Topics

1

Other Topics / 2 Gryphon Is Engaged, you guys

« on: June 17, 2012, 06:18:07 pm »

Speed-withdrawal assault comedian 2 Gryphon has gotten engaged to his (extant, apparently) boyfriend, and it was suitably exhibitionist:

Just proposed to my sweetheart @Toasttherabbit in front of about a thousand people. He said yes. - @2_gryphon

Noted roach furry Sam Conway popped a boner, or he would have, if not for the years of sake-infused Corn Flake breakfasts. Too bad 2 is still in LA, pursuing a comedy career shouting at people about male nerds having awkward sex with each other, and gay marriage is currently illegal there, thanks to Caleeforneeuh's illustrious multidecade experiment in citizen governance.

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FA Obsession Collection / Performance issues prompt "unplanned maintenance". Maybe.

« on: January 25, 2012, 03:41:55 pm »

Recently, d.facdn.net (ie. images and other artfiles, as well as thumbnails), began being served over HTTPS, for no obvious good reason. Despite the intermediate SSL certs being broken (which leads to certificate errors on certain types of popular smartphones), this adds additional load to an already overloaded infrastructure. d.facdn.net resolves to a single box in the netblock owned by Ferrox Art, LLC. This is not new, but it also means that the additional load of HTTPS is being borne by that same box, and not, say, by some kind of cloud-based caching service.

At least one Twitter user this morning said they'd been prompted to enter a reCAPTCHA challenge with the message (ostensibly from FA) that their computer had a "virus".

And now, the administrator notice, in addition to informing users about AUP changes, is also stating that the administration is aware of performance issues and that their may be "unplanned" maintenance this week to fix it. Which is progress, I guess, that they are more or less willing to admit to winging it when it comes to this stuff. Translation of "unplanned maintenance", to me, is something like "Whenever Dax feels like it/Whenever Yak is awake".

Maybe you could solve your performance issues by not using SSL when it adds no value whatsoever, and you don't have the fancy hardware and software necessary to lighten the crypto overhead? What exactly is being protected by the SSL session? There are no cookies sent to the artfile server, there is no login whatsoever necessary if you know the direct link to a mature image. All of this is as it was before. Except for the SSL.

It might make (slightly more) sense to make the main domain end-to-end HTTPS, to protect against cookie hijacking. But SSL-izing facdn.net is the one thing that makes no sense to me, and it seems to me to be the one thing that could be (maybe the only) cause of their current performance issues.

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FA Obsession Collection / The first AUP update of 2012

« on: January 19, 2012, 09:18:00 am »

So, to kick this off right:

The Acceptable Upload Policy (AUP) has been updated. You can find a list of changes/updates can be found here.

Somebody hasn't chugged their Mountain Dew Amp'd for the morning. You can click through can find this:

Brief run-down of changes:

Aww, Sean, you read us, do you? Of course you do.

Anyway, it seems like he tried to address a lot of the criticisms leveled by yours truly in the previous thread. Dunno if any FAF users pointed any of the same stuff out.

What's new:

- The photography policy was yet further restricted. Pictures of, e.g. DVD collections are prohibited. Pictures of animals eating are no longer allowed. This seems to (sensibly) prohibit, say, a wild animal feeding on a carcass but is it necessary to ban a picture of, say, your Lab eating Purina Dog Chow?
- Body part photographs are not allowed. The example given suggests that this is aimed at foot fetish photographs, though I am not aware of any specific incidents that might've prompted such a ban.
- Music is further restricted to prevent uploads of trivial remixes.
- Memes are permitted, as long as they're not memes, apparently.
- A new policy requires all contributors to a work to be cited.

I am not aware of any incidents that led to any of this, most of it seems to be clarification. He says in the introduction that he contacted 60 to 70 people to get feedback on this, which seems excessive. I don't know how many responded, I can't imagine it was anywhere near that number.

So. Nothing particularly comical this time around.

4

Scandal! / Findra's Wake (How Not To Keep Secrets)

« on: October 18, 2011, 12:21:39 pm »

Continuing in it's own thread:

Findra was 44, and a member of furry fandom for at least a decade and a half; plenty of time to build meaningful relationships.

I don't know what happened, either. As a reporter, I'd like to find out; as a friend, I'd prefer to remember him as he lived, rather than as he died.

It's too bad. Findra was one of those who worked in the back rooms to make the community a better place for everyone - well, almost everyone. He'll be missed.

You would do well to just STOP TALKING if you really want people to stop asking questions. You see how this works? That article for Flayrah was written just like WikiFur is written- excessively deferential to the subject, unless the High Dork Command of furry has deemed them an outlaw (as with your last link above). Which, you know, whatever- I have to admit, not knowing the first thing about the situation, the lack of information struck me the minute I read the article. It was an offhand observation, and I would have moved on, but for the fact I come to find out I'm not exactly alone here. Not only are people asking questions, but you and the people who DO know the answers are acting as though there is something to hide. You, for what it's worth, almost sound like you don't want to know; lest any illusions you have be challenged. Which seems to be how you run WikiFur- the less bad stuff you know the better you can do what you do at WikiFur.

So by being freaking weird like this, people who would have otherwise let it go now see that there's a seekrit somewhere. Good job.

Anyone dead at 44 immediately begs the question of why/how. But- there are a handful of non-embarrassing possibilities for people to die suddenly even younger than that. I have a cousin who came within hours of dying of a previously-unknown genetic heart condition (they operated, quite literally, just in time), and one of my father's former coworkers almost had his wife die of a brain aneurysm. It happens.

So if you have something to hide, and there's a perfectly feasible excuse JUST STANDING THERE, for god's sake shut up and let people draw their own conclusions.

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FA Obsession Collection / AUP Updates; August 15, 2011 - "Fetish Costumes" now prohibited

« on: August 15, 2011, 05:13:37 pm »

The Acceptable Upload Policy has been updated. And it looks like Princess Piche might have been waiting for Symantec to finish scanning something, because he was clearly bored when he set this up.

The link in the admin-notice goes FAF. In the past, it went to the wiki, but that's gone. When you click on a link marked "details", you are inexplicably taken to an entire sub-forum of FAF that has been created to discuss, specifically, the August 15, 2011 update of the AUP.

Most sentient mammals deal with changes to policy documents by providing the delta towards the top, followed by the complete lawyer-approved text (hah). That does not appear to be the case, as the new AUP is posted in a sticky thread. Dragoneer talks about the changes in another sticky, but the usual practice is to do something along the lines of: "line 3, paragraph 2 is changed to read: blah blah".

The good news: almost all of the changes are for clarity, grammar and general readability improvements! Hurrah! We've updated almost everything to make it easier to understand and digest.

while Sean's inability to write coherent English like an educated adult human is well-known, he's also not a lawyer and changing words often means changing meanings.

This was addressed, perhaps unsurprisingly.  Other stated policy changes are: Image rating for maturity level is now required (it wasn't before?), and there is a policy on 3D models. Since FA cannot accept let alone display, say, Blender models, I fail to understand why there's a need for a specific policy addressing rasterized renderings of models that are no different from a policy standpoint than any other PNG/JPEG art file. Regarding that policy, "Fender" says:

It's both stricter and looser

Hmm. Okay.

The photography policy was also updated. And that's where the madness lies, complete with ad-hoc capitalization:

Photography involving people wearing real-life Fetish Costumes (BDSM, skin-tight latex/leather, Pony Play and other severe fetish costuming, etc).

"severe"?

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FA Obsession Collection / Icon Police

« on: May 14, 2011, 01:23:31 pm »

Iconoclypse:

Avatar Policy & Guidelines

Avatars must be work safe. They may not contain blood/gore/fluids, rapidly flashing colors/images (i.e. "seizure mode"), outlines/indentations of genitalia or nipples, or be sexually suggestive in nature. General rule of thumb: avatars must adhere to the same guidelines as “general submissions”.

Further, avatars using the work of another artist without their permission will be removed.

Accepted formats: .gif, jpg, png (.jpg and .png will be converted to .gif format, with possible loss of quality)
Max avatar filesize: 50 KB
Max avatar dimensions: 100x100 pixels

Avatar F. A. Q.
Q: What does "work safe" mean?
A: Work safe means it must be something that is appropriate for viewing while in the standard work place.

Q: Are bouncing boob icons and jiggling butts still allowed?
A: No, they are now prohibited as avatars due to their sexually suggestive nature.

Q: Are fetish avatars allowed?
A: Explicit sexual fetishes are prohibited as avatars.

Admins were apparently deleting icons last night to enforce the new policy, giving users little to no warning. There has been no rationale offered as yet, but one can imagine the usual reasons for a move like this.

Particularly interesting (and characteristically vague) is the notion that icons depicting "explicit" sexual fetishes are disallowed.

7

Non Topics / ED = finally dead?

« on: April 11, 2011, 04:55:58 pm »

Looks like Encyclopedia Dramatica is finally dead.

Hey everyone,

We have some things that we need to take care of, but we will be back soon. While you are waiting, please check out our new blog and join our mail list.

Thank you for your fealty,

ED

I really doubt they'll be back. I believe the only reason the site was kept online as long as it  was was because it probably had pretty good Google rankings which allowed for some advertising revenue to be extracted from it. If the owner(s) can't extract that revenue stream anymore, there'll be little motivation to bring it back.

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Other Topics / OR Congressman Gets Smashed, Puts on Tiger Suit

« on: February 19, 2011, 11:56:26 am »

I'm not sure what makes this more furry, the tiger suit or the uncontrolled alcoholism:

Whether the photo depicted a staged or real event is uncertain. Someone who appears to be Wu is in the full-body tiger costume. He is face-down on a made bed with his arms at his side, as if asleep or passed out.

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FA Obsession Collection / Once and for all, what is Dragoneer's job?

« on: August 03, 2010, 10:33:18 am »

So maybe you've seen that after years of being a section in the FA article, Princess Piche finally has his own ED article. But it is a pretty crappy article, and it could benefit either from re-writing or at least more "real" (i.e. plausible) dirt on its subject. It's gotta be out there.

Particularly, does anyone know with a reasonable amount of authority (first hand, trusted source, etc.) what Dragoneer actually does during the workday? The article says he works at a 7-Eleven but I don't see how he spends the money he does, lives in NoVA, and works at a 7-Eleven, unless he like manages one or something. Even then it just doesn't seem likely.

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News Media / 2 gryphon gets a break, of sorts

« on: July 31, 2010, 07:54:08 pm »

2 gryphon is going to perform at the Comedy Store in West Hollywood.

Discuss.