@mick@cosocial.ca
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

mick

@mick@cosocial.ca

Average middle-aged guy from various places in Ontario.

Collector of various nerdly interests.

Into #running, #books, #chess, #videogames.

At least a little bit #buddhist. Trying to lead an examined life.

I believe that we have the right to safe digital spaces where we can build communities free from corrosive capitalist influence.

Working to build a sustainable, non-corporate web as a volunteer with #CoSocialCa

Posts auto-delete after 2 months.

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

alkatandan, to random
@alkatandan@cosocial.ca avatar

While this review is almost as juvenile as the it expresses well my reaction when I read the manifesto.

https://technovia.co.uk/2023/10/16/marc-andreessens-manifesto.html

What are people reading for their or

mick,
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

@alkatandan on the techno-progressivism (or, perhaps, techno-pragmatism?) front I took a lot away from @pluralistic ‘s new book “The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.”

Cory does a good job analyzing the current, dismal state of the tech landscape and correctly (I think) diagnoses the causes of - and solutions to - big tech as largely regulatory.

He would definitely land on Andressen’s “enemies list” for this one. 😅

georgetakei, to random

There’s something quite delicious and funny watching Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders try to respond to a GOP-led audit of her alleged false records, including a $19K lectern, and failure to respond to FOIA requests, by blaming “left wing activists” for the controversy.

Keep flailing, Governor. It’s your own party’s audit panel investigating your office.

mick,
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

@georgetakei that is one fancy lectern.

mick, to random
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

Etsy used to be a place where you could reliably find one-of-kind items and directly support the artists that created them.

As it has traversed the classic cycle, Etsy has become more “buyer-focused,” and less useful to artisans, who are being crowded out by mass-produced goods and paying higher fees.

As elsewhere, (ahem, ) dissatisfaction with the corporatization of this space is prompting people to try something new:

https://artisans.coop/pages/about-us

anildash, (edited ) to random
@anildash@me.dm avatar

Roughly 1/3 of all sites on the Internet just entered the fediverse. You can’t stop an idea whose time has come. https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/11/wordpress-com-blogs-can-now-be-followed-on-mastodon-and-other-federated-platforms/

mick,
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

@amy I was searching the comments going “WHY EAT?” I’m glad you said something I was beginning to wonder if it was real. 😂

ryan, to random
@ryan@dads.cool avatar

ok, i'm outside the time window, i can disclose that i just got the otp 666999

mick,
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

@ryan @Binder nice

mick, to fediverse
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

This, from @pluralistic, is absolutely on point.

This is why I’m here, and why I am helping to build

evan, to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Wow! We just finished the first annual general meeting .

We had about 1/3 of the full CoSocial membership on the call. We managed to get through reports from working groups, elections of board members, and resolutions on strategic direction.

Thanks to everyone who came. And welcome to our three new board members: @boris @mick and @Django !

mick,
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan @jai @alkatandan Great turn-out! Thanks for chairing the meeting and stepping up for another year on the board!

MikeDunnAuthor, to random
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar
mick,
@mick@cosocial.ca avatar

@MikeDunnAuthor Lives were probably saved…

GeekSusie, to random
@GeekSusie@mastodon.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @GeekSusie same vibes.

    timbray, to random
    @timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

    Are there any Fedi clients that have something like the Twitter Web client thread constructor, where you can compose a bunch of posts and then post them all at once? I used to use that a lot.

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @timbray +1

    Sort-of the opposite of this: someone has implemented the unroll app for Mastodon, bless them: https://mastoreader.io/

    mick, to ai
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    PSA: Talk to your olds about the dangers of scams.

    A couple weeks back we got a call that sounded like a call from our bank looking for my son.

    I am suspicious of these things by nature but the call was very consistent with other contact I’ve had with the bank when I've had a card compromised in the past.

    They had his name and number, and everything about it sounded just like the bank's automated system. "Please contact us at 1-800-number as soon as possible.”

    So he called.

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    What answered also sounded identical to the bank’s automated phone system.

    “To help us identify you please read or enter your access card number.”

    My son read off his number, then his date of birth, and it was here that things started to get weird.

    The thing didn’t seem to hear him, just kept asking him to repeat.

    And then we figured that it was probably a scam.

    Contacted the bank by other means and changed his card to be on the safe side.

    Lesson learned, went on with life.

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    Fast forward to today, when my dad got a call that sounded like it was from my son, saying that he was in trouble and needed help.

    My dad is pretty sharp, and has heard me going on about AI tricks for a while now.

    Though he described the voice as “a perfect match,” he immediately got the sense that this was not my boy and dumped the call.

    A+ for dad.

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    So these scammers:

    • gathered my son’s name and phone number.
    • possibly they figured out what bank he was with, though they could have just been playing the field.
    • harvested his voice with a pretty sophisticated scam
    • figured out who his grandfather is; and
    • attempted to use my son’s voice to trick money out of him.

    Things are getting kinda weird out there.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ai-vocal-cloning-grandparent-scam-1.6777106

    mick, to mastodon
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    Some questions for Mastodon admins on running Elasticsearch:

    • How have you deployed ES? Same host as the rest of your instance? Stand alone VM? Elastic/AWS Cloud? Container or bare metal? Why?

    • How much RAM/CPU do you allocate for ES and how active is your instance?

    • Any advice you would offer regarding setup and ops of ES?

    mick, to random
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    4.2.0 test upgrade has been a comedy of errors. This is why we do test upgrades!

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @thisismissem Nah I bungled a step and the test server is so small that it was running out of memory precompiling assets. I think everything is sorted now.

    Thank-you for reaching out. :)

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @thisismissem @moira thanks!

    Will keep this in mind for the future - though it sounds like I’m unlikely to encounter it again with a future Mastodon release, and it won’t be an issue for 4.2.0 on our production server where we have sufficient resources.

    I’m new to Rails stuff so the additional context is helpful and appreciated.

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @moira @thisismissem The saying “better too much than not enough” is true for many things.

    RAM in particular. 😂

    stux, to random
    @stux@mstdn.social avatar

    “No worries, let me check the server room real quick”

    A gigantic mess in cables.. just terrible

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @stux hyperventilating rn

    WTL, to Ottawa
    @WTL@mastodon.social avatar

    Got my twenty pushups in during my warmup/stretching, then ventured out for a cool morning in for a 1km walk and 10KM RUN! Now, I know the path to getting back to my pervious volume is going to take time, but I'm seeing progress, so I'm pretty happy.

    The Ottawa River with a visible wall of fog going across the river.
    Rideau River with trees on both sides, curving off to the right.
    Strathcona Park’s trees along the Rideau River have started to change colours with a clear blue sky above.

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @WTL dunno if you’ve done any heart-rate training, or have the means or interest, but MAF training tends to be very gentle and allows for big volume over time with low stress on the body.

    If you’re into distance running it’s pretty great.

    Take it easy!

    mick, to random
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    Woo! ✊

    It’s a near-certainty that this would have gone through if it weren’t for the investigative journalism of @thenarwhal and the Toronto Star.

    This scandal will come to define Ford’s time as leader.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ford-stag-and-doe-integrity-commissioner-1.6974058

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @Greengordon “I deeply regret how much attention has been called to my government’s attempt to enrich our donors and family friends, we were only trying to profit from our position of power in accordance with the natural order of things, and this seems to have upset some of you.”

    seldo, to random
    @seldo@alpaca.gold avatar

    If you own an elliptical machine whose maximum resistance is not challenging enough, know that the phrase "increase maximum resistance" for an elliptical is a totally un-googleable phrase that will result in 1m videos saying "press the increase resistance button".

    mick,
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @seldo Ankle weights!

    mick, to fediverse
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    Kinda meta.

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