For years, I've had a test-card at the start of my slides. Before I start my talk, I can immediately see if the aspect ratio is wrong, colours are off, or any other visual issues with the presentation. A few years ago I was invited to give a talk and was assured that the venue was set up for audio as well as video. I dutifully filled my slides with with demo videos containing sound. None of…
Continue reading →
Here's a problem that I've found with ActivityBot - my little ActivityPub server. Sometimes it receives messages which were originally sent months ago. Why does that happen and is it risky to accept and process them? My tl;dr is that it probably isn't worth worrying about. But I'd love someone to tell me why I'm wrong. Here's my thinking: Table of ContentsCausesIs that a problem?What are we…
Continue reading →
I imagine everyone here has received an unsolicited message telling them that their tax is overdue and that they urgently need to visit Genuine-Tax-Payment-Website.fart or that a parcel is delayed at customs and you can pay a small sum for its release at Almost-The-Right-Acronym.ak You know it is a scam. Most people just mark as spam and move on with their day. But a significant number of people …
Continue reading →
This is a gorgeous set of short stories - and a good deal more accessible than some of the heavyweight prose Liu has previously been involved with. Some of the stories contain sentences which are complex jewels to be savoured. What I particularly like is the way he moves between almost-prosaic Earth-bound stories to the the most extraordinary flights of fancy. One story might be set in a…
Continue reading →
If you're reading this, you've probably been hitting your head against a brick wall trying to parse and decipher the new HTTP Signatures sent by Mastodon and other Fediverse servers. This is a basic and somewhat incomplete guide to accepting these signatures. I'm sure there are various gotchas, but it works with the signatures I've seen in the wild. Shut Up And Show Me The Code! OK, wow, no…
Continue reading →
As part of my grant from NLnet to improve my Fediverse bot project, I'm spending time making sure I understand all the fundamentals of ActivityPub. The problem with Internet standards is they're scattered all over the place. Abandoned forums, half-maintained wikis, mailing lists with obscure rules, and monolithic blocks of text. Sometimes you just want one book which collates all the info and…
Continue reading →
