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New comment by conesus in "Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users"

1 Comment and 3 Shares

I run NewsBlur[0] and I’ve been battling this issue of NewsBlur fetching 403s across the web for months now. My users are revolting and asking for refunds. I’ve tried emailing dozens of site owners and publishers and only two of them have done the work of whitelisting their RSS feed. It’s maddening and is having a real negative effect on NewsBlur.

NewsBlur is an open-source RSS news reader (full source available at [1]), something we should all agree is necessary to support the open web! But Cloudflare blocking all of my feed fetchers is bizarre behavior. And we’re on the verified bots list for years, but it hasn’t made a difference.

Let me know what I can do. NewsBlur publishes a list of IPs that it uses for feed fetching that I've shared with Cloudflare but it hasn't made a difference.

I'm hoping Cloudflare uses the IP address list that I publish and adds them to their allowlist so NewsBlur can keep fetching (and archiving) millions of feeds.

[0]: https://newsblur.com

[1]: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur

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philipstorry
32 days ago
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Oh great, another threat to RSS, just what we needed...
London, United Kingdom
samuel
33 days ago
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Cambridge, Massachusetts
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Control Group

3 Comments and 17 Shares
Placeble 228 x/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
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philipstorry
1021 days ago
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I've suddenly realised that I have been in SO MANY control groups in my life...
And it feels fine. 😉
London, United Kingdom
jlvanderzwan
1021 days ago
All these things that turned out to have no benefit and a ton of annoying side-effects that we didn't have to deal with!
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2 public comments
cjheinz
1021 days ago
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Nice! Really takes the pressure off!
Lexington, KY; Naples, FL
ossiander
1021 days ago
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Works for me

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

1 Comment

Because the human condition isn't harrowing enough

Fear, shame, regret and Quarter Pounder® with Cheese – now you can relive the scents of last night in your living room thanks to obesity merchants McDonald's.…

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philipstorry
1734 days ago
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I choose not to weep for humanity.
I choose to be f***ing amazed we made it this far...
London, United Kingdom
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Apple is considering letting users change default email, browser, music apps in iOS

1 Comment
Closeup photo of a hand holding the iPhone 11

Enlarge / The iPhone 11. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple is seriously considering the possibility of allowing users to change the default apps for Web browsing, mail, or music on their iPhones. The company might also allow users to listen to Spotify or other music streaming services besides Apple Music via Siri on the iPhone or on the HomePod smart speaker.

These revelations were outlined in a report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman this morning, who cited multiple people familiar with Apple's internal plans.

While Apple's plans are not final, the changes could go into effect as soon as Apple's iOS 14 release later this year, which means they would likely be introduced during Apple's developer conference this June.

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philipstorry
1734 days ago
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At last.
London, United Kingdom
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Invisible Formatting

11 Comments and 20 Shares
To avoid errors like this, we render all text and pipe it through OCR before processing, fixing a handful of irregular bugs by burying them beneath a smooth, uniform layer of bugs.
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philipstorry
2112 days ago
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Yeah, I get this anxiety too.
And it can actually be an issue. The best case is that at some point in the future you click into that space and start typing, only to find everything in bold. Easily fixed.
The worst case is that you find one of the chaotic, baffling stupid dead ends in Microsoft Word's layout engine and lose hours fighting it to get what you're sure should be a relatively simple layout.
London, United Kingdom
1895 days ago
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9 public comments
denubis
2111 days ago
reply
Ah, *TeX, the ultimate outcome of what I see is what I meant. (Also, if folks don't know about overleaf it... shockingly doesn't suck as an online LaTeX engine)
1895 days ago
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kazriko
2112 days ago
reply
I have my whitespace set to visible in my IDE for exactly things like this. And yes, WP5.1's reveal codes was a similarly useful thing. WYSIWYG is far inferior to WYSIWYM.
Colorado Plateau
awilchak
2112 days ago
reply
#same
Brooklyn, New York
1895 days ago
https://keramatzade.com/Earn-wealth-with-amazing-business-ideals https://keramatzade.com/Law-of-Attraction-of-Wealth https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money https://modirebimeh.ir/online-calculation-of-iranian-life-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/engineers-professional-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/third-party-insurance-calculation/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-liability-insurance-have-you-not-yet-insured-your-business-with-iran-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-life-insurance-ganji-for-the-future-of-children-and-families/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-car-body-insurance-the-best-and-most-prestigious-in-the-iranian-insurance-industry/ https://modirebimeh.ir/the-most-reliable-and-unrivaled-third-party-car-insurance-in-iran/ https://keramatzade.com/14-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/8-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/25-jobs-with-which-you-can-earn-up-to-a-million-dollars https://keramatzade.com/success-secret-1 https://keramatzade.com/Make-Money-Online-Effective-step-by-step-money-making-techniques https://keramatzade.com/Make-money-at-home https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money-without-capital https://keramatzade.com/Creative-Money-Making-Ideas https://keramatzade.com/The-law-of-attracting-money https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-Make-Money-at-Home https://keramatzade.com/Immediate-absorption-of-wealth-in-10-minutes-and-attractive-ways-to-get-rich https://keramatzade.com/The-secret-of-attracting-money-in-Iran-to-achieve-creative-money-maker-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-get-rich-in-Iran-with-the-most-wonderful-business-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Astonishing-economic-intelligence-test-to-increase-financial-intelligence
summerofjay
2112 days ago
reply
So much THIS!

It's bad enough in native apps but browser-based services have taken it to a new level (looking at you, Confluence)
23223
1895 days ago
https://keramatzade.com/Earn-wealth-with-amazing-business-ideals https://keramatzade.com/Law-of-Attraction-of-Wealth https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money https://modirebimeh.ir/online-calculation-of-iranian-life-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/engineers-professional-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/third-party-insurance-calculation/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-liability-insurance-have-you-not-yet-insured-your-business-with-iran-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-life-insurance-ganji-for-the-future-of-children-and-families/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-car-body-insurance-the-best-and-most-prestigious-in-the-iranian-insurance-industry/ https://modirebimeh.ir/the-most-reliable-and-unrivaled-third-party-car-insurance-in-iran/ https://keramatzade.com/14-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/8-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/25-jobs-with-which-you-can-earn-up-to-a-million-dollars https://keramatzade.com/success-secret-1 https://keramatzade.com/Make-Money-Online-Effective-step-by-step-money-making-techniques https://keramatzade.com/Make-money-at-home https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money-without-capital https://keramatzade.com/Creative-Money-Making-Ideas https://keramatzade.com/The-law-of-attracting-money https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-Make-Money-at-Home https://keramatzade.com/Immediate-absorption-of-wealth-in-10-minutes-and-attractive-ways-to-get-rich https://keramatzade.com/The-secret-of-attracting-money-in-Iran-to-achieve-creative-money-maker-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-get-rich-in-Iran-with-the-most-wonderful-business-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Astonishing-economic-intelligence-test-to-increase-financial-intelligence
sirwired
2112 days ago
reply
God, I miss "Reveal Codes" from WordPerfect. It made fixing formatting problems *so* much easier over watching your entire document re-format because you delete a single paragraph break.
duerig
2112 days ago
I thought about reveal codes as well when I saw this. I miss it sometimes, but it always brought out my OCD side. I was always tempted to spend time erasing codes that didn't actually impact the document.
fallinghawks
2112 days ago
Reveal codes was awesome. My memory is of when word processors started to be able to apply HTML. An instant shitshow of massive amounts of repeated inline styling for a single character. You could not find the actual text in the mess.
reconbot
2111 days ago
Let’s be clear, even if it didn’t impact the document removing unnecessary and unexpected codes is important work.
1895 days ago
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emdeesee
2112 days ago
reply
The struggle is real. 😬
Sherman, TX
1895 days ago
https://keramatzade.com/Earn-wealth-with-amazing-business-ideals https://keramatzade.com/Law-of-Attraction-of-Wealth https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money https://modirebimeh.ir/online-calculation-of-iranian-life-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/engineers-professional-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/third-party-insurance-calculation/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-liability-insurance-have-you-not-yet-insured-your-business-with-iran-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-life-insurance-ganji-for-the-future-of-children-and-families/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-car-body-insurance-the-best-and-most-prestigious-in-the-iranian-insurance-industry/ https://modirebimeh.ir/the-most-reliable-and-unrivaled-third-party-car-insurance-in-iran/ https://keramatzade.com/14-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/8-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/25-jobs-with-which-you-can-earn-up-to-a-million-dollars https://keramatzade.com/success-secret-1 https://keramatzade.com/Make-Money-Online-Effective-step-by-step-money-making-techniques https://keramatzade.com/Make-money-at-home https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money-without-capital https://keramatzade.com/Creative-Money-Making-Ideas https://keramatzade.com/The-law-of-attracting-money https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-Make-Money-at-Home https://keramatzade.com/Immediate-absorption-of-wealth-in-10-minutes-and-attractive-ways-to-get-rich https://keramatzade.com/The-secret-of-attracting-money-in-Iran-to-achieve-creative-money-maker-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-get-rich-in-Iran-with-the-most-wonderful-business-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Astonishing-economic-intelligence-test-to-increase-financial-intelligence
Screwtape
2112 days ago
reply
And this is why web developers keep opening the developer tools to look at the page markup, and why grey-beards fondly remember Word Perfect's "Reveal Codes" feature.
HarlandCorbin
2112 days ago
I miss reveal codes. Word just hides them, tons of on/off tags hidden from view.
1895 days ago
https://keramatzade.com/Earn-wealth-with-amazing-business-ideals https://keramatzade.com/Law-of-Attraction-of-Wealth https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money https://modirebimeh.ir/online-calculation-of-iranian-life-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/engineers-professional-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/third-party-insurance-calculation/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-liability-insurance-have-you-not-yet-insured-your-business-with-iran-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-life-insurance-ganji-for-the-future-of-children-and-families/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-car-body-insurance-the-best-and-most-prestigious-in-the-iranian-insurance-industry/ https://modirebimeh.ir/the-most-reliable-and-unrivaled-third-party-car-insurance-in-iran/ https://keramatzade.com/14-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/8-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/25-jobs-with-which-you-can-earn-up-to-a-million-dollars https://keramatzade.com/success-secret-1 https://keramatzade.com/Make-Money-Online-Effective-step-by-step-money-making-techniques https://keramatzade.com/Make-money-at-home https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money-without-capital https://keramatzade.com/Creative-Money-Making-Ideas https://keramatzade.com/The-law-of-attracting-money https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-Make-Money-at-Home https://keramatzade.com/Immediate-absorption-of-wealth-in-10-minutes-and-attractive-ways-to-get-rich https://keramatzade.com/The-secret-of-attracting-money-in-Iran-to-achieve-creative-money-maker-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-get-rich-in-Iran-with-the-most-wonderful-business-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Astonishing-economic-intelligence-test-to-increase-financial-intelligence
alt_text_bot
2112 days ago
reply
To avoid errors like this, we render all text and pipe it through OCR before processing, fixing a handful of irregular bugs by burying them beneath a smooth, uniform layer of bugs.
1895 days ago
https://keramatzade.com/Earn-wealth-with-amazing-business-ideals https://keramatzade.com/Law-of-Attraction-of-Wealth https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money https://modirebimeh.ir/online-calculation-of-iranian-life-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/engineers-professional-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/third-party-insurance-calculation/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-liability-insurance-have-you-not-yet-insured-your-business-with-iran-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-life-insurance-ganji-for-the-future-of-children-and-families/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-car-body-insurance-the-best-and-most-prestigious-in-the-iranian-insurance-industry/ https://modirebimeh.ir/the-most-reliable-and-unrivaled-third-party-car-insurance-in-iran/ https://keramatzade.com/14-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/8-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/25-jobs-with-which-you-can-earn-up-to-a-million-dollars https://keramatzade.com/success-secret-1 https://keramatzade.com/Make-Money-Online-Effective-step-by-step-money-making-techniques https://keramatzade.com/Make-money-at-home https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money-without-capital https://keramatzade.com/Creative-Money-Making-Ideas https://keramatzade.com/The-law-of-attracting-money https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-Make-Money-at-Home https://keramatzade.com/Immediate-absorption-of-wealth-in-10-minutes-and-attractive-ways-to-get-rich https://keramatzade.com/The-secret-of-attracting-money-in-Iran-to-achieve-creative-money-maker-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-get-rich-in-Iran-with-the-most-wonderful-business-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Astonishing-economic-intelligence-test-to-increase-financial-intelligence
alt_text_at_your_service
2112 days ago
reply
To avoid errors like this, we render all text and pipe it through OCR before processing, fixing a handful of irregular bugs by burying them beneath a smooth, uniform layer of bugs.
1895 days ago
https://keramatzade.com/Earn-wealth-with-amazing-business-ideals https://keramatzade.com/Law-of-Attraction-of-Wealth https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money https://modirebimeh.ir/online-calculation-of-iranian-life-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/engineers-professional-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/third-party-insurance-calculation/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-liability-insurance-have-you-not-yet-insured-your-business-with-iran-liability-insurance/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-life-insurance-ganji-for-the-future-of-children-and-families/ https://modirebimeh.ir/iran-car-body-insurance-the-best-and-most-prestigious-in-the-iranian-insurance-industry/ https://modirebimeh.ir/the-most-reliable-and-unrivaled-third-party-car-insurance-in-iran/ https://keramatzade.com/14-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/8-ways-to-increase-revenue https://keramatzade.com/25-jobs-with-which-you-can-earn-up-to-a-million-dollars https://keramatzade.com/success-secret-1 https://keramatzade.com/Make-Money-Online-Effective-step-by-step-money-making-techniques https://keramatzade.com/Make-money-at-home https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-make-money-without-capital https://keramatzade.com/Creative-Money-Making-Ideas https://keramatzade.com/The-law-of-attracting-money https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-Make-Money-at-Home https://keramatzade.com/Immediate-absorption-of-wealth-in-10-minutes-and-attractive-ways-to-get-rich https://keramatzade.com/The-secret-of-attracting-money-in-Iran-to-achieve-creative-money-maker-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Ways-to-get-rich-in-Iran-with-the-most-wonderful-business-ideas https://keramatzade.com/Astonishing-economic-intelligence-test-to-increase-financial-intelligence

The early history of Windows file attributes, and why there is a gap between System and Directory

1 Comment

Let's look at the values for the basic Windows file attributes. There's a gap where 8 should be.

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_... Value
READONLY 0x00000001
HIDDEN 0x00000002
SYSTEM 0x00000004
  0x00000008
DIRECTORY 0x00000010
ARCHIVE 0x00000020

Rewind to CP/M.

CP/M supported eleven attributes:

Name Meaning
F1, F2, F3, F4 User-defined
F5, F6, F7, F8 Interface-defined
T1 Read-only
T2 System
T3 Archive

The operating system imposed no semantics for user-defined attributes. You can use them for whatever you want.

The meanings of the interface-defined attributes were defined by each operating system interface. Think of them as four bonus flag parameters for each syscall that takes a file control block. You could set interface-defined attributes before calling a function, and that passed four additional flags in. Or the function could manipulate those attributes before returning, allowing it to return four flags out. Interface-defined attributes are always clear on disk.

The read-only bit marked a file as read-only.

The system bit had two effects: First, it hid the file from directory listings. Second, if the file belonged to user 0,¹ then the file was available to all users. (This was handy for program files.)

The archive bit reported whether the file has been backed up.

These attributes were retrofitted onto the existing directory structure by taking over the high bits of the eleven filename characters! That's why they are named F1 through F8 (high bits of the eight-character file base name) and T1 through T3 (high bits of the three-character extension, also known as the file type).

You can infer from this that CP/M file names were limited to 7-bit ASCII.

Anyway, MS-DOS 1.0 split the dual meaning of the system attribute into two attribute (hidden and system), and even though it didn't implement the read-only attribute, it reserved space for it.

That explains why the first three attributes are read-only (1), hidden (2), and system (4).

MS-DOS 2.0 most notably added support for subdirectories, but another feature that came along was volume labels. Since there was no space for the volume label in the disk header, the volume label was added as a directory entry in the root directory, with a special attribute that says "This is a volume label, not a file."²

The next attributes became volume label (8), directory (16), and archive (32).

Win32 adopted the same file attribute values as MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows, presumably in an effort to minimize surprises when porting code from 16-bit to 32-bit. The volume label attribute disappeared from Win32, but the bits for directory and archive were left at their original values to avoid problems with programs that operated with file attributes. Those programs contained their own definitions for the file attributes because 16-bit Windows didn't provide any.

¹ CP/M supported up to 16 users, numbered 0 through 15. When you started the computer, you were user 0, but you could change users by saying USER n. Files belonging to other users were inaccessible, except that system files belong to user 0 were available to everyone. Anybody could change to any user at any time, so this was a file organization feature, not a security feature. In practice, nobody really used it because floppy discs were so small that it was easier to organize your files by putting them on different floppies than by trying to remember which user you used for each file.

² Windows 95 later repurposed the volume label attribute to mark directory entries as being used for long file names. Disk utilities often parsed directory entries directly, so any change in the disk format was a compatibility risk. The choice to use the volume label attribute for this purpose came after a lot of experimentation to find the least disruptive file format for long file names. It turns out that most low-level disk utility programs ignored anything marked with the volume label attribute.

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philipstorry
2274 days ago
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I knew that it was the Volume Label flag, and that it was used for LFNs.
I had no idea it was deprecated and no longer in the documentation though!
The CP/M stuff is fascinating. I never really used CP/M enough for that to be something I'd have noticed, kinda want to have a tinker now...
London, United Kingdom
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