Little programs or scripts or automations you've created ad-hoc to solve a particular single use case

I have lots of shortcuts i make on my phone and I have one i love that detects when bluetooth accidentally or purposefully disconnects from my speaker and reconnects it and fixes a playback glitch so its back to playing properly

Sort of relaxed, slow-paced, not a ton of plot.

Home Movies (cartoon)

Schitt's Creek

Corner Gas

Painting/Fishing with John

Father Ted

EDIT: tldr - I was having issues creating a VM using Virtual Machine Manager on Bazzite Linux. Several responders chimed in that it's likely because I'm using the flatpak version of VMM. I probably still could make it work on Bazzite somehow, perhaps w/ the help of distrobox, but instead I've fired up a VM on an old laptop running Linux Mint and everything is smooth sailing. Thanks to all who took some time to help me find a solution.

Original body:

Background: I'm looking to set up a virtual Debian server using Virtual Machine Manager, but I'm stuck on creating my first VM. I'm running Bazzite on my host machine if that makes any difference.

Steps to Reproduce the Issue:

1. Launch Virtual Machine Manager.
2. Click File > New Virtual Machine, which opens the "New VM - Step 1" window.
3. Select "Local install media" and click Forward, which brings me to "New VM - Step 2."
4. Click "Browse..." which opens the "Locate ISO media volume" window:
5. Click "Browse Local," which opens the file browser.
6. Choose ISO file (in my case, I'm using debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso) and click Select, which returns me to the "New VM - Step 2" window.
7. Because the OS is not detected automatically, I uncheck the "Automatically detect from the installation media / source" checkbox, start typing the word "debian" in the text box above it, and select Debian 12 from the pop-up selection menu.
8. Click Forward.

Actual behavior:

Input Error - Error setting installer parameters. Validating install media '/run/user/1000/doc/c0a3c3fc/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso' failed. Could not start storage pool: cannot open directory '/run/usr/1000/doc/c0a3c3fc': Permission denied.

Expected behavior: Create the VM and boot into the ISO that I selected in previous steps.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

Original question by @Wahots@pawb.social

I think art deco is one of my favorites. It still has a clean, modern look that ages surprisingly well, even a century later.

I see a lot of misinformation about bluesky here, so I want to address a lot of the talking points against atproto/bluesky.

This is partially inspired by accounts like mastodon migration and feditips being really annoying about bluesky.

How Bluesky Works

I see a lot of people misunderstanding how it works.
The network has three main parts:
1. A PDS -- This stands for Personal Data Server. These store information in records, like who you are following, your posts, who you are blocking and your images.
2. A relay -- These crawl PDSes and keep a copy of all the records on them. They give a "Firehose" of all the data on the network (that they crawled).
3. An AppView -- These index and work through the data from the firehose. All interactions are handled through these, meaning if someone follows me on bluesky, that app.bsky.graph.follow record will be crawled by the relay, and recieved by the AppView. bsky.app/ is an Appview. Appviews don't always have to use the relays, whtwnd.com/ connects to PDSes directly.

This is different to ActivityPub, where if I follow someone, my server sends that information directly to the other person's server.

Common misconceptions

An atproto relay is too expensive to run.

atproto.africa/ is a second full-network relay run by the blacksky team. We already have a second relay, and they're not even that expensive to run anymore, a lot of people run non-archival (meaning it doesn't backfill every post) relays for less than $40 a month.

There is no instances available except for bsky.social

bsky.social isn't actually an instance, its just the domain name assigned to users by default. This is explained here: app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/f…

Wafrn has (opt-in) bluesky support, they act as a PDS and AppView, so if bluesky disappears tomorrow they can switch to the atproto.africa relay. (There is DID:PLC which is a problem, but I'll get to that later.)

You can't defederate bsky.social, this proves atproto is centralised!

app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/f… also explains this, bsky.social is just the name assigned to users, each PDS has names like brittlegill.us-west.host.bsky.… (where my account is).

While you could ignore records from a specific PDS on the App layer, its pretty pointless, since atproto is portable/content addressed, meaning a user could seamlessly move to another PDS. (AP does support moving, but its pretty seamful.)

(While I was writing this someone posted a pretty good blogpost about this: blog.cyrneko.eu/there-is-no-bs…)

Bluesky can censor people in turkey, this proves they're centralised!

Those posts weren't removed, people on third party bluesky apps in turkey could still see them.
People in Turkey are automatically subscribed to a Moderation Service which hides those posts, as the government requires it.
If a person unsubscribes, or uses a third party app/server the posts are still there.

Bluesky isn't decentralised as someone was banned for pointing out the head of T&S liked jailbait porn.

That person came back on a different PDS. They literally are still on bluesky because they joined a different server.

Bluesky went down due to a DDoS, this proves they are centralised!

The DDoS only crashed the Bluesky PDSes. People self hosting were fine.

Wafrn

Wafrn is a federated tumblr alternative. It started off as a tumblr clone, the dev added AP support, and eventually, Atproto support.
Its a great example of how bluesky can be built on.
If bluesky disappeared tomorrow, Wafrn could switch relays to atproto.africa, and still interact with people on other PDSes.

AppViewLite

appviewlite is a cool project I forgot to mention in the original post. It lets you self host an extremely lightweight Appview.
You can crawl PDSes yourself, eliminating the need for a relay.

github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite

The main reason I made this post is because so many people are blindly anti-atproto, without fully understanding how it works and how it can be improved.

There is obviously problems with it, but it does a lot right. (There's a lot ActivityPub should do, like content addressing, DIDs and composable moderation).

I also think we could do with a better bridge. bridgy isn't really cutting it right now.

Note on did:plc, its the only centralised part of the network as of now, its essentially the underlying ID every account has. It is possible to use a did:web id instead, which is tied to a website name.

Wafrn post by alexia

Well to answer that we must first look at how bsky.social is just the auto-assigned domains for new users the underlying servers are all hosted at subdomains of .bsky.network, luckily mary-e

^{app.wafrn.net}

alexia's blog

2025-06-22 13:23:16

There is no bsky.social instance:

Why Feditips is either ignorant, stupid, or both.

I am going straaaight to name-calling I don't care anymore

---

Very recently I had the great displeasure of arguing with FediTips which you may know for creating all kinds of informational content about the Fediverse and surrounding topics on their website, fedi.tips/.

That's great and all, if not for all the blatant disinformation regarding...literally any microblogging or even social media platform at all that isn't the Fediverse. Most notably, Bluesky.

FediTips, or rather the person behind it, Fedithings loves spreading plain disinformation regarding Bluesky and completely disregarding proven facts about Bluesky. Facts that are obvious by just reading one or two pages of the spec overview or the Wikipedia page on ATProto.

---

On the Fediverse, as I'm sure most of you will know, we use a sort of “message-passing” approach to sharing our posts around the network; We pass our posts directly to those which should see it, and we know who should see it because “oh hey, that guy followed me that one time!”. This is great! Everyone gets their posts no matter where they are, from completely different communities! (unless you deny them, we'll get to that)

These places, communities are often referred to as “Instances”. It's basically just the fancy term for communities though. But it's important to keep that in the back of your head for the rest of this.

Another important detail to keep in mind is how, on the Fediverse, your identity is usually tied to the community you chose. Your handle will quite literally look something like @[url=https://blog.cyrneko.eu/@/sunny@wonderful.garden]sunny@wonderful.garden[/url] (I don't think that's a real instance...I hope lol) and people will see you as being from that community

What about Bluesky? Oh boy, Completely different model.

Are there even instances?

To get this right out of the way: No. At least not how you think.

Whereas in the context of the Fediverse and all our communities we just sort of pass posts around directly, like people sending eachother letters, Bluesky went a different route

There is basically three important components:

• Personal Data Servers – This is where the posts are
• Relays – This is what gets the post from A to B
• AppViews – Fancy speak for “the app the posts are in” / “The Bluesky app”

now, Personal Data Servers sort of explain themselves. It's where your posts are. If you or anyone else wants to go right to the source of those memes and shitposts, that's where they'll find them. Right open for everyone to see.

I'll refer to Personal Data Servers as just “PDS” from here on out.

Relays then take the posts from every single PDS they can possibly find and turns them into one long, always-updating list of all posts in the order they were posted.

And the AppView has the job of, well, letting you actually see those posts and interact with them; Make new posts, like stuff, share stuff. You know the drill

---

Notice how I didn't say what data is stored on a PDS? That's actually an important detail to know, so let's compare

So with a Fediverse server, because you're passing posts directly between eachother as if they're letters, you need to hold on to the posts yourself so that you can, well...read them.

This means that you have a copy of not just your posts, but also the posts of everyone you follow and interact with regularly. Anyone that appears on the feed, basically

On Bluesky though? You don't keep the posts of others, only your own are stored. Well, your own and anyone you happen to share space with on the PDS.

What is “defederation”?

Now we're back to the whole “denying” thing that I hinted at earlier.

Due to the fact that posts are exchanged directly between people, there might be like superevilcommunity.com that does nothing but send you like hatred or something else you plain don't like. And blocking those communities is known as “defederation”

Now, this is a stark difference to how Bluesky fundamentally works.

Because everyone gets their posts from the same place, the Relay, one cannot really block the server a post comes from; You're not getting it from there anyways.

But even if they did filter out posts of that kind, there is another issue that makes it near impossible to have this sort of moderation tool.

Account Portability and Moderation

Bluesky had one arguably good reason to not use the same tech that the Fediverse uses: Fedi's account moving ability is not robust enough.

on the Fediverse, you can move your account to a different server by setting up an “alias” or “redirect”. This will make it so that anyone which follows you will automatically follow the new account, and anyone that searches for your old account will be redirected to the new one.

But for Bluesky, this wasn't enough. Posts weren't moved across, and you had to take up an entirely new identity on that new community. So for their new tech they were developing, they have a new identifier that isn't tied to a server. This is called a DID:PLC identifier.

The important thing here, just so I don't lose myself in technical details, is that even when you were previously at one given server it is trivial to move to another one, keeping this identity. Unlike a fediverse identity which is tied to the community it was on.

And this is why “defederation” doesn't work on Bluesky.

The Point

The things I've discussed here are basically a breakdown of what I talked about with Feditips.

Repeatedly, feditips refused to acknowledge the fact that Bluesky works differently, that it isn't even “federation” per-se, and eventually they pulled the “think of the minorities which are scared for their lives” card.

social.growyourown.services/@F… (archive)

On a Trans person. They were talking to a trans person. That is one of the minorities which are scared for their life.

At that point, I stopped talking to them and advised them to shut the fuck up

Feditips does this on the regular. They frequently spread disinformation about Bluesky in an effort to feed their superiority complex for using a different social media site. They blame those which use Bluesky and see them as below themselves. You can see them posting about oh how much better the fediverse is on the regular.

Preaching to the choir, on the fediverse.
my {preferred term} in christ, you don't need to preach to fediverse users how good the fediverse is. Especially when those which ACTUALLY moderate and run communities and those which have been here for MUCH LONGER THAN YOU all agree that no, the Fediverse is not this perfect safe haven. Far from it.

If you come to me screaming about how “think of the minorities” how come I don't see you taking action on transmasc erasure on fedi, or how people of color are treated on fedi? Those are marginalized too, and you say you care so much about safety which is why you redirect everyone there. Why can't they find a home here? Could it be that fedi is...not perfect? That the structure we've built over many years makes it at best uncomfortable for those people to be here?

No, it couldn't be. The fediverse is perfect and we are all superior for using it. What's that, Blacksky is a thing and they are running completely independent infrastructure for the black community? No no, you must be hallucinating. What is that, they in large parts feel much safer there? Nope. Can't be. The Fediverse is perfect.

expanding on blacksky a bit...Just to expand on this a little bit, everything I've seen from the blacksky community is genuinely amazing. They are building their community and keeping eachother safe, and it is working much better on there than anything I've seen on fedi. Seriously, these people make their own software completely independent from Bluesky PBLLC, and I've heard some rumours they even want to have their own AppView.

Thank you for reading.

---

↓ it'd mean a lot if you supported my work ↓

liberapay.com/cyrnekoko-fi.com/cyrnekoAny little bit helps ❤

---

↓ it'd mean a lot if you supported my work ↓

liberapay.com/cyrnekoko-fi.com/cyrnekoAny little bit helps ❤

Wafrn post by alexia

hey I don't wanna say anything but you are talking to that minority. Shut your mouth and do not use our fear to drive your point you prick.

^{app.wafrn.net}

Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the members of the CDC’s esteemed vaccine advisory panel, medical organizations and experts are looking for alternatives.

In the wake of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to shake up a key federal vaccine advisory committee, outside medical organizations and independent experts are looking for alternate sources of unbiased information and even considering forming a group of their own.

A leading contender is a new group led by Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm is launching the Vaccine Integrity Project at CIDRAP as a potential alternative to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

“We’ve always just taken for granted that routine child immunizations and other vaccines would be readily available and that they would be supported by the public health system,” Osterholm said. “Now that’s in question.”

Outside groups organize to form unbiased, independent vaccine panel

In the wake of RFK Jr.'s decision to shake up ACIP, outside medical organizations and experts are looking for alternate sources of unbiased information and even considering forming a group of their own.

^{Erika Edwards (NBC News)}

Ich hab gestern mein Smartphone von Englisch auf deutsch umgestellt und ich Frage mich wie ihr das macht.

Hab jetzt schon zweimal (Reddit und newpipe) Videos mit komplett bescheuerter KI Übersetzung vorgelegt bekommen, weil das Original in Englisch war.

Auch viel content scheint übersetzt zu sein, da bin ich aber nicht sicher.

Also zur Frage: Handy auf Deutsch oder Englisch? Wie geht ihr mit Maschinenübersetzungen um? Bin ich der Einzige dem das auffällt oder der saß untergeschoben bekommt?

solved: not plasmas fault: the monitors own smartcontrast did that.

Hi, please kindly direct me to the right community to ask this:

Plasma 6 is my favorite DE and i use KDE neon.
The screen brightness adapts automatically to the windows i focus on, which is a good idea. But it does that the wrong way IMO. Dark windows are dimmed and bright windows are lit up. Why? Now i have both extremes switching back and forth all the time. Can we turn that the other way around or turn it off please?

I like that the screens hardware brightness setting is used now from the desktop. Great! But now i have no control over it anymore, since when i open a bright window, the brightness setting goes up too. I hate that at night.

Usually adjusting the brightness for me has one purpose:
- bright room: max display brightness (day)
- dark room: min display brightness (night)

...maybe something in between for transition.
All the other features are nice to have but please only work on them when this main feature is secured.

Taiwan is "of course" a country and China lacks both the historical evidence and legal proof to back up its sovereignty claims, President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday in a strong rebuke to Beijing and its stepped up political and military pressure.

China says democratically-governed Taiwan is "sacred" Chinese territory that has belonged to the country since ancient times, and that the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.

Lai and his government strongly reject that view, and have offered talks with China multiple times but have been rejected. China calls Lai a "separatist".

Giving the first of 10 speeches in a series called "uniting the country", Lai drew on Taiwan's history, including the millennia-long connection of its indigenous people to other Austronesians, like native Hawaiians, to show what he said was Taiwan's separate and distinct development from China.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-is-of-course-country-president-says-rebuke-china-2025-06-22/

About a year ago, I heard someone mention that Outer Wilds had a VR mod. I do have a VR setup and am an experienced VR player, so I really could experience this game for the first time in VR.

Is that reasonable or should I play it the first time with flat graphics?

(Index btw)

I picked up an old optiplex I'm trying to use as a NAS and do other things with. Initially I put Debian on there but felt like I was running into too many problems with things like power management, remot desktop, Docker, and mounting drives.

So I put Openmediavault on there and it's working now. But what are some of the best ways to get the most out of it?

Can I do most things through the browser interface, or should I remote into it to install things?

How easily can I mount it as a network drive to other computers? I still have a Windows PC so I'd like to access it from there too if possible.

And what's the best way to get other services running on it? I'm thinking of how it's possible to set up torrenting software and control it with a remote app from your phone. (For managing and sharing my distros, of course).

Happy to hear any feedback on what people do with OMV, or their setups for a NAS in general. This is more of a tinkering computer to get me more familiar with networks and Linux.

Around 10,000 Russian soldiers are fighting in Russia's Kursk region, about 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) of which is controlled by Ukraine, Ukraine's top military commander said.

"We control about 90 square kilometers of territory in the Hlushkov district of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, and these are our preemptive actions in response to a possible enemy attack," Oleksandr Syrskyi said without elaborating, in remarks released by his office for publication on Sunday.

The Ukrainian military said the activity in this area prevented Russia from sending a significant number of its forces to Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk, where some of the heaviest fighting has taken place in the more than three-year-old full-scale invasion.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-fighting-10000-russian-troops-kursk-region-ukrainian-commander-says-2025-06-22/

Linguists analyzed websites and blogs to determine where vulgarity was most common. They found Americans swear more on the internet than other English-speaking groups.

Almost two billion words — just under 600 of them swear words — were carefully assessed, and the United States then handed the dubious honor of being the most cursing country in the English-speaking world, at least online.

For the Australian duo behind the research, it came as a surprise that the inhabitants of their own country did not lead the way, such is the stereotype that Aussies are easy-going and relaxed, in actions and words.

But Australians were only the third-most likely citizens to drop a swear word in conversation online.

The reason that America — viewed by some to be a more conservative and polite culture among English-speakers — is the most profane community online may be the anonymity of the screen, according to the study's co-author Martin Schweinberger, a linguist at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Americans more vulgar online than Brits, Aussies — study

^{Matthew Ward Agius (Deutsche Welle)}

A jury has awarded a Georgia couple $2.25 million in their lawsuit accusing a pathologist of posting graphic videos of an autopsy of their decapitated baby.

A Fulton County jury returned the verdict against Dr. Jackson Gates on Wednesday. The couple, Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr., hired Gates to perform an autopsy on their son, Treveon Taylor Jr., who was decapitated during delivery in July 2023.

They have separately sued the doctor who delivered the baby and the hospital where the delivery occurred. That case is pending.

In a lawsuit filed in September 2023, the couple said Gates posted several videos of the autopsy on Instagram without their permission. Gates initially removed the videos after receiving a letter from the couple’s attorneys, but then reposted them, according to the couple’s attorneys.

https://apnews.com/article/decapitated-baby-autopsy-video-lawsuit-3062bc590b8152dc51c53ba35eb28073

So, recently I spun up cAdvisor to provide some metrics for the Grafana dashboard. I created both the docker-compose.yml and prometheus.yml thusly:

prometheus.yml:

::: spoiler spoiler

scrape_configs:
- job_name: cadvisor
  scrape_interval: 5s
  static_configs:
  - targets:
    - cadvisor:8080

docker-compose.yml

::: spoiler spoiler

services:
  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus:latest
    container_name: prometheus
    ports:
    - 9090:9090
    command:
    - --config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
    volumes:
    - ./prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml:ro
    depends_on:
    - cadvisor
  cadvisor:
    image: gcr.io/cadvisor/cadvisor:latest
    container_name: cadvisor
    ports:
    - 8080:8080
    volumes:
    - /:/rootfs:ro
    - /var/run:/var/run:rw
    - /sys:/sys:ro
    - /var/lib/docker/:/var/lib/docker:ro
    depends_on:
    - redis
  redis:
    image: redis:latest
    container_name: redis
    ports:

- 6379:6379

Placed them both in /tmp/cadvisor/ and ran docker compose up. All well and good, got some metrics to feed Grafana and all would seem jippity jippity.

Next day I notice Prometheus is off line. Hmm, check everything out. Logs complaining of a missing prometheus.yml. On a hunch I recreated the above prometheus.yml and placed it back in /tmp/cadvisor/, restart Prometheus, and it fires right up no runs, no drips, no errors. Before I uploaded the new prometheus.yml, I notice that there is a directory now named prometheus.yml in /tmp/cadvisor/, which is empty. Deleted it.

Next day, same scenario. Missing prometheus.yml, directory called prometheus.yml in /tmp/cadvisor/. I thought well, if it's getting deleted, change the permissions, and continued my daily affairs.

Today, same exact scenario. So, wtf, over? Run some commands:

stat /tmp/cadvisor/prometheus.yml
sudo lsof /tmp/cadvisor/prometheus.yml
grep "delete" /var/log/syslog

Any ideas? Suggestions? Ancient wizardry? Any mystical incantations or tomes to consult?

I'm looking for experiences and opinions on kubernetes CSI backends.

I want to create a highly available homelab that spans 3 locations where the pods have a preferred locations but can move if necessary.

I've looked at linstore or seaweedfs/garage with juicefs but I'm not sure how well the performance of those options is across the internet and how well they last in long term operation.
Is anyone else hosting k3s across the internet in their homelab?

Vance Boelter texted family that they needed to flee their house before ‘people with guns’ showed up, filings allege

The man charged in connection with the recent shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses was a doomsday “prepper” who instructed his family to “prepare for war” as he tried to evade capture, according to new court filings.

Vance Boelter, 57, faces multiple federal and state murder charges after allegedly shooting dead the Democratic Minnesota state house speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in the early hours of 14 June. Boelter is also accused of shooting and seriously wounding the Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, about 90 minutes earlier.

In a newly unsealed affidavit first reported by the local news station WCCO and seen by the Guardian, law enforcement pulled over Boelter’s wife and four children hours after the shootings near Lake Mille Lacs, about 75 miles (120km) north of the Twin Cities, apparently en route to Wisconsin.

Suspect in Minnesota killings accused of being ‘prepper’ preparing ‘for war’

^{Nina Lakhani (The Guardian)}

Prime minister says Iran’s nuclear programme is a ‘grave threat to international security’

Keir Starmer has backed the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and called on Iran to return to negotiations, saying the country’s nuclear programme was a “grave threat to international security”.

Donald Trump announced overnight that the US had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, joining Israel’s attack on the Tehran regime.

There was no UK involvement in the action. Starmer and the foreign secretary, David Lammy, had pushed for a diplomatic solution amid fears a wider action could further destabilise the region.

Starmer backs US strike on Iran and calls for Tehran to return to negotiations

UK prime minister says Iran’s nuclear programme is a ‘grave threat to international security’

^{Jessica Elgot (The Guardian)}