MHLoppy

Announcement: Firefish will enter maintenance mode

For those who have been supporting Firefish and me, I can’t thank you enough. But today, I have to make an announcement of my very difficult decision: As of today’s release, Firefish will enter maintenance mode and reach end-of-support at the end of the year. The main reasons for this are as follows.

In February, Kainoa suddenly transferred the ownership of Firefish to me. This transition came without prior notice, which took me aback. I still wish Kainoa had consulted with me in advance. At that time, some people were already saying that “Firefish is coming back”, making it challenging to address the situation. Also, since there were several hundred active Firefish servers at that point, I could not suddenly discontinue the project, so I took over the project unwillingly.

Over the past seven months, I have been maintaining Firefish alone. All other former maintainers have left, leaving me solely responsible for managing issues, reviewing merge requests, testing, and releasing new versions. This situation has had a significant impact on my personal life.

Frankly speaking, there are numerous bugs and questionable logic in the current Firefish codebase. While I attempted to fix them, balancing this work with my personal life made it clear that it would take ages, and I’ve started thinking that I can’t manage this project in the long run. Additionally, vulnerabilities have been reported approximately once a month. Addressing vulnerabilities, communicating privately with reporters, and testing fixes have proven overwhelming and unsustainable. Moreover, a certain percentage of users have made insulting comments, which have severely affected my mental well-being and made me fearful of opening social media apps.

I will do my best to refund the donations made to Firefish via OpenCollective, but that’s not guaranteed.

firefish.dev and info.firefish.dev will remain operational until the end of February 2025, after which they will return a 410 Gone status.

Server admins may downgrade Firefish to version 20240206/1.0.5-rc and migrate to another *key variant, or may fork Firefish to maintain.

Downgrade instructions: https://firefish.dev/firefish/firefish/-/blob/downgrade/docs/downgrade.md

Thanks,
naskya

We were dismayed to see no Australians on the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century – so, with the help of 50 experts, we created our own, all-Australian list. You can have your say, too!

Xitter

Original post: Xitter

Various responses in one unwieldy image: https://fedia.io/media/ce/5c/ce5c5637ce2bf3a36e18264580d48e416d3052bba2db4a9f4c8b7e0a44f87275.webp

4K, 120 FPS, and more

Queensland’s Labor government turned heads last week with a bold new election promise. If returned to power, it would set up 12 state-owned petrol stations and limit fuel price rises to just five cents a litre on any given day.

The proposal certainly tapped into a pain point for Queenslanders – Brisbane topped national petrol price rankings last year.

But it was quickly met with a predictable pile on from opposing political commentators, industry bodies and some economists, attracting labels like “risky” and “dumb and stupid”.

Mark McKenzie, chief executive of the Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association, called it a “wildly bizarre intervention” in the retail fuel market.

So is the Queensland premier really out of his mind, trying to win votes less than three months out from an election? Or is there actually some merit to this proposal?

Four Corners has spoken to more than 200 people to investigate allegations of Channel Seven's toxic culture, uncovering allegations of bullying, sexism, and exploitation.

Warning: This story contains coarse language and a description of a suicide attempt.

In short:

• Australia's domestic spy chief says three to four countries have been caught actively seeking to interfere in diaspora communities.

• Mike Burgess said Australians would be shocked that those seeking to interfere were nations considered friends.

What's next:

• He has warned that he would be willing to call out nations publicly if the threat persists.

(the detail is that he's talking about how she self-identifies rather than her appearance itself, but that would ruin a perfectly good nottheonion moment)

"The predicted arrival time of the solar storm is uncertain, with a variance of twelve hours either side, which is typical for solar eruptions like these," said Dr Brett Carter, a specialist in space weather prediction at the RMIT University school of science.

To help you decide whether it is worth heading out to catch a glimpse, Carter suggests keeping track of incoming space weather data via the BoM, as well as social media feeds.

I think they mean the relevant sub-division (?) of BoM: https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Aurora

Strange scenes from Channel 9 who are copping widespread criticism for their disastrous handling of the Olympics while their journalists are on strike after the bosses were sure they don’t need to pay the journos properly.

A year ago, the government instigated an independent review of the national multicultural framework.

As more than half of Australia’s population is either born overseas or has one parent who was, this policy is important. It underpins how multiculturalism works in almost every part of life. It aims to ensure equity and inclusion for people from minority groups, and attempts to whittle away at structural racism.

The review recommends bold changes, like dismantling the Department of Home Affairs. It remains to be seen how much the government will enact.