*banned 4 MarkDown love* @design_RG@qoto.org

"If this election turns out to be just between a self-proclaimed socialist and an undiagnosed sociopath, we will be in a terrible, terrible place as a country. How do we prevent that?

That’s all I am thinking about right now. My short answer is that the Democrats have to do something extraordinary — forge a national unity ticket the likes of which they have never forged before. And that’s true even if Democrats nominate someone other than Bernie Sanders."

EXCELLENT article on NY Times by Thomas Friedman. I would love to see what he is suggesting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/opinion/democratic-primary-candidates.html

@snow The 5 GHz band is really good for people in apartment buildings - where the amount of competing networks in the crowded 2.4 GHz band is a nightmare.

As long as your devices support the dual band, the 5 GHz can help. Less distance covered, weaker signal, but less collisions and interferance.

@snow
Not on that region, I think. I imagine you might find some criminal gangs in Sicily and Calabria, possibly, or near Naples.

The reporter does a good job of mentioning it ain't the best place to be living at during the Winter (dark, windy, humid and probably rainy).

I have read other articles talking about similar promotions in Spain (land being sold at 1 Euro per square meter for home construction). There's a lot of small villages that lost their younger people, moved to larger cities for employment, and there's many times properties that end up abandoned and in disrepair when the older owners pass away.

@freemo

@freemo It's an interesting story, and a great way to attract attention, with that price (same as a coffee at the local eateries).

The bad part is that there's work needed to make the places liveable, and the costs can be high - the reported made some comments mentioning seeing an already refurbished property selling, ready to move in, for 30,000 Euros and considering that a better bet. I fully agree, it can be occupied and you know the cost upfront.

This is probably the BEST written and explained article about real world WiFi usage, how it works, frequencies, attenuation by obstacles, etc I have ever seen.

#QOTOJournal

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/02/the-ars-technica-semi-scientific-guide-to-wi-fi-access-point-placement/

Small towns in Italy selling old homes for 1 Euro each - the ones in the photos here were the first ones sold in one of them - Cantiano.

Read the details (you will need to pay for a renovation, it has to be done within a certain time) here : https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-for-one-euro-in-cantiano-italy-you-can-buy-a-coffee-or-you-can-buy

The Washington Post has a tremendous article detailing a long standing Intelligence operation by the NSA.

Recommended reading, it's incredible for anyone interested in intelligence work, encryption, geopolitics. Article came up a couple of days ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/?itid=pm_pop

@Sphinx @realcaseyrollins@mstdn.social

Hi guys! 😃 Thanks for the concern, and yes, I have been away quite a bit, which is very unusual.

But it's just the way I have been feeling, Winter Blues, been quietly reading a lot and not saying much, posting in any forums or mastodon, or even writing blog pages.

Sorry, hopefully it will pass, this quieter phase. 😛

@lupyuen That article is excellent, I can completely relate to it. Thank you for posting the link!

From the Toot linked at the end of previous post...

An interesting article on The Guardian. People started discussing their favourite Fonts and point sizes, and Times New Roman (a Serif font very commonly used as Default in many office applications) was very popular - in 12 points.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/29/when-fonts-fight-times-new-roman-conquers#comment-137768367

What is your favourite Font and size for writing work?

My own? Georgia, at 12 points for writing, in text editor or wordprocessor. Georgia is a Serif font which was specifically designed for use in Screens, and I used it as the Default Serif font in my browsers (in 16 points size).

Similarly, Verdana was also created and optimized for on screen usage, in this case it's a Sans Serif, replaces the very common Arial with easier in the eyes similar style.

See more detailas about Georgia, Verdana, references and further reading -- in my post here: https://qoto.org/@design_RG/103222890777553467

@snow Thank you for the detailed guide with full custom css settings. Well done, Snow! 😃 👍

* Memories, a visit to the Archeology Museum *

It started this morning, the thread. And over short posts, someone told a story. Of a Greek man, who lived in antiquity, by the Mediterranean side; in a city whose name is still preserved, and today is written "Marseille".

This series of posts was interesting, liked it and went to the top to find the rest.

Enjoying his post, I remembered similar thoughts, of History, and how things worked, how small bits and pieces came to me as I visited an exposition, at the Archeological Museum, in Lisbon.

Now the story is on my blog: https://write.tedomum.net/rgx/memories-a-visit-to-the-archeology-museum

You can also see a mirrored copy at our Discouse Forum at Qoto.org : https://discourse.qoto.org/t/memories-a-visit-to-the-archeology-museum-blog-mirror-here/169

** Author notes:

This is one of my favourite posts in my blog, I really enjoyed writing it, first as a series of Toots, then as a fleshed out and enriched Blog post.

I am grateful to @kashi for the original suggestion and inspiration of our new Qoto Journal hashtag.

#QOTOJournal #History #Technology #Geography

@JulianRott Thank you for posting - it's an interesting and data rick article. Well done. 😃

@sda Thank youm, that was an interesting article! 😃

@snow @freemo A new Toot editor in Collapsed Mastodon Looks like this. Admittedly, it could be wider...

@snow @freemo

The proper use of wide screen displays is one of my pet peeves. I have collected a few folders here of screenshots, and posted even at mastodon.social itself, with a couple of them, asking Eugen to consider a different, more writer and reader friendly AWI feature.

He did respond to it, and was surprised I was not interested in having multiple columns with live feeds on them - which would be too distracting for my personal use. I like the layout on the screenshot Snow linked to above -- and even went and made a fresh one to document the better AWI setting in the Dark Theme that Qoto and Todon.nl have.

These two were the only two instances were I was able to use AWI in a pleasant way. I am attaching here at comparative screenshot, taken just now, with Todon.nl in AWI mode, which is identical to the Qoto AWI dark screen theme as far as I know.

I kind of silenced my campaign for general usability improvement, since I have discovered that a lot of sys admins, and most crucially, the lead project developer, are all long time Twitter users and seem to think that is the way to go.

Which explains features I abhor :

- 500 characters maximum Toot size is hard coded into the Mastodon project files, and not in a configuration file as it should for ease of keeping modified settings from getting erased by an update or version upgrade.

- the assumption that AWI is the shits, and that emulating TweetDeck is the best way to use real screens in laptop or desktop computers.

If someone wants to have 3 or 4 columns, and live feeds in each of them, well, enjoy it. What I prefer is to have 2 columns, and a proper Toot editing area.

In reality, I have found that the "Collapsed Mastodon" add-on for Firefox is a giant improvement.

- Not only if allows me to set my preferred to active columns mode, but it does so while collapsing totally the leftmost column (the one is writing about, where the Toot Editor lives).

So, it's not 20, 30 or 40% of the screen -- it's zero, as the functions which use that area can be perfectly executed in the columns in use themselves. It will open a reply Toot editor (with the much larger and more comfortable width the columns already have) right below any message you intend to reply to.

A new Toot all together (not a reply to someone) will open an overlay near the "Pencil" icon and proceed to take user input for the new post.

Best of all -- for people who use Firefox and this add on, we can configure our preferred work arrangement without having to beg each system administrator in instances we use to please consider making improvements to their AWI css files.

Attached Screenshots :

#1 : Todon.NL, AWI mode, enhanced Dark Theme Full Width instance theme. (Without Collapsed Mastodon)

#2 : Qoto.or, AWI mode, enhanced Dark Theme Full Width, with "Collapsed Mastodon" enabled.

Not the HUGE reply box I am using on this reply -- the FULL width of the Rightmost column. No lack of space in this setup.

@freemo Ah, thank you -- this explains the difference in behaviour, the feed accessed via the dots menu (and by the API call) fill up instantly, while the Subscribe Domain method will populate as new posts are made in that instance.

Remote API calls might be blocked in some places (it was being discussed by some admins in regards to the major scraping done by the University researchers recently), while the Federated feed pull will always work.

The story about Map Projections and the people who favour each of the methods. (web comics, karge image)

https://m.xkcd.com/977/

@freemo This was so surprising to me that I took the time to login into another, non-moderator account, to make sure a regular user could see this feature.

It does work, for any QOTO user account, as shown in the screenshots (taken from my alt, secondary Qoto account).

And it is NOT present in any other instances, where I logged on locally to check if I had so far missed this. Nope, not there. Exclusive. 😃