cross-posted from: https://community.nodebb.org/post/106679

Hello all!

(Sorry, I could not resist with the title :laughing:)

Today we are releasing NodeBB v4.9.0, on a Friday, toward the end of the day, because we like having our weekends ruined.

As usual, we recommend you update to this stable version of NodeBB, not least because it fixes a federation issue accidentally introduced last month.

There are a bunch of new features and usability improvements here, for both end users and admins. Federation improvements abound, as well as a few moderation upgrades. As usual, we fixed a ton of bugs, and even a couple open issues from the 2010s :scream:

Here is a list of the changes and new features you should expect to see!

:world_map: New "World" page

/world has been updated so that is closer to a feed-reader than a topic list. While I will continue to iterate on this design over time to better promote topics, I am hoping that this proves to be more accessible of an interface compared to the old topic listing.

Your watched/tracked remote categories will be listed in a sidebar (hidden behind a drawer on mobile views) for easy access.

The default view ("Latest") continues to be a list of content from people you follow, and content shared by those same people. The other view ("Popular") shows unconstrained content, and can include content from people you don't follow.

:lock: Remote topics now unavailable to guests

After an Alibaba bot was recorded mercilessly scraping a lot of the public content served up by NodeBB, we decided to restrict access to that content to registered users.

While this would normally mean that "View Original URL" would stop working from other federates sites (since visitors are usually guests), we have added an exclusion to this logic that will continue to serve up the content to guests if at least one local user has commented on the topic.

:writing_hand: UX change for composer and chats

@baris worked on a number of usability fixes that make the experience of using our post composer and chat interface much better. For the longest time we had issues with the composer not properly resizing when mobile keyboards opened.

Composing and replying should work much better now that we are using the latest CSS and javascript tooling to properly detect visual viewport changes.

:bell: Better notifications

@baris also updated the notifications system so that bodyLong, which usually contains post text, is now sent with all notifications. This should increase the usability of notifications (both via web, email, or push).

:arrows_counterclockwise: Cross-posting privilege

A previous release introduced the ability to cross-post content into local categories. This functionality can now be gated behind a privilege at the category level.

:wave: Guest call-to-action

@baris introduced a new guest "call-to-action" banner that will help guide guests toward registering a new account to contribute to your community :blush:

:label: Title-less topics

As part of the changes to /world, we also allow the creation of topics without a title. If you don't pass in a title, we will generate one for you based on the first sentence in your post. The same title generation logic was applied to remote content in the past, and now it also applies to local content.

This also means you can use the /world page to just fire off something quickly without having to do the hard work of thinking up a title. You're welcome :laughing:

:sparkles: Opportunistic backfill

Now that the fediverse's largest implementor, Mastodon, supports context, which enables backfill, we have implemented an opportunistic backfill feature that will check for new replies when you enter a topic. It'll also regularly check the top most popular remote topics known by the instance for new posts.

:no_entry: Reasons

You can now set up a recurring list of "reasons", which you can invoke on certain moderation actions. These custom reasons can be used when a user is banned, muted, or on post queue rejection.

You can set up these reasons from ACP > Manage > Users > (Gear) > Manage Custom Reasons

:information_desk_person: Registration queue now applies for SSO plugins

This issue, open since 2016 is finally fixed. SSO plugins don't automatically bypass the registration queue anymore. This was a common vector for spammers to bypass registration limitations.

:bug: Additional features and bug fixes

• An improvement to auto-installation of plugins
• Removed many remote tids and pids stored in the db for no reason (thanks @baris)
• A regression that caused nodebb-to-nodebb federation to fail (and possibly many others)
• Notifications can now be passed custom icons
• ACP privilege selector now no longer shows remote categories
• Improvements to mentions to better handle periods at end of sentences, or names within names
• All cached used internally are now exposed in the admin panel for better management.
• Sitemap cache duration is now configurable
• Infinite scrolling now works on /world
• Slug generation errors when you mixed and matched - and .
• Topic pruning applies to all remote cids now, not just cid -1
• Chats list updated properly now, when new messages are received, chat messages now properly backfilled upon reconnection
• NodeBB now federates Delete on both deletion and purge

---

For the full changelog, please take a look at the closed issues list for this milestone, or take a gander at the much less impressive CHANGELOG.md in our repository root.

A pretty good introduction to how the fediverse works

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59132096

I've seen people suggest Ubuntu without mentioning Kubuntu, but it seems like most people (especially gamers?) prefer KDE Plasma. I've seen people complain about Ubuntu's GUI and lack of customization, but then no one suggests them to try Kubuntu instead. It seems like people just don't know that Kubuntu exists.

Also as an aside, people often criticize how slow updates are on Ubuntu/Kubuntu/etc, but if you enable the backports ppa then it's actually pretty quick!

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

cross-posted from: https://community.nodebb.org/post/106480

NodeBB v4.8.0 — Crossposting, federated moves, API changes, and bug fixes!

Hello from Canada! :flag-ca:

We're a week behind the planned release, but we're dropping v4.8.0 today, containing some changes to our ActivityPub handling, along with a new API route, and bug fixes.

Crossposting

As briefly introduced in my earlier topic on cross-posting, NodeBB v4.8.0 supports cross-posting of topics between categories. More importantly, it means topics from other remote categories can now be added to local categories, which is another way to bring conversations to your local users.

Unlike before, where administrators were the only ones allowed to move topics from cid -1, cross-posting is available to all local users. If you see a topic on the fediverse you'd like to cross-post to a local category, just hit the cross-post button (it's a button with a little upward-right pointing arrow), and share it with other users on your forum!

When you cross-post, it also shares the topic with all of your followers from outside of your forum.

Federated topic moving and removals

This was actually released with v4.7.0 but was improved slightly in the intervening versions. NodeBB now follows the Draft FEP f15d: Context Relocation and Removal and will publish Remove activities when a topic is moved to "Uncategorized", and Move activities when moved to another category.

Developers of other ActivityPub software looking to implement similar mechanics are advised to read the FEP and provide feedback here: https://activitypub.space/topic/86/fep-f15d-context-relocation-and-removal

Other technical debt and bug fixes

• Post ownership websocket call was migrated to a v3 REST API call
• Notifications had issues when user display names contained commas
• Piefed v1.5 supports emoji from remote instances; incoming custom emoji from Piefed are now handled
• Nodeinfo fixes for if a NodeBB instance is not actually federating (has AP turned off)

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/piefed_meta/p/1653370/piefed-1-5-is-released-move-posts-upload-video-files-better-chat-and-more

Big deals, omg

• Mods can move a post, with replies and votes, to another community. The change federates to other instances (except Lemmy, for now. I've been in discussion with devs from NodeBB and Lemmy about how this will work, they are on board).
• Upload video files while creating a video post - no external host needed. Admin setting to limit who can do this (to save space).
• Realtime chat - conversation immediately updates on screen when a new PM arrives.

More good stuff

• Author-deleted posts are still visible to them and anyone with the url. No more loss of high-value comments with the OP deletes.
• Search filters - nsfw and minimum post score
• Improve speed of cross-posting form on mobile
• Emoji tokens like :blush: can be used in post or comment body. No GUI support yet.
• Admin setting to disable local copies of remote images - good for single-user instances
• Replying to a comment marks associated inbox item as read
• Updated HPT-Fruits theme
• 196 no longer excluded from default community import
• Remove unused community rating feature
• Remove unused instance vote weight feature
• Remove ineffective þ to 'th' replacement
• Improved accessibility - better contrast, fixed many incorrectly-used aria-labels
• Updated translations - Basque, Chinese, Japanese

API:

• Admins can ban/unban users through the API. piefed.world was maintaining custom code for this, hopefully it'll make their version upgrades faster.

Bugs fixed

• PMs
• Markdown parsing
• Speed up loading of profile pages for admin users
• Friendica post parsing
• Passkeys login UX tweak

To upgrade

To upgrade from 1.4.x:

git pull  
git checkout v1.5.x  
./deploy.sh or ./deploy-docker.sh  

I want to make a 4k game video for Youtube but I only have access to a 1440p monitor. On Windows I could use DSR, how do I do this in Linux? Kubuntu, KDE Plasma 6.4.5, RTX 2080, Nvidia driver version 580.95.05

Also Linux generally had better 1% lows, lower RAM usage, and lower CPU usage. A big part of this is that AMD no longer updates the Windows drivers for the RX 580.

Idk how trustworthy this youtube channel is, but crazy to think the RX 580 released in 2017 and the 8GB version was ~$230 lol