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A public service announcement, to clarify once again that "Public" posts, are, as the name implies, "Public".

As in, people can see them. Anyone, from anywhere. Dooh, if you don't like that idea, Mastodon has a number of Privacy settings for posts that might offer more control if desired.

Noelle has an excellent Guide to Mastodon, and the image on this post is a screencap of the part of it which clarifies this.

RSS feeds are created by default for everyone's Public and Unlisted posts. The noise some people were making about the Misskey feature, now present here at Qoto.org, which allows easily subscribing to anyone's public and unlisted posts is just the same as using an RSS feed reader to subscribe to that user's RSS feed.

Disinformation, paranoia and rancour have caused some to de-federate with Qoto.

Maybe it's for the best, if they are that obtuse.

Noelle's Guide is at : github.com/joyeusenoelle/Guide

A really interesting story on The Guardian; how a couple of homeless people in London, UK, managed to build an underground bunker and live on it for almost two years undetected. Right inside Hampstead Heath park, adjoining a very expensive neighbourhood.

theguardian.com/news/2020/mar/

"An Oregon Mill Town Learns to Love Facebook and Apple"

"PRINEVILLE, ORE. — A decade ago, when five shuttered sawmills and 20 percent unemployment defined Crook County, Ore., nobody envisioned that the path to recovery would be tied to Facebook and Apple.

But on the rimrock summit overlooking this city, the county seat and home to 10,000 residents, Facebook is sinking the footings for the first of two 450,000-square-foot data centers that together will cost $1 billion when completed in 2021. "

nytimes.com/2018/03/06/busines

Long read investigative article, excellent, published at Wired UK.

The scum operating companies renting out whole buildings as "shared accommodation" is atrocious to people living in many world cities with tourist demand.

wired.co.uk/article/airbnb-sca

It is so rare to have someone writing up the truth -- housing prices raising are not good for anyone (other than speculators and commission earning realtors).

British situation is one of the worst in this aspect, but in many countries property markets are inflated dangerously. Governments are to blame for keeping interest rates artificially low for too long (it's been 10 years now from our Quasi-Depression of 2008. Credit is too easy, assets are inflated in various markets (real estate, shares, bonds, etc).

theguardian.com/commentisfree/

"If this election turns out to be just between a self-proclaimed socialist and an undiagnosed sociopath, we will be in a terrible, terrible place as a country. How do we prevent that?

That’s all I am thinking about right now. My short answer is that the Democrats have to do something extraordinary — forge a national unity ticket the likes of which they have never forged before. And that’s true even if Democrats nominate someone other than Bernie Sanders."

EXCELLENT article on NY Times by Thomas Friedman. I would love to see what he is suggesting.

nytimes.com/2020/02/25/opinion

This is probably the BEST written and explained article about real world WiFi usage, how it works, frequencies, attenuation by obstacles, etc I have ever seen.

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/0

Small towns in Italy selling old homes for 1 Euro each - the ones in the photos here were the first ones sold in one of them - Cantiano.

Read the details (you will need to pay for a renovation, it has to be done within a certain time) here : theglobeandmail.com/business/a

The Washington Post has a tremendous article detailing a long standing Intelligence operation by the NSA.

Recommended reading, it's incredible for anyone interested in intelligence work, encryption, geopolitics. Article came up a couple of days ago.

washingtonpost.com/graphics/20

An interesting article on The Guardian. People started discussing their favourite Fonts and point sizes, and Times New Roman (a Serif font very commonly used as Default in many office applications) was very popular - in 12 points.

theguardian.com/books/2020/jan

What is your favourite Font and size for writing work?

My own? Georgia, at 12 points for writing, in text editor or wordprocessor. Georgia is a Serif font which was specifically designed for use in Screens, and I used it as the Default Serif font in my browsers (in 16 points size).

Similarly, Verdana was also created and optimized for on screen usage, in this case it's a Sans Serif, replaces the very common Arial with easier in the eyes similar style.

See more detailas about Georgia, Verdana, references and further reading -- in my post here: qoto.org/@design_RG/1032228907

* Memories, a visit to the Archeology Museum *

It started this morning, the thread. And over short posts, someone told a story. Of a Greek man, who lived in antiquity, by the Mediterranean side; in a city whose name is still preserved, and today is written "Marseille".

This series of posts was interesting, liked it and went to the top to find the rest.

Enjoying his post, I remembered similar thoughts, of History, and how things worked, how small bits and pieces came to me as I visited an exposition, at the Archeological Museum, in Lisbon.

Now the story is on my blog: write.tedomum.net/rgx/memories

You can also see a mirrored copy at our Discouse Forum at Qoto.org : discourse.qoto.org/t/memories-

** Author notes:

This is one of my favourite posts in my blog, I really enjoyed writing it, first as a series of Toots, then as a fleshed out and enriched Blog post.

I am grateful to @kashi for the original suggestion and inspiration of our new Qoto Journal hashtag.

The story about Map Projections and the people who favour each of the methods. (web comics, karge image)

m.xkcd.com/977/

@freemo This was so surprising to me that I took the time to login into another, non-moderator account, to make sure a regular user could see this feature.

It does work, for any QOTO user account, as shown in the screenshots (taken from my alt, secondary Qoto account).

And it is NOT present in any other instances, where I logged on locally to check if I had so far missed this. Nope, not there. Exclusive. 😃

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QOTO.org new January 2020 Features Added - 6 - Quick View Remote Timeline.

This is something I have just discovered, as I prepared screenshots for a previous post.

It is similar to the "Domain Subscriptions" feature listed previously. But :

- It can be done from ANY post, and allows you to instantly open a column showing the originating Instance's Local Timeline.

- Done taking a look? Just back out of it, open any other timeline and move on.

If you liked what you see in their timeline, then you could consider Domain Subscribing as described at discourse.qoto.org/t/qoto-org- .

* Why would someone be interested in that?

- for diversity : the fediverse has a myriad of instances, and that means there's many different places. Some are big, some are small, many we can't even read the local languages, but it's fun to travel and see.

- when things get quiet at Qoto's local timeline... we open one of these and have freshly posted content from whichever instance we selected.

Isn't this snooping, or uncool, or frowned upon? No, not at all.

- we can only see posts that were made Public at their original instance.

- these posts will be Federated and will join the millions of others in the Home and Federated feeds.

* How do we open this Quick View into a Remote Instance ?

Reminding everyone that this feature is now available here at Qoto.org, and it will not work elsewhere (unless the instance installed similar modified software).

But, I was really surprised on finding it here too - even @freemo hasn't mentioned it, and likely is unware this is now possible.

- From ANY post in the Home or Federated feeds, click on the "..." Dots menu in their lower part.

- There are various options, some quite useful for controlling unwanted content (mute, report, etc.)

- And on this list we now find "*Open instance.name timeline*". (see screenshot #1)

- Voilá.. Click on that, and the screen will display a Full column of the remote instance posts; their Local timeline in fact. (see screenshot #2)

As shown in the screenshot, *we are still on the qoto.org domain*, but the timeline displayed is from ***blob.cat's posts***.

That's it, simple as that!

Like it? See the instructions and Subscribe to their Domain if desired --> discourse.qoto.org/t/qoto-org-

** You can also see this post in prettier, easier to Read format at the Discourse Forum : discourse.qoto.org/t/qoto-org-

** Why, Prettier? Because.. Text formatting, Header sizes, Bold and Italicized text styles, Inline images inserted in the proper place on the text, that's why. 😛

...and as it turns out, I think I just discovered a new, enhanced and so far undocumented Feature added to our Qoto mastodon Web Clients.

Woot...

Now preparing a post for it (hint: viewing Remote instance local timelines VERY easily, without the Subscribe Remote actions previously described)

QOTO.org new January 2020 Features Added - 5 - Account Subscriptions.

As per the original annoucement post by @freemo :

"Account Subscriptions - This allows you to follow a remote accounts public toots in your Home timeline without actually following them, great for following users with locked accounts."

So this is another new and unique feature -- we can see posts from users similarly as if we Followed them, but without actually Following them.

Why would someone be interested in that?

- For Locked accounts (which display a small padlock besides the user name); these normally will require you to click the "Follow" button as usual, but will only work once the user approves your follow request.

- so you can get similar access, but only to their "Public" posts. You will not see "Unlisted" or "Followers Only" posts.

- If this is an account you have a slight interest in, that might be enough.

Isn't this snooping, or uncool, or frowned upon? No, not at all.

- we can only see posts that were made with "Public" privacy setting at their original instance.

- these posts will be Federated and will join the millions of others in the Home and Federated feeds.

The advantage is that we see them in the same way we see the posts from users we actually Follow.

How to "Subscribe" to a user?

- If you visit any user's Profile page, you will see a new "Subscribe" icon, which looks a bit like the typical WiFi one (see screenshot #1)

- Notice that this particular user has a Locked profile (padlock icon beside his username, as highlighted in screenshot #1)

- Regardless of the Locked Following, we click on the Subscribe button.

- and it immediately switches to a Blue, highlighted button, indicating a Subscribed account.

- bringing the mouse over it shows an "Unsubscribe" action legend (see screenshot #2)

From this point on, things will work very similar to being a Follower to that user.

- you will see any of their new Public posts in your "Home" timeline (the one with the little House icon).

- you will not see posts if they were made with more restricted Privacy settings (Unlisted, Followers only, or Direct Messages)

- And if you are no longer interested, visit their profile and unsubscribe from them, similar to Unfollowing a user.

** This post can also be seen in Prettier form at the Discourse Forum : discourse.qoto.org/t/qoto-org-

** Why, Prettier? Because.. Text formatting, Header sizes, Bold and Italicized text styles, Inline images inserted in the proper place on the text, that's why. 😛

Ridiculous that I have to run errands and go to work today, instead of just sitting under a blanket with this guy

I had the idea of check how these Quote Posts look like in other instances. Just did, and found that...

- it looks poor on GlitchSoc, similar to the Pinafore snapshot above.

BUT...

It looks PERFECT in a Pleroma node.

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I just finished creating a Discourse Forum thread with copies of the series of toots about the New Features for Qoto.org.

They contain the same text and images, in a single thread for all 4 major new features.

If anyone wants to see it, its at discourse.qoto.org/t/qoto-org-

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