Pinned toot

I'm fox, I spend a lot of time on computers doing various cyber things.

My work is in and and I'm given the leeway to leverage my time to learn and create useful tools for internal use.

I'm likely to post about:






and general geopolitical goings on.

_foxaru boosted

Bit of fun this weekend by looking at how Mastodon actually works under the hood. The "federation" part is really interesting, but also highlights how other servers may not be trusted.

Take for example this user (should be cached on infosec.exchange):

@fakexpn

If you click on the user via the web interface, you'll see that the account has insta-influencer status, without all the shit-posting and self-meme'ing..

This is of course is all by design, as part of ActivityPub. When we reference another account on another server, the "federation" part of the protocol kicks in and requests information on the account. This means that on the server we control, we can set as many followers as we want (as well as post count and basically anything else we want) by returning a "totalItems" value of 99999999 in the followers ActivitySteam JSON.

tl;dr, Factor in trust of servers when using Mastodon (and stop using follow count as a metric!)

_foxaru boosted

So it seems joinmastodon removed QOTO from their directory without cause, without contacting us, and without any discussion or due diligence.

Since this is the only way to actually find QOTO for new users if it isnt reversed soon it could mean the end for our wonderful community.

If you care about this place remaining fair, respectful, and inclusive environment I highly suggest everyone reach out to them annd voice your objecttion and your disapointment and having no procedure to keep this fair and inclusive.

If you want to see QOTO stick around you can email your objecttion here:

hello@joinmastodon.org

Feel free to CC me here: jeffrey.freeman@qoto.org

Please be respectful, we want to show them we are the good guys and not give them any reason to object.

@Gargron @trinsec @khird

_foxaru boosted

CBS News and Twitter 

CBS News suspends use of Twitter due to Musk takeover - The Jerusalem Post jpost.com/business-and-innovat News has halted its activity on Twitter in light of Elon Musk's turbulent and unpredictable takeover of the social media platform, the broadcasting company announced over the weekend.

CBS News national reporter Jonathan Vigliotti broke the news of the company's decision on Friday evening, saying that "in light of the uncertainty around Twitter and out of an abundance of caution, CBS News is pausing its activity on the social media site as it continues to monitor the platform."

_foxaru boosted
_foxaru boosted

Reminder to new folks here, like my good friends @foxesafloat .

Write an introduction, use the introduction hashtag, plenty of people follow it, you'll get some nice boosts and engagement from it.

There is no computer feeding you what it thinks you'll like, you need to engage with people and people need to engage with you. So fill up your feed by following some folks.

Search doesn't work unless you use hashtags, people can't find you, so make sure you use hashtags all over the place.

Because there's no machine to boost posts, make sure you Boost(retweet from the old world) to share the tweets you like with others. A favourite over here will show the user who wrote the toot you liked it but do nothing for their engagement with others so help them out with a boost.

If you're posting stuff that others might not want to see, like my habit of terrible political hot takes, use the CW button to hide the post behind a content warning.

There's far better guides that this kicking around, but if you're new here, this is a good starter for 10.

Welcome to a more relaxed, better engaged environment.

_foxaru boosted

Note to self about and :

  1. excalidraw.com for sleek hand-drawn diagrams (just a few shapes, but great UI)
  2. app.diagrams.net for blocky, corporate-looking diagrams (plenty of clipart, bloated UI)
  3. mermaid.live for auto generation of diagrams belonging to a handful of types (computing, engineering, business), similar to (very limited, but declarative and text-based)
  4. asciiflow.com for the lolz, basically
_foxaru boosted
_foxaru boosted

24,798 accounts
+5 in the last hour
+255 in the last day
+1,164 in the last week

_foxaru boosted

#Photo #tips for Mastodon.

Unlike other websites, here you can adjust what photo previews focus on.

All you have to do is click 'edit' after you select your photo for uploading. This is where you can add your #AltText as well. Drag the circle over the area you want to be the focus. Apply your changes, and voila. No more awkward crops on inappropriate areas!

Note, these screenshots were from the fancy web version, so things may be slightly different on the apps, but hopefully they help.

I'm fox, I spend a lot of time on computers doing various cyber things.

My work is in and and I'm given the leeway to leverage my time to learn and create useful tools for internal use.

I'm likely to post about:






and general geopolitical goings on.

One of the misconceptions I was labouring under before getting set up here was that Mastodon was itself a platform in the same sense that or are; i.e. that it was itself an entity that people communicated on.

And, judging by the responses to a recent @joinmastodon tweet, I wasn't alone in labouring under that misapprehension.This feels a lot more like with cross-server posting.

So from that perspective, this feels a bit like getting angry at Jarkko Oikarinen because someone banned you from an IRC politics chat for posting intentional misinformation lmao.

Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.