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The Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management

The Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (1998) (Part 7) - Binance

-term

* Global Feed Bot*

A 12-hour flight in economy is a physical event. Your blood pools, your sinuses dry out, your circadian rhythm gets jostled, and the cabin air sits at roughly.


The Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (1998) (Part 7) - Binance

-term

* Global Feed Bot*

Build a Basic AI Agent from Scratch: Long Task Planning

It's kind of fascinating that the very first software to implement ActivityPub was Hubzilla, originally created by (that's where you can find him now, by the way).
It already had a kind of precursor of FEP-171b "Conversation Containers" implemented, so it has never even needed any backfilling. At the same time, its ActivityPub implementation was more by-the-book than Mastodon's two months later (as by-the-book as you can implement ActivityPub anyway).
I guess the big issue is the dichotomy between purist Twitter-style microblogging where enclosed conversations are superfluous luxury that just makes things unnecessarily complicated and Facebook-like or Reddit-like stuff where enclosed conversations are essential. On top of this, not many know that the Fediverse has the latter in the first place. It's bad enough for (streams) and Forte admins now having the option to lock the former out entirely in one fell swoop.
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One that happened quite early on was Mastodon's hijack of the
summary
field for content warnings which wasn't used for that previously.

And everyone on Mastodon believes that Eugen Rochko has invented this field from scratch as a CW field. It's deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture now. It got to the point at which non-Mastodon users use the summary field as such, and they're attacked by Mastodon users for allegedly misusing the CW field.
Worse yet: Friendica has had a much more elegant way of handling content warnings since its inception, about seven years before Mastodon introduced the CW field: Have them created by a keyword filter on the reader's side. The advantage is that you have your own individual CWs, and other users who don't need these specific CWs don't have them. All its descendants have inherited it. But if you add the appropriate keywords as hashtags, Mastodon users might scold and/or mute/block you for hashtag spam.
Even worse: Mastodon itself has introduced essentially the same functionality with version 4.0 in October, 2022, just shortly before Elon Musk took over Twitter. But this has never entered Mastodon's culture which is mostly built around Mastodon 3.x. Or maybe it's because filters are the one thing where Friendica and its family are much easier to handle than Mastodon. Or it's simply because Mastodon users were promised to be babied and pampered and coddled all over, so they don't want to take care of their own CWs.
Now their "hijacks" are more on the side of centralizing moderation and overall working on features that aim to reduce the social aspect of the network and increase witch hunting. Like the new "follow packs" or whatever they called them which will definitely never turn into "block packs" that will inevitably end up maintained by heavily opinionated people like on BlueSky.

Mastodon already relies heavily on importing or subscribing to automatically generated filter lists. For some admins, the filter lists can't be too extensive. Of course, hardly any admins really curate these lists.
At least the times of absolutely monstrous lists consisting of multiple other monster lists compiled by overzealous snowflakes are over. There used to be a time where it took two or three server admins with lists of their own to have one server blocked on hundreds of servers.
Lemmy only recently figured out how to properly federate posts instead of just sending a post link along with a title to instances not running Lemmy.

I guess the two Lemmy devs have finally understood that they can't develop Lemmy as its own enclosed network anymore, now that a lot of traffic on Lemmy comes from and goes to Mbin and PieFed. They've lost a lot of users to these two, and I guess they know they can't afford to lose the traffic from these users as well.
They still don't really care for compatibility with Mastodon, probably also because of how much Mastodon's culture clashes with Lemmy's. And Friendica and its family just happen to be sufficiently compatible by mere chance, I guess.
Coincidentally looking at I can see that there are approximately 450 running Friendica instances, approx 100 Hubzilla instances, and apparently 2 Forte instances which doesn't seem right. Streams isn't on the list. That list is acquired by crawling through the various peers endpoints on Fedi servers.

For Friendica and Hubzilla, I think it isn't too far off.
(streams) is intentionally kept away from stats sites. Also, its nodeinfo code was intentionally removed almost entirely. This was done to keep (streams) out of that rat race for server popularity and to make it uninteresting for commercial actors that might want to sell it as allegedly their own original creation. Then again, it isn't like (streams) has many servers, much less public servers with open registration. (I'm still waiting for another server to clone my two (streams) channels to.)
Forte has quite a bunch of private, single-user servers, but to my best knowledge, there's only one with open registrations. But while Forte does have nodeinfo implemented again, it's set up to not send any actual numbers. Besides, these tiny Forte servers are quite difficult to crawl, also due to Mastodon users' tendency to block everything that's too disturbingly far off Mastodon in behaviour.
CC:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # About "reply gating": This, or something similar, has been a standard feature at least on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte from the get-go, i.e. from their respective creation on. Hubzilla has had it since 2012. All three rely heavily on permissions for anything and everything. They can make themselves and each other hide the reply button. When someone wants to comment from Mastodon or something else that doesn't understand these permissions, these three simply reject unpermitted comments before they even reach the inbox.
On Hubzilla, the channel-wide permission to comment also includes a permission to like or dislike something. I can generally allow
to comment on my posts.
In addition, I can turn comments on and off for specific posts. Mind you, if it's a reply, it isn't a post, it's a comment, and I've got no control over it.
On (streams) and Forte, the channel-wide permission to comment is uncoupled from the permission to like or dislike. The channel-wide options are

On top of that, I can generally allow comments only for a certain number of days.
Again, I can turn comments on and off for specific posts. But I can also only allow my contacts to comment on specific posts, and I can define until when comments are allowed on specific posts.
In all three cases, I can even choose to preview technically unpermitted comments and then decide whether I allow or reject them, one by one.
In other words, where I am (I'm commenting from Hubzilla), this not only has been available for longer than Mastodon has even existed, but it's deeply engrained into the culture.
About "quote gating": Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have all always (in Friendica's case, since 2010) had both actual quotes like on bulletin-board forums (remember the 2000s when forums were all the rage) and Twitter-quote-tweet-style quote-posts (which literally were the only way for them to share content before they adopted Twitter-retweet-style forwarding).
The former obviously only works in comments. Whether or not it's allowed is defined by whether or not comments are allowed.
The latter doesn't have any permission setting, not even on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte with the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse. That's because their inventor says that it's technologically impossible to keep people from forwarding or sharing your content in separate posts.
If you disallow actual quote-posts, people can still copy-paste the content of your post into a new post. Unlike when you're actually being quote-posted, you won't even notice unless they mention you. Mind you, while an estimated 60% of all Mastodon users are on iPhones, and another estimated 39% are on Android phones, 100% of all Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte users are on desktop or laptop computers where copy-paste is easy-peasy. It's pretty much impossible to disallow copy-paste, and even if it was, people would resort to screenshots.
You don't want people to quote-post your stuff Then don't make it public. Once it's public, it's out there, and anyone can do with it whatever they please.
Nobody really misses an actual permission for quote-posts. That's also because Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte aren't primarily a home for Twitter refugees. In fact, neither of them can even understand the ruckus about quote-posts on Mastodon, and neither can Friendica users. Hardly any of them have been on Twitter at any point in the 2020s. There's no influence of Twitter culture anywhere to be found.
The typical path into Hubzilla is not Twitter > Musk buys Twitter > Mastodon > Hubzilla. Not even Twitter > Musk buys Twitter > Mastodon > Friendica > Hubzilla. It's Facebook > diaspora* > Friendica > Hubzilla. Or Facebook > Google+ > diaspora* > Friendica > Hubzilla. The typical path into (streams) is the same, but one step further beyond Hubzilla. The typical path into Forte is the same as into (streams), but another step further beyond (streams).
About the iPhone: Whether or not the iPhone is a status symbol depends on where you are.
In the USA, the iPhone is the Levi's jeans of phones. It's the Ford F-150 of phones. The allegedly all-American American phone. Most importantly, it's what everyone has.
Over here in Germany, the iPhone is the higher-class Mercedes-Benz of phones. The iPhone 15 Pro is the 2026 Mercedes-Benz-AMG E 53 of phones. The iPhone 15 Pro Max is the 2026 Mercedes-Benz-AMG S 63 E Performance of phones, slammed suspensions, standing on polished 22" Lexani wheels, muffler cut-outs always open. In American terms, it's the 2026 Cadillac Escalade-V of phones, gold-foiled, with air-ride, standing on gold-plated 26" Bellagio spinnaz. The phone made for peacocking in rap music video clips. It's the Rolex of phones. For women, it's the genuine Prada or Fendi or Louis Vuitton handbag of phones.
Well, and then there's the iPhone 4S with the cracked screen. It's the 1995 Mercedes-Benz E-Class of phones. Old, worn out, four-banger engine, often rusty as hell, may have been stolen at some point, but it's cheap. And most importantly, it's still a Benz, and it's a real Benz as opposed to "Baby Benz" C-Class and smaller. The Benz for those who need a Benz to show their folks how much of a winner they are, but who can't really afford one.
Over here, the Samsung Galaxy S is the VW Golf of phones. The Americans' Ford F-150 of phones. It's what everyone has. It's the no-brainer that you buy when you don't know what to buy, so you buy what everyone buys. Still, it's expensive for what it does. But all the other brands are akin to "cheap imports" from, what, France or Italy or Japan or Korea or Romania.
The choice of the hardcore nerds in the homeland of Chaos Computer Club and Chaos Communication Congress is never something that can only run stock Android. It's an iPhone even less. They rather buy a Google Pixel, and the first thing they do is root it immediately and install GrapheneOS. Or if they refuse to buy something from Google and/or run a Google OS (de-Googled or not), they acquire a Sony Experia, root it and install SailfishOS. Or they go straight for a Fairphone or even the new Jolla Phone or something like that. I'm pretty sure many want a true successor to the Nokia N900.
If Google locks Android down, these nerds won't flock to Apple. Some may switch to SailfishOS which, on officially supported phones, has the Aliendalvik compatibility layer for Android apps, but only with F-Droid and neither with the Google Play Store proper nor with Micro-G. Many more will go entirely elsewhere like PostmarketOS or PureOS, also seeing as SailfishOS is payware that's half proprietary and closed-source. Or they'll forgo mobile phones entirely or keep old phones alive for as long as they can.
About iOS apps: I guess the notion that the Fediverse equals Mastodon, something that the majorty of Mastodon users believe, is particularly wide-spread among iPhone users. And if it isn't only Mastodon, it doesn't extend beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube. Excluding Pixelfed and PeerTube, if Mastodon can't do it, the Fediverse as a whole can't. I mean, on top of the fact that apps made for Mastodon generally only support Mastodon features because the Mastodon Client API only supports Mastodon features, and the Mastodon Client API is all that these apps understand.
It's particularly bad for Friendica users. If they're on Android, they may opt for a Mastodon app. There are several Android apps for Mastodon that have been reported to work with Friendica. Or they may want to try one of the dedicated Friendica apps which are at various levels of unfinished. Or they may choose the middle-ground and use Fedilab.
But if they're on an iPhone, they'll discover that literally not even a single Mastodon iOS app works with Friendica. There is no Fedilab. And the iOS version of RaccoonForFriendica requires Test Flight, and it's probably even more incomplete than the Android version.
In general, iPhone apps are rarely developed for the same reasons as Android apps. Most Android Fediverse apps are open-source and under a free license, and they're also or exclusively available on F-Droid. They're developed by FLOSS enthusiasts/idealists. However, these people don't develop for iOS. That's because the Apple App Store is inherently hostile towards free software, and it's completely incompatible with all versions of the GNU General Public License.
Also, as you've already pointed out, you absolutely need a Mac to develop iOS apps. But if someone releases FLOSS apps on F-Droid, you can bet they're running GNU/Linux at home (more often Arch or a derivative than you may think), and they won't touch any corporate-made, closed-source OS with a 10-foot barge pole. They may even steer clear of anything where Novell, Red Hat or Canonical is involved.
With hobbyist FLOSS enthusiasts out of the way of developing iPhone apps, this is only ever done by those who do it for money. Or fame and social status (same reason why they always have a fairly new iPhone). Or both. But then they discovered that the Fediverse, to them at least, is a hive of radical leftist tech nerds whom you can't impress with expensive bling-bling from big American gigacorps. They failed to gather the umpteen thousand followers they wanted. So they left for greener pastures: Bluesky. Or they even went back to their hundreds of thousands of followers on . Doing so, they also abandoned their iPhone app development.
By the way, none of this affects Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. For starters, just like Friendica, all four can be installed as Progressive Web Apps. However, at least in the case of these three, there is no alternative to the Web interface whatsoever. There's an old Android app for Hubzilla named Nomad, but it's only available on F-Droid, it hasn't been worked on since December, 2019, it only runs on older Android versions and Aliendalvik, and it's only a wrapper for the Web interface anyway. For (streams) and Forte, there's zilch.
There has been some talk about developing a native mobile Hubzilla app. It's kind of difficult, though. Generally, Hubzilla users use Hubzilla on desktop OS's. They can't imagine people daily-driving phones as their main or only end-user devices, so they think that a Hubzilla app only needs the features one would need when out and about because everyone will go back to their desktop or laptop computers anyway when they're back home.
In reality, many users of the Hubzilla app will only use that app. They won't use Hubzilla's Web interface in a browser. They won't use it on a desktop or laptop computer either, usually because they simply don't have one. They'll resort to that app for everything. In fact, they'll perceive Hubzilla as a phone app rather than a Fediverse server application. This means that a Hubzilla mobile app will inevitably have to cover all of Hubzilla's features except those that really don't make sense in a phone app (e.g. the PDL editor). But a fully-featured Hubzilla app would be so complex, it'd make infamous K-9 Mail pale in comparison.
Licensing is the least problem here. Hubzilla and Forte are released under the MIT license, (streams) was released into the public domain. So I guess putting an app for either of them under the MIT license would be an option, one that's fairly compatible with the Apple App Store even. It's just that this app would be bound to be an absolute monster.
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Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja unveiled the grim soulslike Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, dark, intense, and atmospheric.

A direct sequel to Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (the original drew in over 5 million players), it throws you back into the war-torn Three Kingdoms soaked in dark fantasy. You play a lone warrior crossing the burned plains of Ancient China, cleaving grotesque demons and fighting alongside leg...

Announced: Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember from Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja, a hardcore sequel due early 2027.

Dark, brutal fantasy returns: refined parry-heavy Chinese martial arts, blood-soaked battlefields of the Late Han overrun by demonic beasts the original Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty launched in March 2023 and pulled in over 5 million players. Platforms: PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2. INSANE

Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember, the official sequel from Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja, due early 2027.

The studio says they'll expand what worked in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (Mar 2023, over 5M players): tight rhythmbased parries, complex Chinese martial arts, blood-soaked Late Han battlefields and famous historical generals. Launches worldwide day-one on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2. HYPE

Long flights are so much easier when they start like this

The Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (1998) (Part 7) - Binance

-term

* Global Feed Bot*

: of great length or duration

- French: long

- German: lang

- Italian: lungo

- Portuguese: longo

- Spanish: largo

------------

Guess the next word of the hour

I really wanna explore more of a fight club type thing at the DSO with Elana, but I haven't been able to come up with a good idea for it, so if you have any suggestions, im all ears xD

Long

A Movie Too Long

5 Song Wei Long C-Dramas That Showcase His Charm and Versatility

Airbus A350-1000ULR Jet Completes First Ultra-Long-Haul Flight

Airbus's A350-1000ULR, built for extreme range, has completed its first test flight, paving the way for non-stop journeys between Sydney and London.

-haul

Lee Je Hoon Is An Eccentric Law Office Manager Who Only Takes On Unwinnable Cases In New Drama The Long Shot Trial

It Came from the Long Beach Comic & Horror Con 2013

My lack of a plan for this year's con made the show floor less satisfying, but the panels were great: Marv Wolfman, Scott Lobdell, Mark Waid, Young Justice. Weil du geschrieben hast, da du gern Feedback zu deinen Alt-Texten httest:
Hier gibt's ein paar Dinge zu kritisieren. Erstens solltest du die Stze jeweils mit einem Punkt beenden, damit der Screenreader beim Vorlesen die Stimme senkt. Ohne Punkt am Ende geht ein Screenreader davon aus, da der Satz weitergeht, auch bei Zeilenumbrchen. Generell solltest du das immer tun, damit Screenreader nicht irritiert sind.
Zweitens solltest du Zeilenumbrche in Alt-Texten vermeiden. Ja, es sieht fr Sehende schicker aus. Aber die eigentliche Zielgruppe fr Alt-Texte sind Blinde oder Sehbehinderte, die sich den Alt-Text von einem Screenreader vorlesen lassen. Screenreader sagen jedes Mal, wenn sie ein Bild mit oder ohne Alt-Text finden, etwas wie "Grafik". Sie erkennen aber jeden Absatz in einem Alt-Text als eigenen Alt-Text und sagen daher, "Grafik", am Anfang von jedem Absatz.
Drittens: Foto-Credits gehren in den Post-Text, genau wie alle anderen Informationen, die nicht aus dem Post-Text oder aus dem Bild ersichtlich sind. Wenn du sie unbedingt brauchst, aber nur 500 Zeichen hast, dann mut du dafr eben im Post-Text Platz schaffen.
Den Alt-Text in diesem Post liest ein Screenreader aktuell so vor:
"Grafik. Eine Dame mit dem Kopf gesenkt, stehend an einer Treppe, von oben fotografiert Grafik. Sie trgt ein hellblau-wei gestreiftes Hemdblusenkleid Grafik. Es ist an der Hfte enger und dann leicht ballonartig drapiert Grafik. Foto von Bershka", und dann macht er mit den nchsten Wrtern oder so weiter, als wre der Satz nicht zu Ende.
Mit Punkten an den Enden der Stze wrde daraus schon mal:
"Grafik. Eine Dame mit dem Kopf gesenkt, stehend an einer Treppe, von oben fotografiert. Grafik. Sie trgt ein hellblau-wei gestreiftes Hemdblusenkleid. Grafik. Es ist an der Hfte enger und dann leicht ballonartig drapiert. Grafik. Foto von Bershka."
Wenn du dann auch noch die Zeilenumbrche weglt, sieht der Screenreader keine vier Bilder mehr, sondern nur noch die drei, die wirklich da sind:
"Grafik. Eine Dame mit dem Kopf gesenkt, stehend an einer Treppe, von oben fotografiert. Sie trgt ein hellblau-wei gestreiftes Hemdblusenkleid. Es ist an der Hfte enger und dann leicht ballonartig drapiert. Foto von Bershka."
Last but not least, wie gesagt: Das "Foto von Bershka" gehrt in den Post-Text.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # Weil du geschrieben hast, da du gern Feedback zu deinen Alt-Texten httest:
In diesem Fall solltest du auf jeden Fall zwei Dinge tun. Zum einen solltest du die Stze jeweils mit einem Punkt beenden, damit der Screenreader beim Vorlesen die Stimme senkt. Ohne Punkt am Ende geht ein Screenreader davon aus, da der Satz weitergeht, sogar bei Zeilenumbrchen. Generell solltest du das immer tun, damit Screenreader nicht irritiert sind.
Zum anderen solltest du Zeilenumbrche in Alt-Texten vermeiden. Ja, es sieht fr Sehende schicker aus. Aber die eigentliche Zielgruppe fr Alt-Texte sind Blinde oder Sehbehinderte, die sich den Alt-Text von einem Screenreader vorlesen lassen. Screenreader sagen jedes Mal, wenn sie ein Bild mit oder ohne Alt-Text finden, etwas wie "Grafik". Sie erkennen aber jeden Absatz in einem Alt-Text als eigenen Alt-Text und sagen daher, "Grafik", am Anfang von jedem Absatz.
Die Alt-Texte in diesem Post liest ein Screenreader aktuell so vor:
"Grafik. Eine weie Popelinhose Grafik. Eine weie ballonartige voluminse Hose mit Gummizug oben und unten Grafik. Beigefarbene Keilabsatz Schuhe Grafik. Jeansjacke, eng mit schrger Knopfleiste in dunklem Denim", und dann macht er mit den nchsten Wrtern oder so weiter, als wre der Satz nicht zu Ende.
Mit Punkten an den Enden der Stze wrde daraus schon mal:
"Grafik. Eine weie Popelinhose. Grafik. Eine weie ballonartige voluminse Hose mit Gummizug oben und unten. Grafik. Beigefarbene Keilabsatz Schuhe. Grafik. Jeansjacke, eng mit schrger Knopfleiste in dunklem Denim."
Wenn du dann auch noch den Zeilenumbruch im ersten Alt-Text weglt, sieht der Screenreader keine vier Bilder mehr, sondern nur noch die drei, die wirklich da sind:
"Grafik. Eine weie Popelinhose. Eine weie ballonartige voluminse Hose mit Gummizug oben und unten. Grafik. Beigefarbene Keilabsatz Schuhe. Grafik. Jeansjacke, eng mit schrger Knopfleiste in dunklem Denim."
Zustzlich empfehle ich, das doppelte, redundante "Eine weie" im ersten Bild zu vermeiden. Im zweiten Bild sollte zwischen "Keilabsatz" und "Schuhe" ein Bindestrich, um zu verhindern, da irgendwelche Screenreader das komisch vorlesen, z. B. dazwischen die Stimme senken ("Beige Keilabsatz, Schuhe.")
Man knnte das Ganze sicherlich noch weiter ausbauen und verfeinern. Aber das hier sind zumindest die Basics.
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The Course Management Trick That Makes Long Par 5s Easier

TRENDING

The Long Farewell to Mark Zuckerbergs Metaverse - The New York Times

*Automatically posted by Global Feed Bot*

TRENDING

Physicists Top LongStanding HighTemperature Superconductor RecordAll at RoomTemperature Pressure!

standing temperature

*Automatically posted by Global Feed Bot*

Dann versuche ich es zunchst mal mit einem Meme-Post. Vier Bilder, jeweils mit Alt-Text, plus Erklrungen im Post selbst, teilweise in Form externer Links.
Alt-Text zum ersten Bild:
Image macro, based on a screen capture from a video. The camera is following a car drifting off a multiple-lane highway on an exit ramp with the rear wheels smoking. Thus, the car is in the middle of the image, and the actual highway is off to the left. On top of the screen capture, a photo of a highway sign bridge was added. It carries a combination of signs indicating an exit. The big main sign in the middle has an exit symbol consisting of two arrows slightly left of centre. The highway side of the arrow is labelled, Develop own modular avatar building system. The exit side of the arrow is labelled, Add Ready Player Me support and be done with it. The car drifting up the exit ramp is labelled, Metaverse developers.

Alt-Text zum zweiten Bild:
Image macro, based on a single-panel comic from the Web comic XKCD with a stack of dozens of grey, rectangular blocks of various sizes. The blocks generally become the smaller and the more numerous, the higher up on the stack they are. The many blocks at the top are labelled, Hundreds of virtual worlds and VR, AR and XR applications launched during the Metaverse hype of the 2020s. On the third level from the bottom and all the way to the right, there is one small vertical block which everything above rests on. It is implied that the whole stack would collapse if this block was removed. The block is labelled, Ready Player Me.

Alt-Text zum dritten Bild:
Image macro, based on two vertically arranged screen captures from a video. In the upper image, a school bus is standing on a level crossing with its front wheels. A train is approaching in the background. The bus is labelled, Using Ready Player Me as the avatar-building system in your metaverse. In the lower image, the school bus has just been hit by the train. It is careening away from the tracks, still blurry from the motion. The front of the train is labelled with the Netflix logo.

Alt-Text zum vierten Bild:
Image macro, based on a combination of two meme portrait drawings. On the left, there is a drawing of a Soyjak, a male-looking character with a bald head, a stubbly beard and a pair of glasses. He is crying with pink, blood-shot eyes, streams of tears running down his cheeks and his mouth wide open. Below, he is captioned in all caps, We rely entirely on Ready Player Me for our avatars, and we won't have any new avatars from February, 2026 on. On the right, there is a drawing of a Nordic Gamer, a male-looking character with a natural skin tone, well-groomed blond hair, blue eyes, a full beard, a black pullover and a calm but stern and confident expression. Below, he is captioned in all caps, Your loss LOL.

Erklrungen im Post, ber 4.500 Zeichen:
The images are based on the following meme templates in this order:
  • Left Exit 12 Off Ramp ()
  • Dependency, also known as Complex Structure Supported by a Tiny Part ()
  • Train Hitting School Bus ()
  • Soyboy vs Yes Chad, a combination of Soyjak () and Nordic Gamer, also known as a Yes Chad ()

Ready Player Me ( ) is known for various tools for creating fairly high-quality 3-D avatars for various uses. Their name is a play on Ernest Cline's 2011 novel about a 3-D virtual world and, more famously, Steven Spielberg's 2018 film adaptation.
Ready Player Me uses a large number of built-in assets plus artificial intelligence to build avatars. It can be integrated into other platforms, it has a dedicated avatar creator for the popular 3-D virtual world platform VRChat, and it can be used to export avatars for various standards.
Among developers of small virtual worlds and virtual world systems, it is popular because it can fairly easily be integrated into their systems, giving them quick and easy access to very versatile avatars on par with characters in modern-day video games. This saves them from developing their own avatar system, including rigging, configuration and outfitting, and from designing their own avatar components or waiting for their user community to supply these.
Such virtual worlds are actually fairly numerous. The COVID-19 pandemic with its social distancing provided fertile grounds for virtual worlds which would allow for interactions without real-life social restrictions. And Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 announcement to start his own virtual world kicked off a metaverse hype. Countless virtual reality and virtual world projects were launched in its wake.
Bigger players could afford to develop their own avatar engine and avatar-building system and usually also design their own avatar components. Small start-ups, on the other hand, lack the development capacities for that, as do non-profits and free and open-source projects. Some, like the decentralised virtual world systems Vircadia and Overte, require their users to generate their avatars in external tools, convert them to something that Vircadia and Overte understand and upload them on sufficiently fast servers.
Others made use of the solutions offered by Ready Player Me to integrate it directly into their worlds. This immediately gave them an avatar-building system along with all assets to build avatars from as Ready Player Me generates them on the fly.
There are other avatar providers like Ready Player Me, but Ready Player Me is the biggest and most well-known one by far. In fact, oftentimes, Ready Player Me must have been the only one of its kind known to virtual world developers. Even if not, they deemed integrating at least one more such provider an unnecessary effort. After all, Ready Player Me did what it was supposed to do.
One year ago, in December, 2024, Ready Player Me launched PlayerZero which can be integrated into virtual worlds and the like, too. The killer feature of PlayerZero is that users can create an avatar and use the self-same avatar in all virtual worlds that have PlayerZero implemented without ever having to remake it. In fact, generating the same avatar twice over is next to impossible, seeing as Ready Player Me has always been AI-powered.
With the takeover of Ready Player Me by Netflix, the latter will fully incorporate not only its staff, but also its technology and assets and make them available exclusively to Netflix products.
On January 31st, PlayerZero will be shut down which will immediately rob hundreds of virtual worlds of their entire avatar engine. Not only will users no longer be able to create new avatars, but even existing avatars will vanish along with the entire avatar engine, essentially breaking these virtual worlds altogether.
These worlds will have to choose: Either they find and integrate another avatar engine. This would take quite some time during which the whole world will remain essentially defunct, and then everyone will have to build new avatars. Or they develop their own avatar engine and either design their own avatar assets or also provide a way for their user community to make, upload and share avatar assets. This would take much more time, and it would require people talented enough to make avatar assets. Well, or they give up and shut down, and be it because they cannot survive for a prolonged period of time during which nobody can access them because nobody has an avatar anymore.
As hinted at in the fourth image, Second Life and worlds based on OpenSimulator, both from the 2000s, have a much more resilient avatar system. It doesn't even use assets built into the world engine. Instead, avatars are built in-world from content that first has to be acquired into the inventory. With only very few exceptions, this content is made and offered by users.

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Les avocats de de dfense des droits humains affirment rassembler tmoignages, dossiers mdicaux et preuves photographiques avant une ventuelle saisine de la .

UCI Student Center: Then and Now

I got my first view of the newly-completed Student Center. Then I remembered a photo I'd taken of the old building in the 1990s, and I decided to see if I could match the shot.

MySQL 8.0 LTS

EricaEllyson




















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It is available everywhere AFAIK.
But: The convenient black "Alt" button in the corner is exclusive to Mastodon's Web interface plus maybe a few phone apps that have adopted it since. Technically speaking, a UI element to show alt-texts is completely unnecessary because alt-text is only a stand-in for the image itself, for when the image cannot be seen for whichever reason. The alt-text as an extra source of information is a purely Mastodon thing where people use it to expand their meagre 500-character limit by up to another 6,000 characters.
Just about everywhere else in the Fediverse, there is no button for showing alt-texts. That's also because there's nowhere in the Fediverse where people really need alt-texts to write around their tiny character limits, so that alt-texts can be what alt-texts are literally everywhere outside of Mastodon: a stand-in for the image and nothing more than that.
The normal way in the Fediverse (and other social networks and social media) for sighted people to access an alt-text is by moving the mouse cursor upon the image and hovering in there, and the alt-text pops up. The alt-text is the title tag at the same time. This has been the case on Mastodon before, I think, version 4.4 as well. I guess Mastodon changed that because just about everyone on Mastodon is on phones, and you don't have a mouse cursor on a phone, so you have to long-press on the image which is a not very intuitive thing to do.
Here on Hubzilla where I'm commenting from right now, the alt-text still is the title tag as well. In order to read an alt-text, the mouse cursor has to be hovered above the image. And Hubzilla has no alternative to its Web interface, only different themes for the Web interface. There is no phone app, at least none worth speaking of.
Also, on Hubzilla, we don't need to use alt-texts to write around character limits. Our character limit is 16,777,215, and that's the maximum size of the database field for the message text. Actually, on Hubzilla, alt-texts are included in these over 16 million characters as opposed to separate data fields. Thus, sighted Hubzilla users have no use for alt-texts whatsoever. Thus, there's no reason to make opening alt-texts easier (as if that was Hubzilla's only UI issue). Thus, there's no "Alt" button, and there will never be one.
It's just about the same just about everywhere else from Misskey (hard-coded 3,000 characters) to Akkoma (configurable 5,000 characters) to Friendica (same limit as Hubzilla) to (streams) and Forte (over 24 million characters) to pure long-form blogging stuff like WordPress, Ghost, Write Freely and Plume.
Now I ask you: What are people supposed to do whose both hands had to be amputated due to some accident Or people with deformed hands who can neither use a smartphone nor a computer mouse nor a trackball nor any other pointing device on a computer Who operate their computer with e.g. a headpointer, a plastic stick strapped to their forehead with which they poke the keys on their computer And who are in the Fediverse, but not on Mastodon How are they supposed to open an alt-text with only a keyboard as an input device
Or how about people with a severe tremor Who have big troubles moving a mouse cursor over an image and then keeping it there because it keeps slipping away Who probably operate their computers via the keyboard and only the keyboard, too
Or, a wholly different example, how about those who use Linux with a super-minimalist, keyboard-only tiling window manager Who do have a GUI (albeit a very frugal one), who do use graphical Web browsers, but who deliberately, intentionaly, do not have any kind of pointing device Who, nonetheless, are ten times faster with only keyboard shortcuts than you and me are with a mouse How are they supposed to move a mouse cursor over an image without a mouse
This is something that many Mastodon users don't know:

Oh, and there's one more thing: Misskey and its various forks (Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS, CherryPick etc.) all have a character limit of 512 for alt-texts. They should enforce it the same way as Mastodon enforces its 1,500-character limit for alt-texts, namely by truncating longer alt-texts. This is bad enough already.
However, they all have the same nasty bug that still hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK: Instead of truncating longer alt-texts, they delete them. So if you describe your image in an alt-text of more than 512 characters, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will never know that your image is supposed to have an alt-text. Instead, they may think that you were too lazy to describe your image. And if you use the alt-text to explain your image in over 512 characters, this explanation will never reach users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co.
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* Bildbeschreibungen sollten beim Bild sein, nicht nur als Reply. Also sollte ein Autor den Text in den Ursprung-Post kopieren.

Was auch bedeutet, da, wenn man eine zustzliche Bildbeschreibung in den Post-Text tun will (z. B., weil man noch eine lngere Bildbeschreibung braucht, oder weil ), man diese zustzliche Bildbeschreibung nicht auf einen Thread ausdehnen darf. Sie mu zwingend komplett in den Post passen, in dem auch das Bild ist.
Damit sind natrlich Langbeschreibungen auf Mastodon nicht machbar und je nach Lnge auch bei einigen anderen auf Microblogging ausgerichteten Serveranwendungen nicht.
* Beschreibungen des Bots sind oft nicht hinreichend oder irrefhrend. Also nicht nur kopieren, sondern auch anpassen

Das sowieso. Ich wei aus eigener Erfahrung, wie lckenhaft und fehlerhaft KI-Bildbeschreibungen oft sind.
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Last updated: 2026-06-11






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