There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I just use the upload icon and the upload usually freezes on “processing”. Any image I have uploaded takes multiple attempts.
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I’ve used login with Google elsewhere (ha!) but was hesitant to use it for the sandbox. It worked with no problem.
Thanks a bunch. 
ETA: Looks like it’s working well. No problems uploading a gif, bouncing around, looks good. 
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Which OS Is Best for Old Macs in 2025? I Tested Them All So You Don’t Have To
From MacObserver, since it won’t onebox. I don’t have any specific knowledge in this realm, so I can’t vouch for the advice, but it seems like a fairly comprehensive rundown.
Keep in mind that this advice is 5 years old at this point, so adjust accordingly.
Some more general info:
I use Linux (Ubuntu) on my personal laptop, which I’ve gone into some detail elsewhere. If you’re afraid that you’ll have to use the terminal a lot, I wouldn’t worry about it. I choose to use the terminal to do many things, but I’ve very rarely had to. I do have a Windows desktop for games, but I spend more time gaming on my Steam Deck these days, and it runs Linux too (Arch, btw.)
I have heard good things about Thorium, and am considering investigating it as a replacement for Firefox since Mozilla seems to be hitching their wagon to AI nonsense.
Here’s some more info:
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https://sb.elsewhere.cafe/t/playing-in-the-sandbox/5563/2?u=heikki
That’s my first problem…
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On the Discourse, we’re running 3.1.0.beta3 here, and the version that’s running on the sandbox is 3.6.0.beta1-dev. That’s a fair number of versions forward, so I thought it would be useful to cover some of the changes:
3.2
- Chat
- This isn’t something I’ve ever really looked into, but I could look at enabling it in the near future if there’s interest.
- AI
- There’s also some admin stuff that could be interesting, and it looks like this is the release that added passkey support.
3.3
- Discourse Discover could be an interesting way for new users to find this place, but it could also be a great way for trolls to find it too…
- More AI stuff. Maybe I’ll dig into it more someday and see if it’s actually useful.
- This release adds the Hot sorting option, which @mindysan33 already discovered over at the sandbox.
- Custom flags could be useful for the rare times things get a little out of hand…
- The improvements to the topic map look generally useful.
- There are some theming updates that don’t look like they’ll break anything immediately, but I am seeing a warning on sandbox about one of our custom components. Maybe @tinoesroho can take a look at it eventually, or I can take a crack at it sometime.
3.4
- More AI stuff. It seems to be at least partially a value-add for their own hosting offering, so it (and other AI features) are likely unavailable to us here without some extra work.
- More admin improvements
- A simplified invite system.
- A new About page. I’ll have to check this out.
- Updated reports
- Multiple drafts. That is so dangerous for me…
- Better on mobile?
- More chat improvements
- A new font?
3.5
- A new theme (Horizon)
- More editor (composer) updates
- Automatic translations. That could be interesting.
- Some popular plugins are bundled by default
- This includes emoji reactions…
3.6
I’m not sure what new features are planned for 3.6. I didn’t find any mention of it in a cursory search.
Separately, it looks like there are new emoji sets. We’re currently using Twitter here, so it has been swa pped for Twemoji. Here’s a comparison:
Old:
New:
It doesn’t look that different to me, although there appears to have been a change to the emoji picker at some point.
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Can you go into a bit of detail? I’m not sure what you’re trying to do there.
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Cross-posting from https://sb.elsewhere.cafe/t/kittehs-in-space/5562/7 to there. I used
3. option I guess in English that would “copy quote”.
I was trying to test If I can cross-post images.
Here is what I was trying to do:
Tried again https://sb.elsewhere.cafe/t/playing-in-the-sandbox/5563/3?u=heikki cross-posting doesn’t work at all.
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I tested it a few times in that thread, and was able to do so successfully. It looks like somehow when the quote got copied for you (or when it was pasted) that it escaped the square brackets ([, ]) with a back-slash. I don’t know if you have some extra software that can manipulate your clipboard, or if it’s a legitimate bug, but that’s what it looks like to me.
Here’s an example on here that should produce similar results.
This works:
[quote="Heikki, post:27, topic:5560"]
I was trying to test If I can cross-post images.
[/quote]
This doesn’t:
\[quote="Heikki, post:27, topic:5560"\]
I was trying to test If I can cross-post images.
\[/quote\]
[quote=“Heikki, post:27, topic:5560”]
I was trying to test If I can cross-post images.
[/quote]
Maybe it’s related to the rich-text editor. I’ll try that in a bit.
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For those interested it works no idea why or how. Suddenly it just worked.
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Since it looks like there are no major blockers or red flags, I’d like to try to do the migration this weekend. I’m aiming for around 9pm my time, so I think I’ll do this Saturday night (2025-08-23) because I feel like that’s too little notice to try and do it tonight (2025-08-22).
Official plans:
The migration will start 2025-08-24T02:00:00Z and run until it completes.
This site will be in read-only mode for the duration, so it will not be possible to post or reply to existing posts. I’ll be tearing down the sandbox tonight and getting the new server ready for tomorrow. Here’s the general sequence of events:
- Switch bbs.elsewhere.cafe to read-only mode.
- Make a backup of bbs.elsewhere.cafe.
- Restore the backup at the new server.
- I don’t know how long this is going to take.
- I didn’t time it when I ran it for the sandbox because it was very late and I was too tired to stay up and watch it.
- I thought about running it again as a test, but I don’t really see the value in that.
- Smoke test the new server to make sure there are no major issues.
- Switch the DNS for bbs.elsewhere.cafe to point to the new server.
- At this point, people should be able to start logging in on the new server, but depending on DNS propagation, they may still be seeing the old server.
- I’m setting the TTL to a low value (5 minutes), so this hopefully won’t be much of a sticking point.
- There will be a banner on each site that should make it obvious which is which.
- At this point, people should be able to start logging in on the new server, but depending on DNS propagation, they may still be seeing the old server.
I’ll try to post updates to the official Mastodon account so that you can follow along if you’d like.
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Sounds good! Looking forward to seeing how the new version works!
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So it should be back up and running by 10:45 pm?
I don’t envy you, I’ve done small scale migrations of websites to new servers, I hated it.
The migration always went well, it was the backups and testing the backups and having a plan to go back if it failed. That’s the part that stressed me out.
Also, are you sure you don’t want donations, I know what’s involved in doing what you’re doing, I’d be willing to chip in if for nothing else than to buy you a drink, beer, cup of coffee, sandwich, something to say thanks.
May the migration gods be with you.
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Best of luck. While I’m sure this is super low on your list of priorities, please don’t forget to add the extension that turns off the “switch header to topic title on scroll” behavior.
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I have an idea or suggestion.
When replying to a post, we are immediately sent down to that new post at the end of the thread. Is that necessary? Could we stay where we are in the thread?
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I honestly don’t know. The backup is ~24 Gib, and I didn’t wait around for the sandbox to restore. My current plan is for it to take less than 4 hours, which is why I plan to start at 9pm my time.
I’d like to get things a bit more settled first. Once that’s taken care of, we can start talking about ways to make this site more self-sufficient.
Good call. I’ll add it to the list. There are a handful of theme components that I need to make sure carry over or get installed.
I’m not sure if that’s something I have any control over, but I’ll look into it when I get a chance.
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Did the switch happen last night? Did I miss something, or was it going to be something we don’t even notice?
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Thanks @LockeCJ
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No, this evening is when it’s happening, 10pm EST…
Agreed! I’m sure it’ll be smooth as silk!
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Ah okay thanks, I misread above as last night.
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