pleroma.debian.social

jlines | @jlines@pleroma.debian.social

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Monitoring for mail delivery problems

After an issue where a large mail provider stopped accepting mail from my default outgoing mail server (detected by my wife, who sends more mail than I do) I decided I had better know if this happens again, and have written it up as Monitoring for email delivery problems in case it is useful to someone else.

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RFC 9518 - Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards

RFC 9518 is another thoughtful document from Mark Nottingham @mnot regarding the balance of Centralization and Decentralization in standards. I would add Network Time to that, were I not writing from Oxford (famous for Oxford Time) and https://xkcd.com/2867

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Federated attacker/trust information
I am pondering the use of ActivityPub for distributing information about bad actors on the internet. Something like a fail2ban action which would publish on securitybot@social.examplle.com a structured message carrying the meaning "192.168.12.7 has just blocked 10.1.99.5 for SSH bad password attempts". It could follow, for example securitybot@social.example.net etc, and so on and decide to add possible attackers to its own blocklists.

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@nik @fsf as a general case I find it alarming how many web sites (almost all) on the Internet, run Javascript from external sites, so that even if you are visiting a site you trust you are running code from, from Meta (Facebook), Twitter (or X or whatever they are today), Google, and often a dozen tracking companies without your knowledge - unless you use NoScript, or 'Use the Source, Luke' - often an alarming experience.

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@dannyjpalmer This is why journalists should be wary of Commercial Social Media, and why news media should be running their own federated instances.

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re: pleroma on social.paladyn.org upgraded to 2.5.5
@gantua @john I am, but some of this is an experiment to find a route to package projects, such as pleroma, where verifying Freeness is an obstacle to even starting the process.

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re: pleroma on social.paladyn.org upgraded to 2.5.5

@gantua @john There is certainly a lot to do, both in the copyright file and in a source package for the front-end. However making access to the Fediverse simpler seems an important goal, and I am trying to find a way to a usable and maintainable package in bite sized chunks. Would love to see some Fediverse packages in trixie.

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re: pleroma on social.paladyn.org upgraded to 2.5.5
@john @gantua I wonder if a pleroma-deps package containing all the currently unpackaged erlang dependencies, in experimental/non-free would be a stepping stone towards a package in experimental/contrib. They could move to main by a mixture of modules being packaged if they were independently useful, or the process of working through the copyright file.

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@GossiTheDog Their offer of a year's 'Free' access to Experian credit monitoring for those affected does not feel like an adequate response to anyone who has looked up Experian's history of data breaches.

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@GossiTheDog Non technical people will not want to set up and manage such instances if the administrative burden of maintaining and upgrading an instance is too great. Threads (I assume - have not tried it, but I do have a Facebook account which I try not to use, but do sometimes as it does keep in touch with people) takes away the technical administration of setting up a community, at the cost of advertising and loss of privacy.

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@GossiTheDog Not everybody *wants* a social network which changes all the time. Mastodon is part of an ecosystem, composed of many instances, each independent, and some Fediverse instances, like this one, run other software, in this case Pleroma. I would like it to be easier to set up smaller, more focussed instances in non technical areas. Too much of the Fediverse discusses the Fediverse (and cat pictures!). We need instances for gardening, knitting, kayaking ...

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@GossiTheDog I really hope somewhere there is a team having fun inventing bad inputs for NATS - as well as the obvious syntax errors and null values, how about flight paths which do not intersect UK air space, impossible distances, etc. Their aim should be (in simulation) to find other scenarios which could cause the system to be unable to handle the situation.

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@weirdwriter @goatsarah I already find myself, as someone with a reputation for knowing about computers, being told more personal and financial details than I would like to help out friends who are blocked by the complexity of the process from, for example making charitable donations, or sponsoring someone for a good cause.

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@dangillmor I have felt for some time that journalists should be on the Fediverse, and wrote something on Federated Social Media and Journalism in 2021. Unfortunately not much has changed since.

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Running your own social Network

I came across https://runyourown.social/ which is full of good advice, and fits in with my feeling that is should be easier for small organisations to set up their own independent internet presence.

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re: Federtated road/rail closures
Broadening it out a bit, it could carry the information that a route was Restricted - for example a new speed limit, route for pedestrians only, buses only etc (possibly between certain times)

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re: Federtated road/rail closures
The same 'this route is closed' format could carry information about unplanned closures, such as accidents, published by police and highways agencies, and read by route planners, and radio stations who broadcast traffic news, possibly even direct to car/truck etc satnavs. This could carry information such as whether the route was still available for emergency vehicles (say a road closed due to an accident) or not (e.g. a bridge collapsed)

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Federtated road/rail closures
We are having a spate of letters about road closures for gas works, maintenance etc, also some foot and cycle paths, and rail lines. If there was, say an #XMPP XSF for the information in a machine readable form it could be published by gas and electric companies, highways agencies etc, probably as proposed and then approved. Subscribers would be mapping providers, Google, #OpenStreetMap, Garmin etc, maybe logistics companies etc.

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re: IPV6 and the Fediverse
@JohnLines social.debian.org is IPv4 and IPv6 too

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IPV6 and the Fediverse

Many fediverse sites only have an IPv4 address, which may not seem to matter, as people with an IPV6 only device (such many mobile phones) can still access them as a client via their provider mapping to IPV4 on network exit. For twitter.com this does not matter, but an IPv4 only site can not Federate with an IPV6 only site. Please read RFC 9386 - IPv6 Deployment Status and ask your Ipv4 only server to act.

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