Kitty Cat

Hi, I'm Kitty! :3

I like computers and sysadmin stuff and I do a little bit of python. I do technologically cursed things. Also, meow. :3

openpgp4fpr:33364F3154FE16A9D73E0DDB5DD88428CF598F42

Pronouns: he/him/his (or whatever idc rly)
Website: https://ki.tty.sh/
Discord: kitty_nyaaa
Partners: @kurosxki, xshyybug

Public Key

npub19e58kah59c0h7htxag373v8uk6wek0hkn3neem093gg90uxrcxdsc7a5jk

NIP-05 Address

kitty_at_kitty.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszu6rmwm6zu8mlt4nw5glgkr7td8vm8mmfceuuahjc5yzh7rpurxcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dszjv8u6

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub19e58kah59c0h7htxag373v8uk6wek0hkn3neem093gg90uxrcxdsc7a5jk

Show more details

Last Notes

2024-12-27 14:43:30 UTC

is anybody interested in taking over kitty.social and/or (especially) kitty.tube? pls dm. technical knowledge desired but I'd be happy to assist as needed on an ongoing basis.
🔁 boosts/renotes appreciated
obviously alarming post from me but
- [this](https://kitty.social/notes/a1zvsqcmbe9z2bj1) has me concerned, I'm not mentally or financially prepared to handle *any* litigation
- tbh i'm a deadbeat admin, I make sure the site's accessible but barely touch it other than that, and the people here deserve more than that... I don't put any blame on our current moderation team as their time is completely voluntary, but I haven't done a very good job of ensuring we have active and coordinated moderation here.
note that no immediate action *here* on kitty.social is pending
- possible candidates would be well vetted, publicly announced and community approved by poll with a reasonable amount of advance notice
- as far as I'm aware, this site is still currently in the clear from the laws that threaten to shut it down. **I have no intention of shutting down the site as long as this stands**, but an administrative candidate in a different legal jurisdiction without these problematic laws could help to ensure the long term future of the site
- kitty.tube is probably still slated to be shut down on new years, haven't had the time to assess that, but it's extremely high risk for me to continue running

2024-12-20 21:34:50 UTC

Maybe I should move out of Florida...

2024-12-20 07:16:07 UTC

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*the void screams back*
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/808c1e6f-1503-4db4-b772-c8623af9a655.jpg

2024-12-20 06:56:11 UTC

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It concerns me as the Kitty Dot Social owner... The site is okay for now, but the margin is small. My biggest concern is if they further change the law, and I can only hope they do not (except maybe getting rid of it).
I posted this because I want people to know what's going on... We're not in immediate risk of closing, but I do want people to know that the climate is rough so that they're not caught off-guard if that changes.

2024-12-20 05:35:57 UTC

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Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can say the same for Peertube, which is the software running behind [kitty.tube](https://kitty.tube). The presence of the Trending page has me concerned there, as I am not sure what exactly goes into what is shown there (though I can check, it is open source, after all), what the legal definition of an "algorithm" is, and how that all fits together with this law that is soon coming into play. I will have to do some further investigation there, but there is a very real possibility that I will be shutting down kitty.tube when the clock strikes midnight into the new year.
It's not the first time that we've seen these kinds of laws dragged through the legislative system, but now that they're coming into play, it's scary. This was a close call, it scared me, and honestly, it should scare anyone who's living inside or out of the US, because it's setting a precedent. Thinking I might have to shut down kitty.social on New Years was definitely not what I wanted to think about today.
This situation has also brought some other issues to my attention, on the topic of adult content being served to minors, in less of a legal stance and more of a common sense one. There is no way that I can moderate the entirety of the Fediverse to ensure that underage users here are not exposed to adult content, there is no way to isolate adult content from underage users as there's no way to hide it entirely on a site level for a specific user, and there is no way to identify which other instances are compliant to block them, without disabling federation or switching to a federation allowlist, which would severely hamper the intended functionality of the site. Therefore, as soon as I'm able to get the fine print worked out, kitty.social will require all users to be at least 18. I will post a notice when this takes effect, and at that time, new users must be at or above the age of 18, and existing underage users will have 30 days to migrate. If you are under the age of 18 and reading this as a kitty.social user, please start looking for another instance or platform to migrate to. I offer my sincerest apologies to the affected users of this upcoming change.
And last, but not least: Everything in the previous post is currently a reality in Florida. Kitty.social managed to skirt by, but not everyone can say the same. There's also another bill on the horizon at the federal level, called the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which holds many of the same privacy concerns, and a lot larger concerns for free speech online. Specifically, the kind of free speech that helps people and delivers important information. Please see the [EFF's article on KOSA](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/xs-last-minute-update-kids-online-safety-act-still-fails-protect-kids-or-adults) as well as [Fight for the Future's campaign](https://www.stopkosa.com), and call your representatives if you're a US citizen.
Thanks for reading! :neocat_heart:
(2/2)

2024-12-20 05:35:48 UTC

(Sorry for the clickbait title, but *please* read this, especially if you're a Floridian, US citizen, instance admin in the US, or kitty.social user)
$[sparkle $[x2 Kitty.social is Shutting Down]]
Or it would be, if not for a small loophole in this law...
You might have heard that the "Hub" is closing its doors to Florida. This is due to [Florida HB 3 (2024)](https://flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/3), which goes into effect on January 1st, 2025, and requires "age verification for online access to materials harmful to minors."
At this point, it's probably a good idea to state that I am NOT a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and the following are my own thoughts on the matter.
That legal heading carries some significant implications, and immediately had me concerned for the adult content available on the Fediverse, and where kitty.social stands as a result, considering that I am, as the site's sole legally responsible entity, a Florida resident. Luckily enough for us, our saving grace is that this law is applied to sites whose explicit content exceeds 33.3% of all content served, and to my understanding, content originating from other providers served through us is not applicable (though that part is very much subject to interpretation, especially in the context of federated platforms, which was not directly addressed and apparently not considered.)
Possibly more concerning is the fact that this bill states that you are "doing business" in the state of Florida if your site is *accessible* in the state, and are legally bound to the state's laws as such. Not sure how that affects those of us who do this as a hobby, and those of us who haven't taken in so much as a penny for the services we provide.
For instances that cater more to adult audiences, well... Sharkey's controversial [Age Verification PR](https://activitypub.software/TransFem-org/Sharkey/-/merge_requests/611) doesn't look quite as silly now, if you dismiss the privacy concerns just as the legal system has. If there ever comes a time where I would have to age-verify my users, I would be shutting the doors here because not only do I want to avoid compromising the privacy of the people here, I cannot afford to have a third party process age verifications for me.
Which, on the note of age verification, the shenanigans don't stop there. That same bill also implements requirements for "social media sites," attempting to prevent minors from using social media without parental permission, and although that section does not explicitly require age verification (and rather banks on social media sites using their advertising and targeting algorithms to identify such users), the penalty for violations is still very heavy and not having *some* method of 90% assurance that users are above legal age is a severe risk. The loophole that keeps us in the clear here is that, according to their definition, we are not a "social media site", as we don't have an algorithm.
(1/2)

2024-12-15 04:48:38 UTC

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apparently, it's an issue with the zdoom engine :(

2024-12-15 04:34:21 UTC

there's a livestream thingy [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3MYHiDqvlc) showing the christmas updates to Tower of Skorne, a multiplayer rpg dungeon crawler mod for doom that @catgirl has been helping on, check it out if you've got a moment :3
I've only seen a little bit of gameplay but imo it's pretty impressive, I was honestly surprised to find out it was running on a doom engine

2024-12-14 16:17:02 UTC

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Also, their documentation says that they will automatically DM anyone who interacts with anyone on the bridge without being linked:
**Why is Bridgy Fed chatting or DMing with me?**
Bridgy Fed sends a few different types of chat messages (aka DMs, or direct messages):
* When you first enable it for your account.
* When you first reply to a bridged account, but you haven't enabled the bridge yourself, so they won't see your reply.
* If you haven't enabled the bridge, and someone on a different network requests that you enable it so they can follow you. (Bridgy Fed includes a link to their profile in this message.)
* A confirmation or other reply when you message it to request that someone else enables the bridge.
Bridgy Fed tries hard to avoid spamming. Apart from replying to your own messages, it will only send you at most one of each of these messages, ever.

2024-12-14 16:08:35 UTC

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my bad
it's `username themeowgicalfairycat.kitty.social`
I had only written `user` instead of `username`

2024-12-14 15:56:44 UTC

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Then, to get the shorter username, DM the bot (@ bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy) with `user themeowgicalfairycat.kitty.social`, and it should message you back with a confirmation.

2024-12-14 15:48:50 UTC

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It's completely opt-in on both sides, by following the bridge bot (@ ap.brid.gy on the bsky side). So, yes, you wouldn't see replies unless Bluesky users are also following that bot.
From their [docs](https://fed.brid.gy/docs):
Who can see me and my stuff?
If you haven't enabled the bridge for your account, no one. Once you enable it, Bridgy Fed only bridges fully public profiles and posts and interactions, not unlisted, quiet public, followers-only, or otherwise private posts or DMs. In other words, bridging your account doesn't expose your profile or posts to anyone new who couldn't already see them before.
To get started, you just have to follow @npub1pqr…2sck, and once it generates your handle, I can configure our side so that you can shorten it.

2024-12-07 20:27:17 UTC

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Looks like they're mostly back, things are working on my end. Still just waiting for them to give an all clear.

2024-12-04 08:50:03 UTC

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Extra tidbit if you're trying to go **really** old: [winevdm](https://github.com/otya128/winevdm) allows you to run 16-bit applications on modern Windows x64 platforms. Space Cadet Pinball, the full-featured version of Microsoft's "Pinball" from before Microsoft got their hands on it, works great in it.

2024-12-04 08:44:00 UTC

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8.1 was end-of-support January 2023 with no ESU, caveat same. I assume you roughly know the liability of running an out-of-date OS online, so I'll leave it at that.
"XP Mode" is a pre-packaged Windows XP VM running on Windows Virtual PC, the predecessor to Hyper-V. I could be wrong as I haven't tried gaming on it, but If you need compatibility going back that far, I suspect a more modern hypervisor would give you better results.

2024-12-04 08:30:46 UTC

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Don't quote me on it, but as much as I'm aware, 10 and 11 have the same foundational kernel compatibility- one of the biggest annoyances of 11 at a low level is the addition of VBS (Virtualization-Based Security), which can be turned off relatively easily.
If Windows 7 happens to be your choice, tread lightly and isolate. Windows 7 isn't even supported in ESU anymore, ~~except for POS systems.~~ (POS support stopped as of October 5th, this year.)

2024-12-04 08:15:14 UTC

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Windows likes its TPM's, though afaik IoT Enterprise LTSC shouldn't have that requirement (and if it does, there's a registry edit you can do during PE (installation miniature windows) to bypass it). You should be fine, as long as Ultramarine is using Fedora's unmodified kernel/modules, has otherwise gone about satisfying image signature requirements on their own end, or you're willing to deal with signing things yourself (which is rather painful when you consider updates). Personally, if I didn't have confidence in that, I'd probably test it in a VM with Secure Boot enabled first.

2024-12-04 07:52:28 UTC

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Absolutely, I've done it- The OS doesn't have *much* influence over Secure Boot. Windows is going to work regardless since Microsoft is in every hardware vendor's pants. Any distribution that works with Secure Boot out of the box has been signed by Microsoft. And for any distribution that doesn't, you're probably adding your own keys to make it work, and you certainly have the option to keep Microsoft's keys there as well.
What I'd be a little more worried about is the TPM, though I personally haven't ever made use of my TPM on Linux.

2024-12-03 09:33:02 UTC

I had a realization a few hours ago that work is only a few hours away, and that if I go to bed, I won't wake up in time, but if I stay awake, I won't make it through the day. I then decided that I needed to fortify my army of alarm clocks by adding my computer to the mix, only to realize that Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC does not have a clock app. I spent another two hours searching for an open source alarm clock app for Windows, only to fall back to installing the Microsoft Store to acquire the Windows Clock app. I have added a plethora of alarms, but now find myself heading to bed wondering why my alarm clock app has the option for me to sign into my Microsoft account.
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/d6d00c50-f4fa-4af4-b25f-6a828439c017.webp

2024-12-03 08:29:16 UTC

I think I just briefly broke kitty.social by scrolling down 4 years of my favorited notes. It'd be the first time the site crashed since we switched to CherryPick, and I've got reasonably actionable logs for it this time.

2024-11-28 03:53:40 UTC

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Side by side, but I have nothing to plug with (at all, or strong enough to handle pressure if heavily improvised), and it doesn't change the fact that the excess wastewater is already on my floors and towels

2024-11-28 03:46:32 UTC

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this is not how liquids and gravity works, unfortunately

2024-11-28 03:45:10 UTC

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plunging is basically useless (I've tried) and I don't really want them in my place lol... Called the maintenance line, "Press 1 for an emergency maintenance issue which presents immediate risk to the dwelling", told the person my house is flooding, they took my number and said they'd call me back, been waiting like a half hour now

2024-11-28 03:08:01 UTC

Welp, American Thanksgiving is tomorrow, my duplex neighbors have managed to back up our shared septic tank, then used a plunger until things started overflowing on my side, and the landlords office is closed until Monday. The odor is obnoxious and I'm running out of towels to curb the flooding. I'm tempted to move my wireless access point into a window in front of my house and just start game streaming to my phone while I sit in my car, but I have no idea what else to do about it at this point.

2024-11-25 03:58:02 UTC

#BubbleGame (normal)
SCORE: 1,853pt
:blobangery:
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/1915c626-d48a-4065-8572-98675acae3e0.png
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/ba5cd28c-02d9-4b6d-b4de-c7a8d55d721c.webp

2024-11-23 06:58:34 UTC

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but have you tried syncing 2TB of music to an iPod Video? I have, and it takes long enough that I forget I have an iPod by the time it's done.

2024-11-18 16:48:48 UTC

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Just DM the bridge bot with `username linux.kitty.social` and you're good to go!

2024-11-16 08:17:23 UTC

blah blah kitty.social milestone blah blah
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/5e1cbe84-2e7f-4926-a3e0-2dfca8c483e5.webp

2024-10-29 12:20:59 UTC

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WSL distributions aren't *that* much of a closed box, you can get non-supported distributions working (relatively) easily (for the Linux nerd) as they support importing rootfs tarballs. There are tutorials available such as [this](https://dev.to/bowmanjd/install-fedora-on-windows-subsystem-for-linux-wsl-4b26) one which provide instructions on how to do so, though you may have to find newer versions of the downloadables they're talking about.
I've previously installed Gentoo in WSL in a similar fashion, Gentoo's [WSL wiki page](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_in_WSL) may also be helpful for some of the generic information they provide.

2024-10-24 08:38:05 UTC

oh hey would ya look at that
#vivaldi
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/aad0bb46-8912-418e-9a01-2dbcbfd38c00.webp

2024-10-24 01:16:56 UTC

I feel like I need to be more active on here to drown out all of the meta that I post because I get dragged into it somewhat unwillingly as an instance admin.
I can't really complain, though, I chose this life.

2024-10-23 23:04:25 UTC

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Oh yeah, the new privacy policy (and soon to be the Terms of Service and other documentation) is sitting on top of Mediawiki, so you can see the [changes](https://kitty.wiki/KittySocial:Privacy_policy/history) that have been made to it over time.

2024-10-23 22:34:54 UTC

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Have you checked out Disk Cleanup as admin yet?

2024-10-23 20:35:44 UTC

Hey peeps, here's a [Privacy policy](https://kitty.wiki/KittySocial:Privacy_policy) for kitty.social, feel free to give it some peer review, questions, comments, suggestions, or whatever before I make it official.

2024-10-22 13:17:25 UTC

Threads.net appears to have defederated with kitty.social, apparently for "Privacy Policy".
Of course, I probably started thinking way too deeply about that, when chances are that it's simply for the fact that I don't have the "Privacy Policy URL" configuration option filled out, which I'll get around to fixing sometime today.
But, going down that rabbithole of thought, are they looking into the privacy policies of other Fediverse sites? What exactly are they looking for? I do have a note in the [Terms of Service](https://meta.kitty.social/tos.txt) which reads:
```
Regarding your privacy:
=======================
"kitty.social" and its operators hold NO LIABILITY and make NO GUARANTEE of
the security of any content uploaded to this website, REGARDLESS of any other
inferred or explicit statements made on this website, such as visibility
permissions on posts. ALL media content uploaded is immedately accessible to
any individual posessing the link, without authentication.
We would like to offer you a reminder that, as with any other website of this
nature, administration has the ability to view any content received by the
server. Content and data provided by you to the server may be incidentally
seen during the course of regular administration processes or explicitly
investigated for moderation purposes.
```
I value privacy, and furthermore value the ability to know exactly how your data is going to be used and where it's going to be available if you put it out there, but I struggle to understand the efficacy of having a privacy policy on a Fediverse instance. We have a platform that is inherently designed to share with other entities that we do not control, and that lacks encryption for that same reason. Once you publish something, it is out there for all to see, and may be impossible to control or remove, because it is no longer in the control of the site which you published it on. Maybe my mistake is assuming that anybody using a fediverse instance would implicitly understand that, but maybe the goal of the privacy policy is just to make that clear, since that's [what Threads does](https://help.instagram.com/387800897233223) anyway.
I suppose what has me all worried, moreover confused, is their verification and removal of instances that don't have a (compliant) privacy policy. I don't understand why that's a relative factor in defederation when we can't control things that enter or leave our instance any more than they can. (In this context, they can't.)

2024-10-21 06:45:32 UTC

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Neato, I'll have to check those out.
Separately, on the app front, apparently NewPipe also works with PeerTube.

2024-10-21 05:58:01 UTC

https://kitty.tube/ now allows publishing videos without moderator approval.
Also, does anybody have any recommendations for other peertube instances that kitty.tube should follow?
--
I realized that going for a nap immediately after opening the site was a terrible idea, since nobody would be able to upload anything and have it be visible until I woke back up. Please don't abuse my decision :<
If this happens to massively backfire, peertube does support trusted users being able to bypass moderation-first, I could probably implement that, but of course, I'd rather not.

2024-10-20 15:44:57 UTC

https://kitty.tube exists I guess

2024-10-15 02:14:48 UTC

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nope, that's just my gpg key assertion for https://keyoxide.org/ki@tty.sh
look lower ;)

2024-10-15 02:10:24 UTC

tomorrow is a completely normal day and there is nothing in my profile that would say any different

2024-10-09 15:55:29 UTC

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“It’s got electrolytes, it’s what plants crave!”

2024-10-07 00:23:57 UTC

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DM'd. Excel struggles ~~a bit~~ wrangling the data, but I'd recommend sorting by the ID column. AIDX ID's are sort of like snowflakes, sorting A-Z will sort chronologically.

2024-10-06 23:54:53 UTC

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It's an interesting problem to tackle, because some posts are linked to others, and blindly clearing duplicates could leave certain replies, renotes, etc dangling. Not too sure I'm gonna be able to come up with something to take care of this right away, but if you feel like taking on the issue, I can provide you with a database dump of your posts and bulk delete ID's you don't want :)

2024-10-06 22:58:11 UTC

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Quadrupled, even. Looking into it right now.

2024-10-04 19:42:46 UTC

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It's honestly pretty refreshing to see more than two parties on the ballot. Arguments that the others have virtually no chance of winning aside, it brings me joy considering I've previously found myself in the booth not wanting to pick either of the two parties listed.

2024-10-03 14:31:26 UTC

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Work. We switched ISP's over the weekend, neglected to update our trusted zones, and users have allegedly been facing 50+ password/MFA prompts a day.

2024-10-03 12:50:37 UTC

:neocat_thumbsup: MFA
:meowpuffydoublefux: Poorly implemented MFA that breaks everything

2024-10-02 02:00:31 UTC

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and this one goes up to 11.
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/231826df-39a1-440e-bab5-598b3fd787dd.webp

2024-10-02 00:47:34 UTC

to those on misskey/forks: press "d"

2024-10-01 18:26:56 UTC

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Clarification: `uBlock Origin` is still available on the extension store.
`uBlock Origin Lite` has been removed, originally by Mozilla, who then realized their mistake. Having a bad taste in their mouth from this experience, the developer chose to remove it themself entirely, leaving the Lite version for Firefox to be obtained only from GitHub.

2024-09-29 15:43:06 UTC

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Possible? In some cases, yes. Probable? Barely.
Once upon a time, everyone and their brother liked to say "Macs don't get viruses." The only reason why Macs have been relatively quiet over the years is because they're a minority of the market share. Unless a bad actor is targeting a specific individual, their motivation will likely be to compromise as many targets as possible, generally as easy as possible.
In the current day, CD drives are out of style, barely anybody uses them, as there are "better" and more convenient media to be used. The difficulty factor is exacerbated by the fact that finalized CDs will generally be locked out from writing at both the OS and (drive) firmware level.
Someone would be more likely to be hit by an MBR/UEFI-embedded malware. If you're talking about this same scenario in the case of rewritable (USB) media, yes, installation media could be compromised with less than 2KB worth of modifications.

2024-09-29 06:21:23 UTC

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As much as I’d personally hate to recommend it, LXD on Ubuntu has been working great for me, decent web-based GUI and all

2024-09-29 06:03:24 UTC

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is there a libvirt service existing that you could disable if you're not using it?

2024-09-28 00:05:57 UTC

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There's limits? Haven't really seen any reason to lock anything down so far, most anything that has a limit was there by default.

2024-09-27 23:11:40 UTC

Wow, I'm really getting called out here
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/fa2c2fa5-23ca-496b-82c8-367f2d04ecc1.webp

2024-09-27 21:46:44 UTC

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Aria works on iOS too, if that's how you roll!

2024-09-27 21:18:52 UTC

IT'S DONE!
(kitty.social is done migrating to cherrypick)

2024-09-27 14:59:24 UTC

Kitty.social will be temporarily shutting down for migration in less than 60 seconds.

2024-09-27 13:54:48 UTC

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Currently doing some last minute preparation... The published migration process will likely begin in about an hour. (~11:00 AM US EDT (GMT-0400))
I have also made a [kitty.social discord server](https://discord.gg/FpxeF3fCFY) if anybody wants to stay in contact during the migration, since Matrix will also be down for awhile.

2024-09-27 10:23:22 UTC

The new [Steam Subscriber Agreement](https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#10) requires disputes to go to court instead of arbitration. Kinda bizarre, most big companies I've seen try to push the other way.
https://cdn.kitty.social/_/89d34f42-ec3b-4177-969d-0713d3ba29af.webp

2024-09-26 11:22:16 UTC

Power is starting to flicker here, if I go poof then I'll see you guys on the other side :ablobcatheartsqueeze:
#note10pm…52e9

2024-09-24 11:40:52 UTC

$[x2 Kitty.social Migration]
Kitty.social will be migrating from [Sharkey](https://activitypub.software/TransFem-org/Sharkey) to [CherryPick](https://github.com/kokonect-link/cherrypick) this upcoming **Friday, September 27th, 2024**. The process will begin **between 8:00AM and 3:00PM, US EDT (GMT-0400)**, depending on my IRL availability. The earlier I can begin, the better. This process is expected to take several hours. ALL related services WILL go down for at least some period of time. Test instances will also be terminated at this time.
During most of the downtime, the current step of the upgrade process will be available on the placeholder page. Foregoing any unforeseen circumstances, the process should take between 1.5 and 6.5 hours before service is restored.
For the curious, the process will be as follows:
- Stop the Sharkey service. The site will be stopped before any operation to prevent any loss of local or remote data.
- Back up the site database and configuration. (Estimated: 15m-30m)
- Back up all other databases for unrelated services. (Estimated: 15m-60m)
- Copy backups to a remote location. (Estimated: 10m)
- Rebuild the site on a separate server to ensure backups are consistent. (Estimated: 20m)
- Install host server OS updates. (Estimated: 10m-20m)
- Reboot host server. (Estimated: 10m, Server motherboards take a while to boot.)
- Ensure base services on host server are functioning correctly. (Estimated: 10m)
- Ensure mail services are functioning correctly. (Estimated: 5m-30m, people depend on this for things other than memes.)
- Upgrade PostgreSQL service from v15 to v16. (Estimated: 1h-3h)
- Execute the [migration script](https://gist.github.com/KiTTYsh/af7a0554e906daa349f6096492ac2561). (Estimated: 3m)
- Replace the Sharkey Docker image with the [CherryPick Docker image](https://hub.docker.com/r/noridev/cherrypick). (Estimated: 5m)
- Start the CherryPick service. (Estimated: 5-10m, processes further database updates.)
Search will be unavailable for some time after the migration, as the search indexer will be wiped and rebuilt. It's kinda nerfed right now, anyway, so that shouldn't be too big of a deal for most. Also, max note length will be increased to 8192 characters.
If you have any questions, please contact me here, on Discord (handle: `kitty_nyaaa`), or on Matrix (handle: `@kitty:kitty.social`, or [here](https://matrix.kitty.social)).

2024-09-23 10:00:23 UTC

For the survey on whether we should switch software and what software we should switch to, out of 25 unique voters casting 33 unique votes, the results are as follows:
CherryPick: 15 votes (45%, 45% weighted)
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Sharkey: 12 votes (36%, 39% weighted)
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Misskey: 6 votes (18%, 15% weighted)
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"Weighted" counts a single person as 1, dividing their multiple votes by the amount of votes they cast.
These numbers are different from those you'll find in the actual poll. Why is that, you might ask? Well, some people voted more than once.
Anyways... If you were curious what we're going to be doing with the site, we're very likely going to be switching to CherryPick. My brain is a bit fried at the moment and I'm running late for work, but I'll be making a more official announcement later today.
Some quick details for those who are interested: The actual migration will be taking place in about 5-7 days, to give everyone time to prepare in whatever manner they deem necessary, whether that's backing up their content, moving off of the site if they don't agree with this change, or just knowing that the site is going to be down for a little bit sometime in the future, since I don't exactly have any alternative communication channels (at the moment, may change.) Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, concerns, or difficulties, no matter how big or small.
Considering that the poll was trending towards CherryPick throughout the week, I have been preparing for this migration already. I have already run multiple test migrations on a copy of the site, tested varied functionality, and I am doing everything in my power to ensure the process goes smoothly. Backups will be performed and **tested** immediately prior to the migration to ensure that, if anything does go wrong during this process, I have 100% certainty that we can revert to the previous state.
The migration to CherryPick will about two minutes, as observed in testing. **HOWEVER,** I am also going to be using this planned downtime to upgrade the OS and varied other services, including the database server. Major PostgreSQL version upgrades require reloading the entire database, which I am expecting to take at least two hours, if not more.

2024-09-19 22:57:25 UTC

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I really can't vouch for it whatsoever, but I found [Vesktop](https://github.com/Vencord/Vesktop) the other day, made by the same people who make [Vencord](https://vencord.dev). They claim privacy isolation from Discord and working screenshare when using Wayland.

2024-09-16 07:53:54 UTC

I'm currently debating the possibility of switching kitty.social away from Sharkey, and I've set up some test instances. My thoughts and opinions on the options are as follows:
> Misskey (Vanilla)
After kitty.social's Pleroma instance catastrophically failed a few years ago, we started anew on Misskey for awhile, before we moved to Calckey/Firefish. Misskey has proven to be stable, but lacks many of the creature comforts that we've grown used to, including the Mastodon API, which is currently used not only for 3rd party clients, but also for our [Matrix](https://matrix.kitty.social/) server SSO authentication.
https://mk.test.kitty.social/
> Iceshrimp (JS)
Yet Another Misskey Fork, Iceshrimp was actually forked from the Firefish source. It feels a bit more dated than Sharkey or Misskey as a result, but seems functional. We would get a different search engine backend, and lose edit history, module (chiptune) file embedding, MFM border & followmouse, avatar decorations, profile backgrounds, roles, listenbrains, imports, and GDPR requests. I'm uneasy to move to Iceshrimp because I'm not certain of their future.
https://isjs.test.kitty.social/
> Iceshrimp (.NET)
It's in development. And it's not ready. I wanted to see the future of Iceshrimp if we go down that road, and the stock FE doesn't even allow for registrations. It seems to drop Misskey API, fully embracing Mastodon API, while retaining the Misskey database schema. I'm not sure if they have any intention of keeping the Misskey(-based) UI. It's kinda broken for the layman, but there's a test instance if you wanted to try it. (It's excluded from the poll.)
https://isnet.test.kitty.social/
> CherryPick
A Misskey fork that I haven't heard about before today. It doesn't seem like there's much in the way of documentation, but the project seems to be very active and holding tight against upstream. It also seems to hold a ton of features above vanilla Misskey, and I think it really deserves a deeper dive. I'm actually placing a lot of hope here that I'll be happy with it and it'll meet our needs.
https://cherry.test.kitty.social/
I encourage you all to give these a try if you haven't before and let me know your opinions. I haven't yet made any decisions for the future of kitty.social, but your input is invaluable to me to ensure that we're all happy with the platform going forward.

2024-09-09 00:52:23 UTC

Tenforward.social has blocked kitty.social. Source: https://tenforward.social/@guinan/113101811954202960
And good riddance, I say to that. A mutual block of their domain has been instated: if we cannot trust the administrators of a site to be civil and uphold the peace, we have no business federating with them.
Kitty.social received two reports from tenforward.social yesterday, I would assume from packetcat, one of them for a now-removed post, and the other one for @Linux stating I would not "[respond well to threats](https://kitty.social/notes/9xweo06tx6v7012e)", in the context of packetcat's publication of the first report. I haven't seen the content of the first reported post due to the fact that it is now gone, but the user who made the post is a regular around here and I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that their post was made with racist, harmful, or harassing intentions.
Apparently both `guinan` and `packetcat` (at) `tenforward.social` are the same person, [so claimed by packetcat](https://tenforward.social/@packetcat/113098310624235781), and they are the admin of the same. While I was not able to see one of the reported posts, what I *can* see is the overwhelming amount of "receipts" which packetcat has provided, in which a majority of them are simply asking for them to stop making so much noise on #fediblock. Packetcat seems to be responding by claiming that the entirety of this situation is targeted racism, and verbally lashing out in a rude, harassing manner towards those who seem to simply be trying to keep the peace.
I personally don't subscribe to the ideology of #fediblock, but I can understand its' merits, and it is my opinion that both Packetcat's conduct, and their abuse of the hashtag calling on the blocking of innocent instances, is detrimental to the fediverse community as a whole. I would ask anybody who is seeing these posts to please do your research into the matter and use your best judgement when making the decision to act.
Trying to stay away from opinion, [packetcat's YouTube video on the matter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUXOUd2AENo) seems ironically hypocritical. I would like to say that I cannot confirm or deny that they are being targeted, that may very well be true, but I have no knowledge of the claimed situation, and I would like to emphasize that I am not calling packetcat a liar on that matter. However, their claims that virtually everyone against them are racist are hypocritical to their own statements that you can't just use a factor of yourself to justify being targeted, especially when there are no grounds to believe the majority of it was racially motivated. Additionally, packetcat calls out two other races for being problematic, which equally sounds to me like he has problematic views of his own towards other peoples in society.
In summary, we will no longer be federating with this site as the drama their admin has brought has no place here.

2024-03-19 04:24:57 UTC

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You can pull an untainted `oidc.py` from your existing Docker container by running `docker cp synapse:/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/synapse/handlers/oidc.py .`
Open this file in your favorite editor and do a search for `return prepare_grant_uri(`.
Immediately before this line, add the following code, replacing the domain name with your fedi server:
```py
# >>>> CUSTOM CODE START
# Request a new authentication session from the fediverse server
auth_session = await self._http_client.post_json_get_json(
'https://kitty.social/api/auth/session/generate',
{'appSecret': self._config.client_secret})
client_id = unpaddedbase64.encode_base64(auth_session['url'].encode('utf-8'))
# Send our modified shenanigans out
return prepare_grant_uri(
authorization_endpoint,
client_id=client_id,
response_type="code",
redirect_uri=self._callback_url,
scope=self._scopes,
state=state,
nonce=nonce,
**extra_grant_values,
)
# Don't mind the second return, it'll be ignored
# <<<< CUSTOM CODE END
```
Put this patched file in a decent, safe location on your server, recreate your Synapse docker container binding this file to `/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/synapse/handlers/oidc.py`, and you should be good to go! Just keep in mind that this file may need to be repatched now and then if the Synapse team ever updates it.
I'm personally rather satisfied with the outcome and smoothness of the login process, as well as the lesser impact on server administration to implement this. By publishing this information, I hope that we can get more Fediverse servers to get accompanying Matrix servers, as realtime communication is pretty cool, and I think having consistent identity between some of them would be pretty cool as well.
I'm also happy to have found this solution before I migrated kitty.social to Sharkey, because we lost on-site chats in the process. But, AFAIK they weren't E2E, so I don't really mind losing it and I think Matrix is a better solution anyway.

2024-03-19 04:08:26 UTC

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So, after some further investigation, it turns out that the Mastodon OAuth2 implementation is a little weird, but it makes sense for the way that a client application in this ecosystem would work. Clients dynamically request an OAuth2 Client ID and secret from the Mastodon API prior to login. Assuming from the fact the Synapse documentation says you can just grab these values from the Mastodon API and use them, it would seem that they can be consistently reused over time.
However, the Megalodon implementation in some Misskey forks is quite a bit different considering that it integrates with Misskey's existing application API, which is not, on it's own, OAuth2 compliant. Megalodon uses a Misskey authentication *session* which is identified by a base64-encoded URL which becomes the OAuth2 Client ID, while the Client Secret represents the application ID itself. This authentication session is only valid for one login, and then becomes invalidated.
**INSTRUCTION FOLLOWERS: GET YOUR CLIENT SECRET HERE**
With that said, we can create our client secret using the API console in the Firefish/Sharkey web interface...
Endpoint: `app/create`
Params:
```json
{
name: 'Kitty.Social',
description: '',
permission: ['read:account'],
callbackUrl: 'https://matrix.kitty.social/_synapse/client/oidc/callback',
}
```
With credential: `False`
(Adjust domain name in Params to your matrix server)
Submit this request, and put the `secret` value as the `client_secret` value in your Synapse `homeserver.yaml`.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that each authentication session is only valid for one go, we'll also need to patch Synapse's `oidc.py`.
(one more post pls hold)

2024-03-19 03:42:06 UTC

Let me start off by saying that I am a sysadmin first before I am a developer in any sort of the term. I could totally be wrong about some of the concepts I'm laying down here, but at the end of the day, the configs and code work.
kitty.social has had a Matrix server for awhile now, with a custom coded authentication provider referencing the users/auth table in the database. Unfortunately, due to the volatility of the infrastructure, and lack of priority I've put to keeping that authentication provider updated, being able to get into the Matrix server hasn't been very reliable. Plus, if you had 2FA on kitty.social, it wasn't even acknowledged on the Matrix end.
I'd been looking for awhile ([6/18/2023](https://kitty.social/notes/9g5t15bpbr6p2z9j)) to use oauth2 for this link, but what I hadn't realized this entire time is the fact that OAuth2 is part of the Mastodon client standard. Several Misskey forks implement the Mastodon API through the [Megalodon](https://www.npmjs.com/package/megalodon) library, so everything we need should already be there! Some further investigation yielded the fact that the Synapse documentation even has a [section to use their OpenID Connect auth provider with Mastodon](https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/latest/openid.html#mastodon).
Armed with this knowledge, I had modified my `homeserver.yaml` with the following:
```yaml
password_config:
enabled: false
oidc_providers:
- idp_id: oidc
idp_name: "Kitty.Social"
discover: false
issuer: "https://kitty.social/@admin"
client_id: "DoesntActuallyMatter"
client_secret: "GeneratedFromAPI"
authorization_endpoint: "https://kitty.social/oauth/authorize"
token_endpoint: "https://kitty.social/oauth/token"
userinfo_endpoint: "https://kitty.social/api/v1/accounts/verify_credentials"
scopes: ["read"]
allow_existing_users: true
user_mapping_provider:
config:
subject_template: "{{ user.id }}"
localpart_template: "{{ user.username }}"
display_name_template: "{{ user.display_name }}"
```
**If you're just trying to configure a Matrix server, use this config, replace the domain name, and place the `client_secret` that I provide instructions for in the next post**
Not really knowing how to generate a Client ID and Secret, I had attempted to log into Fedi using the [Pinafore](https://pinafore.social/) Mastodon Web Client, and sniffed those values out of the traffic before completing the login.
I put those values in my `homeserver.yaml`, attempted a login on Matrix, and... it worked!
Then, I tried to log out and log back in, and... it didn't work! :sadcat:
(part 2 coming as soon as I'm done writing it, yay character limits)