jadedmusings: (NCIS - Abby Unbelievable)
If you're wondering WTF is happening with LJ layouts and your comments, [livejournal.com profile] raemia has an excellent FAQ here.

Pertinent quote:

IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHY LJ EVEN CHANGED THE DEFAULT COMMENT STRUCTURE IN THE FIRST PLACE:
The new default comment structure is only one of MANY changes planned in order to overhaul the look and function of Livejournal. CLICK HERE TO SEE PICTURES OF PLANNED CHANGES TO LIVEJOURNAL LAYOUT. Note that these were NOT posted on the English-speaking side of LJ. CLICK HERE TO GO TO A LIVE PREVIEW OF THE LAYOUT BETA (goes to LJ.ru). The new comment structure was beta'd for one week by Russian users, the majority of whom did NOT like the updated look. The release went through anyway.

Also, Dreamwidth has open accounts until the end of the year, no invite code necessary. If you wait and do need an invite code, I have a few kicking around.
jadedmusings: (BtVS - Buffy does not approve)
From status.livejournal.com this morning:

Since 01:25 am PST, the site is under a DDoS attack. At the moment our operations team managed to deal with it, therefore some users may still experience difficulties with accessing the service. We appreciate your patience while we work to restore access to the service.

[Insert "In Soviet Russia" joke/meme here.]

Get ready for a rough few days of spotty service.
jadedmusings: (Default)
We can now publicly disclose that we have been experiencing a large-scale DDoS attack the last two days, which has been the reason for the site issues most users have been experiencing. The traffic load has been immense, at many times our normal load level, and the attack is still on-going. We are in constant contact with our providers to mitigate the attack as best as possible. We again apologize for the disruption to LiveJournal usage, and are working to get everything back to normal as soon as we can. Thank you!

Well that only took them, what? Three or four days? Really, what was so hard about publicly saying that either you didn't know what was up or that it was another freaking DDOS?

If anyone knows someone who needs invite codes to DW, I have some.
jadedmusings: (Sherlock - Laptop intervention)
From LiveJournal's status page:

While we've gotten site access returned for many users, we know many other users are still unable to access the site at all, or are only able to do so intermittently. We're sorry for the interruption to your LJ usage, and are still working hard to get site access back to normal for everyone as quickly as possible. Thank you.

Yes, users like me! Seriously, yet again there is such a failure to communicate to users precisely what is going on. I only know it was a data-center crash because someone went through the trouble of translating Russian, which is how I learned there was a DDOS attack last time. I'm getting so sick of this everytime LJ has problems, all that is said is "We're experiencing issues and are looking into it." And this is the same update that was up all day yesterday and very early this morning.

As for why I still use LJ, well, I still have too many friends over there who are active there and don't want to jump ship. It's why I still crosspost. Plus, DW doesn't have quite that level of activity, yet.

Let's hope they at least give extensions on paid time again.
jadedmusings: (ATLA - Aang c'mon!)
In case you're wondering what's up with LJ, it's apparently a data-center crash and not a DDOS.

From the comments:

"Blogging platform LiveJournal.com Monday morning turned out to be inaccessible to users. Mass-media company SUP Media has given an official comment on the matter:
Service is unavailable due to technical vremennno failure in communication providers data-center, which houses the server LiveJournal. We bring users to apologize for any inconvenience caused and hope for the patience and understanding. " (source: http://www.livejournal.ru/themes/id/32529)
jadedmusings: (Supernatural - Castiel pass the ammuniti)
LiveJournal is under a DDOS attack, the second within a week's time. That's why LJ is being such a pain in the ass to load, if it loads at all. (I'm posting this from Dreamdwidth as always.)

No telling when this will be over, and the last time I looked at LJ's status page it still said March 30 and not April 4, but that might have changed.

Do not quote me on this, but I think the original DDOS attack originated from Russia and it's political in origin. If this is true, I'm hardly surprised given the controversy surrounding SUP and all of the concerns raised when they first bought LiveJournal.

ETA: According to [personal profile] foxfirefey, the attack is indeed politically motivated.

"Poor LJ! Evidence points to the DDoS being retaliation for hosting the blog of a Russian anti-corruption advocate. This isn't the first time this has happened. I support them in this and hope they pull through soon."

Anyway, I should make a list of websites to play on when LJ is down. I suppose I could visit the World's End Tavern forums on WoW's website.

On second thought, maybe not.
jadedmusings: (Ming Ming Sewious)
From now on, I'll be cross-posting from Dreamwidth. What does this mean? Well, nothing really. I'll still be active on LJ, and so long as you're friended here, you'll still see everything, even f-locked and filtered posts. Nothing's changing except each post will have the little "This entry was posted at X. You may comment here or there using OpenID." That's the only difference.

So, no, you don't have to have me friended in both places, and so you don't keep seeing the same posts on both sites, you only have to friend one or the other.

The why for this can be summed up by reading this post. I'm like [personal profile] cleolinda. I don't want to leave LJ, so I'm not. I have loved LJ for a long time, and Dreamwidth will never have the sort of clout LJ does (and to be fair, they don't want to because they've said they prefer being like the "corner store").

My biggest problem is that LJ and Facebook are now so closely enmeshed with one another. There are many reasons I don't have a Facebook. Leaving aside their horrific record with user privacy and their crappy Terms of Service, I am really uncomfortable with putting my legal name out there where people from my past can find me and read about me. Sure, it wouldn't exactly be impossible to figure out who I am based on a few entries here, but something about Facebook really makes my skin crawl, plus should I ever experience harrassment, Facebook has demonstrated they won't handle it.

I imported my LJ, filters and all, over to DW, so should I get really spooked by what I see, I can delete this journal and not lose anything.

I wish I could explain it, and I know some people will just roll their eyes and say I'm being paranoid, stupid, or both, but I have nightmares about certain people finding me and snooping in my life. I moved out of my hometown because I don't want anything to do with anyone, and so I could finally feel safe to be who I really am. Yes, I'm an adult, but it's hard to explain what hell my life was growing up there and living there. There's also more than one incident in my life of people going above and beyond to get dirt on me. I've had private e-mails read by a snooper, and I've even had a different person call my then-landlord posing as a perspective landlord/employer when she wasn't anything close to that (and then-landlord fell for it and revealed some private stuff that s/he shouldn't have). Out of those two people, I know at least one of them has a Facebook and is still connected to my life in a round about way. It has happened before and I can't explain how horrible that feels to someone who hasn't had that happen. So, yes, maybe it's silly, but this is something that terrifies me and makes me very, very uncomfortable.

I'm going to stick around for as long as I feel safe and comfortable. Should I decide I'm going to delete or start posting solely over on DW, I will make sure to post a notice here so people can keep track. For now, there's no reason to add me there or defriend me here (unless you're inclined to do so for other reasons).
jadedmusings: (Default)
I'm sure you've probably all noticed the pingback feature offered by LiveJournal now. Well, you might want to turn it off.

Wow, this stuff gets more and more disturbing.

At least the slash (/) tag issue is a bug and expected to be fixed? Heh.
jadedmusings: (Default)
Let me explain why this cross-posting thing is such a big deal:

LiveJournal has not given me an option to opt out of this. I cannot rid my journal of the boxes for Facebook and Twitter on my posts. I can rid them on my comment boxes by using a script from an outside source (but it doesn't disable the boxes on posts). I shouldn't have to do this for a service I pay for. It puts more crap I don't want or need on my page.

The other issue is that I cannot prevent others from cross-posting their comments to my posts to Facebook/Twitter. When it's cross-posted, as I understand it, it provides a link back to the post, which while it might not grant an outsider access to that specific post, it will provide them a link to my journal, which a user might understandably want to keep a secret from other Facebook/Twitter users, plus a quote (roughly a paragraph for Facebook) which might include content from the post/comment a user is responding to.

Finally, like it or not, some people are going to agree to link their journals to Facebook/Twitter without being aware of what they're agreeing to do. Sam worked tech support and I've had other friends to use tech support. Some otherwise very intelligent people really don't understand much of anything when it comes to computers. Also, sometimes people just click on things without reading them, or click because they're told to (how else do you think some computer viruses and malware are spread?).

Oh, and a note for those of you who are about to say "If you don't like it leave/don't continue paying for it!" since it comes up every single time LJ does something its users don't like. I'm lodging a complaint because that's what you do when you get bad service. If my cable goes out regularly, I won't just sit around and wait for it to get better, I'll call the company and let them know I don't like what's happening. I give the company a chance to fix the problem first, and this is precisely what users are doing -- they're telling LiveJournal they don't like this and asking them to at least offer a chance to opt out. Yes, some word their complaints stronger than others, but if you've ever worked customer service, you know that every customer is different and that doesn't make their concerns any less valid.

As for leaving, I do have a Dreamwidth account I don't use, but even if I move, I still have tons of friends here who aren't moving. The thing is, LiveJournal is popular and something everyone knows, and it's not easy to just walk away from friendships. Not to mention I have a history here and while I can back up my LJ, there's a silly sentimental value attached to my journal. While Dreamwidth is great (and in a lot of ways better), it doesn't quite have the userbase or history LJ does at this time.

ETA: Because the universe decided today was the day everything would go wrong, I'm posting a cute kitten video since we all know the internet is for porn lolcats and posting videos of impossibly cute baby animals.

jadedmusings: (Default)
Also, apparently you can no longer use slashes (/) in tags. For those of you in various fandoms and who write fanfic, this has probably screwed up a good number of your tags.

I'm not sure if this is only a paid account thing or not, but I can manage my tags and rename them all at once instead of having to hunt down each entry and manually entering a new tag this way. Like I said, this might be a paid/permanent account only sort of thing, but if it's not, then that makes it easier to rename tags.

Not sure if this is a permanent thing or just a code screw up, but I did want to spread the word.
jadedmusings: (Default)
Man, have I been really out of the loop! There's a lot to talk about, but for now as I'm stuck at home with a slightly sick kiddo (just a minor cold but enough of one that it's left him a little run down) due to a flat tire (I need help getting to the spare) and I have to wait around for an important FedEx delivery (a check that's going to help me pay rent and get all new tires!), I figure I better go ahead and address some LiveJournal-related stuff (and use more parentheses!).

Regarding the new ping-back and cross-posting ability that allows you to cross-post your comments whether they are screened, filtered, friends-locked, or public, I think I should mention a few of my boundaries.

1) If a post or comment I make is public, I pretty much figure there's an inherent chance someone might quote me or link to me. That's fine. I've always said if it's a public post it's fair game. Link away, or if you quote me, please link back to me. I don't want other people taking credit for my genius. (That was a joke. It's okay to laugh at me my wittiness.)

2) If a post or comment I make is not public, I wish for it to stay private. If it's a filtered post, which are marked as such with brackets ([ ]) in the subject line, it's especially important to me that the content of those are not shared with others. If you're privvy to such information, it means I trust you not to share with outsiders. If I find you are sharing this content with others, I will unfriend and ban you from this journal as well as let other people on my f-list know who I banned and why so they can know in order to decide if you're worth the risk of keeping around.

3) Now, if you make a comment on my journal and want to quote yourself in your own journal or elsewhere, I'm fine with it so long as you do so in a way that doesn't reveal any information about me. (If it's a public post/comment, refer to rule one.) And if you repost your thoughts in order to continue a conversation in your own journal or to start a different sort of discussion in the same vein, let me know so I can join in. (This last part is a request and not necessarily a requirement.) Of course, if you're automatically cross-posting every comment you make regardless of privacy level/waiting for permission, I'm going to be wary of letting you stick around anyway.

3a) The problem with automatically cross-posting your comments is that sometimes you quote the person you're replying to and that means you're going to wind up sharing at least some of the content of the post. This presents a real problem even when you only intend to quote yourself as you're sharing details of another person's post/comment. So if I find you're going to be automatically cross-posting everything, I might go ahead and unfriend you to keep from either intentionally or unintentionally sharing information from me that I'd rather keep from the general public.


I'll end this PSA by repeating what I said in rule two: If I find you are reposting friends-locked and/or filtered posts/comments from my journal, I will unfriend and ban you from my journal. I will also let others know that I banned you and why I banned you so they can know you're a risk to keep around if they value their privacy.
jadedmusings: (Default)
Here we go again.

[livejournal.com profile] fanficrants is a community that is dedicated to...well, ranting about bad fanfics. Most of the rants are along the lines of grammar snark, out-of-character Mary Sues/Gary Stus, and gemstone-colored orbs eyes. Given that it's fanfiction, there is inevitably a few rants about bad sex scenes, which per community rules are always placed behind a cut (and if they aren't, mods are quick to step in and ask the poster to place behind a cut or face deletion). This method seemed to work out really well, and FFR has been around since 2002. That is until someone flagged it as being sexually explicit and LiveJournal changed the settings on the community and labeled it as containing "explicit adult content."

It was first mentioned here by one under-eighteen member (and yes, this is the post for which I was metaquoted, so now you know what I was on about). Today, an FFR mod confirmed that LiveJournal had indeed flagged the community as adult and that there was nothing they could do about it. No chance to change their rules, no chance to delete any "offensive" material, nothing. After eight years without a problem, suddenly anyone under the age of eighteen cannot so much as view a single post in FFR.

There are so many things wrong here that I don't even know where to begin.

Read more... )

Finally, where are the parents in all of this? As a parent I fully recognize that if I don't like the material my child is viewing/reading, I can prevent him from viewing/reading it. There are a plethora of ways of protecting my child from the dangers of the internet, and as he gets older, I can stay involved with what he's doing online and informed of who he is talking to. I can make a list of rules and provide consequences for breaking those rules, which can and should include my ability to take his computer access away. It won't kill him, and if it will keep him just a little bit safer, I'll accept his anger in exchange for keeping him healthy.

Quick PSA

Jun. 5th, 2010 07:24 pm
jadedmusings: (Default)
I've deleted my writing journal, so update your f-list and all that if you had [livejournal.com profile] jade_inspired friended. The ads for LJ were awful on dial-up, and today I had to sit around and wait for my browser to download what was essentially a freaking television commercial for a Lysol toilet bowl cleaning product. Not cool. If I wanted to throw money away, I'd just get a paid account, but I don't use that journal enough to really justify the expense. There wasn't much over there anyway, and I've moved all the smut over here (all three entries worth). Just click on the writing: erotica tag, and if you were friended on the writing journal, you should be in that filter. Other entries might find their way here, but most of it I wasn't impressed with. There will definitely be an upswing in my writing posts, so keep posted.

Also, if you are not in the erotica filter and would like to be, just drop me a line or message me privately. My only rule is that you must be over 18 years old, though I don't think anyone friended to my LJ is under 18 anyway. I promise not to tell anyone you're reading smut. ;)
jadedmusings: (Default)
See LiveJournal code:

Code, LiveJournal, code.

See Users cry foul:

"WTF, LiveJournal?"
"What were you thinking?"

See Users unite against gender discrimination:

"Bad, LiveJournal! Bad!"
"Okay, seriously, LiveJournal, you should know better by now."
"Raise the colors high! Never shall we die!"

See LiveJournal backpedal:

Faster, LiveJournal, faster!

*****

On a more serious note, I have changed my gender to "Unspecified," particularly because I fear my gender could be used for ad targeting. While I may be cisgendered (in that these days I finally feel comfortable in my own body - wasn't always this way), I learned a long time ago that the sort of female I am is not the one that advertisers generally try to woo. I plan to keep my gender as Unspecified from now on.
jadedmusings: (Default)
In addition to running slow last night and posting the same comment two or three times for some users, I noticed last night there was a long delay (several hours) between getting a comment and receiving e-mail notification. Today I'm not getting e-mail notifications, nor are comments showing up in my message box here on LJ itself, which is really odd.

I'm periodically checking back as people are commenting here and there, but when it comes to communities and stuff, there's no way I can keep track of where I've commented or to whom. So, um, if I miss something important, ah...hang in there? I'm sure I'll get it eventually?
jadedmusings: (Default)
Don't panic! LJ is doing some maintenance.

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

According to the comments, everything should be back to normal by the end of this week.

I'm posting this because I was trying to upload pictures earlier (I wanted to post photographic evidence of feline superiority) and the pictures wouldn't upload, even when I switched browsers. Then, I noticed none of my scrapbook pictures were showing up. Fortunately I saw the link on the LJ homepage and thought I'd pass on this information so fewer people panic like I did.
jadedmusings: (Default)
A warning via [livejournal.com profile] lupabitch (who credits [livejournal.com profile] grrrowly) about some malware being spread through LJ via erroneous community postings:

IMPORTANT

Just so every one knows- there's some malware going around, that makes a post to a community that looks like a mod post, saying the community is being deleted, and then deletes all the community's entries. If you see a post like this, report it and DO NOT CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS ON THE POST. They lead to dangerous malware that will steal your password and fuck up your LJ account.

ALSO: the recent accounts that have been friending people that are entirely in Russian (I know a few of you have posted about this), DO NOT FRIEND THEM BACK. They are BOTS.

This is not a hoax/joke/rumor. More info HERE, including a screencap of the post.

Apparently some people are being hacked through old e-mails associated with their LJ account. Go to this page to delete any old e-mails you do not use any more.

This reminds me of when I read about [livejournal.com profile] copperbadge last year. He fell victim to similar malware and lost five years' worth of entries, but managed to salvage roughly 80% of them according to his user profile. Still, the comments and many entries are forever lost because of someone's maliciousness.
jadedmusings: (Default)
LJers! Don't worry, the news of our demise is premature.Yes, there were layoffs, but that does not affect your LJ!
http://tinyurl.com/9rzk5y
Well, so glad you could take the time to type an astouding 140 characters to Twitter instead of, you know, Livejournal. Wouldn't it be more logical to use LiveJournal to tell people to keep calm since that is the service they're paying for and not Twitter? (By the way, the link goes to LiveJournal's Press Release page which, at the time of this posting, contains no information regarding the layoffs.)

Wow, keep racking it up, SUP. You're doing an astounding customer service job. *two thumbs up*

ETA: Finally, a press release:
January 6, 2009
LiveJournal Inc. announced a restructuring today of their U.S. and Russian operations to more effectively manage costs in light of the global economic downturn.

LiveJournal Inc.'s headquarters, technical operations (and servers,) legal, administration, and customer service teams will remain in the United States. LiveJournal's global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office. The pooling of resources between the U.S. and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal.

As a result of these changes, Matthew Berardo, VP and General Manager of LiveJournal Inc., will be leaving the company along with other valued colleagues. Mr. Berardo played the leading role in consolidating product and design efforts to enable the business to more effectively streamline costs during his tenure. LiveJournal Inc. will now be led jointly by Stephanie Gravelle, currently LiveJournal Inc.'s director of finance and administration, and Sergei Komarov, currently CTO of SUP (LiveJournal Inc.'s holding company).

For more information, check the post in [livejournal.com profile] no_lj_ads.
jadedmusings: (Default)
Because this really doesn't look good. However, it is slightly comforting to know that the Valleywag got it wrong on the number of people being laid off.

Of course, LiveJournal users, keeping an ever vigilant watch over their backsides to prevent surprise penetration (also known as "screwing over"), are already on the case.

The wank starts here.

And here.

And also here.

You just know this is going to explode to epic proportions, particularly for those people who just shelled out $175 for permanent accounts back in December.

Oh, as far as backing up goes, I heard of LJ Archive. Anyone have any experience with it or other backup service? I ask because if LJ is going the way of the dodo, I really don't want to lose some of my stuff. :(

If you need me, I'll be sitting over here with my virtual bowl of popcorn. (In all seriousness, I really want LJ to stick around. I love the people and communities, I just hate the way it's run.)

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jadedmusings: (Default)
Wrathful and Unrepentant Jade

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