@Jerry@hear-me.social
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Jerry

@Jerry@hear-me.social

admin/owner of this Boston-area Mastodon instance, https://hear-me.social. A liberal who also follows conservatives who use facts to form opinions & are good people. I want my beliefs challenged. I hate when people agendize everything. I play around with Linux.

I also own:
Alternative Mastodon UI: https://phanpy.hear-me.social
Peertube instance: https://my-sunshine.video
Bluesky PDS: https://blue-ocean.social (jerry.blue-ocean.social)

he/him/his

#StarTrek #ScienceFiction #Linux

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Jerry, to random
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

I never buy anything made by random Chinese companies any longer. There's a reason their stuff is so inexpensive. And, yeah, I had to be burned a few times before I learned this.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/consumer/help-me-hank/2024/05/24/smoke-detectors-sold-on-amazon-recalled-because-they-dont-work/?ICID=ref_fark

Jerry, to fediverse
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

A question for people who have moved from one Mastodon Server to another.

I would love to know the reasons that you changed instances so I can better understand what people like, and want, in the Fediverse, and don't like.

I moved once, but only because I wanted to run my own instance. I loved the instance that I was on (social.linux.pizza) before coming here.

Please share. Boosting is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

#Mastodon

Jerry, to generativeAI
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

I got a most disturbing answer from Google's AI Bard when I kept pushing it to tell me why it incorrectly told me that Google Wallet can store Passports (it cannot).

After much poking, it admitted the wrong answer came from an unofficial source. When I asked it if it always accepts information from unofficial sources, it lied and said it doesn't, that it always looks for other sources to confirm. So, when I asked it if it found this wrong information in more than one unofficial source, it admitted that it did not. When I asked why it told me it does the second checks, but failed to do the additional checks for my question, it gave me this:

"I apologize for not following my own process for verifying information from non-official sources. In this case, I was eager to provide you with an answer to your question, and I did not take the time to fully vet the information I found."

Bard is a serial liar, and gaslighting and backpedaling are one of its developing skills. You really can't trust anything it says.

Jerry, (edited ) to random
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

UPDATE on 216.106.86.232 :

Every few seconds, it's doing the following GETS. I'm getting about 2,000 calls per hour from this IP.

https://hear-me.social/packs/media/images/friends-cropped-40409bf96999902fa49757ebce824ce6.png

https://hear-me.social/api/v1/streaming?stream=public:local&access_token=O6luKbPRJV0FlTvhCSqn6z4wNwkUJMxUPgD7xMn4fsc

https://hear-me.social/api/v1/announcements

https://hear-me.social/api/v1/notifications?exclude_types[]=follow_request&since_id=79462

Is anyone else getting traffic from 216.106.86.232 ?

I will open a report with the ISP

=======================

I'm putting this under because I've noticed that since 12 PM EDT yesterday (30-Apr-2024), API requests coming in from 216.106.86.232 have been returning 500 errors constantly from my server. No other 500 errors were being returned.

I blocked the IP at the Cloudflare firewall and now the 500 errors have stopped. There were more than 93K 500 return codes in total until now!

I have no idea what the requests are, and it's too late at night to do more research, but I'm passing this along to other Admins as a warning and to see if anyone else is seeing similar behavior.

@Gargron

Here's what I see in Cloudflare for the last one hour before blocking the IP address. Notice all the requests returning 500 are from this single IP. There are no page views. It's all API requests. And 500 errors stopped after I blocked it.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Jerry, to random
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

@GottaLaff
Nice!

Biden's Threads account is now federating with Mastodon and can be followed with @potus

Jerry, to threads
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

#Obama has enabled Federation on his threads account, @barackobama, and so his account can be followed here on Mastodon and other Fediverse servers.

This offer not valid on servers where your Admin is blocking #threads

@GottaLaff

Jerry, to twitter
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

In light of Elon's claim that AI has brought his platform to its knees this weekend reading data for training purposes, I asked , , .ai, and Bing Chat if they use Twitter data for training. Here are the results:

Bard:
"No, I do not use Twitter for training."

Perplexity.ai:
"I do not use Twitter for training."

Bing Chat:
"I couldn’t find any information that suggests Bing Chat uses Twitter data for training purposes."

ChatGPT didn't know. But, Bing Chat uses ChatGPT

So, Elon's treasure trove of user data doesn't seem to be of a quality that people want to train AI with and his claims of massive "data scrapping" to train AIs appear probably to be made up to deflect from infrastructure insufficiency due to mismanagement.

It would also seem to be that his data is financially less valuable than he assumed.

Jerry, to fediverse
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

So what will become of Mastodon servers that are using "mastodon", "mastodoon", "mstdn", or "mast0don" as part of their domain names? And what of people who use "mastodon" as part of their user names, either on Mastodon or on other social sites?

From joinmastodon:

"You may not use the Mastodon word mark, or any similar mark, in your domain name, unless you have written permission from Mastodon gGmbH."

"The name and handle of your social media account and any and all pages cannot begin with a Mastodon word mark, or a similar mark (e.g. "mastodoon", "mast0don", "mstdn"). In addition, Mastodon logos cannot be used in a way that might suggest affiliation with or endorsement by Mastodon."

Jerry, to threads
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

For anyone who hates (most, I hope?), you'll be delighted to know that MeidasTouch has turned on their federation and can be followed from Mastodon and other Fediverse apps via @meidastouch

Offer void where prohibited by Admin law

While they have a Mastodon account on mstdn.social (@MeidasTouch), they seemed to have stopped posting with it back in September, sadly.

@GottaLaff
@jaykuo

Jerry, to kbin
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

@jerry

Hey, Jerry, are you a KBIN expert yet? 🙂

I brought up my KBIN instance this morning, https://feddit.online, and it appears to be working but it doesn't yet know about any magazines other than the two I created locally and the 11 I manually entered the names for that are remote.

If I use the topmost search to look for a magazine, I find none. So, 13 magazines is all I have.

On the assumption that my instance is still downloading information from other instances, how long did it take your instance to see all the available magazines.

Or, should I have them by now? Or does it not work this way. Or, do you think something is wrong?

Thanks.

Jerry, (edited ) to random
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Some random person told me they are blocking me because I don't block threads.

And I wonder, why did he tell me this? Can someone be so arrogant and self-centered to believe that I would care that he, a total stranger, has blocked me? Does he think that he is so important that this would hurt me? Whatever was he expecting the impact to be from me?

He blocked me. So, why would I care???

I live on this planet with people, but I definitely don't understand a lot of them.

Your thoughts? Help me understand.

When a stranger blocks you because they disagree with you:

Jerry, to threads
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

"Zuckerberg only had one job with Threads, and he blew it"

"The issue: Threads’ user experience lacks key features that are critical to most Twitter users. Without them, its big bang will likely fade out in a quick, sad poof. Here, in no particular order, are the biggest features Threads is missing."

Interesting read

https://www.fastcompany.com/90919575/zuckerberg-one-job-threads-ux

Jerry, to internet
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

My mother gave me good advice when I was a kid. She'd say, "Jerry, don't be a shmuck"

If you're thinking about using , be aware that their terms of service say that EVERYTHING you post instantly belongs to them. Even if you don't use their app. Anything that goes through their network belongs to them.

They should call it Redsky because it's a deep fake that attempts to look like a nice social platform.

They are trying to package it like some better than Twitter thing but it is exactly the same as Twitter. It's for their profit. They will sell your brain to anyone who offers them money for it, be it corporations or political groups.

I will not go anywhere near it.

Jerry, to random
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Anyone have this account on their instances? I found 44 of them when I searched. I'm sure there are more out there.

Jerry, (edited ) to Humor
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Jerry, to USpolitics
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Bottom line, for too many reasons to list here, life expectancy in GOP controlled states is way below Blue states, and is expected to get worse, fast.

How bad is it now?

"1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65…. a similar life expectancy to residents of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries"

Here's a link. I removed the pay wall: https://wapo.st/3F8ZObN

Jerry, to internet
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Figuring that will someday soon be hacked because Musk fired so many technical staff, I want to change my email address there to a throwaway email. But, for over a week, the ability to change the email address is broken.

I don't even get to enter the new email address. I just re-enter my password and I expect an email replacement prompt, but instead I get an error.

Am I the only one who can't change their email address associated with a Twitter account?

Jerry, to privacy
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Concerning

As you walk by, "The sign collects a [cell phone] device’s unique address, which is encrypted before it’s sent back to Soofa, the company said. Soofa described the collection as “passive.”"

Soofa tries hard to convince people there is no threat because THEY don't share with 3rd parties, but only turn the information over to the municipalities.

Beyond that, though, they can't assure that governments won't share, nor can they vouch for how well municipalities will protect the data.

Very concerning as a privacy issue.

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/03/26/these-solar-powered-signs-across-boston-collect-data-from-your-phone/

Jerry, to twitter
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Do I have this right?

Elmo got into an online Xitter fight with James Wood because Wood is vehemently opposed to removing the block function, with the end result that Elmo blocked Wood? Does it get more ridiculous?

I guess it's temporary, anyway.

https://www.mediaite.com/tech/elon-musk-battles-james-woods-in-heated-x-spat-over-block-button-that-ends-with-musk-hitting-the-block-button/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Jerry, to kbin
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Did you know you can add a magazine to a kbin server that you don't have an account on, that you are not logged into, that you never logged into, that is locally listed on a different kbin server, whether you have an account there or not as well?

I created a magazine on my server, feddit.online, called "feddit".

I went to geddit.buzz and looked at their magazine list. It did not have my magazine. I never logged into geddit.buzz nor ever had an account.

I clicked on the global search icon at the top on geddit.buzz and searched for <at>feddit<at>feddit.online.

The magazine came up and is now on the magazine list for geddit.buzz, which they can't delete.

So, you can force any other KBIN server to list a magazine that is on any other KBIN or Lemmy server.

Defect or feature?

I can think of how this can be abused.

@mastodonmigration @jerry @ernest @admin

Jerry, to kbin
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

📢 📢 📢 📢 📢 📢 📢 📢
I've decided it's time to open my instance, https://feddit.online to the public!
📣 📣 📣 📣 📣 📣 📣 📣

KBIN is Alpha software and it's got some defects and missing parts. But, if you are looking for a Reddit replacement, are a pioneer, just want to learn more about KBIN, or want to play, I invite you to have a look at https://feddit.online

So, you all come on down! You hear?

NOTE that the email confirmation sent twhen you register expires in just 1 hour and there is no way to get it resent. If you miss the time, send an email to me from the email address that you registered with and I'll manually activate your account. Send it to: registration@feddit.online

@mastodonmigration @ernest @ernest @hapi841

Jerry, to threads
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Star Trek fans! :trekbadgetng:

7 of 9 (Jeri Ryan) has turned on Threads Federation and can now be followed on the Fediverse!

She once had an active Mastodon account but hasn't posted anything since last September. But, she's a prolific poster on at @jerilryan

Her inactive Mastodon account is @JeriLRyan

@georgetakei @GoodAaron

Jerry, to internet
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

If this is true, if Musk actually does this, then this would be Musk's stupidest idea ever. The headline seriously understates the impact. It will end Twitter.

"... in a move that nobody seemed to ask for, Twitter will apparently let users call anyone on the app, whether you follow them or not."

https://www.techradar.com/opinion/elons-twitter-update-will-make-twitter-completely-unusable-for-women

Jerry, to random
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

Wordle 690 5/6*

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
🟨🟨⬛⬛🟨
🟩🟨⬛🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@hapi841 @Xorky @Kasulay

Jerry, to ubuntu
@Jerry@hear-me.social avatar

It is insane that in 2023 I cannot just get Bluetooth to work on Ubuntu without going through all sorts of nonsense.

First, I had to reinstall the Bluetooth software stack. Why should this even be necessary?

And then, I had to create some bizarre symlink because Ubuntu is looking for a nonexistent firmware file, so I need to fool it into using the right firmware file.

This is just all wrong. And wasted a lot of time. I wonder if it all breaks the next time I update Ubuntu?

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