I waddled onto the beach and stole found a computer to use.
🍁⚕️ 💽
Note: I’m moderating a handful of communities in more of a caretaker role. If you want to take one on, send me a message and I’ll share more info :)
Normally updates like this are patched quietly, and sometimes without disclosing what exactly the exploit is
This one was leaked early and tutorials supposedly popped up on Twitter, all before the patches were released to relevant software
On top of that, it was a pretty bad exploit (RCE)
So websites were taken offline because either
I got here from the same report
For those who want to read into the organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Institute_for_Responsible_Statecraft
I tried to update mine and saw that there wasn’t an easy path to update it yet, so I decided to do the same
It’s weird seeing the widget on my phone blank now
I agree this is terrible, and I encourage people to talk to their older / non technical friends and family
At the same time, that seems like a lot of work on the part of the scammers when the average person wouldn’t know what their local sheriff sounds like. Osceola doesn’t seem like a small town.
The grandparents scam (cloning the voice of a grandchild) is a lot more concerning IMO
Looks great! Is the best way to submit bugs by DM or email?
I noticed the following issues when trying to sign in and add an instance with my accounts on Lemmy and Piefed instances (lemmy.ca/u/otter and piefed.ca/u/otter specifically):
Logging in
Signing in with the profile-description (bio) code works on both Lemmy and PieFed, but logging in with a DM does not work for either.
On Lemmy, I get the error message
We could not deliver a message to that account. Check the handle, or use another way to sign in.
Meanwhile on Piefed, FediDB says that it sent the code, but it fails silently since I never receive a message on the account. I looked into adding fedidb.com as a trusted instance from the admin side, but I don’t think that’s the issue since there are no entries for fedidb.com there at all.
I know it should be possible to receive DMs from non-threadiverse instances since Canvas used that for auth. If it helps, here is the source code for that project:
I think they do it by sending the DM as both a Mastodon style note and as a Lemmy style chat message (link to code)
// around line 144
const outbox = [
await message.build(fedify.Note),
await message.build(fedify.ChatMessage),
].map((obj) => apub.prepareObject(obj, ts));
Admin verification
This one fails for both.
On Lemmy I suspect it is looking at the wrong endpoint since I get this:
Could not reach the server to confirm your admin status.
Meanwhile on Piefed, I see the following message despite using an admin account that shows up in /api/alpha/site
Your account is not an admin or the contact account of this server.
I haven’t tried the other methods yet :)
Also sound quality and fit, that’s what I’m curious about
Most earbuds are not repairable, and they don’t have replaceable batteries. Eventually the battery capacity drops to the point where you need to charge them too often. These use replaceable and generic batteries from what I heard, and they’re fairly repairable.
I’m considering a pair of these for when my current earbuds die, depending on the fit and quality.
Maybe, but I read it as emphatic scare quotes
Either they really don’t trust doctors, or they’re trying to be clear this is satire
I think most Lemmy apps are either compatible with both Piefed and Lemmy, or just Lemmy. So putting out information in a Lemmy format will let more clients connect to it?
That’s very cool, and I appreciate the thought that you’ve put into this, including the naming.
How does the embedding side change as it scales up? (Storage costs and performance). Brainstorming based on your description, I assume the embedding process is the most resource intensive, and lookups are basically free? If so, would the limit be how fast it can process all new posts?
I wonder if it would be helpful to run a threadiverse search service like this, which other instances can plug in to. Theres no strong reason for everyone to run their own, since they can just filter out any results that a particular instance has blocked or banned. In our case, we wouldn’t want to replicate that work across the few instances that we run.
I suspect that LLMs do pretty well with troubleshooting Linux thanks to those manuals and old forum posts. After using them to troubleshoot Linux based devices, I tried the same thing on Windows and it struggled to figure out what commands to run.
Windows is a mess to configure and troubleshoot, even with the help of LLMs. Microsoft could have spent their investment trying to fix that, but I don’t think they have.
“Copilot can troubleshoot your computer” could have been a selling point, but they’d have to admit that windows 11 is a buggy mess
It’s intentional disinformarion. This is a war, and wars are rife with propaganda
The problem is that this could also end up furthering disinformation.
If a user without tech knowledge interprets this news as “the fake right wing bots were shut down”, but still sees accounts on their social media posting during that time, they might start to believe that those accounts are real people in their community.
I hope there was a dip in social media bots, but I don’t want to be saying that unless I see more evidence for it. The existing evidence mentioned in the article has been followed up with clarifications / retractions by the people that shared it
To be clear, I appreciate your explanation and I agree that it’s plausible. It is also possible that both things are true (they use data centers, but the fake accounts people were monitoring are running out of different data centers).
Are there any matching issues for the URL that you are trying to deal with? Maybe someone is already working on it
Since a lot of people here (myself included) also misinterpreted the recent news, here are some excerpts for those who haven’t read the article.
If I had to guess, I’d say that you don’t need a data center to run a social media bot that spits out the same generic inflammatory lines all day.
Claims that Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres reduced Kremlin-linked bot networks have spread widely online, but experts have told BBC Verify there is no evidence the attacks have significantly reduced them.
Viral social media posts have claimed there has been a significant drop in influence operations in recent days, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggesting on Monday there was “less hate, less division and fewer provocations” online because of “fewer bots”.
But claims these attacks have affected Russian disinformation operations, including accounts posting supportive messages about groups including the Make American Great Again (MAGA) movement in the US and the far-right AfD party in Germany, appear to have come from a misinterpretation of data produced by tech firm Cloudflare.
Some social media users have been sharing charts of Cloudflare data which show bot activity using Yandex’s network has declined.
While bots are commonly associated with fake social media accounts that may post false, divisive and inflammatory content, they are also used to automate tasks like scanning web pages so they appear on search engines.
Cloudflare clarified its data includes all automated internet requests to websites hosted on its network, including bots crawling websites for information.
The company also said the drop off was “not necessarily bot behaviour on social media platforms”.
Researchers from dTeam, a US-based group that tracks Moscow-linked influence operations, told BBC Verify there has not been “any traffic change from known Russian accounts and bot clusters on any platform”.
They added that if the offices of known groups involved in these operations “were in flames then we would see a change”.
Bots linked to pro-Kremlin influence operations like Storm-1516 and Matryoshka - both of which BBC Verify has previously reported on - were still active on social media on Tuesday, evidence shared with BBC Verify by dTeam shows.
I was going to suggest covering them up, as a legal way to turn them off without physically dismantling, since they’re technically not college property. But that’s exactly what the campus staff did and Flock kept coming to uncover them? Lol wtf
I’d bet if this was a larger college/university, they wouldn’t have pulled something like this.
Something good did come out of this. It is a concrete example of how the company will behave if you sign a contract with them. Public officials and administrators will be more likely to care if they risk losing their power like this. It also makes it clear that you’re not paying Flock to “help” your own region, you’re doing it to help people in other regions.
Elgin Community College staff notified Flock in October 2025 that they wanted to cancel their contract and have the cameras taken down. Within a day, Heinrich said, Flock rejected the request and refused to uninstall the equipment on the basis that the company had not breached their agreement.
College officials reached out again in December 2025 and said they would pay for the remaining five months of the contract — they just wanted the cameras taken down.
“We never received a response back from Flock,” Heinrich said.
That’s when things got weird. Heinrich said Elgin Community College staff began to cover the cameras using black trash bags and zip ties so that they would not be able to capture footage. But workers in an unmarked vehicle, which Heinrich assumed belonged to Flock, repeatedly removed the coverings.
This strange dance continued, Heinrich said, until Elgin Community College’s contract with Flock expired in April this year and the company uninstalled the cameras for good.
Does it prevent the initial .gitignore from being commited too?
For example, what if a file name had sensitive information. It’s bad practice, but someone might want to ignore the file while also hiding the ignore rule itself.
/test/fake-person-first-last.json
/test/real-person-first-last.json
Someone might want to selectively omit the second file while keeping the first, but not show what they are hiding.
What kind of content do you create? That might help you find someone :)
Most of the new devices I see are using the hard to find components (DDR5) while refurbished devices from a few years ago have more than enough RAM for school. Also capacity matters more than generation for RAM, assuming we’re talking DDR4 vs DDR5
I wish I learned this sooner, but the best device for school is a generic laptop that you can easily find guides and replacement parts for. That way you can fix things quickly in the middle of a term instead of needing to wait months for the manufacturer to deal with it
Oh wow that’s neat
Does the ecosystem have something like Mealie and Tandoor, where a nontechnical user can drop in a link to add a recipe?
YouTube started with a lot of angel funding, which is why it eventually monetized in the way that it has
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube