alis

alis, 2 months ago to blogging

“WordPress might not be the fanciest tool on the market but it has one thing going for it: Nothing comes close to ease of deployment and running. WordPress enabled so many non techy writers and artists to run their own platform should they choose to do so. It was one of the few successful mainstream projects that actually got people to realistically choose not to post their stuff on Medium or Substack or some other closed hosting platform. Because while there are more open source publishing platforms really nothing is near WordPress’ sweet spot of features, ease of use, ease of deployment and plugin landscape. The fancy shmancy new tools running increasingly complex JavaScript stacks or even more obscure tech are not ready for non nerds to run (and often fragile as fuck). And that’s on the nerds and techies. We were so busy rewriting things in rust or JavaScript that we never thought about what to do when Automattic falls. We were very naive.”

Jürgen Geuter on tools for normies.

For all that Automattic has made a bunch of terrible decisions recently, and the plugin ecosystem has gotten . . . bad, I still use WordPress at https://alis.me and can’t really see myself not using it in the near future. It works. It’s stable. It’s easy to customise, both in how it looks and what it does (I run a lot of single-use custom plugins). And it politely shares serve space with all my other websites as opposed to assuming I’m going to run it in some kind of hyperscaled containerised microservice archipelago hiding behind sixteen over-engineered layers of proxies. So. Call me old-fashioned, but. Here we are.

#blogging #tech #wordpress

alis, 5 months ago to tech

“The once ubiquitous phrase “let me Google that for you” is now meaningless. You are as likely to return incorrect information as you are complete fabrications, and the people who put this content on the Internet do not care.”

On breaking the internet.

#tech

alis, 6 months ago to books

Currently reading: Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook

. . . oh no they got me.

The second edition of WtA — the one with the slashed cover and the Tony DiTerlizzi comic — was my Baby’s First RPG Core Book, back even before I really knew what TTRPGs were, other than “something cool I wanted to get into.” The WoD is still my “home”, crunch-wise, but I’ve avoided 5e after the brouhaha (pun intended) over Vampire: the Masquerade and some of it’s . . . less than ideal editorial choices. So I guess we’ll see what lessons learnt have been taken from that, over the last five years.

And I suppose it’s not like the oWoD was never ill-advised, cringey, controversial, or just out-and-out racist which, speaking of, a quick flick through the 5e Tribes in the game store seems to have been, uh. Looked into.1

So . . . let’s do this, I guess.

1. The Get of Fenris seem not to’ve made the purge which, okay. Fair enough. But, also, because I am Me I did kinda like playing against-type outsider Get. Oh well. ↩

#books #booksRead #ttrpg

alis, 7 months ago to books

Twenty-Nine

The crowd is roaring when I step down from the stage. Crying, cheering. Demanding more. It’s been a while since I played, and never in front of such a big audience, and feeling all that energy—that worship—directed my way is . . . intoxicating. I want it. I want to bask in it, to sing my passions to the sky, to beat to the pulse of the crowd for eternity, because what god could ever ignore his people?

Well. This god, for one.

“You were pretty good.”

Sigmund greets me on the ground, arms going around my waist and lips pressing against my cheek. I grin, accepting the affection, sweeter and better than the cheering of a thousand audiences.

AO3 • Wattpad • RoyalRoad

#bookNews #books #STORMBRINGER #wyrdverse

alis, 7 months ago to fediverse

So WordPress.com adding official ActivityPub integration is one of those “I’m surprised someone actually did it, but not surprised it was them” things, hey.

RIP for the standalone plugin, though, if Automattic’s history with things like Jetpack is anything to go by . . .

#activitypub #fediverse #wordpress

alis, 8 months ago to books

Finished reading: Mnemo’s Memory and Other Fantastic Tales

My disclaimer on this one is I know Dave from the local writers’ community, which is how I picked up this book; at a Conflux a (ahem) shameful number of years ago.

Regardless of me being bad at getting around to reading things, this is a great collection of stories, ranging across most genres. Stand-outs for me included “Seven Excerpts from Season One” (I’m a sucker for a found-object narrative/analogue horror), “The Dressmaker and the Colonel’s Coat”, “Red Fire Monkey”, and “Lost Dogs”, which is both utterly brutal and worth the price of entry alone.

#anthology #books #booksRead #csfg #sff

alis, 8 months ago to environment

“Companies have been trying to hide the full footprint of their data centers because they know the public could turn against them if they knew the reality. In The Dalles, Oregon, Google was found to be using a quarter of the city’s water supply to cool its facilities. Tech companies have been facing pushback elsewhere in the United States, but also across the world in places like Uruguay, Chile, the Netherlands, Ireland, and New Zealand. Now opposition is growing in Spain too, where droughts are wiping out crops and people are wondering why they’d give their limited water resources to Meta for a data center. But adopting generative AI will require a lot more of those data centers to be built around the world.

The tech industry is constantly incentivized to increase the computing power we use as a society, because that works for their business models — especially when Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have massive cloud computing divisions. But we never seem to stop and ask whether that additional computing power is necessary to improve our lives. As Hugging Face climate lead Sasha Luccioni told The Guardian, “we’re seeing this shift of people using generative AI models just because they feel like they should, without sustainability being taken into account.” Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon, but it’s not clear that’s actually in anyone’s interests but those of founders and investors who are hoping to cash in on the latest AI bubble.”

Paris Marx reminds us that the chat behind the bot is not free.

#environment #tech

alis, 9 months ago to books

Twenty-Seven

We’re barely out of the forest when we hear it.

“What is that?” Þrúðr catches it first, sitting up straighter on her horse, eyes squinting into the dawn.

“What’s what?” I say. In my arms, Sigmund’s head keeps dropping to my chest and jerking back. If I weren’t holding on to him, he’d have fallen off miles ago. It’s been a long couple of days.

“Shouting,” Þrúðr says. “In the distance. And . . . a horn?”

I tilt my head, trying to catch the sound. Jötnar don’t have great hearing but, even still, I think I can just about make out what Þrúðr means.

“It’s coming from Ásgarðr,” I say.

Þrúðr doesn’t respond, just spurs her exhausted horse onward.

“Shit,” I say. Then, to Sleipnir, “Well. Feel up to a bit of a race?”

Stupid question, I know. An instant later Þrúðr is eating dust, and I have my arms full of a suddenly very awake and very startled Sigmund.

Sleipnir isn’t a horse, but he’s still the fastest thing in all the Realms. We make it to the Wall in no time.

And just as quickly wish we hadn’t.

AO3 • Wattpad • RoyalRoad

#book-news #books #stormbringer #wyrdverse

alis, 10 months ago to Hololive

A quick guide from satsuma on posting, sharing, and saving fic outside of the AO3.

It includes links to guides on making your own fic archive, finding other archives, using Dreamwidth communities for fic sharing and discovery, and tools to download and save fics as ebooks.

(It also reminds me I still need to finish that webring script . . .)

#ao3 #fandom

alis, 10 months ago to books

Twenty-Five

“How long till their arrival?”

Munin clicked its beak, hopping from foot to foot, exhaustion eating at its bones. Two days it’d been flying, ahead of the kids coming back from Sindri. It was a long trip, and Munin was about ready for a soft nest and a good nap, followed by a fresh corpse and a birdbath full of mead.

Forseti, however, wasn’t coughing up any of it.

“A day,” Munin said. “Maybe less.” It hopped backward again as Forseti paced. The kid didn’t look well. Sort of gaunt and pale. Haggard and washed out. And Munin would’ve sworn he was favoring a single eye.

Not to mention he was still holding Gungnir. Munin wondered if the kid even put it down to sleep.

AO3 • Wattpad • RoyalRoad

#book-news #books #stormbringer #wyrdverse

alis, 10 months ago to Hololive

Since ’tis this season, how to make a barebones-yet-completely-usable archive for your own fanfic. For free!

This is exactly he we used to do things in Ye Oldene Dayes (ref.), though back then we didn’t have none of this auto-HTML-export1 and had to reformat Word files by hand.2 Kids these days have it easy!

(Also plug for my slightly-more-complex archive script, in case anyone’s feeling adventurous.)

1. Scrivener, my beloved. ↩
2. Or recruit a friend who was good at Python to make a converter script. ↩

#fandom #fanfic

alis, 10 months ago to Hololive

So with all the talk recently about re-building decentralised fic hosting archives, the issue around what to do with things like discovery, commenting, and kudosing still remains. Well, it does occur to me that what works for blog posts would also work for fic.

It wouldn’t be hard to integrate this into my existing fic archive script, either. Probably via some kind of cron that scanned for a field in the fic meta JSON files. When it found a fic without a corresponding fedi crosspost ID, it could make said crosspost (with appropriate meta, tagging, etc.), as either a new post (for first chapters/standalone fics), or as part of a thread (for chapters). Then another little bit of script to display replies to said posts on the fic page itself. Probably a couple hours coding all up.

Hm . . .

(The more advanced version of this, of course, would be to write a self-hsoted AP-native fic archive script. Which would be super cool but sadly probably a bit beyond my current coding skills/free time.)

#fandom #fediverse

alis, 10 months ago to Hololive

“One of the things that excites me [. . .] is that AIs are reading fan fiction now. For a long time, machine learning relied almost exclusively on data sources that were known to be in the copyright public domain, such as works published prior to 1927 and public records. The result of that was that machines were often learning archaic ideas—learning to associate certain professions with certain races and genders, for example. Now, machine learning is turning to broader sources from across the internet, including fan works. That means that machines will learn how to describe and express a much more contemporary, broad, inclusive, and diverse set of ideas.”

The OTW’s Legal Chair, Betsy Rosemblatt, on large language models.

Not a new quote by now (or even a remotely accurate one), but just . . . a reminder.

#ao3 #fandom #otw

alis, 10 months ago to infosec

So apparently .zip and .mov are now domains, meaning now any .zip or .mov download is potentially susceptible to phishing attempts a la URLs like https://realdownloads.com∕path∕to∕@totally.legit-file.zip.1 Or fake social media profiles (and thus login screens) like https://fandom.ink∕@hacker.zip. All of which seems completely cool and fine and I’m glad our Benevolent Internet Overlords have decided this was a great idea, truly.

1. legit-file.zip is the domain name. The @ is an extremely oldskool way of doing URL-based authentication, and I hope you can tell the difference between ∕ and / because you’re gonna need it! ↩

#infosec #tech

alis, 10 months ago to books

Twenty-Four

Getting back was easier than getting out, thanks to some fancy dvergar magitek Uni had brought along. They looked sort of like glowing poles, and the dvergar set them up in a ring around the group, themselves and the jötnar and the æsir and Sigmund standing inside.

To say things were tense would be an understatement.

Uni’s brother had surrendered quietly enough, though he had objected when Uni handed over the much-contested gauntlets to Þrúðr. The pair said some words, stiff and formal, and when they were done, Þrúðr was crying, though she wasn’t sad, exactly. Just . . . crying.

“Annulment,” Lain had explained. He was sitting on one of the weird hexagonal columns of rock, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, looking damp and miserable. Which, good. He kind of deserved.

Keep reading »

#book-news #books #stormbringer #wyrdverse

alis, 10 months ago to books

Finished reading: PTSD Radio 3 (Vol. 5-6)

These were fun. Nakayama does some great body horror, particularly with faces, and the story is the sort of thing that creeps up on you at odd hours. The disjointed nature of the narrative — it’s told in small vignettes that jump back and forth spatially and temporally in a way some people may find tricky to follow — won’t be for everyone, but if you’re into that sort of thing (spoiler: I am), then hey.

Only downside is PTSD Radio is unfinished. The magazine it was originally serialised in folded, and new chapters haven’t been released since 2018. It’s gotten a bit of traction in the west recently — I originally heard about it from a random YouTube video before happening across it in the local book store — which fingers crossed may encourage Nakayama to continue. But even if not, it’s still worth reading for what’s there.

#books #books-read #horror #manga #recommended

alis, 10 months ago to fediverse

The story of Google and XMPP (in the style of Microsoft) . . .

#fediverse #google #tech

alis, 11 months ago to mentalhealth

tl;dr so called “mental health” (and prayer) apps are some of the worst when it comes to violating user privacy.

#mental-health #privacy #tech

alis, 11 months ago to DaftPunk

Telemonopoly.

An interesting look at how Netflix’s use of predatory pricing and obfuscation of pricing signals (among other things) killed film and television. I think the big takeaway here, at least for anyone struggling in a creative industry, is that companies have pushed literal billions into trying to wean audiences onto “content streams” rather than the […]

#pop-culture

alis, 11 months ago to books

Twenty-Three

There were whispers in the corridors now. Æsir and ásynjur who would not meet his eyes. Mother’s doing, Forseti knew. Weaving rebellion and discontent amid Ásgarðr’s bright and shining halls.

“You must call the þing.” Víðarr had said, seated beside Forseti at morning meal. “This cannot go on.”

But it could. How else could anything go? How could Forseti, god of law and justice, be seen to be brought low by the gossip and conspiracies of women? Of Hel and her foul beasts, who danced and wailed every night beyond the Wall, brewing madness and discontent.

The halls of Gimlé had been empty last night, the endless feast of the einherjar abandoned. Today, when Forseti walked the Wall, many of the warriors turned from him, stiff-backed and defiant, gazes fixed out across the Line. Behind the shields and banners, the runes and signs, Forseti heard laughter. Singing. The beat of drums and the strumming of the strange modern lyres the new dead brought with them to the grave.

In contrast, Ásgarðr was cold and empty. Anger and sadness dripping from its gold-lined eaves.

Keep reading »

#book-news #books #stormbringer #wyrdverse

alis, 11 months ago to Hololive

So anyone even moderately paying attention in fandom will know that the OTW has been somewhat embattled as of late.

And, look. For all it’s done, at the end of the day, the OTW and the AO3 are still the product of a very specific sort of late 2000s/early-2010s “enclose all the commons” ideology. The same one that drove Facebook, and Twitter, and every other Silicon Valley tech giant of that era. And it will crumble in the same way, too.

#fandom

alis, 11 months ago to tech

A short and relatively accessible guide on how to use CI pipelines to deploy small static personal websites.

I know that sometimes things like this can seem like “not real programming” or whatever, but as someone who works in enterprise tech for a Day Job, every now and again we get a junior who’s obviously got some secret Neocities site and has played with things like this in their spare time. Even if they’re not the World’s Most Computer Science — they’re juniors for a reason! so was everyone once! — I still absolutely can tell and it still absolutely makes a difference.

Also I will just never find it not amusing when the twenty-nothing grad derails the mansplaining neckbeard with some variation of “oh, yeah, I set up one of these back in high school to run my BTS fan shrine.” Truly huge “what, like it’s hard” energy.

#tech

alis, 11 months ago to anime_titties

So Mike Masnick of TechDirt has been on a bit of a tear recently about community moderation and how it’s oh-so-very-hard and, yes, this is about Elon Musk and Twitter and so on and anyway, the point being he released a little browser game that supposedly simulates how difficult it is to moderate online communities.

I say “supposedly” because what I actually think this little game shows the problems that pop up when people who’ve spent their entire lives neck-deep in STEM fields, sneering at people with liberal arts degrees, try and run private communities in the way they imagine nation states are run . . . without actually understanding anything about how nation states are run. I’m not saying it’s an easy problem to solve — either in private communities or in nation states — but it’s also not this hard, either. Unless you make it.

#culture #social-media #tech

alis, 11 months ago to tech

A look into the various dark patterns companies use to keep you subscribed to their products . . .

#tech #webdesign

alis, 11 months ago to books

Twenty-Two

In the end, it was always going to come down to this. A betrayal. Not mine, even. At least, not exactly.

Keep reading »

#book-news #books #stormbringer #wyrdverse