Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Fandom things

Aug. 30th, 2025 02:40 pm
sholio: aged sepia paper with printed text saying "If undelivered, return to Air Ministry, London" (Biggles-london air ministry)
[personal profile] sholio
My fandom gift basket is up: find it here!

Meanwhile [community profile] caseficexchange revealed and I have received TWO STUNNING GIFTS in two different fandoms, both of which I genuinely could not love more; the authors nailed the feeling of the caseficcier parts of canon in each of these fandoms, and I have had SUCH a good time last night and this morning reading and commenting on them!

The Case of a Forced Landing (Biggles books, 6800 wds, light Biggles/EvS)
Perfectly captures the feeling of the short SAP stories, with Biggles and EvS on an enforced holiday on the countryside with mysterious happenings and rural ambiance. Delightful!

The House Always Wins (Babylon 5, 16K words, Garibaldi & various)
Early season one casefic with Garibaldi investigating a missing artifact that both Londo and G'Kar claim cultural ownership of. Pitch-perfect character voices and canon tone, feels like it could literally be an episode.

(no subject)

Aug. 29th, 2025 11:31 am
sholio: two men on horseback in the desert (Biggles-on a horse)
[personal profile] sholio
State of Whumptober:
7/31 (24 to go)
2 Biggles, 4 Murderbot, 1 Babylon 5

They're definitely not all whump or even h/c; some of them are just using the day's prompt for a general ficlet. Because it's my journal and I say so.

Turns out writing short h/c snippets for Babylon 5 is extraordinarily hard (at least with the characters I want to write about) due to
spoilers.the incredibly short window of everyone being happy and getting along before it all goes to hell. You pretty much either need 20K of fixit beforehand, or somehow fit all your little hurt/comfort tropes into like 4 months of canon. (Obviously this pertains primarily to Londo.)


I also did sign up for Out of Order Flash. (Nominations are still open if the thing you want isn't in there.) I currently have no matches; I don't suppose any Biggles people (or Murderbot! or B5!) are around to be ~tempted~.

In other news, it is definitely early fall. Leaves are turning gold and falling! The air smells like autumn! I love this time of year best of all times of year, and yet .... help.
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
If you missed the live recording of the Murderbot interview episode at WorldCon, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JRHSABM24

This includes the special message to me that the show's cast sent, which was awesome.


***


I'm still sick, but getting better bit by bit.

(no subject)

Aug. 27th, 2025 05:09 pm
turps: (beach)
[personal profile] turps
My MiL's visit is going nicely so far.

We went out for a drive Saturday, went for lunch at our favourite beach restaurant on Sunday, went to Whitley Bay for a drive on bank holiday Monday then went to see Corey where I got to hug the stuffing out of him. I'll just skirt over the morning where I sat on the wall outside the gym waiting for it to open, only to discover my branch doesn't open at all on bank holidays.

We drove to Sea Houses yesterday, which was another lovely sunny day. Then today was class and an afternoon at home, because as much as she complains she doesn't get out, it's obvious my MiL doesn't have the stamina to go out every day without some downtime.

Today, Rosie told us she's starting an exercise only class from next Monday, using the time slot we used to have. She asked if there was anything people wanted including, and I made the rookie error of saying nothing I wanted to be included, but no more walking lunges, please. Guess what she's decided to add, for sure? Honestly, I never learn.

James also got a cancellation for his back injections so he's getting those Saturday evening. Kayleigh is driving us there and back, then some recovery time and hopefully, he'll be back to work.

My SiL and her family are at a holiday camp close to the wildfire on the Yorkshire moors. They were supposed to be there until Friday, but are coming back today instead, taking the train as the main road is closed. They're going to stay with my SiL's partner's mam for a couple of days, then come home on Saturday. But I must admit, I'm kinda hoping that they come home Friday instead so we can drop off my MiL then and have a bit more breathing room on the Sat.

Back

Aug. 27th, 2025 10:46 am
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
I'm back, sort of. We did a week of vacation after WorldCon, then got sick on the last day, so I'm still recovering. Covid tests were negative, so I think it's just a bad cold. It probably wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't had to do a full day of travel from 6:00 am to 10:30 pm to get home.


More later, but one of my favorite things was the really wonderful piece that N.K. Jemisin wrote about me for the program book.



***

Big thing I wanted to mention here: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books

This is a 14 ebook Humble Bundle from Tor, (DRM-free as usual) and you can select a portion of the price to donate to World Central Kitchen.

Whumptober 2025 prompts

Aug. 26th, 2025 11:23 pm
sholio: Halloween candles (Halloween-candles)
[personal profile] sholio
It's that time of year. :D

Whumptober 2025 prompts list on Tumblr and text list on Google docs.

Full prompt list and alternates )

Happy to hear any suggestions, requests, or ideas/inspiration! (Results not guaranteed.) I will probably be looking at writing Biggles, Murderbot, and Babylon 5 for this, and I already have specific thoughts on a few of the prompts, but I'm happy to hear any thoughts or suggestions that you have.

Exchanges/Challenges

Aug. 26th, 2025 11:02 pm
sholio: Chess queen looking horrified (Chess piece oh noes)
[personal profile] sholio
I won't sign up for more exchanges, she said, before being tempted by exchanges. Although this is more a broad smorgasbord of things I'm currently being tempted by.

I'm probably not signing up for Sex Pollen Exchange despite being very tempted. I love the trope, but I suspect signing up to write it for other people would be a great way for my brain to decide it had never seen a sex pollen in its life. (Signups close Aug. 31.)

I'm definitely not doing [community profile] ficinabox this year (signups 'til Aug. 31) because I'm definitely not up for 10K right now, but I wish the best to all who are throwing themselves on that pyre!

One thing I actually am seriously thinking about signing up for is Out of Order Exchange, a semi-flash exchange for non-linear fic. Currently taking nominations, and the signup window is tiny (Aug. 29-Sept. 1), then there's a 2-week writing period. I just think it sounds like a fun challenge (300 word minimum, 1 fandom minimum for requests/offers).

I also did sign up for [community profile] fandomgiftbasket, which is taking signups until Sept. 5. This one has no requirement to create anything; you can simply leave prompts (3 fandom minimum) and receive gifts. They do have a tendency towards delays if they have trouble filling all the baskets.

And this year's Whumptober prompts are out! (There is also a Whumptember challenge, because of course there is.) This is like the WORST year to try to write all the Whumptober days, because I have a lot going on that month, but I am so tempted to at least give it a try.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Foundation 3x03-06

Aug. 25th, 2025 10:41 am
sholio: Made by <lj user=aesc> (Atlantis city)
[personal profile] sholio
This season continues to be definitely Something.

Spoilers )

Murderbot TV fic: Hide and Seek

Aug. 25th, 2025 12:41 am
sholio: murderbot group from episode 10 (Murderbot-family1)
[personal profile] sholio
Hide and Seek (5088 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murderbot (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Murderbot & PreservationAux Survey Team (Murderbot Diaries)
Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Mensah (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Gurathin (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Ratthi (Murderbot Diaries), Pin-Lee (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Arada (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Bharadwaj (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: Friendship, Post-Canon, Banter, Fluff, Team Bonding, Hide and Seek, background tv-verse canon pairing (pin-lee/arada)
Summary: Murderbot thinks its humans need more practice not dying under field conditions. The answer is obviously a staged war game, modified for Preservation concerns. (TV-verse with a few minor book elements.)

Apparently I need to write something like this in every fandom I'm in that has some kind of organized team.

(no subject)

Aug. 23rd, 2025 03:01 pm
turps: (dalek)
[personal profile] turps
Thank you [personal profile] misbegotten for the excellent postcard ♥

I got a comment on one of my old bandom fics. I replied to the comment and the person replied again mentioning that they were exactly one month younger than the fic. Omg, talk about feeling old.

Kayleigh, Lucy and Bodhi are home, as sadly their holiday ended up being a bit of a nightmare. It was going okay until one night they'd walked to eat at a restaurant near their hotel/the beach cut for details but no one is injured or hurt )

I've been watching Parenthood on Netflix and really enjoying it. It reminds me of Brothers and Sisters and This Is Us, though it hasn't made me cry like This Is Us tended to do. There's time yet though, I've just reached the end of season one and have quite a few seasons to go.

After swimming on Thursday I was having a discussion with James about him maybe getting his own gym membership instead of relying on my guest passes as he's been quite often lately. We asked about prices as we were leaving the pool, and of course, got the spiel about it being cheaper to pay for a year at once. But we said we'd need to think about it more, and it's good that we did as literally, just after getting into the car someone from the doctor's phoned.

James had asked if his GP could ask about the GP exercise referral scheme which is partnered with the gym I go to. They'd done so, and end result is, James now has a discount card that means any drop in sessions at the gym only cost him £3. Between that and the two free guest passes a month, he doesn't need his own membership, so thank goodness he didn't say yes to signing up.

Foundation 3x01-02

Aug. 22nd, 2025 08:35 pm
sholio: Made by <lj user=aesc> (Atlantis city)
[personal profile] sholio
Watched the first couple of episodes of the new season!

Spoilers )

If you're watching it, no spoilers beyond episode 2, please!

Unraveller - Francis Hardinge

Aug. 20th, 2025 07:12 pm
sholio: book with pink flower (Book & flower)
[personal profile] sholio
I haven't read Hardinge in ages, so I'm catching up some of her books I missed. I started with this one, and really enjoyed it! Although it's not specifically similar to it, I was reminded of Fly By Night in its general vibe - not as dark as some of her books (... I say this about a book in which
slight spoilerone protagonist's brother ate her sister and that's not even the worst trauma of her life),
with entertainingly unhinged worldbuilding including a kingdom partly ruled by spiders, and kid protagonists caught up in adult politics in which they're not sure which of the various morally gray adults around them they can trust.

Basic setup/characters/etc )

Spoilers )

(no subject)

Aug. 20th, 2025 05:00 pm
turps: (bite me)
[personal profile] turps
I'm looking after Kayleigh's cats and tortoise atm, visiting twice a day, and man, having the two kittens makes the job so much harder. Fun, but I totally understand why the phrase like herding cats was invented.

We went to see Materialists yesterday, and while I really enjoyed watching Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, I can't say it gripped me, so I wouldn't really rec.

James also had an appointment with his back doctor. It was at the private hospital and when we got there we were told there was a 40-min delay. But in the end we only waited about 20 minutes, probably because the consultant was rattling through his appointments. James' literally took less than two minutes, asked if the pain was back, told yes, okay, can have the injections again, appointment will be sent as soon as possible, then done, out we went.

Today was weight management class, cut for those who don't want to read )

I finally picked up my new compressions today. I actually got the thigh high pair last week, but those are meant for use in the house or just pottering around, so I haven't worn them much. But today I got the below knee ones meant for every day, and you know I'm going to wear the blue patterned ones tomorrow.

I'm going swimming again tomorrow morning. So it'll be cats, swimming and then back home to tidy up and move furniture as my MiL is coming to spend the week on Friday. I'm just hoping James' appointment doesn't come really early as there's already an overlap of looking after the cats and my MiL. I could do without James' being down for the count, too.

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