Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

If you are automatically subscribed to a thread when you post, does it matter? At the moment I get a double listing in my following list. Anyway, I'm sure it's not beyond you to make it work, given the rest of this!

You can help if you like, the code you want will be in https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microcosm/blob/master/models/comments.go , https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microcosm/blob/master/models/items.go , https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microcosm/blob/master/models/updates.go , https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microcosm/blob/master/models/updates_dispatcher.go

Comments will need to be able to have multiple in_reply_to (perhaps change it to an array in the database?).
Items will need to be able to show those.
Updates should deal with not showing duplicates even though they are of different types.
Updates dispatcher should notify the right people that they have been quote.

My current coding ability goes about as far as nested IF statements and vlookups in excel. Reckon I can pick this up with a few youtube videos?

The mark everything read button works again.

Microco.sm/out URLs would appear to have been banned by Websense, or at least my employer's implementation of it, so all outbound links now fail and you won't be getting your affiliate money.

I don't suppose there is an alternative that I can implement with Switcheroo is there?

I've just added one for you, please see whether this gets past websense.

Instead of something like:

http://microcosm.app/out/fWZWg

You can now use:

https://lfgss.microcosm.app/api/v1/out/fWZWg

Note: /api/v1 is only available via https.

Try that.

If that doesn't work, then I'll look into using the domain on which a site is hosted... i.e. http://www.lfgss.com

the https://lfgss.microcosm.app/api/v1/out/ version results in "net::ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILED" in Chrome and
"An error occurred during a connection to lfgss.microcosm.app. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. (Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)" in Firefox

Really? How strange.

https://lfgss.microcosm.app/api/v1/out/fWZWg works fine for me... I click it, and it just goes to the right place.

As it should, because it's the same SSL config, same server, same URL handler, same underlying code, and same query to it.

It could be the proxy that all my traffic has to be routed through. It's fine on my phone.

That link makes my Internet spin round in circles going RON RON RON.

A doo ron ron?

Work fixed the proxy issue. And the result is that the long form links are also banned. I don't think they trust the San Marino domain.

surely you have no images either?

All avatars, attachments and other things come from the .sm domain.

LFGSS is now HTTP/2
It's also SPDY for those who can't do HTTP/2
And HTTP1.1 for those who can't do SPDY or HTTP/2

Yep. They don't work either.
The only avatars I see are those served from my browser cache.

Wow, your work firewall is super aggressive.

There's nothing even remotely malicious on the microcosm.app domain.

Hmm, I'll look into what I can do, but it may take a while for me to have a solution as this is quite a lot of changes to rectify.

Mr @Velocio please can you fix it so I see no trace of those I've put on ignore?

Like when viewing following, I can still see them if they were the last to post on a thread, and can still see names quoted in replies...

Don't mind seeing the replies with a (....) in place of the name, but it would be nice if ignore was truly good bye.

There are a few places where it isn't possible to efficiently remove every last trace. The last poster is one of those places.

Presently we cache the information, and if we didn't it would put a significant enough strain on the database that we'd need to upgrade things and whilst possible it would be slightly slow and incur more cost (another ~£106 per month for the next leap in database server from the Linode 16GB instance to the Linode 32GB instance).

With that in mind I figure that there are places in which the cost of doing something just aren't worth it. Only a very small number of people use the ignore features, and there's no way that removing caching to achieve a perfect ignore system makes sense given the real cost involved. I'm not even sure how much slower it would be, but perhaps as much 50-100ms per API call, which would be noticeable enough.

Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate the situation, I can live with it as it stands.

You're telling me!
They have upped the paranoia settings to max recently. The number of access requests I've had to raise is ridiculous, but I'm never getting away with raising one for microcosm.app :-)

No worries, I shall fix it, but it will take a while.

It will probably involve a site option that allows proxying of a *.microcosm.app endpoint via a custom domain endpoint. i.e. that https://lfgss.microcosm.app/api/ surfaces at https://www.lfgss.com/api/ and that https://microcosm.app/out surfaces at https://www.lfgss.com/api/out .

There is a security risk to this, but it is exceptionally small and difficult to leverage, and because I am mindful of it I can add in checks on user uploaded files (avatars, attachments) such that the file hashes are checked against Virus Total before ever making them available to people.

Anyhow... it will be done, but not for a while.

I'm curious though... what happens if you have a local hosts file entry pointing lfgss.microcosm.app to 104.20.62.196 and microcosm.app to 104.20.63.196 ? Does that fix it? i.e. are they using a DNS method of blocking rather than an IP list? I am assuming they are, because blocking the CloudFlare IP addresses would take down a significant chunk of the internet for them.

It seems that host entries make no difference unless I also exclude them from the proxy. (Excluding them from the proxy just makes them unreachable, cos we have no direct internet connection here).

Your workplace has the most entertaining firewall I've heard of.

It will be quite a while before it's resolved, I'll work on it over Christmas.

I'm never getting away with raising one for microcosm.app :-)

Have you considered doing what they're paying you for while you're at work?

Something extremely tiny I've just noticed:

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/12669528/

cjr @-ed me and I quoted his text that included my username. In the quote, the non-breaking space that I have in my username was evidently converted into a normal space, resulting in a wrong alert to an inactive account with one post.