# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
# 
# Usage:
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/users              View list of users and latest twt date.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt                View all twts.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/mentions?uri=:uri  View all mentions for uri.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/conv/:hash         View all twts for a conversation subject.
# 
# Options:
#     uri     Filter to show a specific users twts.
#     offset  Start index for quey.
#     limit   Count of items to return (going back in time).
# 
# twt range = 1 1793
# self = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://arrakis.netbros.com/user/fastidious/twtxt.txt&offset=1693
# prev = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://arrakis.netbros.com/user/fastidious/twtxt.txt&offset=1593
I wonder how will this look. The "↳ In-reply-to" needs to go. We need to figure out nesting too, as it might get crazy.
@james this is a second test. Shorter this time, just because.
@james how goes mate? This is to test WebMentions. I know I could have just say "hello", but it doesn't go well with my nick.
Or not… I claimed triumph too early. But don't worry, WebMentions are more important, keep at it. I kinda like the green avatar for now, but I am sure the normal one will show up. Eventually.
@prologic woah! This. Was. Freaky. LOL. Finally the good old avatar shows. My theory, it is so cold here, it was frozen in the tubes. 😂
9°C, feels like 6°C. Was nice and comfy on my couch, watching TV. Children want pizza. Ugh.

OK, let me call and order to take away. Line rings busy all the time, so I come in person. “Are you picking up?” — “No, I tried calling to order but your line rang busy all the time.” — “Sorry, we are very busy and short staffed. It will be 40 minutes of wait, is that OK?” 😳

None of them is wearing a mask. They are also non-stop talking. No wonder they are short staffed. I am waiting.
Keeping my benders crossed! This is like the second, or third time that it happens to your avatar, since I have been around here.
Not sure what’s, happening, or why, @prologic, but your avatar is flip flopping… again!
For the Wordle players around here (@lyse, @xuu, @movq), and for those moments in which you rather cheat, than lose: https://github.com/KevinXuxuxu/wordle_machine. 😂
Ha! This out-of-band update from Microsoft fixes the issue we were having at work the other day, with the Domain Controller being in a boot loop. It only comes four days after the problem started to occur.
@lyse since to get to the kitchen and eat, you have to first go through the door, I consider it a potential death trap (though not really death). You come in, all skinny and all, and get to eat in the kitchen. When you are full, you can't get out, so must wait, but when you are slim enough to get through you are hungry again. Repeat this process until you run out of food, without ever getting out of the kitchen. 🤣
@~duriny pretty neat! It sure is a good way to twt git commits. It could be added to a post-receive hook to automate, right? How are you using it today?
@off_grid_living with 49°F in here today, and rain, we also have a “brrrr” (🥶) problem, indeed! 🙈
Yet, OP is a close second to Maya. Ah, to be careless, like the wind, or the rain, the sunshine! 😊
I am afraid Maya on *twtxt* is the perfect, though very short, monologuist. Her audience is out here, mostly silent. Yet, every once and then a hopeful rises, yearning to establish a channel that never hashes, to then simply despair.
I tried to paste a formatted version of Ozymandias to no avail. An image from old "The Examiner" should do.
Ozymandias
OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.
Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive,
stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair !'
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
The bottom line of this is, vaccines work, boosters for said vaccines work. Whoever thinks otherwise these days is, at the very, very least, an utter ignoramus. From the AP report:
> […] Protection dropped from 94% during the delta wave to 82% during the omicron wave. Protection from just two doses was lower, especially if six months had passed since the second dose. Officials have stressed the goal of preventing not just infection but severe disease. On that count, some good news: A third dose was at least 90% effective at preventing hospitalizations for COVID-19, both during the delta and omicron periods […]
I am with you, @lyse, I have absolutely no idea of what @darch is talking—or wanting to—about. I know he has been advocating for URLs in the form of https://nick.example.com/ for some time now, but even if this has something to do with that, it is still incomprehensible to me.
@thecanine wow! That is an extremely good interest rate! One of our banks, Bank of America, gives 0.05%/year maximum (and that means having a lot of money on your saving’s account). As you can see, you are very lucky, and we would be very screwed if we kept any money in the bank.
@movq yes, it sounds even crazier when you read that it has been happening for years. I mean, really? Why wasn’t law enforcement involved from the very beginning? This is something that might sound “normal” in a third world country, but here? It’s bloody unbelievable.
@lyse not only a basement for food, but what about your small shop? You have to be able to have a space to do some woodwork too, right? I truly believe the builder's building techniques will be enhanced with all these suggestions. That, or the builder will quit. 🤣
@thecanine the bet is that, at least, the market outperforms inflation, and bank's interests—which are as shitty as they can be these days. Without investments you are pretty much screwed in the US, I don't know if it is the same in the Czech Republic. I don't fixate much on their status as they are pretty much for the long run, but when they take a bigger tumble you feel it. 😩
@thecanine funny that you mention it, as now I know (TIL, duh!). Before I read this I aways read your nick—in my head, and sometimes out loud, because it was fun—as "the can ine". I always thought Ine was the name. Believe it or not, **can** means **dog** in Spanish, to "The dog named Ine" was the actual translation of your nick. 😂
So, @prologic, having a slash on the nick breaks mentions. Is there a consensus on which characters are allowed on nicks, or just about anything goes? Evidently I am not going to be exchanging that many twts (if anything at all) with someone with a slash on their nick, but it would be nice to either set some "standard", or fix mentions (again?!) to accommodate.
Cryptocurrencies were not the only ones "tumbling" (that sounds a bit sensationalist, but it is the click bait modus operandi). The S&P500 also fell, together with others. My stocks/funds took a -/+ $10,000 dive today. I guess it is the nature of the beast.
A class action lawsuit was inevitable, I saw it coming as I heard the news of the upcoming Google changes. For those on the old Google Apps For Domains, keep this link handy. I wouldn't recommend to sign up just yet, unless you are willing to jeopardise your grandfathered account earlier. But keep it handy as "stuff's getting better, is getting better every day!"
@prologic for as cute as they are, I don’t think I would fit in any of them. I am also afraid I will get wet, the light coming through will not let me see the TV, and other things I might be forgetting now. 😂
@thecanine not every twt has an animated GIF. If set, every twt sent by the user with an animated GIF avatar will have, well, an animated GIF moving, flashing, etc. That's the difference.
This behind a Google Account login—which, if you have the grandfathered "Google Apps for Your Domain", or just a Gmail address, you will have—is the beginning. I haven't received my email yet, but this is coming for sure:

> "If you have the G Suite legacy free edition, you need to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to keep your services. The G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available starting May 1, 2022. Starting May 1, Google will seamlessly transition you to Google Workspace, which you can use at no cost until July 1, 2022."
@prologic I vote for **not supporting** animated GIFs on avatars. They can be distracting, and even cause issues to other users, which might be sensitive to flashes, constant movements, etc.
Same, or even weirder result. The first twt on this yarn, on conv shows fine. The second, on the other hand, shows the overflow over the line below the code block. That is, the code block overflows on the line below. I am seeing this on Safari **desktop**. It is fine on mobile.
Now doing the same, but adding an empty line in between.


This is a long text here, so that the code block will have a horizontal scrollbar to see if it overflows to the line right below. I will not close the code block, and add another line right beneath it.
More on the code block, a second line in it.



This line goes right after the code block, with an empty line in between.
Testing code block. I will hit return, and enter a code block right after.

This is a long text here, so that the code block will have a horizontal scrollbar to see if it overflows to the line right below. I will not close the code block, and add another line right beneath it.
More on the code block, a second line in it.


This line goes right after the code block, no blank spaces before it.
@movq ahh, wow, sorry dude, my condolences! I haven't worked on a Windows machine for over five years. I did Windows administration before (have an MCSA, and an MCSE), but was moved to a different role that doesn't involve it, thankfully. For everything Windows (I use a VDI exclusively for email) related—troubleshooting, etc—I just open a ticket with the MS Infrastructure. 😂
@movq "[…] The FTP server already existed anyway. (You don’t want to know why.) […]" — Ah, well, that tidbit of information was missing on the referred twt. If the server already existed, what was it that you setup?
@prologic of all Futurama characters, Bender is my favourite, of course. Dr. Zoidberg is a close second loved one, with Professor Farnsworth being in third place.
@movq actually, the easiest way is to simply install WinSCP—or a similar SCP client—on the Microsoft Windows machine. That is assuming the Linux box is running SSH with sftp enabled (default in most distributions).
@eaplmx I simply can't make sense of what you write, or what you are trying to say, or how it relates to the twt, or yarn, you are replying. Some things may relate, but then others don't. I don't know what else to say. I am thinking it might be a combination of language barrier, and cultural differences, but I am not sure.
Just so you know, @eaplmx, and I might be the only one (which will make this **my** problem), but I find it utterly difficult to understand what you write. Like, truly, mind blown but not in a good way. I am truly doing my best by reading, and re-reading what you write, to no avail. 😔
@prologic the mention is "fixed" because it is now gone. How to replicate: click reply on any twt, try mentioning someone. No little popup, no autocomplete. Nada.
Children are resilient, he will be fine. Was he vaccinated? I have a 7 years old niece positive with Omicron right now, but she is vaccinated and fully asymptomatic, so she is happily having a small vacation off school. She told me to be learning new magic tricks to show me. "I will be a full magician when I am not sick anymore!". I believe her.
@thecanine I am glad Yarn remains on "Web 1" because, you know, old is new again. I am not paying $3/month for Blue—it has nothing that interests me—but consider this one something someone would do on April Fools'. Isn't a bit too early for that? 😂
@prologic of course! I see you missed the video on that page I linked. Go to the page and search for “New Ways to Work Across Apple Devices”. The video is right after the first paragraph or so. It is pretty neat!
@prologic just tested @ullarah's changes and they are all good. Those CSS changes look pretty kosher to me, and good to go.
It seems this is going to be a security, and other bugs, update, as no new features has been found. Universal Control is what I want, and have been waiting for, but it isn't coming until the Spring 2022. Universal Control "[…] lets users work with a single mouse and keyboard and move between Mac and iPad for a seamless experience, with no setup required […]".
@prologic yes, I don't know how did they it back then (or how is it done these days) without the subject extension. Having every single twt been independent, without any kind of grouping/threading is harsh, to say the least.
@lyse hahahaha! That was fun to watch! I hope you didn't hurt too much, but just enough to learn a valuable lesson :-P LOL. Now, the fact you can juggle makes me jely. Dear lord, Lyse, is there something you can't do?
@prologic you may as well unplug and use pigeons mate! Or smoke signals! 😂 Is this because you are actively blocking the site, or is it really not available for Down Under?
@prologic it is just a deliberated choice I believe, based, perhaps, on taste and/or based on PicoCSS's default line height. Current list line height doesn't suit well with what we are using for twt paragraphs.
I wanted to add that I played with the * 0.25 (increasing, reducing), and also tried - 0.25 and other values. I believe the best bet here is a reset, so setting the margin-bottom as I twted before. But not sure 100%.
@prologic I believe we simply need to override that value (on the Pico's override file) to margin-bottom: 0;. But I am leaving it to @ullarah, because he knows better than me.
@prologic, "who still users FTP anyway" — The same people who now uses Gemini, obviously! 😂 I bet telnet, UUCP, ZMODEM, and XMODEM are still used too. 🤪 (I am just having fun, not being serious at all.)
@prologic no biggies, mate. You are juggling quite a few balls. I am just making sure you keep the one that briefly dropped off on the air now. LOL.
@xuu yes, but that is because I have the avatar meta defined. I don't see any headers on your feed. Maybe is it because you have "Allow open profiles" disabled? I am puzzled, and curious, really. I know that at certain point I was able to see your mouse, but not now.
Hmm, your feed doesn't have the "normal" headers in it, one of them being avatar, that is why. What I don't understand is why twtxt.net shows an avatar for you, when evidently there is none. Maybe it is just using a cached one. That has to be it. But, again, why isn't my pod doing the same?
@lyse that could be, but it is still wrong, don't you think? I mean, there has to be a better way to handle this other than just assigning a PNG extension to just about any image, right? Maybe that's something @prologic is already working on, and I am here just adding noise for no good reason at all. 😅
@xuu, how come I can't see your lovely mouse avatar on my pod? I know you might not have an answer; I am puzzled, and mostly thinking on loud voice here. I see your avatar fine at twtxt.net.
@xuu I figured that was what was happening. The confusing part is, why even give it an extension then, and why PNG, when the original was GIF? 🤯
@movq right after I twted, I figured that could be it. Sorry I am dumb, I should concentrate more on making profits and leave the important stuff for people who knows better! 🙈
I saw the allegedly animated GIF @thecanine uploaded gets a PNG extension, yet remains animated. I know PNG can be made animated, but I don't think that's what's happening here, so I am puzzled. Let's see how this Nyam cat looks like.
Amount of people (and spiders, bots, etc. because like corporations, "they are people too!" 😂) on US government websites. Interesting numbers on the provided analytics; worth a look, to the curious.
I concentrated so much on the bullets, that completely missed the last two sentences. I smiled when I read the last sentence, as it sounds like a contradiction to me. I mean, if it is pretty good, why should we care if it is based on Ubuntu? 🤣
@movq oh man, that music video brought back so many memories! Dear god! So smooth! Thank you much, it is now in one of my playlists.
@ullarah, this line on 01-pico.css is the one adding too much space in between lines on lists:

ul li,
ol li {
  margin-bottom: calc(var(--typography-spacing-vertical) * 0.25);
}


If I remove that, lists look perfect.
@markwylde, I see. When you wrote "big supporter of the GPL/GNU/FSF stuff", that should have been the period there. But that doesn't make the OS trash, though you might think it is **for you**. Just a small observation.

Privacy is of great concern to Apple, and clearly (no lawyer wording mumbo jumbo) spelled out on their site. More about how data is used by Apple. Apple, of course, isn't perfect.

What you mark as being against I see as positive. The signing/gatekeeping works great, and provides a level of security. The ISO you can download; it is on the OS application bundle when you download it. Yes, the install is 8GB, and a fully installed macOS (Monterey) is less than 16GB. That isn't huge, unless you are living in the 1990s still. For comparison purposes, my Linux CLI only—that is, no X applications, or environment—VPS is 14GB.

I take it you use Microsoft Windows for gaming still, correct? And your daily drive one is Linux, yes? You are in luck, as 2022 will be—certainly, and once and for all—the year of the Linux Desktop!
@jlj ah, interesting! To understand your thoughts about the book, and potentially engage in a discourse, I will have to first read it. Is that one of your aims? That is, do you seek getting others involved in reading, so that books can be discussed?

While I was an avid reader as a child, and up to my mid-teens, I no longer read much, if anything at all—I am talking about books here, I read plenty of online articles, but that's not the same. I have been meaning to read more but haven't settled on the medium. Certainly do not want paper books.
@markwylde I am curious, though. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote with the exception of macOS being trash. Care to expand on that? What isn't trash, in your view?
@lyse is that a Boston Dynamics robotic creature? What is the police going to use it for? Got a link about it (even if in German, is OK)? €60K per is not what will get them, but the licensing fees. 😬
@movq, you and I, mate, you and I. Often I get fed up with my career of choice, and wish—heck, long!—to do something else, something completely opposite. Luckily I don't deal with Microsoft stuff yet. Now, we are moving an entire data centre to Azure, so it is too early to count my blessings.
@pedantic, nope, not fixed at all. I am sure @prologic must have dreamed of a fix, but forgot to implement. It happens, we are not getting any younger! 😜
@ullarah oh, I am not really interested in animated GIFs, that’s down @thecanine’s alley. 😂 I am just curious, mostly because I don’t know the reason preventing this from happening.
@ullarah Apollo is exclusively for iOS, not on Android. I believe @jlj is on Android, so he can’t enjoy the exquisiteness of it, sadly.
@ullarah, but why wouldn't animated GIFs not work while inline? Is it the processing being done whilst uploading the image? That (processing) was the issue before, and the reason I opened issue 560 over two months ago. With so much work done to show images in different ways, is there a reason this hasn't been addressed yet? What say you, @prologic?
So, allegedly this guy purposely crashed his airplane (a single engine, Cessna like one) while recording it, just get clicks on YouTube, and arguably monetise from it. If true—which is still unproven, but under investigation—ain't that stupid?
AT&T and Verizon—and I assume, T-Mobile too—are finally rolling out the C-Band on the 5G spectrum, which was delayed over aviation worries that would interfere with airplanes' instruments. Yet, EU has roll it out (or is in the process of doing it) without a hitch.

How is Australia doing on 5G? Is it going to be rolled out, or is it already in use? I know I can search for it, but would rather hear it from someone living Down Under. ☺️
@kt84 look at it this way, if it doesn't suit you well, and you encounter problems, you will have support right there, 24/7 to solve them, otherwise there is a couch where support can sleep. 😂
@prologic a backup MX is only useful beyond the default retries has expired. Your main would have to be down for more than 3 days (maybe even more) before you lose mail.
@eaplmx hahahaha! Not getting triggered, but getting annoyed for me is so easy that my life is often a Calvary. 😩 Each time someone replies with a handful of words, a poorly crafted sentence, neglects to end on proper punctuation, or "steals" a yarn's topic without forking (just to mention a few), it annoys me. You will not believe the many times a day one of my eyes twitches. I am just weird that way, but I believe there is a small corner in here for me.
I downloaded the Lagrange Gemini browser, just to see what's out there, and because it renders Gemini sites nicely. For those around running their own server, which did you pick, and why? Does every Gemini server supports Titan, for editing/uploading content?
@thecanine though I agree that businesses make the worse decisions—because they are made at the management level, and often without any technical folk involved—Slack is an exception when it comes down to be a "worst option". As I said, and mind it, I have not used it for over three years now, so I don't know what could have changed, Slack is/was very slick. Relatively fast, and with powerful threaded conversations, search, tagging, etc. Oh, and an almost limitless list of plugins, bots, etc.

Yes, Teams sucks, but we are stuck with it, sadly.
@movq I am set to use "twtxting", rather than "yarning" (lower case), when it comes relevant to use (it hasn't, until now). For me, on Yarn (name for the software, and social media, hence capitalised) you twt, just like on Mastodon you toot.

So, allow me to translate. What @eaplmx meant to say was "Did you know I really enjoy twtxting on the Yarn at twtxt.net? […]" 😂
@thecanine I do not know of any big enterprise using Discord for anything. Slack, on the other hand, is widely used at the enterprise level. Slack is pretty slick, and was a favourite at my work place for many years until management sold their soul to Microsoft, hence we ended up using Teams.
@jlj, are you running all of your services on a Raspberry Pi, or just only a Yarn pod? I ask because I see the list of them growing, and growing, and makes me wonder what kind of magical apparatus this Pi is. On that topic, could you twt about that Pi setup? What storage do you have attached to it, and—if any—what mods do you have, etc.? I am very curious!
"Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" — "光復香港,時代革命"

'“As required by law, I am subject to a supervision order upon release,” he wrote in the post, adding that he would stop using social media and will not be taking any media interviews or visits.

“After four years, I want to cherish this precious time to reunite with my family and resume a normal life with them,” Leung said, before thanking his supporters for their concern and love. His Facebook account was deleted an hour later.' — *The Guardian*
@prologic thought I share the sentiment, it is all about expressing magnitude in a way people understands. As the magnitude of the nuclear blast had the effect of claiming that many lives, people sure gets it.

It is like the story told by the Little Prince on "The Little Prince" book; saying you have a pink coloured house with a garden is one thing that, normally, doesn't cause shock and awe. Now, if you say your house is worth $40M you are bound to catch attention.
@movq do you think it will be up to Gemini to bring twtxt/Yarn out of its relative obscurity? If that is the case I think I will start betting on something else. 😂
@eaplmx dumb TVs do not exist in the US anymore. They are just a legacy device no longer sold. But even when dumb TVs were sold, they were used like anything but TVs. We have been using cable boxes (tuners, with DVR capabilities, etc.) attached to TV's, and controlling them, since before the 1990s. Today our SmartTVs are not used as such, as least in our house. We have AppleTV pucks attached to all of them. No cable, no satellite. Everything comes to us through the tubes.
@jlj looks like a "lovely" place to hang out. :-D Where is that taking place, on Discord, Matrix, or some other network?
@thecanine, oh lovely. Dear lord, what a cluster f…! And you bear with it, day after day, without even blinking, eh? I feel for you mate. My sincere sympathies.
@ullarah not just you. This week came to me uninvited, and didn’t even said hello. I am ready to let it go, it is truly not working out.
@prologic hmm, I don’t know about that, but much has changed. They have a Docker image, but if manual is preferred, then:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs
git clone --branch master https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git &&
cd etherpad-lite &&
src/bin/run.sh

@prologic "If you are intending to visit Australia, do yourself a favor, get a burner Phone and Laptop" — This one is so hard to achieve. These days my phone is my camera too. It is also my main traveling computer, my GPS, my airplane check-in, my hotel reservation. It is also my passport backup, and method of payment. It is pretty much a vital piece I need with me at all time.

A phone must become a basic human right and, as such, inviolable.
So, created an account on Hetzner trying to give their VPS a go. Their specifications are sweet, and the pricing is more than right. It didn't like a MasterCard, but took the AMEX fine. After the account was created they required verification. Allegedly my account was flagged as high risk, and they needed to verify me. One of the choices was my driver's licence.

Whilst trying to add my drivers licence, the first time failed. The photo on the licence picture didn't match the current photo I had to take. Duh! When trying to redo, got a 403 error. No matter what I tried, nada. Tried another verification, using Paypal this time. Same error. Logged out, logged back in, tried again, same errors. Bye bye Hetzner! :-(
@prologic I am surprised you even tried it. Etherpad runs on NodeJS. Maybe that was the something you didn't like about it? I am yet to find a similar tool on Golang. There is a playground for you!
@prologic I believe they are in the preliminary phase (I truly do not know details on how company acquisitions and merges are regulated, but they are indeed). So, they are yet to face scrutiny; that's coming.
@prologic it is likely going to happen, but it is too early for anything to occur yet. At the very least, the whole deal is going to get a strong scrutiny from government regulators.
As a side, helpful note, you can buy the book on hardcover or paperback formats too. Amazon has it in both formats. The book might be available from other sources too, not just from Amazon—though I haven't checked.
@prologic you are joking, right? Tell me you are jesting. I am kind of worried to see a twt from you with zero Emoji. Please, tell me you are (a laughing face with tears Emoji as a reply will suffice).
@lyse is not kidding. Bartosz almost writes with an ELI5 approach. The choice of font (Lato), the choice of colours, the line height, the interactive illustrations, as @lyse points out, the site's design, they all help conveying the message clearly, and with excellent taste to boot. But don't stop at this article. He has more equally amazing. A heads up, JS is required. But, oh, so worth it!