I recently made a major update to my Improved Channel Select Menu userscript, which adds your subscribed magazines and liked collections to the channel select button in the header....
I check in here quite often, but for now, I'm just focusing on clearing spam and keeping the instance alive. In January, I was working on the AP module, and there has been significant progress in the work, which hasn't been publicly published yet. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year, I developed a skin condition that...
Thanks a ton for the update Ernest! It's great to hear from you, and I hope your health improves soon.
That being said, I do have a few things I'd like to suggest.
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In February, I spent my time visiting doctors and undergoing treatment with medications, which often had very unpleasant side effects. Therefore, I decided to hold off on any major updates to avoid causing even more chaos.
If I'm interpreting this correctly (i.e., that you chose not to give any updates as to prevent people freaking out), I don't think this was the best move. I understand where you were coming from, but (if you were able) some sort of small status update would've been preferable to a month-long silence (especially since you'd previously said that you'd be unavailable for only 2–4 days). A simple "Hey, I'm currently not doing well. I'll get back to things as soon as I'm feeling better," would've at least let us know that you were alive and that the project hadn't been abandoned.
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Just because it's not visible that something is happening doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything during this time. In fact, two really significant things have been successful, which I've been working on for a long time and which I intended to announce soon once I recover.
I don't think this whole "holding off for a big announcement" thing is a great approach, at least not now. There are currently several issues that we're waiting to see fixed, and we have no idea which ones (if any) are being worked on. If you must wait for a big reveal though, at least telling us, "I'm still working on stuff" would be better than nothing.
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And finally, I really suggest getting some more admins for the instance. You're absolutely correct to prioritize your health over Kbin; nevertheless, it's far from ideal for your absence to mean that spam piles up, moderation requests lie unanswered, and accounts can't be deleted. We'd all appreciate it if you could have at least one extra person on deck for whenever you're ill or in need of a break.
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Thanks again for all you do for Kbin, and I hope things get better!
I'm not really a fan of nuggets in general. I've always been much more of a tendies human. By and large, I find the texture of processed chicken to be extremely revolting. Even as a kid, I thought they were vile and Dino nuggets always seemed to be particularly low-quality....
100% with you on tenders being better than nuggets. In general, nuggets have always been kinda eh (sometimes solid, sometimes awful), and dino nuggets are the worst of their kind.
Interesting. I might be somewhat of the opposite — I think barbecue's great, but I'm not a fan of barbecue potato chips. I'll maybe eat some if there's nothing else around and I'm hungry, but I've just never liked them.
But Eigel isn’t alone in his condemnation of the bill. Another Republican, Missouri State Senator Sandy Crawford, claimed the incest and rape provision shouldn’t pass because “God is perfect.”
“God does not make mistakes. And for some reason he allows that to happen, bad things happen,” Crawford said. “I’m not gonna be able to support the amendments because I am very pro-life.”
You can't help but appreciate the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance you gotta have to say, "God is perfect," and "…for some reason He allows … bad things [to] happen." How delusional can you be to say that raped children giving birth is part of some perfect, divine plan?
Researchers have created the first functional 3D-printed brain tissue that can develop and form connections in the same way as real human brain tissue.
kbin.social is being overrun with spammers. Can we disable registrations on this instance so they can't keep creating new accounts? Every day I log on, I have to spend the first 20-30 minutes, reporting and blocking a bunch of new accounts....
This might be a good idea, at least until Ernest gets back. To my knowledge, he's the only instance admin, so as long as he's inactive, the spammers won't get dealt with (especially on magazines he moderates, like /m/tech).
Ideally, there could be another admin or two to deal with this stuff when he's not available, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
A serial comma (or Oxford comma) is an optional comma used before the last item in a list. For example, "bread, butter, and tax evasion" uses a serial comma, whereas "bread, butter and tax evasion" does not....
I think the point is more that without the serial comma, the last two items in the list aren't separated line others, which (imo) feels like omitting the last bullet point in a list.
…Who exactly is asking for this? AI chatbots are cool and all, but I have no idea why you'd want them in your messages app. What would you even need that for?
This has been an issue since the beginning of Kbin tmk, but when you make a post, it won't appear under sort by hot unless it has an upvote. This means that if someone forgets to upvote their own post, it just won't appear on the default sort. There are plenty of posts I've missed because of this....
Given that we're so small at the moment, why should a post need an upvote to be at all visible on the default sort? It can the only post of the past two weeks, but if there's no upvote, it doesn't get seen. It's very impractical.
And even if we go with this logic, why should the criterion for a post being seen be whether OP remembers to upvote their own post? It doesn't make sense. If you think that posts should only be seen if someone opts to go through new and give it an upvote (because otherwise it's not a "hot" post), OP shouldn't be able to do that.
Right now, we have a system where a major factor in post visibility is, "Did OP remember to click the upvote button?" It's just not beneficial.
Yeah, having posts automatically upvoted by OP would be great. I think that Lemmy automatically starts with an upvote count of 1 regardless of OP's vote, so I think Kbin should do the same. I get that Hot is meant to factor in activity and time, but it just feels super off for the only post in the past month to not appear. Surely a post that was made an hour ago is hotter than a post was made weeks back.
Not everything wants to be an everything app. While everything in the fediverse uses ActivityPub, that doesn't mean everything has to aim to be interoperable. I wrote a lengthy rant about this here, but essentially, it's important to have things with a more specific, restricted purpose if we want the fediverse to be accessible. If someone just wants a thread aggreegator (i.e., just Reddit's style of media), they shouldn't be forced to grapple with microblogging features more fit for a Twitter-like. There are some platforms that aim to combine different media types—Kbin/Mbin has both thread aggregation and microblogging, and I've heard that Friendica tries to work well with everything. Even so, if someone wants federated Reddit, they should be able to have federated Reddit, and Lemmy aims to provide that. The same way that Pixelfed (an image-sharing platform like Instagram) doesn't need to incorporate Reddit-style threads or Twitter-style microblogs, Lemmy doesn't have to do it all.
Federation is still in the works. Something to keep in mind is that most of these platforms are early in development and still working out a lot of bugs. Kbin (the platform I use) is an obvious example due to its currently incredibly spotty microblog federation (tho I've heard that Mbin has implemented fixes to fare better in this regard). We have to be patient while all the kinks are worked out. As much as we all wish it didn't, software development takes time—a lot of it.
Admins can sometimes be a bit trigger-happy with defederation. I don't think the fediverse has quite grasped that defederation is essentially the nuclear bomb of instance moderation tools, cutting off interaction with all users of an instance. While there are times where this is justified (even preemptively, such with Threads imo), there are times where the nuke has been threatened over a quarrel between admins or disagreements about other defederations. Hopefully, this will cool down as the fediverse matures, but we'll have to see how that pans out (especially with Threads federation growing ever nearer).
Oof, that's never fun. When I'm typing a long comment, I always spam copy it so that I can paste it back if I end up losing it. On PC, you can even use Windows+V to pull up a clipboard history, which has come in handy more than once.
Anywho, glad my reply was helpful! There are a lot of ways to interact with the content on the fediverse, and it seems like you're well on your way to finding one that works best for you. Hope you enjoy it here!
Continuing with the trend of vexillological organizations having their own flags, the Flag Society of Australia has one. While the flag within the flag looks really cool and has a nice color palette, I think the flag as a whole looks a bit odd. The Southern Cross looks weird since its stars are crowded closer together but not shrunken themselves, and the arrangement of everything just doesn't work imo.
I've been using kbin since the Reddit exodus and I still don't really know the path to finding my way into a specific community/magazine I've subscribed to. I usually search for the name using the search function, then hope I find a thread from there in the results where I can just click directly into it. Surely there must be a...
You can go to "Settings" or "Profile" and you'll find a subscriptions tab.
Alternatively, you can install a userscript that adds a faster way of accessing them. Here's one I recently made and one made by raltsm4k.
One of the more interesting threadverse instances is beehaw.org, which holds it's members to higher standards than most places. It wants people to be nice to each other. Imagine that!...
Second, I made my first userscript: Improved Channel Select Menu! This is my first time making something with #JavaScript—a good bit of the code is based of raltsm4k's Floating Subs List—but I'm really happy with it! Earlier today, I released version 0.2.0 which adds a settings button and some new features. If you have any feedback, please share here.
This past weekend, I tried my hand at JavaScript. I ended up making a helpful userscript for Kbin, and I'm working on adding some features like settings.
Since Geometry Dash 2.2 released, I've been playing around with the game's level editor. Currently working on my first level, and I'm pretty happy with how it's going so far.
Sweet. I've found that trying to make solutions to problems is always a great way to learn more about a programming language or to introduce yourself to a new one. I imagine you'll definitely learn a lot from this (alongside the more important achievement of making something you can use to maintain your health).
Sounds fun. I've messed around with Godot a bit myself, though I unfortunately don't have the work ethic to make a full game out of it. Great to see more people using the FOSS option!
The first request would definitely be a nice setting to have.
As for the second one, I think microblog posts are pretty easy to distinguish from threads already, as everything's organized completely differently. There's no title, the avatar is in a different spot with a different shape, the upvote button is in a different spot, there's no downvote button, etc. I think changing the color would just be visually jarring more than anything.
One of my most wanted features as of late has been for the channel select menu to have my subscribed magazines and liked collections. Right now, it just contains some general feeds, but I thought it'd be super useful to also have your mags and collections there for easy access! However, given that Kbin development priorities are...
One of my most wanted features as of late has been for the channel select menu to have my subscribed magazines and liked collections. Right now, it just contains some general feeds, but I thought it'd be super useful to also have your mags and collections there for easy access! However, given that Kbin development priorities are...
As of right now, you can follow either Lemmy accounts directly or follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon relatively easily if you know what you are searching for....
A super helpful feature that PieFed (a new fediverse thread aggregator like Lemmy & Kbin) has is an "Add Remote" button on its communities page. This button allows you to get a community on another instance to appear on your PieFed instance (and thus get the PieFed instance to start getting posts from that community)....
i get all kinds of new communities by just clicking into the remote community, and then clicking subscribe
Maybe you misunderstand what I mean. Right now, if I were to create a new community on lemmy.world called /c/thatonekirbymainisawesome, it wouldn't show up if I searched for it here on the kbin.social magazines page. That's because kbin.social currently doesn't know that this community exists and thus isn't fetching anything from it. The same goes for any other two instances. If you want a non-hypothetical example, go to sh.itjust.works and search "geometrydash". You won't find /m/geometrydash (or at least I didn't at the time of making this comment). If you go to https://sh.itjust.works/c/geometrydash@kbin.social, you just get an error, because sh.itjust.works doesn't know about geometrydash@kbin.social yet.
To fix this, someone needs to essentially tell an instance, "Hey, this community over here exists, and you should start fetching stuff from it." On Kbin, this is done by putting the community's address in the general search bar. So if I were to search "thatonekirbymainisawesome@lemmy.world" on kbin.social's, that community would finally appear, and I'd be able to subscribe from it and see any posts made after that point.
What I'm suggesting is that instead of having to type the full community address in the normal search bar (which can be unintuitive), there should be a dedicated interface for adding remote communities (i.e., letting your instance know that communities on other instances exist). PieFed does this with its "Add Remote" interface, and I think it'd be nice for Kbin (and Lemmy as well) to have something similar.
True, and the same happens here on kbin.social. However, in the case where there isn't a link to automatically do the search for you, I still think it'd be helpful to have something more intuitive than the community only appearing when the exact address is put in the general search bar.
EDIT: To give an example where this would be useful, what if you're someone on a newer Kbin instance and want to add an existing community? You'll have to know the method of doing it, and if you don't, you're out of luck. Having a dedicated button and interface for this would make it much more intuitive. When I saw PieFed's "Add Remote" button, I immediately got what it did, whereas I still have no clue how to make Kbin communities visible on most Lemmy instances.
Thinking of leaving Lemmy for kbin or mbin to have Mastodon integration. Mastodon is my favorite place in the fediverse and it looks like kbin/mbin will allow me to interact with EVERYTHING under one account rather than have a Lemmy and Mastodon account.
The image icon in the bottom left corner of image posts can be clicked, showing the image at a larger size (i.e., what you'd get if you were to enable "Auto Media Preview" in the sidebar). There are a couple of userstyles that make this more button-like, such as kleanbin and (my own userstyle) idkbin.
@ernest
I've noticed this week that I'm currently seeing no visual indication that the boost button is active. No underline, color, or anything.
It seems that a now-broken userstyle I'm using expects there to be an "active" class applied to the element, but it isn't anymore. Is that intentional?
Figured I should point this out to you in case you don't know already.
@Pamasich@ernest Can confirm that this is an issue. I brought attention to it a short while back, and there are also some bugs with the visuals for vote buttons not consistently working as they should.
Improved Channel Select Menu 0.3.0 — Turbo mode support, kbin.earth compatibility, and an Mbin version! ( kbin.social )
I recently made a major update to my Improved Channel Select Menu userscript, which adds your subscribed magazines and liked collections to the channel select button in the header....
RE: Is Ernest still here? ( kbin.social )
I check in here quite often, but for now, I'm just focusing on clearing spam and keeping the instance alive. In January, I was working on the AP module, and there has been significant progress in the work, which hasn't been publicly published yet. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year, I developed a skin condition that...
Do any of you eat and actually enjoy dino nuggets? ( kbin.social )
I'm not really a fan of nuggets in general. I've always been much more of a tendies human. By and large, I find the texture of processed chicken to be extremely revolting. Even as a kid, I thought they were vile and Dino nuggets always seemed to be particularly low-quality....
What food or drink do you dislike that a lot of people like? ( kbin.social )
What the title says. Feel free to get into fierce food debates in the comments....
MAGA Candidate Says He’s Worried About Babies Who Might Get an Abortion ( newrepublic.com )
Bill Eigel, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Missouri, may not realize, but this is physically impossible....
So… what's going on? ( kbin.social )
Since the beginning of the year, there's been a bit of a pattern over on @kbinDevlog:...
3D-Printed Neural Tissue Grows And Functions Like a Human Brain ( www.sciencealert.com )
Researchers have created the first functional 3D-printed brain tissue that can develop and form connections in the same way as real human brain tissue.
Can registrations on kbin.social be disabled to stop spammers ( kbin.social )
kbin.social is being overrun with spammers. Can we disable registrations on this instance so they can't keep creating new accounts? Every day I log on, I have to spend the first 20-30 minutes, reporting and blocking a bunch of new accounts....
Do you use a serial (Oxford) comma? ( kbin.social )
A serial comma (or Oxford comma) is an optional comma used before the last item in a list. For example, "bread, butter, and tax evasion" uses a serial comma, whereas "bread, butter and tax evasion" does not....
What are you reading right now? ( kbin.social )
What the title says. What books are you reading? Or if not books, what are some interesting articles you've read lately?...
Google Update Reveals AI Will Read All Your Private Messages ( www.forbes.com )
New warning as AI suddenly targets billions of private messages on smartphones…
Issue with sort by hot ( kbin.social )
This has been an issue since the beginning of Kbin tmk, but when you make a post, it won't appear under sort by hot unless it has an upvote. This means that if someone forgets to upvote their own post, it just won't appear on the default sort. There are plenty of posts I've missed because of this....
Prove it wrong: the fediverse is not as connected as we're told, and it's splintering even more now.
This is what makes the Fediverse so frustrating, been using: #Kbin #FireFish #Mastodon #Friendica #IceShrimp #Lemmy....
Flag of the Flag Society of Australia ( media.kbin.social )
Minecraft Movie to Allow Viewers to Vote for One of Three Arbitrary Endings ( hard-drive.net )
I thought this recent Hard Drive article was pretty funny, so I figured I'd post it here.
What's the quickest way to find a magazine/community you've subscribed to? ( kbin.social )
I've been using kbin since the Reddit exodus and I still don't really know the path to finding my way into a specific community/magazine I've subscribed to. I usually search for the name using the search function, then hope I find a thread from there in the results where I can just click directly into it. Surely there must be a...
STOP DOING CASTLING ( media.kbin.social )
STOP DOING CASTLING ( media.kbin.social )
The first sentence of the Bee Movie in Hip'alŭk' ( kbin.social )
English...
PieFed support for Beehaw
One of the more interesting threadverse instances is beehaw.org, which holds it's members to higher standards than most places. It wants people to be nice to each other. Imagine that!...
What's something cool that you've started doing lately? ( kbin.social )
Requirements:...
xkcd #2878: Supernova ( imgs.xkcd.com )
Alt text:...
Two requests for microblog incorporation into the main feed. ( kbin.social )
First off, I absolutely love that microblogs are a part of my main feed now....
Improved Channel Select Menu 0.2.0 — Makes your subscribed magazines and liked channels more accessible ( greasyfork.org )
One of my most wanted features as of late has been for the channel select menu to have my subscribed magazines and liked collections. Right now, it just contains some general feeds, but I thought it'd be super useful to also have your mags and collections there for easy access! However, given that Kbin development priorities are...
Improved Channel Select Menu 0.2.0 — Makes your subscribed magazines and liked channels more accessible ( greasyfork.org )
One of my most wanted features as of late has been for the channel select menu to have my subscribed magazines and liked collections. Right now, it just contains some general feeds, but I thought it'd be super useful to also have your mags and collections there for easy access! However, given that Kbin development priorities are...
Lemmy interoperability with Mastodon
As of right now, you can follow either Lemmy accounts directly or follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon relatively easily if you know what you are searching for....
Could we get something like PieFed's "Add Remote" button? ( kbin.social )
A super helpful feature that PieFed (a new fediverse thread aggregator like Lemmy & Kbin) has is an "Add Remote" button on its communities page. This button allows you to get a community on another instance to appear on your PieFed instance (and thus get the PieFed instance to start getting posts from that community)....
Kbin or Mbin? Which do you prefer?
Thinking of leaving Lemmy for kbin or mbin to have Mastodon integration. Mastodon is my favorite place in the fediverse and it looks like kbin/mbin will allow me to interact with EVERYTHING under one account rather than have a Lemmy and Mastodon account.