Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

So thankful for Elizabeth Warren and the #CFPB right now. After months of fighting with my bank, I filed a CFPB complaint last week. Today they called and apologized, as apparently the rep could see I tried to resolve this several times. They promised to make things right and do so in writing as a formal response to the complaint. Turns out a watchdog for financial institutions is a good thing.

I added an extra server to the #QOTO cloud. This should speed up our services, in particular gitlab and discourse were using up too much cpu, but now they are fine. Those services should run much smoother now.

A new mRNA based vaccine looks like it might be able to protect against all known forms of influenza even given the highly variable nature of the flu virus. 👩‍🔬

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0271

hi mastodon, I just thought you all should know that I make exceptionally good mac & cheese (it is my grandmother’s recipe and has its roots in southern church basements)

@cwebber well when two servers like each other very much, they open an HTTP socket and start sending JSON blobs back and forth

“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for thy love’s sake. Amen.”

A happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it, and a happy Thursday for everyone else.

@cstross I (who am totally not a robot) wish you a traditional American Giving of the Thanks as depicted in patriotic image of first Thankinggives at Plymouth The Rock. Has Turkeybird and Pilgrimship! Much American, very traditional, wow!

Nice to see some support on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/z09ioa/qotoorg_an_inclusive_stemfocued_instance/

#reddit

@b0rk famously the #haskell GHC compiler offers an option to make the computer beep at the start of a major garbage collection https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/latest/docs/users_guide/runtime_control.html#rts-flag--B

From that link:
“Some people here use it for a variety of purposes—honestly!—e.g., confirmation that the code/machine is doing something, infinite loop detection, gauging cost of recently added code. Certain people can even tell what stage [the program] is in by the beep pattern. But the major use is for annoying others in the same office…”

Review this every day.

This is one of the big topics that people are bringing up as they discover the #fediverse

https://blacksun.social/@sean/109377295432367591

Let’s game it out, shall we?

Suppose I’m a total d*ckhead. You know, like one of those guys we’ve left behind on the bird app. Racist, homophobic, perhaps just addicted to trolling and starting sh*t.

I hear about the new pachyderm playground and decide I want to show up and start trouble with my trolling.

What happens?

If the Fediverse becomes sufficiently popular, the following might happen:

1. Advertisers start using tags or direct messages to get into people's eyeballs.
2. We can block individual accounts, or servers that allow this sort of thing, but it's easy to set up new servers.
3. Moderators (or maintainers of public block lists) adopt a defensive policy of not federating with any server that hasn't been around and active (with believable human conversations) for at least, say, a year.
4. This makes it very hard, but not impossible, for individual people to set up new servers; they just have to create a community through some other means and hang out in their isolated space (or with each other) for the first year.
5. An industry arises of using AI to create thousands of fake "communities" that, once federated, let loose with the advertising.

Alternately, after step 1, we might start using anti-spam software to filter our tags/DMs the same way we currently filter our email.

Trying to figure out if something is regional or universal: Do you usually eat Thanksgiving dinner at

My dog just triggered Alexa's 'turn off all the lights if you detect snoring' feature

7 things all kids need to hear

1 I love you

2 I'm proud of you

3 I'm sorry

4 I forgive you

5 I'm listening

6 RAID is not backup. Make offsite backups. Verify backup. Find out restore time. Otherwise, you got what we call Schrödinger backup

7 You've got what it takes