Discussions has got a lot of attention recently, none of it good. The volume of spam in the area is at an all time high, which isn't disappearing quickly due to the lack of the usual tools.
This is compounded by the tiny volume of good quality posts in Discussions, meaning that people don't want ...
@cocomac I vaguely recall a similar discussion in the past; back then, it was felt that the instructions catered to the use case of actually setting up a prod version (I think, reading between the lines, and relying on unreliable memory) whereas the majority of readers IMHO would probably be just playing around
arguably we need documentation which works for both audiences, though I would think that it's easier for someone who is familiar with Python and virtual environments to decide that they don't need one than vice versa; but that's just me
Makyen/EC2-linux received failover signal. <-- This probably shouldn't have happened. Check if there are any operational notifications from Thomas Ward, which are usually pinned in the sidebar. If Thoth is operational (i.e. use the !!/location command to see if it responds), then consider executing !!/standby Makyen/EC2-linux to put this instance back in standby. @Makyen
### LoginError on teward/Cerberus at 2024-11-20T19:05:18Z: login with cookie could not be verified, try credential login instead File "/home/smokey/SmokeDetector/chatcommunicate.py", line 120, in init client.login_with_cookie(cookies[site]) File "/home/smokey/SmokeDetector/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/chatexchange/client.py", line 180, in login_with_cookie self._br.login_site_with_cookie(self.host, cookie_jar) File "/home/smokey/SmokeDetector/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/chatexchange/browser.py", line 176, in login_site_with_cookie
It looks like the failover was caused by Cerberus being blocked from logging in to SE for a while by SE's anti-bot changes. Obviously, it did get in, but it took a couple of minutes, which is enough to trigger a failover.
@Cow That pattern looks like it's already caught by Bad keyword in body and Bad keyword in answer Append -force to the command word(s) if you really want to add the pattern you provided.
@GeneralGrievance Quite a few years ago, somebody tried to scam me. There was a common scam at the time where they call random(-ish) numbers and just go "Guess who!" then go with whatever answer ("Uncle, is that you?") and try to ask you for money ("So, nephew, I was in a car accident and I need some money fast"). I mean, typical scam - it's still around. It was just more prevalent at the time. However, they failed with me because, foolishly they call my teenage ass way too early on a Saturday
morning (like, 10AM). I would sleep to quite late in those years and I was a very heavy sleeper. So, the call wakes me up. I can barely process where I am or how to talk but I do my best. They say "Hey, it's me - did you recognise me?" and the only sentence I could formulate at the time was "Sorry, who are you trying to reach?". The scammer is insistent tries again and again "It's me. Come on, don't me you don't recognise me." Well, I don't but I am also not really able to express that and I
just repeat the same thing over and over. Like some weird pokemon. Asking again and again who they try to reach. Eventually the scammer gave up and just went "I'm looking for <some generic name>". This is after maybe full 3-4 minutes. I managed a "Sorry, wrong number" then tried to go back to sleep but couldn't. So, I get up and finally figure out it was a scam. Half an hour later, I'm with my dad when he gets a call. He answers and says something like "Who is that?" and I immediately figure
out it's the same scammer. Our phone numbers were very close - only the last digit was different. Mine ended in a 2, his ended in a 5. So, the scammers were very likely just going up the phone numbers incrementally. I motion for him to hang up. Which, and bless my dad for this, he immediately does. Only afterwards, he asks me "Why?". And I explained that I already got the same call as him. The interesting thing is that my number (...2) and my dad's number (...5) got a call but not my mom (...1).
Now that texting/text-like messenger apps are more prevalent, it's that much easier to get this kind of conversation going now. I keep getting similar messages on my Line app, sometimes in Chinese.
But it's also easier to not reply, so... maybe it balances out.
@GeneralGrievance Yet, we're also getting easier and easier access to computer voice generation. So, it's also easier to start dialling up people to try and scam them by just having an AI generate the text and the voice (probably two AI) as well as carry out a conversation. A colleague told me he suspects he got such an AI call. He's not sure but it was definitely unwanted and he says the voice on the other end was odd having weird pauses and inflection at times.
Yeah, I've noticed upticks in YT videos with this too. It sounds normal until they pronounce what is obviously a misspelled word and continue talking as normal.
The real bad part is that previously scammers were tied up for resources. You can have a group of, say, 4 people and they'd call up and try to chat to 4 people at a time. But now, you an have one person running dozens of simultaneous voice calls. I don't think it happens often (well, I've not heard of it happening much) but it's definitely going to be an issue in the future.
