Anyone here have experience self-hosting Stoat?

After a few evenings banging my head against the keyboard I finally have Revolt and Livekit self-hosted!

It's largely all working through the official stoat-for-web that I'm hosting, but something really simple is preventing me inviting my friends along to try it...

I've set the backend to invite-only and added an invite code to the database... But I can't for the life of me figure out how the devs intend for invites to actually work beyond the backend?

• It doesn't seem to be a feature of stoat-for-web at all.
• The app doesn't support any alternative servers as far as I can tell

Any good workarounds, besides opening up the floodgates...?

The New York Times reported on Saturday that the compound was a detention center for African migrants who were recently deported from the United States by the Department of Homeland Security.

None of the deportees are Cameroonian citizens. And almost all had received protection from American courts, which banned the government from sending them back to their home countries, where they would most likely face persecution, according to government documents obtained by The Times and interviews with their lawyers.

...

Some of the journalists, Mr. Fru and Mr. Sa’ah said, were kept in a cell for hours. The two men said the A.P. reporter appeared to have been beaten up and had told them the police had attacked him.

All of the five were later freed. Before the journalists were released, the police confiscated their phones, cameras and laptops, saying the journalists had captured sensitive government information, according to Mr. Fru and Mr. Sa’ah. It was unclear if any had been charged.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing criticism and questions from advocates for homeless New Yorkers after abruptly reversing his policy pledge to end homeless encampment sweeps.
City Hall officials said outreach workers with the Department of Homeless Services would begin notifying street homeless New Yorkers this week of plans to clear them out of public spaces. During a sweep, city sanitation workers often trash tents, makeshift encampments and other belongings if people refuse to pack up and go to a shelter or another location.
Mamdani had called the encampment sweeps done by his predecessors Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio a “failure” because they rarely led to people being placed in permanent housing. He billed the new plan as a kinder, gentler approach to addressing street homelessness, saying the city would conduct daily outreach in the seven days before police and sanitation workers arrived to disperse encampments or makeshift shelters.
But advocates for homeless New Yorkers say Mamdani’s plan is more of the same, and will displace people while moving only a fraction of them into shelters or permanent housing.
“It’s a huge step backwards,” said Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society. “It seems like what’s happening now is the administration is caving to political pressure to say they have to push people out with force rather than approaching them with resources that they need and will accept.”
Mamdani has faced pressure to resume sweeps from business leaders, elected officials and media outlets since he halted the policy days after taking office. Those calls intensified after at least 19 people died outdoors during a recent stretch of cold weather — though it was unclear how many of the people were living in encampments. At least five had permanent housing.

crosspost from https://hexbear.net/post/7702840

We're speed running to the collapse of the US empire?

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/59364074

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/59364066

https://archive.is/JMrd4

https://archive.is/JMrd4

A private Indian university was booted from a top artificial intelligence summit in New Delhi on Wednesday after one of its staffers displayed a commercially available robotic dog made in China, claiming it was the university’s own innovation.

Internet users, however, quickly identified the robot as the Unitree Go2, sold by China’s Unitree Robotics

Archive: https://archive.is/S4fFz

Telecommunications equipment made by the company of Memphis Grizzlies owner Robert Pera is being used by the Russian military in its war against Ukraine, according to a report from Hunterbrook Media. Ubiquiti is a tech company that designs and sells long-range, wireless equipment . The company, based in New York City, was founded in 2003 by Pera, who became the owner of the Grizzlies in 2012.

...

In the report, Hunterbook Media revealed video where Wi-Fi equipment made by Ubiquiti is being shown on the front lines in the Russia-Ukraine war. The equipment reportedly has helped Russia use drones that have targeted civilians in Ukraine

Dangerous days have nearly tripled in past 45 years – and increase largely driven by human-made warming

The number of days when the weather gets hot, dry and windy – ideal to spark extreme wildfires – has nearly tripled in the past 45 years across the globe, with the trend increasing even higher in the Americas, a new study shows.

And more than half of that increase is caused by human-caused climate change, researchers calculated.

What this means is that as the world warms, more places across the globe are prone to wildfires because of increasingly synchronous fire weather, which is when multiple places have the right conditions to go up in smoke.

Countries may not have enough resources to put out all the fires, and help will not be as likely to come from neighbors busy with their own flames, according to the authors of a study in Wednesday’s Science Advances.

I will stop posting on this specific topic for awhile and give it a breather... but yeah get ready :(

The effective confirmation by five European countries that Russia did kill opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2024 did not surprise those familiar with the Kremlin's track record.

But the Feb. 14 statement, which blames Russia for the murder and specifies the kind of poison used, represents a new milestone in the deterioration in Russian-European relations.

Previously European countries were more reluctant to antagonize Russia. But Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and Kremlin-linked murders and sabotage all over the continent have pushed Europe towards a harsher and more resolute approach.

"It looks like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s penchant for killing has been recognized as outrageous," Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told the Kyiv Independent. "And now it will be impossible to restore normal relations with him. The idea that it is possible to make deals with him is becoming less and less popular in Europe."

MBFC
Archive

A 28-year-old Brazilian recruit died after a brutal punishment handed out in a unit that regularly used discipline practices described as "torture" by those who both witnessed and suffered them, a Kyiv Independent investigation can reveal.

The man, Bruno Gabriel Leal da Silva, died overnight Dec. 28-29, 2025, according to former fellow fighters who spoke to the Kyiv Independent on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.

The unit in question is a Brazilian-led formation called Advanced Company, led by the Brazilian Leanderson Paulino who is accused by several of those serving under him of overseeing — and in some cases taking part in — the abuse of his subordinates.

MBFC
Archive

Published FlightRadar screenshots recorded at least 19 KC-135R/T Stratotanker aircraft.

also see https://www.commondreams.org/news/trumps-war-with-iran

Full Comission

Update: I am re-uploading a new version of the video because there was some issue with audio syncing in Firefox.

If only there was a better way!