patrick.net

@HeadSet

OK, now I detect that the text box is not selected before using the l/r arrow keys to navigate.

Please let me know if it's still broken in some way.

Works perfectly!

You can now upload pdfs from your local computer. The result will be a link that says "view pdf" that people can click on to see it, like this:

view pdf

You can change that link text if you like to make it more descriptive of what you uploaded.

The same 10MB limit applies, as with images and videos.

I have a suggestion of a feature I actually saw on another site that I think might be good for Patnet and Patrick's sanity. I don't use Twitter, I use Nitter to read twitter posts. On thing I've noticed on Nitter is that YouTube links are redirected through: https://redirect.invidious.io/ which supposedly doesn't track you like YouTube would. I'm not an even intermediate in computer wizardry, so it's probably way more work than I imagine it is.

It's still a good site regardless. I keep coming back, right?

DhammaStep says

I don't use Twitter

I just signed up!

Twitter has a lot of "anti-vaxers" now.

Please follow me there, though I suspect my new account is already shadow banned because search auto-complete for patrick_dot_net does not work, even if you type "patrick_dot_ne" up to but missing the last "t".

https://twitter.com/patrick_dot_net?ref_src=patrick.net

Better way to embed videos and tweets

@charlie303 True, I don't do anything when someone posts a YouTube link except make it clickable. I don't trust Google, nor their subsidiary YouTube.

If I were to let them embed an html frame on patrick.net, then they would have vastly expanded powers to spy on what users are viewing. I don't think they allow plain video tags with YouTube as the source.

But for Rumble and some other sites I do trust, I transform a link into a video tag, because they allow that and because it doesn't give up much info about patrick.net users.

Patrick says

charlie303 True, I don't do anything when someone posts a YouTube link except make it clickable. I don't trust Google, nor their subsidiary YouTube.

If I were to let them embed an html frame on patrick.net, then they would have vastly expanded powers to spy on what users are viewing. I don't think they allow plain video tags with YouTube as the source.

But for Rumble and some other sites I do trust, I transform a link into a video tag, because they allow that and because it doesn't give up much info about patrick.net users.

Fair enough.

I try to type a description for YouTube videos but I just feel a clickable thumbnail is more eye catching.
I will learn more about the HTML commands iFrame and embed.

Thanks

I put "instant comments" back in, in a simplified way.

So if you have a thread open, and there is a new comment on it, you'll see the new comment without reloading the page.

I used to have a separate websocket server for this, but it was ugly and didn't work that well. Now I just have a poll going on in javascript, so each 10 seconds, the open page checks whether there were any new comments within the last 10 seconds, and if so appends them to the comments, just above the comment box.

Let me know if you see any bugs.

I added a red dot to the tab when there is a new comment, so if you have multiple threads open in multiple tabs, you can see when there are new comments in any of them.

The dot goes away on page reload, or when you make a comment, which is also a page reload.

Patrick says

Please follow me there, though I suspect my new account is already shadow banned because search auto-complete for patrick_dot_net does not work, even if you type "patrick_dot_ne" up to but missing the last "t".

https://twitter.com/patrick_dot_net?ref_src=patrick.net

https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/1618667912377810945?ref_src=patrick.net

Dave Rubin
@RubinReport

Accounts aren’t just hit with labels that are obvious to insiders. They now found more “secret” labels which are causing shadowbans. My account was hit with all three; “Recent abuse strike,” “Recent misinformation strike”, “Recent suspension strike.”

I have a suggestion for having categories.

I follow a bunch of little known people on the Internet who have had fairly good track records on news and events, it it would be nice to be able to make threads dedicated to them.

You already have a thread for each politician I think, wouldn't it be nice to be able to group them?

For example, when you create a post, you could have a pull down (or a write in) list of categories it belongs to, then pull up a page with just those categories. So something like

"News: Ryan Dawson" as a post or "Politician: Rand Paul", etc.

Here's a list of people I frequently pay attention to:

Rivero - Bitchute
Rivero - Odysee
Jimmy Dore - Bitchute
Jimmy Dore - Rumble
Glenn Greenwald - Rumble
Richie Allen
Fight For Freedom (Richie Allen)
Computing Forever
Sargon of Akkad
Black Pidgeon Speaks
The Salty Cracker
Pull The Pin Already
SGT Report
Republic Broadcasting Network
Patrick
AwakenWithJP
The Last American Vagabond
MRCTV
Ryan Dawson (odysee)
Ryan Dawson (bitchute)
Vee
Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
Matt Orfalea
The Duran
The Corbett Report
Andrei Martyanov
Spoon
The Vigilant Fox
Redacted News
Razor Fist
Straight Calls - Douglas Macgregor

I keep this list, because "signing up to follow" is kind of pointless when sites deregister you all the time.

Sure, I'd be happy to have a thread dedicated to each of those.

So you're suggesting categories, like hashtags?

Patrick says

Sure, I'd be happy to have a thread dedicated to each of those.

So you're suggesting categories, like hashtags?

Yeah, something like that.

Maybe have a pull down for categories and then after that, allow people to just see a mainpage with just those topics.

People should try to re-use "categories" and "tags" where appropriate. Basically, allow organization based on topic. For the example I gave, it would be "news sources" or something.

I had a friend who had an idea where he wanted to make a website that would just follow journalists, and their stories, to weed them out as being wrong or full of shit where they would be caught in lies. His idea was that eventually what you'd be left with is reliable reporters. He gave up on it when he drew the conclusion that there are no reporters in "mainstream media", they are all full of shit.

Here is ONE reporter thought that STARTED on mainstream, before his ethics made him leave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceobsac7LE8

He is the only person I've ever seen give Obama a real interview.

How do I donate?

I don't have time to engage with what must be a wonderful community.

Love the memes, they make my day. Every day. If I get Patrick.net memes, I don't really need to read a lot of crap - or I know what to read.

Looked for donation button, link, maybe I'm thick, but couldn't find.

Cheers,

JC

@8621e2ea

I don't have a donation button. You could mail a donation to:

PO Box 85
Menlo Park, CA 94026

Thanks!

I made the font a bit larger. Substack has a pretty big font and that seems to work well for them.

Pat, How did you make this?

@The_Deplorable

First I found the image at https://imgflip.com/memegenerator by doing a search there, then added the text via that site, then took a screenshot, edited in Mac Preview, and annotated with text to put in patrick.net/memes

Took less than 5 minutes.

Patrick says

then added the text via that site

This step I don't understand...

How do you add text "via that site?"

Thank you for the answer.

The_Deplorable

The_Deplorable says

Pat, How did you make this?

If I want to create a meme, I use https://imgflip.com/memegenerator

And I normally do a screenshot to remove the watermark - it produces the image first as a preview, then you can turn that into the "final image" with a watermark.

You can upload images, and entering text is pretty simple. You might want to click the "cog" on them to modify attributes of the text.

richwicks says

You can upload images, and entering text is pretty simple.

Yes, yes, yes... Thank you both!

The_Deplorable

I look forward to seeing memes from you on patrick.net @The_Deplorable!

The likes/dislikes should be able to be toggled on and off, instead of one and done. I'm sure the few dislikes on otherwise very popular threads are from accidental clicks. Happens (esp. to people with big hands) from time to time

@mell I would prefer that too, but it's moderately difficult because I don't have an easy way to tell if a user has voted on a thread before, the way I do for comments. So some malicious user could click like and unlike over and over, or via a robot, to spam a user with thread "like" emails.

For comments, there is a row created in the database for each like. If the row exists, I know not to send out the email again on a second like of that comment by that user.

For threads, there is a more complicated table of views, likes, and other info, but the row exists for each user+thread as soon as the user views it.

Patrick says

mell I would prefer that too, but it's moderately difficult because I don't have an easy way to tell if a user has voted on a thread before, the way I do for comments. So some malicious user could click like and unlike over and over, or via a robot, to spam a user with thread "like" emails.

For comments, there is a row created in the database for each like. If the row exists, I know not to send out the email again on a second like of that comment by that user.

For threads, there is a more complicated table of views, likes, and other info, but the row exists for each user+thread as soon as the user views it.

Makes sense, in that case I'd prefer to do away with who (dis)liked my thread, if people engage they obviously like it or see value in it being discussed. We already have the who liked your comments feature which is plenty and personal enough imo. If you did away with the notifications on the thread (dis)likes, then you only need to track whether the user voted on a thread or not, and the total score can only be 1, -1, or 0, so they can't upvote or downvote multiple times, but they can toggle and you don't care how often they change their mind or reverse an accidental click. Maybe put a rate limit on the like/dislikes thread url, doesn't matter if those are different threads, nobody needs a thread (or comment) like/dislike more often than once every 10 seconds, so if it's more often you don't write to the db and just return.

That's true, if I eliminated thread like emails (there are no thread dislike emails), then it would be easy to let users undo their thread votes.

Pay people with Patrick Dollars when they post, or post and pass a like threshold number, even better. Create a new currency!

I could do that.

But what would people be able to buy with Patrick Dollars?

Patrick says

I could do that.

But what would people be able to buy with Patrick Dollars?

People would immediately cheat if they had any worth, producing posts endlessly to "make money".

Hey Patrick,

I can help you convert from URLs to embedded videos, but for some sites, like Rumble, I have to use something like curl, or wget to retrieve the information.

IF you are able to have a new entry of a post to fire off a program to modify the entry of the post, to call something like Perl, or C or whatever, the post can be modified to create the embed link. I know precisely how to do this with Rumble, and I don't mind figuring it out for new sites either.

For Rumble, I download the page to STDOUT, parse the data, and extract the embed link. I have written this in Perl, but any language can do it, except Javascript, because I don't think that can trigger a call to wget or curl - which are programs under linux to act as a web browser to download information.

I'll be happy to help. New entries into your mysql database (I know NOTHING about mysql) would have to activate an external program. Can you do that? Seems like it should be possible. I could do this with "inotify()" in C, and have that trigger another program. When the SQL database changes, if you can pull the latest post, produce the text of it, allow perl to read it, allow perl to convert it, and resubmit it to the database, I can do it.

Considering how shitty social media has become, you could potentially become a competitor.

The way some on here are debating/fighting seems to indicate that there is a larger split in the population, not just along party lines. It may be something bigger and we should all reflect on it. My suggestion would be to have threads with invited guests only where you can ask them for their opinion. Doesn't have to be exclusive, i.e. only invited people see the thread, so there is no obvious "exclusion". I may know a lot of things at this age and have made up my mind on others, but that doesn't mean that you can always live the way you want and avoiding the issues you rail against, sometimes you have to face em and collaborate, or you don't listen to your own advice and create issues for yourself ;) And it would help me reflect more on myself if it's genuine opinions/advice without a lot of cockfighting. What do you think, everyone and @Patrick? Not a moneymaker, but would make the site even more valuable imo.

@mell I love the idea of invited guests.

I can make a page for current users to invite someone to participate in a thread. But how would we get the email address of the person we want to invite?

Patrick says

mell I love the idea of invited guests.

I can make a page for current users to invite someone to participate in a thread. But how would we get the email address of the person we want to invite?

When you create such a thread, you have an additional field or fields where you enter the current usernames of those you wish to invite. Your backend creates the thread and stores the participants, and when a user is logged in and (re)loads your site there is an additional query for threads to show where their current username is invited to, or something similar.

@mell But how would I invite anyone who's not already on the site? I would need his or her email address?

Or is this just for current users?

Patrick says

mell But how would I invite anyone who's not already on the site? I would need his or her email address?

Or is this just for current users?

I was thinking just for current users, extending it to new users as a general invite to the site is a great idea as well, but not in my scope :)

With 3 kids, 1 wife, 1 mom (of my oldest) plus my original and already large expanded/extended family (and married into another one) in my life there is plenty of action/drama at times. I may have some practical advice as well, lol

I mean I hear some of you fiercely fighting about the exact detailed comings of the rapture, I'm just saying a quick thank you prayer to the Lord when I can finally lean back at the end of a long and successful work day with womyn and kidz (successfully kept) at bay, indulging in a great wine country red. That's as far as I can get, that and browsing patnet ;)

Patrick says

But how would I invite anyone who's not already on the site? I would need his or her email address?

Or is this just for current users?

I think people here are more tech savvy. I use a burner email account I legit never check. Most dudes I know under 40 have at least 5 email accounts. I think those over 40 here aren't using their real email account either. This isn't soy boy dip shit world.

Even though I'm the don't give a shit about privacy user, I still do. Whether he remembers, I have emailed Patrick my real first name at least. If I end up doing a Socal meet up I still won't give my name. I will show photos of my family and shoot the shit at a bar. I have to meet people to gain a level of trust.

I'm cocky but my record with trust is pretty god damn impeccable. I'll call a person out on one interaction and someone else there will take a year and tell me I was right. It happens monthly where people tell me I was right. The key is the ability to be self deprecating. Know your flaws. I'll admit mine. Most don't and you've lost my trust at that point. Especially if they're obvious flaws.