A radio amateur in Gloucester UK
#Linux user (mostly #debian)
#Accessibility consultant at work
mastodon.radio #instanceAdmin
#HamsOverIP 200147
#HamshackHotline 24016
He/his/him/they/them/theirs
Trans rights are Human rights 
Proudly Making the Amateur Radio Inclusivity Pledge @amateurradioinclusivitypledge
Most toots auto delete.
Has someone asked you to "caption your image" or "add a text description" or "use alt text" and you're not sure what that is, or how?
This page is here to help!
https://m0yng.uk/Image-descriptions-on-the-Fediverse/
Covers most (all?) Android apps, web interfaces, and TUI/CLIs that I know about.
(I know that not everyone can describe things, and that's ok! This page is here to help people who want to but don't know how, or want some tips.)
Deep links should work, e.g. for @Tusky
A helpful guide on getting started with Mastodon.
https://kevq.uk/getting-started-with-mastodon/
@aral
Dunno if you want to be tagged every time I find one, but habub at mas.to is saying "
️Fundraiser Verified." but I don't find them on https://gaza-verified.org
Hi everyone,
I’ve just launched the Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal to get our remaining 8 families who are stuck in the danger zone in the North to relative safety in the South.
https://gaza-verified.org/emergency/
Based on conversations @joynewacc and I have had with them to ascertain what they need (transport, land, tents), we have set the campaign goal at $15,000.
To kick things off, I’ve made a personal donation of $1,000.
These families are living in terror under nightly bombings by Israel. Please, if you can, help them survive Israel’s ongoing genocide. And please share this as widely as you can.
Thank you!
PS. The donations are being collected by our not-for-profit, Small Technology Foundation and the entire sum, minus Stripe’s fees, will be transferred to the individual fundraisers of the families. We have suspended our own fundraising for Small Technology Foundation for the duration of the emergency appeal (https://small-tech.org/fund-us/).
PS. If you keep the campaign page open, you will see the progress meter update and donations coming in in real time.
"The Patriot Radio Club" emailed me offering "discounted" membership for the rest of the year.
Now, as much as I'd like to talk to their Chaplain about trans rights I'm not inclined to spend $24 a year for the privilege. Or the amazing discounted rate of $6 for the remaining 3.5 months of the year.
Any weirdness, refresh your browser.
DONE - going to do the v4.4.4 update 
Hello Mastodon!
We’re the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) - a global network of telescopes working together to study black holes and other extreme cosmic phenomena.
In 2019, we captured the first image of a supermassive black hole (M87*), followed in 2022 by Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
Follow @ehtelescope for scientific updates, behind-the-scenes looks at our worldwide collaboration, and the latest discoveries from the edge of space and time.
I don't want to post this because it feels like showing off, but also I want input and help.
It's my birthday this month, I went the barber this morning and when I paid I asked if I could pay for someone else to get a cut too.
Just a random person, someone who is trans or unemployed.
The barber was unsure, he doesn't ask people if they're unemployed!
I think maybe I go back with a handful of A5 or A6 notes he can pin somewhere visible, but I'm unsure what they should say or look like.
Can you tell when I:
a) split my gittea instance logs from my normal website logs
b) made robots.txt work on gittea
c) started blocking ai-crawlers in nginx (https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt)
If anyone wants ... https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues/2884
What's the most basic phone that can run #signal and access emails?
Anyone use #goAccess to review log files know how to make it treat all the various fediverse clients / software / servers differently to "normal" bots?
50% of traffic is "crawlers" but when you look it's ruby, and hometown, and Misskey etc.
Good morning everyone.
One million people are facing imminent death and destruction at the hands of Israel in Gaza.¹
Israel has issued evacuation orders for one million people. These are people who have been displaced over and over again in Israel’s ongoing genocide. They have nowhere left to go. To move South costs thousands of dollars to rent land, a tent, and sanitation due to war-time profiteering.² That’s if they can get someone outside of Palestine to host their fundraiser and if they can keep their social media accounts from being shut down by mainstream Big Tech platforms and after paying half the donation amount or more in commission while withdrawing the funds that are sent to them.
Things are desperate.
Mastodon and the fediverse are the last lifeline for people from Gaza. It’s their last chance of reaching us in the outside world so that we might help them survive the genocide and famine being wrought out by Israel.
@joynewacc and I are having video conversations with people from Gaza who have Mastodon accounts every day to verify them in hopes that this will help them raise funds to live.
You can find the verified accounts on Gaza Verified:
I hope you will follow them on the fediverse, perhaps send them a few words of love and solidarity so they know they’re not alone but that there are some of us that see, hear, love and support them.
And, if you can, please support their fundraisers, boost their posts, and share their accounts.
Thank you in advance for making our friends from Gaza who are facing unspeakable horrors welcome on the fediverse and for showing that humanity is not entirely dead in the rest of the world.
PS. Please note that many Palestinians use automated translation tools, including AI-based ones so you might notice issues with translation or even transliteration (so, for example, a name is written Eman in one place but Iman in another). Also, not everyone is social media or technically savvy. These are everyday people trying to survive a genocide and a famine so please understand that there might be issues with the accounts. That doesn’t mean that they’re not genuine. If you have any concerns, you can talk to me. (Furthermore, there are concerted efforts by some groups to spread FUD about Palestinian accounts with the goal of getting them all shut down. If you notice any such behaviour, please also alert me. To server admins: closing their accounts is tantamount to handing out a death sentence. We’re here to help if you need it.)
PPS. If you know of any people from Gaza with Mastodon accounts who are not on Gaza Verified, please tell them about it. You can give them a link to https://gaza-verified.org/guide-arabic/ with further information. The guide also includes a list of Mastodon servers whose admins have publicly stated that their servers are safe spaces for Palestinians to open accounts so please feel free to share that with people from Gaza who are having their accounts closed on Bluesky and elsewhere. You can find the English version of the guide here: https://gaza-verified.org/guide/
¹ https://msf.org.uk/article/gaza-city-offensive-death-sentence-one-million-palestinians
² https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/9/3/the-crippling-financial-costs-of-forced-displacement-in-gaza
CTFF is the Portuguese branch of the WWFF – World Wide Flora & Fauna Program – an amateur radio program dedicated to promotion of nature and natural values through radio operations. More information about the program can be found at https://wwff.pt
or https://wwff.co
Seen as the guppe domain got ... reallocated to someone else - I've added a block so mastodon.radio won't send traffic that way.
Possibly not needed but who knows what the new owner is doing with the data.
Rant about the world
Announcing Gaza Verified
I’ve been having video conversations over Signal with people from Gaza who have Mastodon accounts on the fediverse in an effort to vouch for their authenticity.
This week, I whipped up a site to formalise this and to enable them to add a verified link to their Mastodon bios. Hopefully this will cut down on the amount of time they need to spend proving that their accounts genuinely belong to a person suffering through genocide and famine in Gaza and help them with their fundraisers.
The first four accounts belong to:
• @Aseelsehwel
• @NouranKhaledGh
• @joynewacc
• @mohshbair
If you want to get on the site, please contact me. See the guide for more information: https://gaza-verified.org/guide
Please share and donate to their fundraisers if you can.
Thank you!
CC @palestine
Sorry, should have posted an announcement before taking the server down for longer than planned.
However!
christopher@mastodon:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
13.0
@linkstack wonder if you can save me some searching - can I host an stack and let people "log in" using their mastodon account?
It looks like we're doing "cookies" again, and the lousy experience that some site operators inflict on their visitors.
Here's a very useful GUI browser add-on, which I use on both desktop and mobile devices (in addition to uBlock Origin, obviously!):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/consent-o-matic/
It doesn't solve the policy nonsense, or the lack of enforcement, but it does make browsing more palatable.
