Category: Uncategorized

  • The most annoying Friends bug

    The most annoying Friends bug

    The most annoying bug of Friends plugin (which generally speaking a great effort with quite promising features!) is the problem of non-standard display names threated as username. If some account, e. g. from Mastodon have display name have emojis as this one

    DCoder 🇱🇹❤🇺🇦

    Or wild combination of non-alphanumerics as this one:

    D:\side\>:idle:

    Or something else beyond latin alphanumerics, let it be Cyrillic letters in nickname, like this one:

    РосКомСвобода

    Even such innocent name like rogue_corq will result to the results describe below.

    The result is awful – default behavior is to create virtual users with empty or non-usable usernames with e. g. -character. This makes such username and account unusable for links at Friends List left pane and they seems to break the Friends list (list of your friends page. The “break the page” means literal breaking of the page code at backend (an error email sent to me) and visual breaking of page markup with some broken div tag an and error message.

    And as result you can’t rename or remove them to re-add them again later with better username. Single thing I can think about is to edit the database directly to fix such accounts.

    Normally this should be a plugin issue report at GitHub for @alex-kirk , but I hope someone have a recipe, or plugin like “manual DB editing at admin UI” I could use right now?

    I hope that eventually I will get used to this and will be able to fix broken data at my instance DB… And what is sad that I don’t have any PHP skills to apply a fix and write some test for it.

  • Reblog of Magical Cat:

    Well this is how I can use the not so elegant flow with Federated Reply widget but it somehow does not apply to the content from the Feed when I click “Reblog” from the Friends feed… May be it should be done automatically? (adding of Federated Reply block with URL pointing to the post I am replying to)?

    @alex-kirk what do you think?

    Reblog via Magical Cat

    May be it is answered already few times but when using WordPress with ActivityPub, Friends, and few related extras, I don’t get how exactly I would write post as private mention/direct message? How to send a direct message to someone with such setup?
    Yes I know I better use some dedicated software like Briar or SimpleX Chat for stuff like this, but what I want to sign up this setup to add someone behind bridgy fed? As I remember, this done by sending a direct mention to Bridgy Fed with a handle?

  • Reblog of Hanse Mina:

    Reblog via Hanse Mina

    Russia’s key developer of Runet internet-blocking infrastructure, Rostelecom-controlled RDP Enterprise, plans to buy US- and Israel-made equipment for DPI systems used to filter traffic and enforce online censorship.

    ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/

    This is one of the most disgusting things in money-driven and profit-centric society. Just because you making and selling stuff suitable for 1-2 small legitimate niche, you will bump into the ceiling of niche limits as anyone who could buy your stuff already did so.

    And what this means for shareholders and corporations? When it means you need sell Windows on the Moon, this is laughable.

    But when it means you need to sell your crap to dictatorship, and you know it will bring suffering to people, there is NO any justifications to doing so. And no, you can’t pretend that you don’t know that your DPI-stuff will be used for enforcing the fucking censorship and to suppress even chance of emergence of any protest there.

  • Reblog of Nadiia Omelchuk🇺🇦:

    Reblog via Nadiia Omelchuk🇺🇦

    RE: mastodon.social/@Ukrainian_Art

    Friends, if you see this, please share and like. It costs nothing, but it helps my small business in Ukraine survive in these difficult times!💙💛🫂

    Quoting that original post below

    👋Hello everyone, I am a jewelry artist from Ukraine. In these dark times, my art is the only thing that keeps me moving forward. Currently, I have zero orders, and it’s getting harder to survive.
    ​Please support my small business:
    🔄 Share to help me find a customer.
    ❤️ Order a piece of Ukrainian resilience.
    ​Every order is a symbol of hope.
    🌍️ I ship worldwide!
    ​You can order in DM with payment via PayPal: Omelchuknadiia2021@gmail.com

    More of my work here:

    https://www.instagram.com/ukrainian_jewelry.art?igsh=MWNuYjc4YzFhbWcxZQ==

  • Today Friends plugin and feed works

    Today Friends plugin and feed works

    It sounds like it fixed itself.

    It basically did not required any action from me.

    I just slept and today it works.

  • Rant or conclusion?

    It seems that at same point of time when I decided that I want all these:
    ⭐ custom domain in fediverse name.
    ⭐Ability to read posts by those I follow from my instance right there
    ⭐writing longer posts with formatting
    At that moment wanted too much from IT of 2026.

    Now after spending so much of time on these settings, on getting any other softwares like Ghost at first and now with wordpress and plugins working together, I feel like I have to abandon the mere idea of self-hosting anything for sake of saving last bits of my sanity.

    The “last straw” is issue that my Friends feed is not updates properly with posts from these 30+ (yes, not 300+ compared to my Mastodon account). So I am not sure how to get this working.

    Either I will have to get rid of that idea, or use this setup in some limited way like basket for longer thoughts that does not fit into mastodon limit of length and formatting.

  • I added only few of you

    Well, I added only part of people from all these who I followed at the Mastodon account.

    or at least I thought I followed them.

    Instead of something I expected, I have to deal with another “IT DOES NOT WORK!!1” stuff.

    Why it should be so complicated?!

  • So, It says anything fixed

    So, It says anything fixed

    Sounds like I more or less did it?

    That “Site health” screen does not show any problems.

    But I can’t believe it is _that_ simple. Somewhere there is a catch, as I suspect there is some problem with fetching posts from subscriptions.

    It is very strange feeling after spending so many effort on setting up own blog with ActivityPub and all these whistles.

  • Reblog of Orleana Слава Україні!:

    Reblog via Orleana Слава Україні!

    В Кутаиси мужчина обстрелял краевое отделение полиции apsny.ge/2026/mil/1769691070.p

  • Reblog of Ukrainska Pravda:

    Reblog via Ukrainska Pravda

    Emergency workers lead passengers to safety as Kyiv metro trains stop between stations during blackout – photos, video

    Kyiv's emergency services have led almost 500 people to safety after metro services were halted by a blackout.

    pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/01