1. Firefox rolled out decentralisation protocol support in update 59 (January 2018)
Support for Decentralization Protocols: Mozilla has always been a proponent of decentralization,
recognizing that it is a key ingredient of a healthy Internet. Starting
with Firefox 59, several protocols that support decentralized
architectures are approved for use by extensions. The newly approved
protocols are: Dat Project (dat://) IPFS (dweb:// ipfs:// ipns://) Secure Scuttlebutt (ssb://)
Firefox itself does not implement these protocols, but having them on
the approved list means the browser recognizes them as valid protocols
and extensions are free to provide implementations.
2. So just to explain about data as I’m seeing that some people are not aware of these differences. I don’t track usage on my limvids.net site but the back end is AWS and sometimes the bill comes up big enough to notice (ie more than $2). When myPeaky Blinders vid was in Youtube Jail and the only place to see it was my site? If I recall correctly, limvids did about 7.2tb of traffic that month. That’s just a single vid. It’s not even that many downloads! It’s maybe ten thousand people. If I just run a quick wget on trickster… you would have to read every single story ever written by @cesperanzalike two million times to approximate that. Even the mighty Speranza isn’t doing 2 million hits per story per month. (But a popular vid on Youtube can go >2 million hits easily and often much more. That happens not infrequently. ) A single vid could take out any backstop fandom could pay for and it doesn’t even need to go viral. The cost of hosting is just massively massively more. (All estimates are off the cuff but the scale is right.) Art is in an intermediate position between vids and fic on this scale.
That’s why before we even started coding on AO3 back in urgh…2007 we were discussing swarming and distributed systems for vids with other vidders/vidfans – it’s a conversation that has been going on this whole time, but so far has had insurmountable technical challenges. AO3 can’t host vids directly until/unless something game changing happens with data storage. Vidders do need hosting. Vidders are uniquely vulnerable to TOS – vidding is in eternal Strikethrough. But we could genuinely sink the whole ship. Vids are so massive they can sink any single host. But something game changing IS happening with networksright now.
The only viable long term approach in my opinion, is to slowly build a very densely connected decentralised network that includes all the watchers and lurkers and readers and reccers and other members of our community that aren’t producing 400mb files but are online a whole lot, that spreads the load across hundreds of thousands of people; yes with seeder nodes that fill in any uptime holes and yes with hosting for people that can’t host their own stuff for a variety of reasons, but no to trying to build a traditional hosting system for vids. (I mean, obviously go ahead – I won’t stop you! I’ll upload to you! I’m just saying why I’ve never personally gone for it.) It’s too expensive and too fragile.
This is a discussion about which reasonable and informed people may disagree, btw. I’m not saying I’m 100% right about all this. I’m just sharing my conclusions and trying to give those who don’t have it, some context and places to go draw their own.
People will still use Youtube mostly for a long time and that’s great – let Youtube foot the bill as much as pos (I embed from Youtube at the top of limvids to cue the casual viewer to use their bandwidth not mine and it works well) , but every vid that gets kicked off Youtube and every artist that gets kicked off here should, eventually, be able to find a home with fandom.
3. My Rotonde is here: dat://66af3f8743cc293ebb80f2d109869e8ff82c23a290067d7d76b1b2bdb36f8e86/#lim but I have no idea how to use it yet…
i just realized something: think about padme amidala’s public image. nobody knew she was married. nobody knew who anakin skywalker was at all–he was just some random jedi trainee, and by the time anybody would have started paying attention to him in the public eye, they would have known him as darth vader. to the public, anakin became a faceless villain who always was who he was, no fall from grace needed.
so, padme. i’m sure she had supporters across the republic. i’m sure her time as queen of naboo was EXTREMELY well-documented, and honestly, based on her rotation of outfits, she was probably a full-on celebrity. she was young and brilliant and a passionate defender of her people, and even though the empire seized power in the end, i wouldn’t be surprised if the rebellion decades later directly descended from the ideals of her followers.
but think about the circumstances of her death from the outside. people probably knew she was pregnant by some unknown father, of course, but this is a universe with robot doctors–saying “she died in childbirth” would probably be like saying “she died of the common cold” today. not something that happens, especially for a celebrity politician with unlimited resources. and there must have been a child, but what happened to it? did it die too? as a media narrative, it’s flimsy at best, ESPECIALLY considering the timing of her death.
padme amidala, the woman who ruled a planet at 14 and sat stony-faced while every other senator cheered on palpatine’s rise to power, died under mysterious circumstances just as the government she’d defended crumbled. from the outside, it seems pretty obvious that she was assassinated.
if this was a universe that at all made sense, padme amidala would have been a household name among republic loyalists. her tragically short life, her noble self-sacrifice for the ideals she believed in, would have been LEGENDARY. when the rebellion rose, she would have been the name on everybody’s mind–do it in her honor, people would have said. finish the fight she started.
i know we can’t go back in time and change the original trilogy, but the sequel movies? come on. don’t tell me darth vader is the only looming icon in this franchise.
To make it extra tragic – in the EU it mentions that the coroner used some kind of hologram technology to make it look like she was still pregnant at the time of her death, to protect the twins from the emperor and Anakin by telling everyone that the children had never been born. Padme Amidala’s death would have been the tragedy of the century, the face of the lost democracy.
Okay but what if that celebrity factor got used? By, like, everybody.
To the Naboo people, she’s their beloved Queen. To much of the galaxy, she’s a loved and admired public figure and stateswoman. To the Republic loyalists, she’s their martyred supporter, the vanquished—murdered, they think—face of Democracy. To the Empire, she’s a useful idol, the Emperor’s colleague, murdered, they say, by Separatist forces or by Jedi, tragically dead and conveniently silent, beautiful and glamorous and perfect for starting a cult of personality on her behalf.
And here and there, among the various cultures, there are religious concepts like sainthood, ancestor worship, legends of dead protectors coming to life again to fight when they’re needed. And conspiracy theories, and wishful thinking turned speculation, and the Star Wars equivalent of tabloid newspapers.
The result? Padmé is the most popular and famous woman in the galaxy, a combination of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, Che Guevara, Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley, Arthur Pendragon, Chuck Norris, and the Virgin Mary.
One of the most important Imperial holidays is Amidala Day, devoted to celebrating service to the Empire, the official story of the Empire’s birth, the Emperor’s home world, and the heroic Queen and Senator whom Palpatine claims as his staunch supporter. People paint their faces and make elaborate hairstyles or headdresses and put on their fanciest clothes; there are plays, and parties, and traditional Naboo dances and foods.
Vader hates it. This is about 60% of why the Emperor has made such a production of it.
Among Republic loyalists, a different story is told: a Queen Amidala who loved peace and democracy, who opposed war and worked tirelessly for ceasefires and peace treaties, who stood silently or wept as all around her cheered the newborn Empire; a Queen Amidala who was murdered by the Empire so he could create the fiction of her support.
Vader hates this too. It feels uncomfortably true, and threatens to undermine his resolve that she would have been at his side had she lived.
Rebels paint images of her on their fighters, hang holos of her on their walls, wear icons of her as good-luck talismans. There are exhortations, penned semi-anonymously by people who knew her, that she would have wanted people to join and support the Rebellion. The minimalist image of eyes, cheek dots, and paint-split lips are graffiti’d onto public monuments accompanied by words from her speeches. “Amidala Needs You” is a common phrase on Rebel recruitment posters.
Vader hates this most of all.
Statues and icons of her are made in a hundred different artistic styles and adorn the altars of a thousand worlds’ faiths. Mythologies are written about her: she stopped a Separatist advance with words once, appeared in a dream to a slave telling her where her transmitter was hidden, shot five destroyer droids with pinpoint accuracy before they got their shields up, stormed her own palace to take it back from the Trade Federation, cheated death at the hands of the Empire’s assassin, escaped with the help of the last of the Jedi, is still out there somewhere, mourning for the Republic on some uninhabited planet somewhere, training in secret lost Jedi arts to kill the Emperor, working as a Rebel agent or a disguised vigilante.
Vader dislikes this. But he also seeks them out and reads them, when he’s in a certain mood.
The tabloids regularly claim that she’s been seen working as a roast-traladon restaurant in some backwater suburb of Corellia, or navigating a spice freighter to and from Kessel, or singing at a nightclub on Nar Shadda.
Vader dislikes this too. He has to talk himself out of keeping an agent or three just to visit the places in question and make sure.
He isn’t often in a position to see teenage girls with Padmé’s face emblazoned across their tunics, or walls with familiar face paint next to “So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause” printed next to it. When he hunts down Rebels with her image on a chain around their necks for luck, he can tear them apart with the Force: a quick death, which is, ironically, the luckiest outcome available to them. Tabloids and legends can be read and dismissed, and he’s never had the opportunity to happen upon the fanfiction.
But when the Emperor commands, Vader stands at his side through parades and parties and celebratory addresses to the Senate, with Padme’s image on banners and holos, with Padmé’s image on stage saying words Padmé never said, with all the women and half the men wearing Naboo royal face paint, and accepts the pain of memory almost like a form of self-harm.
And when the newly-elected Junior Senator from Alderaan with a quiet grace that reminds him of her and a fire in her eyes that reminds him of himself asks him, at some interminable party, if he knew what she was like, he troubles himself to answer honestly.
you can pretty much find me anywhere under “cosmicdanger” tbh!
I’m not sure how often I’ll get a chance to post here since most of my work is in the adult content category, but i’ll still be around. Just a little less!
Yes, we have seen the news! We are planning to have the
site back up either tomorrow or Wednesday; we just have a couple last
security measures we want to put in place today, but we will be working on
it as quickly as possible and we will have a clearer ETA by tonight.
We will also try to come up with a way to lower the barrier to entry for new users, though we don’t want to drop the entry fee entirely because a) we feel that would be unfair to our users who have paid for their registration keys and b) we don’t think our servers could handle a massive influx of new users right now, so we’re going to try to allow as many new users as we can without capsizing the boat. We appreciate your patience and will have more details soon!
Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.
Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).
Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.
So what is changing?
Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.
Why are we doing this?
It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.
Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.
So what’s next?
Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.
Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.
Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.
Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.
Okay, so I’ve seen some conflicting information flying around since the announcement literally an hour ago about tumblr’s new policy.
Fandom content will be affected, first of all. Here’s a direct quote from the new TOS. Bold is mine.
What is considered adult content?
Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.
What is still permitted?
Examples of exceptions that are still permitted are exposed female-presenting nipples in connection with breastfeeding, birth or after-birth moments, and health-related situations, such as post-mastectomy or gender confirmation surgery. Written content such as erotica, nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, such as sculptures and illustrations, are also stuff that can be freely posted on Tumblr.
So what does this all mean? TL;DR:
1). N/SFW fanfic will still be allowed, for now.
2). N/SFW fanart will NOT be allowed.
3.) If you tag something as N/SFW (etc), no one will see it in search.
was ruminating on twitter about how floaty Jim Hawkins’ features are—he’s all angles in profile, and then a sweet brooding anime boy from the front?? They don’t entirely reconcile, SO I took a quick pass at a more consistent Jim turnaround, with a few more anchor points and angles.
now I need to go do a ~*Soft Tortured Space Boyfriend*~ turnaround based on how he looks from the front, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk The Many Faces of Jim Hawkins
Okay, folks. So. Tumblr’s jumped the shark in a big way, and I’m not even just talking about indiscriminately blocking all “adult” content on a platform that IS, in fact, primarily 18+.
Many blogs, like the wonderful @blackkatmagic , that are not especially NSFW have vanished.
(And I for one LIKE being able to go to curated porn blogs run by actual people and have a chance of finding stuff to my taste, it was one of the things that kept me on this hellsite, but that’s another issue entirely.)
I know lots of people are talking about migrating, but none of us are sure to where yet. Pillowfort seems to be an option, some people are talking about Twitter. But for now, it’s a mess, and even if we knew where we were going, it’s often a huge process, and a lot of us have stuff on tumblr that ONLY exists there.
One possible quick solution to save your blogs, both NSFW and personal, is to import it to WordPress. I found this solution through from frantic googling on how to save an entire blog, text posts an all. There are several apps for downloading all the pictures from a tumblr, (Plently for Windows, but only a few paid ones for mac, of which Tumbelog Picture Downloader is working for me so far) but this is the only solution I’ve seen so far that allows you to save EVERYTHING. I downloaded my NSFW blog in like 10 min. My regular blog, which is significantly larger, is in the process of importing, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I will, of course, update you if I have any.
This tutorial I found worked really easily. http://quickguide (.) tumblr (.) com/post/39780378703/backing-up-your-tumblr-blog-to-wordpress
I put parenthesis around the .’s like we’re back in FF-Hell, just in case tumblr’s new thing about outgoing links kicks in. You know what to do.
To break it down, just in case:
Sign up for a WordPress.com account at wordpress (.) com/start
You’ll have to create an account, with your email, a username, and a password. They should send you a confirmation email immediately, check it, activate it, and you’re good to go.
On the site, it will ask you for a site name. That page asks you a bunch of other information too, but you only have to fill out the site name.
Then you have to give your site a URL. If you’re lucky, your tumblr URL is still available, if not you’ll have to come up with another one, sorry.
It will tell you if that option is still available for free.
Then it will ask you to pick a plan. Free is really good enough, I swear.
Now you’re set up! You can import your tumblr!
The only differences from the linked tutorial are that the Import button is now on the first level menu, not in tools.
Hit Import, then you have to follow the link for “other importers” at the bottom, to find the option for Tumblr.
Then you’ll have to sign in with tumblr, using your normal tumblr credentials. You’ll be redirected there automatically.
You’ll have to allow WordPress permissions on your blog.
Then your blogs, including all your sideblogs, will show up in wordpress.
Hit import, wait a WHILE depending on the size of your blog, and you’re done!
ALSO!!
I made my NSFW blog private for now, since I don’t know WP’s policy on NSFW.
This means that to access it, someone has to have an account and request access. But hey, part of our problem on this hellsite has been people going places they aren’t wanted, so I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. They can send a request from the landing site on your blog, you get an email, click a link in the email, and PRESTO, they have access.
To make it private, go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Go back and check, it took me changing the setting twice for it to actually stick.
tl;dr, you can import your entire blog to wordpress in just a few steps.
I’m going to tag the hell out of this, in no particular order. PLEASE reblog this and spread the word so people know it’s an option. If you’re having trouble, PM me, and I’m happy to help.
We Are What We Feel 