Over the last couple days, I have noticed a new breed of Mastodon spammer, one that compromises old and unused/abandoned accounts and then adds a spam URL in the profile and starts following users.

I have three examples so far, all of them on mastodon.social (I have reported the accounts to them already):

IronChitlin@mastodon.social
onionfriend@mastodon.social
Adam_@mastodon.social

Notice the join dates, 2017 or 2018 and also the URL format.

#mastoadmin

@cwebber this right here is the most cwebber post there could be

9 days till the shutdown of witches.town

needless to say, if you haven't exported your data from there and moved to another instance already, please do so

Even if you have never had a Facebook account directly or used any of their other owned service, some data about you is probably in Facebook's databases by virtue of the people you know who use Facebook and gave them their contact lists.

That is the real power of the network effect, you don't even have to directly give them your data, they can infer it via someone else.

This is the so-called "shadow profile".

@chosafine http://i.imgur.com/3QwYF.jpg

IPv6 means I can use Let's Encrypt certs in my home LAN with their standard validation method without resorting to port forwarding bullshit.

End-to-end connectivity is so nice. It is how the internet was meant to be before our collective lack of foresight gave us NAT.

Free Pro Tip (tm) from me:

If you are trying to advertise Mastodon to someone who is frustrated with Twitter, start with talking about Mastodon's strengths instead of Twitter's weaknesses.

In a similar vein, if you are introducing Mastodon to someone who doesn't really do micro-blogging but has heard of Twitter, emphasise Mastodon's strengths instead of Twitter's weaknesses.

This I find is a better way to convince people.

#introductions

Hi everyone! I'm Sadiq!

I like video games, music and computer networking (not in any particular order).

I have my own ASN:
https://bgp.he.net/AS393949

I do a podcast with my good friend @ccolocho :

https://twoshadesofbrown.com/

Also I run a small and friendly IRC community called EntropyNet:

https://entropynet.net/

Lastly but not least, I run the Mastodon instance Ten Forward:

https://tenforward.social/

I know there is still a lot to criticize about the Mastodon software and that's important to do but let's also take a moment to appreciate all the folks responsible for the rapid pace of improvement

LB: Cassini is still around

For those not aware, Cassini is doing it's grand finale, 13 of 22 ring crossings ATM

"On the final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back new and unique science to the very end."

15 September is the day of the final orbit

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/