2026-01-16 19:23:23
What computer programmers look like; Ada Lovelace in 1843. https://petapixel.com/2026/01/16/only-known-daguerreotype-photos-of-computer-pioneer-ada-lovelace-join-uk-national-portrait-gallery-collection/…
What computer programmers look like; Ada Lovelace in 1843. https://petapixel.com/2026/01/16/only-known-daguerreotype-photos-of-computer-pioneer-ada-lovelace-join-uk-national-portrait-gallery-collection/…
Learned about GNOME OS from @… and also the concept of “distroless” https://os.gnome.org
Anyone have opinions, pointers, blog posts about GNOME OS and/or distroless?
Natürlich.
Aber dass sie es offen aussprechen...
https://www.twz.com/air/f-35-software-could-be-jailbreaked-like-an-iphone-dutch-defense-minister
Today’s eye candy, remarkable underwater photos: #photography
A federal judge in Boston on Monday stalled major parts of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to remake vaccine policy in the U.S.,
saying the Trump administration had likely violated the law.
Judge Brian E. Murphy issued a preliminary ruling finding that Kennedy’s reconstitution of a key vaccine advisory panel,
and changes made to the childhood vaccine schedule in January,
were likely illegal.
Specifically, he ruled, those policy changes violated…
N.F.L. Playoff Predictions: Vibes Only https://www.nytimes.com/video/the-athletic/100000010647045/nfl-playoff-predictions-vibes-only.html
Reading Yegge’s rant and the much shorter and more polished https://siddhantkhare.com/writing/ai-fatigue-is-real (“AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it”), I keep coming back to this, which I published in 2020 and is sort of at the center of my thinking about everything:
RE: https://mstdn.social/@watson_news/116073476677572057
«SVP-Nationalrat Thomas Hurter ist der gleichen Meinung: Wenn die USA nicht lieferten, sollte das Geld seiner Meinung nach beim Kauf des F-35 gutgeschrieben werden.»
Und die F-35 werden gelief…
RE: https://mstdn.social/@watson_news/116073476677572057
«SVP-Nationalrat Thomas Hurter ist der gleichen Meinung: Wenn die USA nicht lieferten, sollte das Geld seiner Meinung nach beim Kauf des F-35 gutgeschrieben werden.»
Und die F-35 werden gelief…
RE: https://mstdn.social/@watson_news/116073476677572057
«SVP-Nationalrat Thomas Hurter ist der gleichen Meinung: Wenn die USA nicht lieferten, sollte das Geld seiner Meinung nach beim Kauf des F-35 gutgeschrieben werden.»
Und die F-35 werden gelief…
Heute vor 65 Jahren: Am 16. Januar 1961 ereignete sich am Luftwaffenstützpunkt Royal Air Force #Lakenheath eine nukleare Beinahe-Katastrophe. Durch menschliches Versagen fing eine F-100 Super Sabre der US-Luftwaffe, beladen mit einer Mark-28-#Wasserstoffbombe, Feuer.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@VeroniqueB99/115901713757694096
Yaaaaaaaas
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Roberta Flack:
🎵 Compared to What
#RobertaFlack
https://jperiod.bandcamp.com/track/compared-to-what-f-roberta-flack
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZTEMmFm3FzfEtjqJN32c1
In which Claude Opus invades my open-source hobby project. The experience was… surprising.
Fairly raw anecdata here, analysis and reactions still to come: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/02/06/Q-Plus-C-Ch1
@… F. Scott Fitzgerald sounds like I really don’t like a guy named Scott Fitzgerald
I get a steady stream in my replies of meant-to-be-helpful advice of the form “You should use [complex F/OSS tech] to [do complex thing] that [solves a problem you don’t have but renders the process unusable for the people doing it]”
…when the real tech problems we’re facing on the ground here, both with Signal and other tools, are 99% just ground-level UX stuff:
- basic, basic usability glitches
- workflow friction
- problematic default settings
- reliability
TIL that -f on the Windows ping command sets "don't fragment" bit rather than flood mode
Haha f**k you evernote, you enshittifying SOBs
You think I'll just happily ride along with $250/year. I *used* to pay $40/year, just cause inertia
No, I don't want your "starter" plan at $9/month either.
Cancel the entire thing.
Oh, *now* I can get 40% off?
No. I already did the work (including reinstalling windows temporarily) to get 15 years' notes exported, I'm done.
Tell ya finbro execs that I don't want AI in my notes a…
The Netherlands in talks to supply new missiles and bombs for Ukraine’s F-16s: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/16/the-netherlands-in-talks-to.html
"F.B.I. Searches Home of #Washington Post #Journalist in a Leak Investigation
It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of the unauthorized disclosure of #classified information…
F.C.C. Chair Threatens to Revoke Broadcasters' Licenses Over War Coverage (Ashley Ahn/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/world/middleeast/fcc-broadcasters-iran-war.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260315/p7#a260315p7
Wow, I had been running out of patience with Yegge’s uncritical #GenAI boosterism, but this is epic: “The AI Vampire.”
As usual with Yegge, it could have been edited down to half its size, but go read it anyhow. I’m going to adopt that “AI Vampire” phrase and start using it, a lot.
Le trafic est ralenti de Biblio. F.Mitterrand vers Pontoise, de Biblio. F.Mitterrand vers Versailles Château et de Biblio. F.Mitterrand vers St-Quentin en Yvelines.
Pour plus d'informations sur cette perturbation, consultez le fil X du RER C.
Motif : régulation de trafic.
🤖 14/01 08:41
@case.bsky.social is Waiting for the Future to Load!
Which also happens to be a mini test of the @leaflet.pub thread viewer.
https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/3majxlbcqcs2z
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music
Tropical F Storm:
🎵 Teeth Marché
#TropicalFStorm
https://open.spotify.com/track/1WiZLsgRWF7Z1pYMiWzafg
Esse "BB Rende Fšcil" polui um pouco o extrato bancšrio, fica esse item a mais aparecendo em todos os dias em que hš alteração do saldo.
Condé Nast owner Advance Publications and Vox Media sue Google over its ad market monopolization, following Penske, The Atlantic, and McClatchy (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/marketing/five-us-p…
What @… said: https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/15/wikipedia-at-25/
You know, I am occasionally shocked when someone I think of as smart or admirable or n…
RE: #TIL A purposefully Scottish, private expedition studied Antarctica in parallel with Scott's Discovery expedition, establishing a manned meteorological Observatory that is still in operation.
And tried the musical taste of a penguin.
#wikipedia #Scotland
RE: https://social.growyourown.services/@FediGarden/116082350446529495
Here's a wishlist item for Fediverse clients: it should be a one-click path to view the Local Feed page of an OP's server (where public) and if it is really niche, to subscribe to the feed like a hashtag.
More pollution and higher energy costs: critics condemn Trump’s anti-environment agenda https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/trump-anti-environment-agenda-pushback
Under Trump, EPA’s enforcement of environmental laws collapses, re…
The Men's Fertility Nutrition Podcast
Explores what really affects sperm health and male fertility, and what men can actually do about it, hosted by Alex Hardy...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/mens-fertility-nutrition/…
Amazing.
The UAW has this guy’s back. He’s unlikely to actually lose his job. @… https://flipboard.social/@NewsDesk/115894772482908975
Thanks to the wonderful (you all should sign up to his newsletter) @… I learned about Green Beaver (https://greenbeaver.com), a Canadian personal care company.
In a move that surprised exactly no one, FBI won’t share Alex Pretti shooting evidence, Minnesota authorities say
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/16/fbi-alex-pretti-minnesota-authorities-information-sharing
Kiitos hänelle, joka tästä mainitsi
https://www.discogs.com/artist/309409-Sniff-n-the-Tears
Sinäkö @…
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #Breakfast
Camille Saint‐Saëns, Bertrand Chamayou, Orchestre national de France & Emmanuel Krivine:
🎵 Piano Concerto no.5 in F major Op.103 'Egyptian' (3rd mvt)
#CamilleSaintSaëns
https://open.spotify.com/track/3YRDdUyzDH5feB59UQcP5X
Only one month remains until our Call for Papers ends!
Seize the opportunity to submit your proposal for this year's Berlin Buzzwords and be part of Europe’s leading conference for modern data infrastructure, search, and machine learning.
Submit now: https://2026.berlinbuzzwords.de/call-for-papers/
I tried to disable the "Game Bar" that pops up when you press Windows G... what a rabbit hole. I'm rarely on Windows and I know to stay away now. All search results on all those useless Windows sites are wrong. Microsoft removed the option to disable the hotkey from its system settings! On Windows Pro you could use a group policy. After some f-word-riddled Copilot prompting the bot admitted that there's no way to disable the hotkey except for editing the registry.
I saw @…’s share of the No Jobs for Horses article (2016) https://alphorisms.medium.com/no-jobs-for-horses-e0748…
@… PS: Hier auch auf Deutsch: https://www.f-shop.de/media/image/e8/13/7b/GFDND72791-G_0_0999.jpg
Trump gave the middle finger to a heckler during a campaign tour at a Ford plant in Michigan Jan. 13,
-- mouthing "F you" in what the White House described as
"an appropriate and unambiguous response."
The ruffian was touring a Ford F-150 assembly facility in Dearborn when a worker on the plant floor shouted what sounded like
“pedophile protector”
as Trump stood on an elevated walkway
Trump turned toward the person and appeared to respond…
Na ob das was bringt... 🤔
https://www.change.org/p/rote-karte-f%BCr-donald-trump
"Hiermit wird der DFB aufgefordert, die Teilnahme an dieser Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft abzusagen."
2026: END OF WAR OR ESCALATION? Miltech by Minister FEDOROV. Ukraine through AMERICAN Eyes: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/15/end-of-war-or-escalation.html
Gov. Tim Walz Urges Minnesotans To Keep Calm, Carry Phones. Trump Freaks The F*ck Out. (Doktor Zoom/Wonkette)
https://www.wonkette.com/p/gov-tim-walz-urges-minnesotans-to
http://www.memeorandum.com/260116/p98#a260116p98
What is this “sleeping in” of which you speak?
#caturday
In which I build Unicode character tables and fail to serialize large automata, “Losing 1½ Million Lines of Go“:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/01/14/Unicode-Properties
(And in which I find myself sliding into the
RE: https://f.cz/@vitex/116064966057935944
Eu ri disso, até porque despertou uma nostalgia da minha adolescência estudando eletrônica rs.
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Sultans of Ping F.C.:
🎵 Where's Me Jumper?
#SultansofPingFC
https://open.spotify.com/track/4KLRtiOLyyrX2uMIVYoZxR
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #WordsAndMusic
Antonio Vivaldi, Giuliano Carmignola, Venice Baroque Orchestra & Andrea Marcon:
🎵 Concerto for violin and orchestra in F, RV295: II. Larghetto
#AntonioVivaldi
https://open.spotify.com/track/4dnMjzaTtKVnyNl6gVgIa2
Pat Tillman’s Brother Pleads Guilty to Setting Post Office Fire https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/richard-tillman-post-office-fire.html
John F. Burns, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times foreign correspondent who reported from South Africa, Iraq, and other bureaus, dies at 81 (Alan Cowell/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/world/j
Real estate agent brothers
Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander
– known as ‘closers’
– are on trial in New York for
sex trafficking
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/15/alexander-brothers-trial?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
#vereinfachteSprache
#Klimaleugner nutzen viele Tricks, um die #Wahrheit zu verdrehen.
Hast du schon von F-L-I-C-C gehört? Warum sind falsche Experten und
Smart, sharp-edged writing about the scenario where your customers’ and shareholders’ interests are in direct conflict. #genai
https://petapixel.com/2026/03/14/adobe
RE: https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/116076167774984883
A lot of people are dumping on this piece without having read it. My favorite quote: “dollar-signs appear in their [employers’] eyeballs, like cartoon bosses. I know that look. There’s no reasoning with the d…
Thanks @… for alerting me to a posting script gone wrong. Cleaned it up and just left the link to the blog post.
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MidnightInAPerfectWorld
Among Savages:
🎵 I Say F It
#AmongSavages
https://open.spotify.com/track/50joHnKmvtyhahKExF9xSu
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #EssentialClassics
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, John Fadial, Janet Orenstein, Scott Rawls, Brooks Whitehouse, Andrew Harley, Mary Ashley Barret, Michael Burns, Kelly Burke & Lynn Huntzinger Beck:
🎵 Nonet in F minor, Op.2 (1st mvt)
#JohnFadial
Been watching S2 of Wednesday. Darker, nastier, less well-written. S1 was morbid (obviously) but still kind of light-hearted. Every modern production (it seems) has excellent acting and strong visuals. But the demand for good TV writing apparently exceeds the supply.
Unusual GenAI application: Snarky answers to shitty emails.
#genAI
Just paid for a personal annual account with Photopea, the web based image editor. It's free to use and you don't need to login, but 50EU/year takes off the very large amount of ads.
It's got that Photoshop 3.0 design vibes that means I can still sort of use it. https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post
Actually kinda like the new styling on the Safari tab & tool bars. *ducks for cover*
Based on the evidence from the Ayatollahs and MAGAs, I’m starting to think that when a person is accused of being a “terrorist” that’s probably evidence that they’re an admirable person.
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #StreetSounds
Narcotik:
🎵 All Up in My Mix
#Narcotik
https://triballegacy.bandcamp.com/track/narcotik-f-infinite-all-up-in-my-mix
An F.B.I. search warrant affidavit unsealed on Tuesday shows that
a criminal investigation into 2020 election results in Fulton County, Ga.,
was set off by a leading election denier in the Trump administration
and relied heavily on claims about ballots that have been widely debunked.
The unsealing of the affidavit in Fulton County is likely to raise more questions
about the Trump administration’s use of the F.B.I. and Justice Department to revive old, largely di…
I’ve been worrying that the AI bubble-pop will wreck the world economy, but hey there, quite likely War Oil Chaos and sketchy Private-Credit shenanigans will get there first.
Ha ha fucking ha.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
The Bees:
🎵 This Town
#TheBees
https://paintbomb.bandcamp.com/track/free-the-bees
https://open.spotify.com/track/7HpmjoN0o9huaUp8orhVOs
In case you’re wondering, blowing snow / sleet rain highway drive between London and Hamilton ON at 5am SUCKED. https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post/3madnld664k2v
Geometry study (shadows are weird).
Back story: In some parts of Vancouver, if you’re putting up a new building (typically condo/retail) you can get tax breaks or more square feet or some such bonus if you preserve the original facade. This place was torn down quite a while ago but the facade, propped up by the metal framework, remains. A policy misfire in this case because it was a really crappy brick frontage and would not be missed.
Finally taking off. Green de-icing fluid flowing off the Porter Air wing. https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post/3madx66szec2b
Thread viewer as a @leaflet.pub embed. Excellent.
[contains quote post or other embedded content] https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post/3mabu67zg3c2t
From that well-known hotbed of leftist radicalism, the daily Bloomberg markets newsletter.
That (paywalled) column is at https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-11/the-insurance-crisis-is-about-to-get-even-worse
One of the more intriguing strands of Big Tech litigation: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/14/meta-and-google-trial-are-infinite-scroll-and-autoplay-creating-addicts
Sony is trying something new: https://petapixel.com/2026/03/10/the-sony-xyn-immersive-display-feels-like-apple-vision-pro-without-googles/
Where we’re at is like learning the right way to operate the controls of a large passenger airliner.
While it’s full of passengers.
“Under “contributing factors” the note included “novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established.”
“Junior and mid-level engineers will now require more senior engineers to sign off any AI-assisted changes, Treadwell added.”
It’s a “White Ash”, Fraxinus americana.
#Photography #thicktrunktuesday
This picture from https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502/116047090400689262
Caution - it's not as simple as this comic says - I think. Here is the upstream source, which I find really hard to understand:
Stre-e-e-tch.
#caturday
RE: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/115580076628853324
This was posted 4 months ago, i.e. forever in LLM time. I would really like to see a fully-worked through analysis of the actual GHG cost of
Take the good news where you can find it: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/12/orsted-rhode-island-wind-project-trump
“Recently I read Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch and Algospeak by Adam Aleksic. The language we speak (and text) to each other is at the core of who and what we are, and the Internet is the strongest among the forces that channel and fertilize its growth. So there’s scope for plenty of books on the subject. Both books educated and entertained, one made me angry.”
Seems painfully obvious that, whatever you think about #genai code, anyone using it is heading for a code-review logjam. Assuming that the org requires code review; if yours doesn’t, nothing I can say will help you. Anyhow, Rishi Baldawa writes smart stuff about the problem and possible ways forward, in ˚The Reviewer Isn't the Bottleneck”:
Trump DOJ trying to get Ticketmaster off the hook, grrrr: https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/a-wild-da
BC Greens will let their deal with the NDP govt lapse next month for what seem to me pretty good reasons: https://bcgreens.ca/leaders-statement-will-not-renew-carga/
Current seats (out of 93): NDP 47, Conservatives 39, Green 2, right-wingnuts 5. So Eby’s gotta manage…
Cat was unimpressed by the Opening Ceremony. Me too.
#Olympics
Seen in a nearby chat window: “another reason to de-Google is that everything runs more slowly with their needing to push AI into it. In this case, google meet...”
I'm getting reports from people in Britain about MX record issues causing email to our textuality.com addresses (Google Workspace) to fail delivery. Anyone else seeing this kind of thing?
Laurie Penny is very near the top of my list of favorite living writers. She has started a how-to-write-well series, entitled (for obvious reasons) “How to Write Like A Person”; intro here: https://open.substack.com/pub/lauriepenny/p/ho…