There are two different levels of domain blocks. The ones rimu is discussing here are instance-wide, controlled by admins. Basically an admin saying that they don't want their instance to host any posts that point to these domains. In addition to what rimu pointed out in the article, this tool is most often used to prevent spam posts that point to domains that host malware/phishing/etc. Whenever a remote spam user pops up spewing posts that point to some new malware domain, it is simple to ban the domain and those posts now will no longer federate to your instance even if the remote user isn't dealt with by their home admins.
There are user-level domain blocks as well in the filters tab of your settings page. Those only apply to an individual user.
That might be correct actually. Looks like the posts are filtered for language in the web UI here, but I can't find where the corresponding filtering happens for the /post/list endpoint.
Hey, I wrote that guide! I'll try to help simplify it a bit.
tl;dr of creating a basic theme is that all your css changes live in a styles.css file inside your theme's folder.
Here is what you actually need to do to create a theme:
First, you will need some way to experiment with css yourself to create your theme. That can either be running a development instance where you do your work (relevant guide), or it can be something like running a browser extension that lets you define a custom css to a web page (like stylus that was mentioned in the theming guide).
The actual process of defining what your css should be is kind of tedious. If there is an element on the web page you want to apply styling to, you can right click -> inspect on that element to see the page source for it. That can help inform you about any css classes or an id that might be present on that element to help you write your css selectors. If there is an element where a custom css class would be really helpful, you can either add it yourself if you are going the full local development route by editing the relevant jinja template, or you can ask in the PieFed matrix room for it to get added to the source by somebody else to make your life easier.
I am not really a css expert by any means, but you can reference the css changes that other themes make by browsing the different themes and looking at their styles.css files (link to themes folder).
Once you have a file with all the css changes you want for your theme, the next step would be to get your theme added to the source code. That is where you would reach out to rimu and pass your css to him. He would likely do a QC pass on it before adding it to the main project.
Then, when the next version of PieFed is released and is live, your theme is now part of the project and should be select-able as a community theme! Well done!
I use httpie to do local API testing. I find it super easy, I don't need to make any kind of account (like postman really, really wants you to), and it doesn't have any issues with using a local http endpoint.
The modlog has a bunch of issues and, frankly, I think creates more problems than it solves (but I know I am in the minority in this way). The lack of a modlog hasn't seemed to hurt other fedi projects any, just look at Mastodon. Anyway, I had originally tried to structure this comment a bit more, but it ended up kind of rambly, so I apologize.
When looking at content removals, it is especially problematic currently when it comes to comments. Lemmy includes the full text of the comment being removed in the modlog (piefed truncates the comment contents iirc). So, if the comment has doxxed info or something else where simply existing as text is an issue, then even removing the comment doesn't solve the problem since that now just lives in the modlog, permanently, across hundreds of federated instances. At least for posts, it will just have the post title in the modlog and the link to the post won't be accessible unless you are a mod/admin. So, just having a local way of removing that content from the modlog doesn't necessarily solve the problem, since it will live across every other federated modlog still.
All of that happens even if the community mods and admins are all acting in good faith and doing their best to remove this content. This doesn't even begin to broach the issue of mods/admins abusing their ability to write to the modlog (however you want to define abuse). If a mod were to do something like doxx somebody or put a malicious link in the reason field of a modlog entry...how can you handle that? Once it is in the modlog, that's it. That has now spread to every other federated instance.
A local way of removing problematic modlog entries makes a lot of sense in some cases. As I pointed out on matrix and you have included above, certain jurisdictions might have different requirements on what is allowed speech. So, giving admins the ability to remove content in the modlog that contravenes local regulations is helping admins do their legally obligated duty. I agree that it shouldn't just be deleted without a trace though. Having a remaining entry with placeholder text to indicate what has happened helps keep some level of transparency.
However, the local modlog removal doesn't fix the underlying federation problem. I don't really have a solution if I am honest. I think that you could do something like give mods the ability to mark a removal as being sensitive in some way and that hides the actual content from the modlog...but that gives an awful lot of power to mods. Also, I know some people really value the current transparency of the modlog, even if its main use by normal users (non-admins) seems to be generating drama.
Over the past six months, rimu has ~4X more commits to the project than I do, and then it is a steep drop off from there (other than a ton of individual css fixes by travis-jeans). So, it is not entirely a one person show, but it mostly is. Part of that is that rimu is just really quick. We will talk over an idea, and then he will implement it faster than I can even make the git branch.
You are using piefed, so in the web ui you can click the three dot menu and select the remind me option. This isn't in the api though, so it wouldn't be in a third-party app unless they implemented it separately.
Nothing to do with federation. piefed.zip decided not to make their modlog public. It's an admin setting within piefed. IIRC, it isn't an option in lemmy.
Oh man, give me a scientific issue any day of the week. I would much rather deal with some investigation rather than work on an IND, BLA, or MAA section to submit to an agency. I have tremendous respect for reg folks that can make sense of the agency guidance. Thank you for your service!
I work professionally in the field of pharmaceutical manufacturing, though mainly with liquid and lyophilized presentations. The issue talked about in this video, polymorphism and isomerization, would primarily just be an issue with drugs that are considered small molecules. Historically, that is most drugs...but that is changing as more and more other modalities are hitting the market.
Small molecules, especially in a dry powder, undergo lots of processes that would make cleaning with enough rigor to completely eliminate a polymorph extremely difficult. Things like milling, mixing, spray drying, and pressing are extremely energetic and intentionally disperse powder like crazy. The cleaning cycles for all this equipment are already extremely rigorous, often reducing contaminants to levels too low to measure and then undergoing sterilization cycles with vaporized hydrogen peroxide (VHP) between batches. However, when you are talking about autocatalysis like this, it only takes ppb-level contamination to propagate through the whole batch.
When you are talking about large molecules like biologics (antibodies, most vaccines, etc.), there are a whole bunch of other things that can go wrong, but not this. The most analogous thing I can think of would be a persistent viral contamination. Current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) should be able to alleviate this though, and it wouldn't impact tech transfer to a different site like what happened in the video. Alternatively, I have worked on mAbs where each batch would measure the glycosylation state because it impacted activity. That is a post-translational modification process for that drug that some batches worked better than others, but we never really tracked down a root cause (before the program was killed).
Another case study that happened on a program I was working on was that we had a series of batches where the active ingredient (a mAb) was oxidized at a much higher rate than normal. Nothing about our process had changed, but it was a clear night/day difference that happened all of a sudden. After lots of testing and ruling things out, we managed to figure out that there were elevated levels of iron in our product. By sampling at each step of our process, we figured out that the iron was being introduced during two steps called bioburden reduction filtration and sterile filtration. You might notice that these are both unit operations where our drug passes through filter membranes (they were in fact the same filters). Ultimately, it turned out that the supplier of our filters had a contamination issue that impacted their filters from a certain lot and later. So, we were ultimately able to fix it, but I remember those reports being literally hundreds of pages of ruling stuff out before we finally figured out the root cause.
Translation is one of the things that LLMs and other deep learning models are actually pretty good at and has been at the core of just about every mainstream translation engine for years now (since before ChatGPT and the "AI" bubble was a thing - 2020 for Google Translate as an example).
This is an area where the technology could help us, the developers, communicate with users and other potential developers. There are multiple contributions and features that have been added to PieFed that have come from non-English speakers already. Some examples would be allowing things like furigana (ruby) notation in markdown and making post slugs nicer in some non-English laguages. Being able to communicate those kinds of issues to us and even work collaboratively on fixes is worth it in our opinion to allow for machine-assisted translation.
There is an admin setting that requires a user to be logged in before viewing pages on the site. We keep that off normally, but we recently had it on for a couple of days because of over-aggressive scrapers.
I just checked in the admin panel and your user isn't banned. It's possible that you might be quite unlucky with a VPN exit node or something and are now on an IP that was previously subject to a ban. We tend to not use IP bans except in egregious cases, but those users also tend not to connect via their home connection.
Things you can try:
Try clearing your browser cache for piefed.social. You want to remove any cookies that might be left in your browser from the site.
If you are using a VPN try turning it off and clearing your browser cache. Basically trying to start fresh with a new IP address.
If you aren't using a VPN, try from a mobile device, third-party app, or one of our alternative frontends (photon, blorp)
Piefed does allow users the option to not federate their votes. So harvesting that data would mean needing local access to the infrastructure or snooping on traffic to/from your local instance.
The final vote came down to a very narrow margin between our top two vote-getters. If you are curious about the very close runner up (that I voted for), that was the opening song from "CITY The Animation" - "Hello" by Furui Riho.
There are two different levels of domain blocks. The ones rimu is discussing here are instance-wide, controlled by admins. Basically an admin saying that they don't want their instance to host any posts that point to these domains. In addition to what rimu pointed out in the article, this tool is most often used to prevent spam posts that point to domains that host malware/phishing/etc. Whenever a remote spam user pops up spewing posts that point to some new malware domain, it is simple to ban the domain and those posts now will no longer federate to your instance even if the remote user isn't dealt with by their home admins.
There are user-level domain blocks as well in the filters tab of your settings page. Those only apply to an individual user.
Yeah, looks like this was an oversight on the API side of the code. I just submitted a PR to fix it.
Just made a PR for it here.
That might be correct actually. Looks like the posts are filtered for language in the web UI here, but I can't find where the corresponding filtering happens for the
/post/listendpoint.Hey, I wrote that guide! I'll try to help simplify it a bit.
tl;dr of creating a basic theme is that all your css changes live in a
styles.cssfile inside your theme's folder.Here is what you actually need to do to create a theme:
First, you will need some way to experiment with css yourself to create your theme. That can either be running a development instance where you do your work (relevant guide), or it can be something like running a browser extension that lets you define a custom css to a web page (like stylus that was mentioned in the theming guide).
The actual process of defining what your css should be is kind of tedious. If there is an element on the web page you want to apply styling to, you can right click -> inspect on that element to see the page source for it. That can help inform you about any css classes or an id that might be present on that element to help you write your css selectors. If there is an element where a custom css class would be really helpful, you can either add it yourself if you are going the full local development route by editing the relevant jinja template, or you can ask in the PieFed matrix room for it to get added to the source by somebody else to make your life easier.
I am not really a css expert by any means, but you can reference the css changes that other themes make by browsing the different themes and looking at their
styles.cssfiles (link to themes folder).Once you have a file with all the css changes you want for your theme, the next step would be to get your theme added to the source code. That is where you would reach out to rimu and pass your css to him. He would likely do a QC pass on it before adding it to the main project.
Then, when the next version of PieFed is released and is live, your theme is now part of the project and should be select-able as a community theme! Well done!
I use httpie to do local API testing. I find it super easy, I don't need to make any kind of account (like postman really, really wants you to), and it doesn't have any issues with using a local http endpoint.
Ask and ye shall receive. Done.
The modlog has a bunch of issues and, frankly, I think creates more problems than it solves (but I know I am in the minority in this way). The lack of a modlog hasn't seemed to hurt other fedi projects any, just look at Mastodon. Anyway, I had originally tried to structure this comment a bit more, but it ended up kind of rambly, so I apologize.
When looking at content removals, it is especially problematic currently when it comes to comments. Lemmy includes the full text of the comment being removed in the modlog (piefed truncates the comment contents iirc). So, if the comment has doxxed info or something else where simply existing as text is an issue, then even removing the comment doesn't solve the problem since that now just lives in the modlog, permanently, across hundreds of federated instances. At least for posts, it will just have the post title in the modlog and the link to the post won't be accessible unless you are a mod/admin. So, just having a local way of removing that content from the modlog doesn't necessarily solve the problem, since it will live across every other federated modlog still.
All of that happens even if the community mods and admins are all acting in good faith and doing their best to remove this content. This doesn't even begin to broach the issue of mods/admins abusing their ability to write to the modlog (however you want to define abuse). If a mod were to do something like doxx somebody or put a malicious link in the reason field of a modlog entry...how can you handle that? Once it is in the modlog, that's it. That has now spread to every other federated instance.
A local way of removing problematic modlog entries makes a lot of sense in some cases. As I pointed out on matrix and you have included above, certain jurisdictions might have different requirements on what is allowed speech. So, giving admins the ability to remove content in the modlog that contravenes local regulations is helping admins do their legally obligated duty. I agree that it shouldn't just be deleted without a trace though. Having a remaining entry with placeholder text to indicate what has happened helps keep some level of transparency.
However, the local modlog removal doesn't fix the underlying federation problem. I don't really have a solution if I am honest. I think that you could do something like give mods the ability to mark a removal as being sensitive in some way and that hides the actual content from the modlog...but that gives an awful lot of power to mods. Also, I know some people really value the current transparency of the modlog, even if its main use by normal users (non-admins) seems to be generating drama.
Over the past six months, rimu has ~4X more commits to the project than I do, and then it is a steep drop off from there (other than a ton of individual css fixes by travis-jeans). So, it is not entirely a one person show, but it mostly is. Part of that is that rimu is just really quick. We will talk over an idea, and then he will implement it faster than I can even make the git branch.
You are using piefed, so in the web ui you can click the three dot menu and select the remind me option. This isn't in the api though, so it wouldn't be in a third-party app unless they implemented it separately.
Nothing to do with federation. piefed.zip decided not to make their modlog public. It's an admin setting within piefed. IIRC, it isn't an option in lemmy.
Oh man, give me a scientific issue any day of the week. I would much rather deal with some investigation rather than work on an IND, BLA, or MAA section to submit to an agency. I have tremendous respect for reg folks that can make sense of the agency guidance. Thank you for your service!
I work professionally in the field of pharmaceutical manufacturing, though mainly with liquid and lyophilized presentations. The issue talked about in this video, polymorphism and isomerization, would primarily just be an issue with drugs that are considered small molecules. Historically, that is most drugs...but that is changing as more and more other modalities are hitting the market.
Small molecules, especially in a dry powder, undergo lots of processes that would make cleaning with enough rigor to completely eliminate a polymorph extremely difficult. Things like milling, mixing, spray drying, and pressing are extremely energetic and intentionally disperse powder like crazy. The cleaning cycles for all this equipment are already extremely rigorous, often reducing contaminants to levels too low to measure and then undergoing sterilization cycles with vaporized hydrogen peroxide (VHP) between batches. However, when you are talking about autocatalysis like this, it only takes ppb-level contamination to propagate through the whole batch.
When you are talking about large molecules like biologics (antibodies, most vaccines, etc.), there are a whole bunch of other things that can go wrong, but not this. The most analogous thing I can think of would be a persistent viral contamination. Current good manufacturing practices (cGMP) should be able to alleviate this though, and it wouldn't impact tech transfer to a different site like what happened in the video. Alternatively, I have worked on mAbs where each batch would measure the glycosylation state because it impacted activity. That is a post-translational modification process for that drug that some batches worked better than others, but we never really tracked down a root cause (before the program was killed).
Another case study that happened on a program I was working on was that we had a series of batches where the active ingredient (a mAb) was oxidized at a much higher rate than normal. Nothing about our process had changed, but it was a clear night/day difference that happened all of a sudden. After lots of testing and ruling things out, we managed to figure out that there were elevated levels of iron in our product. By sampling at each step of our process, we figured out that the iron was being introduced during two steps called bioburden reduction filtration and sterile filtration. You might notice that these are both unit operations where our drug passes through filter membranes (they were in fact the same filters). Ultimately, it turned out that the supplier of our filters had a contamination issue that impacted their filters from a certain lot and later. So, we were ultimately able to fix it, but I remember those reports being literally hundreds of pages of ruling stuff out before we finally figured out the root cause.
Hope that helps you feel better!
Translation is one of the things that LLMs and other deep learning models are actually pretty good at and has been at the core of just about every mainstream translation engine for years now (since before ChatGPT and the "AI" bubble was a thing - 2020 for Google Translate as an example).
This is an area where the technology could help us, the developers, communicate with users and other potential developers. There are multiple contributions and features that have been added to PieFed that have come from non-English speakers already. Some examples would be allowing things like furigana (ruby) notation in markdown and making post slugs nicer in some non-English laguages. Being able to communicate those kinds of issues to us and even work collaboratively on fixes is worth it in our opinion to allow for machine-assisted translation.
Pinned for now. Longer term, I think I will just pop a link into the sidebar.
Also a former big fan of RIF and I found Boost a fairly easy transition.
There is an admin setting that requires a user to be logged in before viewing pages on the site. We keep that off normally, but we recently had it on for a couple of days because of over-aggressive scrapers.
I just checked in the admin panel and your user isn't banned. It's possible that you might be quite unlucky with a VPN exit node or something and are now on an IP that was previously subject to a ban. We tend to not use IP bans except in egregious cases, but those users also tend not to connect via their home connection.
Things you can try:
Piefed does allow users the option to not federate their votes. So harvesting that data would mean needing local access to the infrastructure or snooping on traffic to/from your local instance.
The final vote came down to a very narrow margin between our top two vote-getters. If you are curious about the very close runner up (that I voted for), that was the opening song from "CITY The Animation" - "Hello" by Furui Riho.
Links: