Mat Bowles

Whatever thoughts crossed my mind that weren't worth a whole post.

• 22:56 trying to get to livejournal. Can anyone get to either www.livejournal.com/ or matgb.livejournal.com/ #

Yeah, alright, if you can read this then you know LJ is back up again, it wasn't when I tweeted, and besides, I said it three minutes before status updated. Anyway, change of emphasis. My icon is borked, can oyu let me know what you can see as the avatar for this post? It's supposed to be Fineas with the word 'Life' at the bottom, not some ugly bloke. Support say they've fixed it but...

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Microblogging using LoudTwitter and Twitter. matgb_twitter is there if you're mad enough.

OK, a fairly long post on the most recent news and another nail in LJ's coffin.  Those of you just interested in the future rather than the LJ trainwreck may want to skip to the second half.

( A big strength of Livejournal )( Livejournal may have the most insane abuse policy of any blogging platform )

This affects ALL of us

( Standard blogging techniques breach LJs TOS—even quiz memes could get you in trouble )
( A caveat, but either way it's a big problem for LJ )

So...
( My plans for 'jumping ship' (redux) )
So, some clarifications.
( Livejournal has two principle Unique Selling Points (USPs) )
( What I'm looking at for journalling/blogging )
( What I'm looking at for the Friends Page )
( As for the network?  )
Maybe, if we get this right, we can have it so you choose where to put your content. You choose how to aggregate the content of others. You do it quickly, and easily. You choose whter to trust as a primary platform a company like LJ, a friend running a node (*waves hand*), a new start up, or you get your own server.

But they can all interlink, all interoperate. It'd be like LJ, with the privacy you want, but encompassing the whole damn web.

I think that'd be cool. Will it work? Dunno. But the prognosis is good.

Let's reclaim the Web

I'll, um, get back to avoiding work on my bit, right?

Posting mainly to clear the text file. Due to an ongoing DDOS attack, a lot of LJ users (but by no means all) are finding it difficult to post full entries, at least four people on my friends list are now affected, but I don't seem to be. There's more at known issues, and there are a large number of open support requests on the subject.

There's a botnet attacking LJ, and it's making the site and staff work really hard just to keep it open, let alone adding new content. Not good. Apparently using clients like Semagic or deepestsender mean you can get around some of the problems.

Oh yeah; happy birthday harlotqueen

This is my 501st post, apparently. That's to LJ, not on all the other places I've started writing since I signed up for this thing. nadriel? In the unlikely event that liberty_central actually works, or gets somewhere at all? It's your fault y'git, you got me writing again.

Unfortunately, I can't break my writers block. I need the inaugaral "real" article for voting_taktix, but it won't flow. "Tactical voting is a myth", on a site dedicated to tactical voting? Yay for contradictions.

Also, nicked from someone else's LJ (look, I click on the profiles of cute girls who put themselves in userpics, ok? Anyone here not do that?):

9/9 Genius You are 78% knowledgable and 96% intellectual.

Amazing! You have an incredible brain (intellect) and a powerhouse of information (knowledge)! Keep up the impressive work-- we all bow to you.

( Tell me something I didn't know... )

( Why I'm unique )

Tomorrow? Exeter, if I get up, to play silly game's at Steve's with Peter Pig. If I wake up. Oh, I also need to clean and tidy the flat, as it'll be the last chance between now and when I get back from nadriel's. Two weeks holiday in one month? Yay! Must remember to buy tickets for those events.

Also, on the quiz thing? A few of the questions are US specific. Sorry, but knowing which Amendment does not isn't a History question, it's a Constitutional Theory and practice Q. I mean, I got that answer right anyway, but, y'know, I would've got a better score if the questions weren't aimed at one populace. Cos I is ded smart, see?

I just clicked on a comment notification, got to the post, and read 4 comments I hadn't been notified of.

Looked back at the inbox, see the following:
How can comments 'sent' at that spread of times all be received '0' minutes ago? Could it be because they're timestamped at the time someone commented, but received all at the same time - ie, when LJ finally processed them?

I thought they'd got it fixed. Gah! So, hoping I haven't missed anything, going through stuff now. I like the way LJ handles comments, when it works. I just wish it worked properly.

Ah well, It's probably about time I submitted a suggestions about comment e-headers anyway...

Aside: paulatpingu? Have a look at this. Recent referrer; isn't it weird seeing what you've written translated?

In their infinite wisdom, LiveJournal have expired everyones cookie without warning us. There were already some logout problems due to the new subdomain as well. I didn't realise until page 2 of my friends page, clicked reply; reloading got me 3 friends locked posts from people.

They're doing it all for our own good, but, well, they're announcing things so badly it's pissing people off. Why doesn't that really surprise me?

Change your password

Seriously, according to this blog/news post:

several Bantown members spoke at length in an online instant-message chat with Security Fix. During the chat, members of the group claimed to have used the Javascript holes to hijack more than 900,000 LiveJournal accounts..."However, we have only used approximately five hundred of these cookies so far, so it is impossible to tell whether this sample is statistically valid. Still, a massive number have been compromised."

In other words, they know 900,000 passwords, but have used 500 of them, so they may have yours without you knowing it.

It's patchy, sometimes I get something, other times Ihave no idea. The recent comments link is great, and now bookmarked, but I miss getting everything in my inbox almost immediately.

I hope they fix whatever problems they're still having, I'm having problems setting up some feeds as well. Bored though, I'm stomping everyone in the Civ game I'm playing, I think I need to up the difficulty for the next game. Ah well...