British, Gen-X. Interests: writing, art, journaling, Second Life, ADHD, LGBT issues, Trans issues, history, paganism

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  • 35 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • The Peak District is right on my doorstep (I’m near Manchester). Monsal Dale, near Little Longstone, is lovely. It was a regular place ofr my family to visit when I was a kid, and I still go up there sometimes. The walk along the river from there to Millers Dale is lovely. And there’s a pub at Monsal dale viaduct (or at least, there was, not sure if it’s still open).

    More locally, I like the area around Uppermill, Diggle and Delph (north-east of Oldham). There’s a great little riverside cafe caled the Lime Kiln, just north of Uppermill. It gets busy at weekends though.

    A couple of weeks ago I went up to the Northumbria coast for a holiday. Warkworth, Alnwick, Bamburgh, Holy Island… it’s all beautiful around there.













  • Downtide@sh.itjust.workstoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlDeleted
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    1 year ago

    The trouble with any sort of captcha or test, is that it teaches the bots how to pass the test. Every time they fail, or guess correctly, that’s a data-point for their own learning. By developing AI in the first place we’ve already ruined every hope we have of creating any kind of test to find them.

    I used to moderate a fairly large forum that had a few thousand sign-ups every day. Every day, me and the team of mods would go through the new sign-ups, manually checking usernames and email addresses. The ones that were bots were usually really easy to spot. There would be sequences of names, both in the usernames and email addresses used, for example ChristineHarris913, ChristineHarris914, ChristineHarris915 etc. Another good tell was mixed-up ethnicities in the names: e.g ChristineHuang or ChinLaoHussain. 99% of them were from either China, India or Russia (they mostly don’t seem to use VPNs, I guess they don’t want to pay for them). We would just ban them all en-masse. Each account banned would get an automated email to say so. Legitimate people would of course reply to that email to complain, but in the two years I was a mod there, only a tiny handful ever did, and we would simply apologise and let them back in. A few bots slipped through the net but rarely more than 1 or 2 a day; those we banned as soon as they made their first spam post, but we caught most of them before that.

    So, I think the key is a combination of the No-Captcha, which analyses your activity on the sign-up page, combined with an analysis of the chosen username and email address, and an IP check. But don’t use it to stop the sign-up, let them in and then use it to decide whether or not to ban them.





  • Drinking journal is fun. Everytime I have a new entry I put a drop of what I’m drinking on the page. The thick cotton pages hold water well and drive fast. Theres a lot of complexities to the flavors when homebrewing so it’s helpful to document whatever I can.

    That’s awesome. I don’t homebrew (yet???) but I do enjoy real ale, and Scotch, and my partner is getting me into gin too. The flavour profiles vary so much from one to another (I’ve learned that pale ales made with Citra hops are my absolute favourites; if I see Citra on a beer label I know for sure that I will like it. They remind me of grapefruit). When it comes to Scotch, I like the Speyside malts best, they’re rich, sweet and fruity. I had (a very expensive) one that tasted literally like Christmas pudding. Gin… I don’t really know enough about yet but I’m starting to find flavour profiles that I like and dislike. I like the spicier ones and dislike the more floral ones, I think. I have a gin in my pantry right now that’s infused with Earl Grey tea, and it’s divine.

    And… now I need to find Lemmy subs about booze, lol.