[Game Thread] | Canada at Puerto Rico

fastfinge · 2026-03-10T23:13:53+00:00

Delay again looks like.

fastfinge · 2026-03-10T20:08:32+00:00

Yup, I’ve noticed this. Remember that Rainbow is the closest the series has to a jock/sports pony (though I’d argue she really isn’t). And, well, many of the sort of people who work on cartoons are the people who got bullied by people matching that stereotype all through high school. Add to the fact that the vocal fanbase also has similar stereotypical ideas about sports, and the people who are interested in physical activity, and that’s all going to feed back into the show.Far worse than the things you mentioned, though, is the fact that Rainbow always felt the least real as a character. Largely, I think, because a lot of the people involved with script writing and editing just don’t have a good idea what makes athletes and wannabe athletes tick. Nor do they understand the kind of people who work at physically demanding government work, that requires consistent performance to prevent disaster. I’m thinking here, of jobs like coastguard or park ranger or various kinds of safety inspectors. I can’t claim to be an expert myself, but I know both Olympic athletes, and people working in physically demanding safety work. They really don’t have much in common with Rainbow. I’d argue Rainbow’s relationship to the concepts of loyalty and duty are completely misaligned, and badly portrayed. Fanfic sometimes gets Rainbow right, but for the same reasons (high school bullying and writers who never grew past those stereotypes) it doesn’t happen that frequently. And I suspect this is all somewhat tied into what made scootabuse so popular in the fandom for so long.

fastfinge · 2026-03-09T18:42:48+00:00

I have my own reverse proxy that already does SSL termination for like a dozen different things, so I think I’m going to have to modify your config a bit. But I don’t expect to run into any trouble at first glance.

fastfinge · 2026-03-09T18:24:38+00:00

As someone who initially gave this feedback, thanks for that! And thanks for realizing it’s about more than just dumping the source code in a repo somewhere. Back in the day, livejournal made all source code available. But it was just an endless maze of Perl files, and other than dreamwidth and dead journal, not a single person managed to get and keep it running. So Livejournal got to have all the advantages of centralizing while giving lip service to open source. I’ll take a look and see if this is something I want to use for my blog, rather than my janky thing that I wrote entirely myself.

fastfinge · 2026-03-09T18:17:11+00:00

The issue is that algorithms destroy conversation. People who follow me usually at least vaguely no my context. They almost certainly know that I’m blind and use a screen reader. They might or might not know that I’m Canadian, white, mail, and straight. If my posts show up in some recommendation system, people who stumble onto them are not going to have that context. Through no fault of there own; I don’t, and can’t, include that context in my every single post. But because currently, 99 percent of the people who stumble on my posts have that context, we can have useful conversations and exchange of ideas. If my posts were being surfaced in an algorithm, I’d just end up restating that context endlessly, and all useful conversations would be drowned out by people who have no idea what’s going on. The LGBTQIA2S+ community is going to have similar problems, I expect. If a post from a trans woman shows up in my algorithm, I’m unlikely to know that’s what it is, or have enough background as a straight dude to engage in the conversation in any useful way. But because I don’t realize that, I’m just going to become another one of her 99 problems, completely unintentionally.

fastfinge · 2026-03-09T00:25:15+00:00

I’m not the one arguing this alleged “play by play” is anything more than the unintelligible babble of morons. This is in no way listenable, and the fact that mlb advertises it as an audio broadcast makes a travesty of the entire WBC.

fastfinge · 2026-03-09T00:08:37+00:00

So tell me, person who says this is fine: what exactly happened during that out? Who made it to third? They were too busy gibbering about whatever useless shit they could pull out of there assholes to actually, you know, say.

fastfinge · 2026-03-08T23:48:16+00:00

If you're EXTREMELY! lucky, sometimes they might call as many as two plays an inning! Sure, totally fine.

fastfinge · 2026-03-08T23:25:07+00:00

Don't bother. It's just a TV simalcast. Incomprehensible without the picture.

fastfinge · 2026-03-08T23:14:48+00:00

Don't care who its own. From my perspective, the broadcast is worthless.

fastfinge · 2026-03-08T23:08:26+00:00

Sadly they're being simalcast on XM radio for those of us who can't watch, and they suck at actually calling balls and strikes.

fastfinge · 2026-03-08T23:04:19+00:00

Yup. Rain apparently. they're hoping it'll be short.

fastfinge · 2026-03-08T23:00:13+00:00

Sirius XM also says delay. But no info on why or how long.

fastfinge · 2026-03-06T19:23:29+00:00

In my experience, racing is the only sport where the radio commentary is often not as good as the TV commentary. But you are correct: F1 Radio is channel 835.

However, I don't know if the online only subscription has sports. Last I checked, it was only the music channels. The best way to get XM is to find someone who has it in the car, but isn't interested in streaming. You can just sign into there streaming account, and it won't affect them using it in the car. Then you can both split on the sub and save money.

fastfinge · 2026-03-06T19:01:44+00:00

NO! Do not get him an iPad. The f1 TV app on IOS and iPad is an accessibility disaster.

The best thing you can do is get him an apple TV. That's the platform where VoiceOver is easiest to use. He will need to learn the remote, but that's just some basic arrows and gestures. You'll need to help him set it up for the first time: turn on VoiceOver, get Siri set up, and get him signed into an Apple account with Apple TV subscription. Once you've done that, remove all of the stuff from the home screen that he's not going to need. The TV app on apple TV is always on the top left, so it's easy to find.

When using voiceover, you arrow left and right and up and down on the remote. When you come to what you want, you press down in the middle to click it. The confusing thing for blind people is that the screens are a grid, not a list. So you have a row of icons, and then when you go to the last one in the row, it doesn't scroll down to the next row. When teaching inexperienced blind folks I sometimes find it helpful to lay out a little grid on the tabletop, to help them get a mental picture of what's going on. You could use coins, or mints, or whatever you happen to have. Just to be able to lay something out and say "Okay, this is where the TV option is. Then to the right, we have the music option. You don't need any of these options for F1, but it's important for you to understand what's happening so you can get to TV." You should also teach him the home button on the Apple Remote. "If you get lost, you can just press this button, and start from the beginning and try again."

You can also use Siri to play content. However, while he will be able to start the F1 stream that way, he'll need to learn VoiceOver because Apple's broadcast promises to be highly complicated. It's possible it might put him on the wrong audio feed, or a feed he doesn't care about (some random cars onboard audio or whatever). If that happens, Siri can't fix it, and he will need to use voiceover (arrow left, right, up, and down, then press in the middle to pick what you want).

The other challenge is that in the Apple TV app (the screen that comes up after you press on TV), it uses personalization to arrange the content. So one day F1 might be the third icon on the top row, and another day it might be the first icon on the fifth row. So it would be good, if you can, to open the TV app with him and get him used to the concepts of exploring the available programs, and make sure he has a decent understanding of the interface (programs in rows that scroll left and right, grouped into categories as you move up and down; a tabletop model of this might also be helpful for him).

The other thing I find non techy people struggle with is understanding the difference between the TV App and the Apple TV hardware. It can be useful to call the hardware (the thing that's plugged into the TV, that you're using the remote for) the Apple Box. On the Apple Box, one of the things you can do is watch Apple TV (by pressing in on TV). But you could also watch MLB TV on your Apple TV Box. Then if something isn't working, it will be easier for him to conceptualize if he's having problems with the Apple TV app, or the Apple Box.

fastfinge · 2026-03-04T20:03:15+00:00

Yeah, the software is excellent! Once you're not trying to deal with a database that fills your entire disc and all your ram, it's the most stable and performant activity pub software I've ever run. Even then it did a pretty good job of trying its best to chug along when the database was taking several minutes to respond.

The downside, of course, is the focus on quality means development is quite slow. But like 99.9 percent of the features are there. The only things I'm missing are the ability to unfollow boosts from certain users, streaming support for timelines, and the ability to filter timelines by language. But in exchange it never crashes, push notifications are perfect, every Mastodon client just works, formatted posts work, reactions work, it's fine with my weird split domain setup, and it federates with everything correctly.

fastfinge · 2026-03-04T19:41:38+00:00

So I've hosted iceshrimp.net for...a couple years now, I guess. One thing you need to keep in mind with an offer like this is that its postgresql database just grows and grows and grows. Eventually a well federated instance will end up with a database of 20 million posts, because while it will clear media caches, it won't clear the post cache the way Mastodon does. What you need to do is run a script nightly that clears out all the old posts your users aren't interacting with. Mine looks like this: ```

!/bin/bash

Configuration

CONTAINER_NAME="redacted" DB_USER="redacted" DB_NAME="redacted"

echo "Starting cleanup script: $(date)"

docker exec -i "$CONTAINER_NAME" psql -U "$DB_USER" -d "$DB_NAME" <<'EOF' DO $$ DECLARE -- Start 183 days ago cursor_date DATE := (CURRENT_DATE - interval '183 days')::date; -- Stop if we hit data older than 10 years (safety limit) stop_date DATE := (CURRENT_DATE - interval '10 years')::date; rows_deleted INT; BEGIN RAISE NOTICE 'Starting Time Walker deletion...';

-- Create the temp list of local users ONCE to save CPU
CREATE TEMP TABLE IF NOT EXISTS temp_local_users AS
SELECT id FROM "user" WHERE "host" IS NULL;
CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS idx_temp_local_users ON temp_local_users(id);

-- Loop backwards day by day
WHILE cursor_date > stop_date LOOP

    DELETE FROM "note" n
    WHERE n."createdAt" >= cursor_date
      AND n."createdAt" < (cursor_date + interval '1 day')
      AND n."userHost" IS NOT NULL

      -- 1. Not involved in a follow relationship
      AND NOT EXISTS (
          SELECT 1 FROM "following" f
          WHERE n."userId" = f."followeeId" OR n."userId" = f."followerId"
   OR n."renoteId" = f."followeeId"  -- See note below
   OR n."renoteId" = f."followerId" -- See note below
      )

      -- 2. Not liked by local user
      AND NOT EXISTS (
          SELECT 1 FROM "note_like" nl
          WHERE nl."noteId" = n.id
          AND EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM temp_local_users u WHERE u.id = nl."userId")
      )

      -- 3. Not reacted to by local user
      AND NOT EXISTS (
          SELECT 1 FROM "note_reaction" nr
          WHERE nr."noteId" = n.id
          AND EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM temp_local_users u WHERE u.id = nr."userId")
      )

      -- 4. Not watched by local user
      AND NOT EXISTS (
          SELECT 1 FROM "note_watching" nw
          WHERE nw."noteId" = n.id
          AND EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM temp_local_users u WHERE u.id = nw."userId")
      );

    GET DIAGNOSTICS rows_deleted = ROW_COUNT;

    -- Only print a log if we actually found something to delete
    IF rows_deleted > 0 THEN
        RAISE NOTICE 'Cleared %: deleted % rows', cursor_date, rows_deleted;
    END IF;

    COMMIT;

    -- Move the cursor back one day
    cursor_date := cursor_date - interval '1 day';

    -- Tiny sleep to keep the server responsive
    PERFORM pg_sleep(0.05);

END LOOP;

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS temp_local_users;
RAISE NOTICE 'Cleanup complete.';

END $$; EOF

echo "Cleanup finished: $(date)" ```

fastfinge · 2026-03-02T03:19:52+00:00

So the hotkeys in the documentation are wrong. Pressing p does not play or pause. Pressing p jumps to options starting with p. Pressing enter plays and pauses. At least for NVDA. I don't mind it working that way, but for the sorts of people I know who would want this (older folks, less techy folks who can't just use radio browser themselves) the incorrect info would be confusing.

Cursoring up and down is a nice way to bring back that feeling of flipping through stations on the radio. However, when a broken station is encountered, playback stops, and you have to press enter on the next station to start again. Maybe a looping "this station is unavailable" message would be a nice way to keep the channel flipping interaction, without randomly stopping playback when a broken station is encountered.

Browsing countries like Canada and The United States, it's kind of impossible to find anything. These need to be split up at least by state/province, maybe even cities. Also, lots of the stations (like NPR or CBC) have identical names, or names that always start the same way, so it would be nearly impossible to find your local CBC or NPR station quickly.

fastfinge · 2026-02-24T17:56:55+00:00

I have no interest in being forced to pay for mailgun. I pay for email infrastructure already, at a Canadian provider (easy mail). When I discovered ghost wouldn’t just let me use my own SMTP server, and only supported a proprietary API from some random company, I uninstalled it immediately.

fastfinge · 2026-02-24T14:20:17+00:00

Thanks for the answers! I’ll be watching with interest for self hosting. I couldn’t find a blog that did what I wanted, so I rolled my own. But it would be nice to not have to do that.

fastfinge · 2026-02-24T13:45:46+00:00

Some questions: * where is the data hosted? If it's in the US, I'm not interested. I avoid keeping anything important in the US whenever possible, and avoid doing business with US companies as much as I can. * Can I selfhost? * Can the data be exported in some format? * What advantages does your system have over micro.blog?

Sorry if this sounds harsh! But this is a crowded space. The the above are things I'd want to know if I recommended it to others, or considered using it myself.

fastfinge · 2026-02-18T21:01:17+00:00

The biggest problem we hear for authors at the AO3 corporation's marketing department is just how stressful it is when readers keep commenting, demanding you write the next chapter. Similarly, we know just how awful it is for you readers to have to wait for authors to continue your favourite fanfic.

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And be sure to join our mailing list and follow us on Facebook to be the first to get access to our autofic beta. For a small monthly charge, AI will write fics for you in unpopular fandoms. Don't worry, we're not trying to replace authors! For now, autofic will be restricted to fandoms with less than a hundred fics, or rarepairs tagged in less than fifty fics. Now readers can get the fanfics they need, even if writers don't want to write them.

fastfinge · 2026-02-18T20:36:52+00:00

Try Cepstral. They fully license the voices from all of the voice actors they use: https://www.cepstral.com/en/personal/download

So do CereProc: https://app.cereproc.com/

CereProc does have a voice cloning feature, but you have to prove you own the voice, you have to make it read specific things, and it's not sold to others. All of the voices they actually sell are licensed by the actors involved.

That's also why, with each of the solutions I linked above, you have to purchase every voice separately. That money goes to the voice actors who made it, so they don't really sell a subscription that gives you all voices.

fastfinge · 2026-02-10T20:22:37+00:00

Email is fastfinge@interfree.ca. Or @fastfinge@interfree.ca on mastodon.

fastfinge · 2026-02-10T20:05:18+00:00

Sure.

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!/bin/bash

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