sources haven't published much on this topic yet, so don't believe info from any of the independent results in the void of that.

I can't remember if they play the same games as they do on YouTube for 'news-related' searches, of pinning results from a hand selected set of establishment media outlets at the top, ahead of the organic ordering.

'Cogito, ergo sum' or something.

2025-02-11T20:00:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…lhe4
_________________________

'Cogito, ergo sum' or something.

I think that's more about a large amount of fake people ...

2025-02-10T21:22:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…mql7
_________________________

I think that's more about a large amount of fake people that'll say they support or virtue about things they actually don't, just to seek group validation; just like all the people that virtue they 'support' free speech, when they almost never actually do, whenever they're put into a situation that tests it.

Just like all the people that say they support free software, when instead nearly all their 'daily driver' software and OS is something proprietary ("to get the job done"), they never contribute to any of it (labor nor financial), etc.

If government is the Certificate Authority of a cryptographic ...

2025-02-06T21:18:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…8azp
_________________________

If government is the Certificate Authority of a cryptographic digital ID system, and if the digital ID is used as an authenticator, then therefore the government can impersonate you, do things on your behalf, and access any resources that are 'protected' wherever the digital ID is relied on as an authenticator. It inherently gives them a backdoor into anything that relies on it, as they can always notarize another ID as you.

There could be ways to mitigate risks, but I highly doubt they'll be considered, since it's always the dumbest of person that any of these systems will be engineered to (just as why authentication with banking is just outright pathetic in a lot of areas, where a vast majority of online banking doesn't even support any hardware token auth whatsoever).

The important part is that digital ID isn't used as a routine authenticator, and maybe only for proving identity ONCE when initially setting up an account, and the onus being on the end user to supply the methods they want to authenticate NOT involving the digital ID as a routine authenticator (password + OTP, user-procured hardware token, or whatever else).

Alright chat, rate my most inefficient base64 encoder: (Inputs ...

2025-02-05T06:57:37Z

Alright chat, rate my most inefficient base64 encoder:

(Inputs are on the left of a card, outputs on the right; red wires implies string datatype, orange implies char, green implies int. Light cyan-arrowed wire is an event impulse, pointing in direction of event trigger. Function input is in the top-left of first pic ("derp"), function output is top-right of last pic ("ZGVycA=="))

This is a component of a project of writing an XMPP client entirely in a visual scripting language (Protoflux) in a VR platform (Resonite), communicated over WebSockets. I already have the XML parser built. Had to write a base64 encoder next, to encode login info for PLAIN auth (since I don't have cryptographic primitives to do SCRAM).

I don't know, I think it's just purely narcissism or some ...

2025-02-04T19:58:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…270j
_________________________

I don't know, I think it's just purely narcissism or some other personality disorder. You can explain how it actually works, and all of it will just go right through them, and they'll just mentally substitute the dialogue as if you're actually just wholly agreeing and validating their comprehension of it, with none of it actually sticking, unless you phrase it directed solely at them (using them as the example vs using other people as the example).

It's like everyone else in the world is just agentless automata to them, that they're the only person that exists, and while it works a certain way for everyone else, that it only works a different way exclusively only for them, and only in the ways they want it to.

I doubt these people have much going on up there, that they probably wouldn't pass the "But what if you didn't have breakfast this morning?" test.

It pretty much is trying to reason/debate with a developmentally-delayed person, that only manages to appear functional enough to not be diagnosed with some high-functioning retardation or something. Just write them off as retarded (literally, not just pejoratively) and move on.

Imagine if we had a protocol where it was required that you'd ...

2025-02-03T23:03:38Z

Imagine if we had a protocol where it was required that you'd open up your SQL server to the public internet (with access control on writes, or reads on protected data, of course), and just have remote servers/clients just query straight off your database, regardless of query complexity.

So how is Solid any different than that with SPARQL, N3, Shape Trees, etc?

Every time I look at the stack of protocols to Solid ( https://solidproject.org/TR/ ), it feels like the engineering mess that was the OSI protocols, of overcomplicating a [relatively] simple problem.

I'm not saying SPARQL, semantic data, and alike don't have utility, as I'm sure it's probably used in various massively-scaled production environments; but that I don't see how you expect to have something publicly internet-facing that any entity on the internet could incur a heavy query on the server, or just with offloading so much compute responsibility to a server, instead of making a dumber server (just like how you can achieve an ActivityPub implementation in just static files, since it doesn't have a query language).

I could be uninformed (and I only periodically peek at it, and skim through some of the specs at times, I don't know it in depth), but I still don't see how this is going to be anything that could be operated cost-effectively and not be prone to trivial Denial of Service abuse.

I wouldn't be surprised if they do also, because I've had ...

2025-02-01T03:03:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…65nu
_________________________

I wouldn't be surprised if they do also, because I've had service calls with people that "their email doesn't work" when it's the Spectrum personal webmail that's just completely down.

It's the factor about the misconfiguration of their service, where it just drops email entirely after the first attempt, that shows someone is being employed to administer a mailserver that doesn't know how mailservers work. Redelivery attempts are usually up to 2 days. Not just giving up after the first try, especially on a temp-fail.

That's jolly. Apparently Spectrum Business email can't ...

2025-02-01T02:40:01Z

That's jolly. Apparently Spectrum Business email can't handle sending to servers that use any form of greylisting. If it can't deliver successfully on the first attempt (even if a temp-fail code, such as 451), it just gives up right away.

Just another case of the wrong people being employed in the wrong position.

Nostr event nevent1qqs9axhegpypfydwuc3kp4xcqmc22svyrs80jakrnvcfaluf0fl728szyq8d0t7gkp9yaaw49s2063kxtezj6ck22zj86m849pld9qj6d5n0wzhn9dz

2025-01-15T04:00:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…zynl
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I usually don't care for needlessly abstract discussions, but ...

2025-01-14T20:57:46Z

I usually don't care for needlessly abstract discussions, but in the objective of code readability; when describing a semantic triple, is it fair to use target instead of object?

In other words: subject --(predicate)--> target

instead of the usual: subject --(predicate)--> object

It feels like 'subject' and 'object' could easily be confused for where they are in the triple (for those new to the concept), while 'target' is clearer, yet any documentation on semantic triples seems to only use 'subject', 'predicate', 'object' to describe the components of a semantic triple.

Didn't expect that turn for someone that's been mostly ...

2025-01-04T20:48:05Z

Didn't expect that turn for someone that's been mostly virtue signalling the past couple years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm51xZHZI6g

Neat, didn't notice that SCRAM for HTTP Authentication was a ...

2024-12-22T23:05:24Z

Neat, didn't notice that SCRAM for HTTP Authentication was a standardized thing until now: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7804

Apparently authored by an employee of an XMPP software vendor.

From periodically lurking X (and I'm sure the same applies to ...

2024-12-11T07:08:00Z

From periodically lurking X (and I'm sure the same applies to Bluesky), I don't understand the fixation of all the people that want to act as some self-appointed justice system that declares people 'pedophile', 'zoophile', or whatever else, based on some Google Doc of just alleged Discord/Telegram/etc screenshots, of conversations with people you have never heard of.

Should I demonstrate how trivial it is to edit conversation history in Discord with developer tools (when accessed from a browser)? Is it worth making a tool to fake Telegram screenshots, to also illustrate the same?

Why is it almost never verifiable court documents, charges, local news reports, etc? If the conversation screenshots are "proof", and there is reasonable evidence to a crime, why is nobody bothering to report to law enforcement, to then officially legally request those conversation logs from the platform and investigate further?

Then there's also times when people will decry any accusations against their friends or acquaintances as baseless, as nothing more than a desperate measure to take them down, but then clap like seals for any campaign against people they hate, for probably no different of quality of 'evidence'.

Just to be clear: anyone advocating for pedophilia or zoophilia deserves the woodchipper. What I'm complaining about is the people obsessing over and recirculating gossip, playing 'moral authority' of the internet, and all the factions that are just a constant inward firing squad.

And hell, it doesn't even have to be alleged crimes, there's some subsets of people that are just appear so insufferably miserable to each other, like some alleged Christian groups throwing each other out and advising people to stay away from certain people, for barely any justification at all.

I don't understand how people aren't self-aware of their own behavior, especially when it very likely is the cause to why they have no stable friendships or are usually alone.

What would be a fair, self-discoverable mechanism for a private ...

2024-11-29T23:23:51Z

What would be a fair, self-discoverable mechanism for a private user storage for an ActivityPub actor, primarily for the storage of arbitrary content such as client preferences, encrypted keyring, etc?

Naturally all I can think of would be another endpoint listed under the endpoints map in an actor, perhaps with a property name of userStorage, whereas the endpoint would be a Collection that you'd Add or Remove objects from.

Or alternatively, if it's something that should just be genericized to some system of arbitrary user-created collections (no idea if discussions about the streams attribute went anywhere), but then that'd probably lose meaning for something that could be self-discoverable (such having to then discover which collection holds a private-only user store for client-managed data, and make it more needlessly complicated).

This is pretty much the last gap that I need figured out, and then my overall plan should be complete, once resolved.

One thing I don't understand with DMARC reports: how do you ...

2024-10-24T15:43:25Z

One thing I don't understand with DMARC reports: how do you even know which sending user is authoritative for a domain? Is the trust model just TOFU (within the same domain)? The DMARC TXT record just designates where to send reports to, but not which account reports should originate from for a domain.

I am also secretly drafting a couple ideas/proposals at: ...

2024-10-06T01:07:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…mz3h
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I am also secretly drafting a couple ideas/proposals at: https://arcanican.is/excerpts/did-method-fedi/

I already have working tools written to create an identity (an older version is at https://arcanican.is/excerpts/did-method-fedi/generator.html ; I don't have the latest code public yet), and am toying with implementing it in my server project within the next week or two.

When I have results, I'll be writing up more about the experiments, and probably paying attention and engaging in discussions on it again.

I can maybe provide a "tl;dr" for the whole broad scope of DIDs, DID methods, resolution, controller documents, etc, upon request. I just might need to know where your confusion is, and I can probably come up with a response.

and even then, some people will still type out google.com, ...

2024-09-15T18:55:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…kx2p
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and even then, some people will still type out google.com, navigate there, and then type the domain name of a website as a Google search, and click the first result instead of understanding to just type the domain name directly in the address bar.

There's one animation skit where the protagonist gets ...

2024-07-08T03:36:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…jpzy
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There's one animation skit where the protagonist gets mistakenly flagged as an impersonation attempt on themselves, from a facial recognition unlock feature on their phone, and automatically prompted to defend themself against identity fraud charges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbXaiqA4ins

I mean, hell, I can just start a managed hosting service (under ...

2024-07-07T19:09:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…hfyc
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I mean, hell, I can just start a managed hosting service (under my pseudonym; I already do such professionally) if there's a market for it on fedi. Just a decade ago it wasn't perceived as that much of a hurdle, as people would pursue through it.

Are all the ports for STUN/TURN open, including the entire ranges ...

2024-06-11T21:26:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…kkng
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Are all the ports for STUN/TURN open, including the entire ranges for TURN relay (ALL ports from UDP port 49152, to UDP port 65535, as is the default for eturnal and coturn), or if you're using a custom port range, is it enough ports (e.g. at least like ~100 ports or so)?

Is it with calls only between people on the same XMPP server, or ...

2024-06-11T18:54:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…ar7c
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Is it with calls only between people on the same XMPP server, or is it with calls to users on other servers? To my understanding, each server (for each participant in a call) needs to provide STUN/TURN services.

and what about the servers I've had running for several ...

2024-05-25T17:27:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…tw68
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and what about the servers I've had running for several years, with a very immaculate uptime, and warning you against starting a community on a mega-instance?

or the result when people complain to social media instead of ...

2024-04-21T04:53:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…jfp3
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or the result when people complain to social media instead of putting the effort into carefully reporting installer issues.

I'm pretty much available for tech support whenever needed ...

2024-04-13T04:47:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…e05f
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I'm pretty much available for tech support whenever needed for XMPP servers and alike (and there is of course also the respective support MUCs, for each server software). I can also set up cert/uptime monitoring with notifications, from my Icinga2 instance, if desired. I was intending at some later point to deploy a self-serve system for that.

Now I'm randomly curious: does phenomena of Dunbar's ...

2024-01-20T00:41:35Z

Now I'm randomly curious: does phenomena of Dunbar's number indirectly include parasocial connections and brand names too? Do the people that worship brands and celebrities therefore have much less 'mental space' for remembering actual people in their lives?

and traditionally they were one of the few early printer vendors ...

2023-08-30T19:22:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…a00v
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and traditionally they were one of the few early printer vendors (other than HP) to actually provide first-party native Linux drivers, as well as deb/rpm downloads from their website (although packaged a little weird). I don’t know how the landscape is now, comparatively.

It’s the main reason I have interest in it, despite my general ...

2023-08-14T03:49:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…l4yx
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It’s the main reason I have interest in it, despite my general hate of social media. The ability to just have discussions with actual people, versus being around individuals that are trying to be: performative, trying to build follower numbers, trying to turn everything into a spectacle, or ‘building the brand of them’.

That’s probably a far better chance than describing it to the ...

2023-08-09T00:52:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…g5gl
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That’s probably a far better chance than describing it to the average Discord user.