patrick.net

@patrick is there some kinda anti-hotlink protection in use?

I tried to download the first video in this thread (url below)
https://patrick.net/post/1334717/2020-08-28-kneepad-harris-promises-more-riots
but get 403 forbidden


The video src:
https://patrick.net/uploads/8/b/f/8bfdb29a49177746a042bf0bcaa742e1.mp4

It might be due to the double dot at the end, but I am able to watch the video in my browser (vivaldi / webkit based) ok, just not download it, nor access the url directly like I am usually able to with internet videos.

Hircus says

patrick is there some kinda anti-hotlink protection in use?

@Hircus Yes, I did that after being threatened by a copyright troll lawyer, even though I comply with the DMCA.

For both images and videos, the "referer" has to be present, and has to say "patrick.net" in an http request, or else you get that 403 forbidden.

But you can get around it in two ways:

1. right click on the image or video and "save as" if your browser supports that
2. if you have the terminal program "curl" you can add the referer manually, like this on the command line:

curl -H 'referer: https://patrick.net' https ://patrick.net/uploads/8/4/c/84c65f80e3a3a09480a0f2a3cd3e0543.jpg > saved_copy.jpeg

(except without the space after the https, which i had to put it so it shows you the link and doesn't put the image in this very comment)

ok thanks!

Wow, they have a browser? Thanks, good tip.

What about your laptop browser? I assume you have a laptop.

I don't know why mobile browsers are refusing to let you save an image or video.

At least with an image you can just do a screenshot. Though that doesn't help with videos.

If the problem is referrer headers, maybe patrick could change it so that images/videos need either a referrer header OR send the login patrick.net username cookie. That way users who've logged in before and still have the cookie are exempt, which should still meet the objective of preventing wild internet hot linking. That would probably be an easy nginx config change.

Yes, that's a good idea.

Need to figure out how to do it exactly though, since the referrer header is checked in the nginx web server first, before it's possible to check whether the user is logged in.

How can nginx know whether a user is logged in?

Why not just check for the existence of the cookie name via nginx?
maybe like

if ($cookie_patricknetuser ~ "\d+") {...}


or whatever the right nginx syntax is.

A user wouldnt have the cookie unless they logged in at some point. They could spoof it, but it would only gain them hotlink viewing ability at best. I think the goal is really to allow patnet users, not necessarily ones that are currently logged in, and reusing the cookie as a way to say "weve seen this user before because they logged in once" seems convenient, and will still deny the internet at large. They can spoof the referrer header anyway, too.

@Hircus That's brilliant! Should have thought of that.

I'll try to do it tomorrow and let you know here if it works.

@Hircus I think I did it. Let me know if any problems.

nginx config is absolutely horrible. I want to switch web servers, but that's a lot of work too.

@patrick seems to work for me. thanks!

Is there a way to turn off Avatar pics? I love this site but some Avatars are NSFW (Trumping Tits, I'm talking to you!)
I sometimes have kids and Karens running around the house. I don't want to be labelled a porn toad or pedo.

rocketjoe79 says

Trumping Tits, I'm talking to you!

His doesn't even show up for me anymore. Not sure if it's a cache thing or not. Just get the ? mark missing image box on my end.

rocketjoe79 says

Is there a way to turn off Avatar pics? I love this site but some Avatars are NSFW (Trumping Tits, I'm talking to you!)
I sometimes have kids and Karens running around the house. I don't want to be labelled a porn toad or pedo.

Adblock extension for your browser allows to put any pic on "ignore", so you'd never see it again.

Thanks! AdBlock did thre trick, much obliged.

TrumpingTits says

WookieMan says

His doesn't even show up for me anymore. Not sure if it's a cache thing or not. Just get the ? mark missing image box on my end.

How about now?

Oh I'm fine with the image. Just don't get why it's not showing. Probably a browser issue. On Safari and it stopped after a recent update.

Try shift-reload to force reload of images in cache in your browser.

Maybe there was a broken version at some point and you got it cached.

I wish I had time to fix all this stuff. If SHOP doubles again, I will.

@Patrick: your certificate has expired.

FuckCCP89 says

Patrick: your certificate has expired.

Thanks for telling me @FuckCCP89

Should be fixed now. I really need to automate that.

Can you develop a way to flag Threads as official Threads for a topic, i.e. the Cat Thread, the Funny Picture thread, the Political Thread, this Thread, the Corona Thread, the 2016 official election thread, not every thread can do it, but perhaps after a threshold of replies has been reached they fall into that list. And have their own link like the Best or Random threads.

Tenpoundbass says

Can you develop a way to flag Threads as official Threads for a topic, i.e. the Cat Thread, the Funny Picture thread, the Political Thread, this Thread, the Corona Thread, the 2016 official election thread, not every thread can do it, but perhaps after a threshold of replies has been reached they fall into that list. And have their own link like the Best or Random threads.

Not a bad idea. I'd like to see the ability to merge threads. I'm fueling the flames, but we've got 3-4 crypto threads going in the last 2 weeks. Only having one would be less annoying to the users that know crypto is crap and don't want to see it.

OK, tell me which threads to merge, and which title should remain.

Patrick says

OK, tell me which threads to merge, and which title should remain.

Exactly.

I didn't mean to nuke any threads, or go thread Nazi on other threads. There just seems to be some threads that endure, if you know what I mean.
This one for example, there are just standard threads, that get revisited time and time again for a certain topic.
A flag that a moderator could flag when they think a thread has reached that status to show up in the (unofficial) official thread list.

@Tenpoundbass How about just looking at the "comments" tab on the home page, which sorts by a thread's total number of comments?

https://patrick.net/?order=comments

All the most commented threads pop to the top then. So you could call those your "standard" threads.

I remember a fun story about bubbles at the museum of finance on Wall Street.
Everyone knows about the "tulip mania" in Holland.
Besides tulips, once olive oil was considered very good as an investment, an important commodity.
A guy in New Jersey had giant tanks of it and attracted LOTS of money from investors.
But this bubble popped, as someone found out the tanks were actually full of water, with just a layer of olive oil floating on top.
Enjoy your "digital olive oil" boys.

All twitter links should be auto changed to a nitter link. Or maybe show both, letting the user choose which link to click.

The nitter instances occasionally get nuked or go down.

Both is a good idea.

I'm in the middle of another bit project, but will get to this eventually.

I have a suggestion, a hard link for general topics to get off the plantation.

How about a link that always shows up on the page (somewhere) that just allows people to post suggestions to alternatives to big tech?

Different search engines, different social media platforms, different video sites, and maybe at the top just more suggestions? Allow people to talk about anything that isn't "mainstream". Mainstream is generally captured.

I just discovered https://www.twitch.tv tonight.

Thanks @richwicks

I don't quite understand though. Just a list of alternative tech?

Patrick says

Thanks @richwicks

I don't quite understand though. Just a list of alternative tech?

Alternative communication systems.

People are trapped into what they are used to, simply because they are unaware there are other systems they can use.

How to post literal asteriks?

I want to post:



But the asteriks get parsed into html:

a b c = xyz

a %2A b %2A c = xyz

Lol, I had not considered this problem. Let me think for a minute...

*

OK, you can do it with:

& # 4 2 ;

If you remove the spaces. Sorry about the trouble @Tenpoundbass

richwicks says

Alternative communication systems.

People are trapped into what they are used to, simply because they are unaware there are other systems they can use.

Not saying mine is a great suggestion, just a silly one perhaps. But using dancing men to communicate, like in that Sherlock Holmes book where instead of letters they used predefined dancing men to hide communication. It's not exactly encryption and is pretty easy to break, but a neat concept with deniability.

I apologize if this was already suggested, but is there a way to allow copying an image and pasting it directly in a post without having to save it to disk and then upload it?

Would it be difficult to implement a reply limit per thread for anon's? I think it's fine if an anon wants to post a few replies here or there, but if they want to get deep into debate, I think they should have to reveal themselves so we can recognize those who may just be trolling, or if we want to use the ignore feature.

There are websites that allow you to setup temp email accounts with no personal info, so this wouldn't really force anyone to give away anything.

porkchopexpress says

allow copying an image and pasting it directly in a post without having to save it to disk and then upload it

Not yet, but thanks for the idea @porkchopexpress