Tootfinder

Hello!
I have a happy favour to ask.
Last year, I had a US intern working with us and she now is looking for help that you- good reader of this account- could give.
(She needs academic survey participants)
Check out her flyer below, click the link, and please RT
http…

Research Study on Data Privacy and Collective Redress
A researcher at University College Dublin wants to conduct anonymous interviews to learn about why you would or would not participate in a legal action to rectify a data protection violation. This information can be used to help nonprofit organizations better represent you when organizations violate your data protection rights. Provide your email to receive more information. All personally identifiable information will be deleted following completion of the study.

Do you know: if you don't post an image, pixelfed users will not see your post.
Time to bring back the good old transparent 1*1px gif/png
(Gif powered by #pixelfed

How Many Safeties Will Make Raiders' Roster? https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-trey-taylor-thomas-harper-isaiah-pola-mao-chris-smith

#today will involve some lounging around, possibly helping a friend with some gardening, and possibly maybe some research (though that feels like a Monday thing).
#yesterday at the food festival was fun, and the food was good and I had a bit too much, and then I had lots of beers afterwards wi…

The move to Windows 11 isn’t just about security updates.
It increases dependence on Microsoft through aggressive cloud integration,
forcing users to adopt Microsoft accounts and services.
It also leads to higher costs due to subscription and licensing models,
and reduces control over how your computer works and how your data is managed.
Furthermore, new hardware requirements will render millions of perfectly good PCs obsolete.
This is a turning point.

The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it's time to consider Linux and LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Blog
The Document Foundation and LibreOffice support the international campaign @endof10 https://endof10.org/ The countdown has begun. On 14 October 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. This will leave millions of users and organisations with a difficult choice: should they upgrade to Windows 11, or completely rethink their work environment? The good news? You don’t […]

Good morning!
This will be a rest day today.

But here’s the good news that way too many people are missing:
𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠.
You are not alone in feeling uncertain about your economic future. Millions of people find themselves in a similar position. Traditional careers leave you exposed.
Here is the key: The world has changed. It has moved online – and unless you are moving with it you will be left behind.

In the final talk of the morning sessions of the #SolarEclipse Conference Thoby Dittrich talked about the Modern Eddington Experiment (the website https://moderneddingtonexperiment.org is under heavy construction): the best observing result of gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun in the optical during solar eclipses is still Brun's from 2017 - https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.00343 - while others have tried with a vengeance since. The goal remains to observe the significant deflection of star positions between 1 and 2 solar radii from the center of the Sun: this is known as the 'forbidden zone' because the corona can be very bright here and only bright stars can be measured reliably - but those in turn are rare. It turns out that the star fields around the totally eclipsed Sun in 2027 and 2028 will be unusually rich in good candidates so there is (or should be) considerable interest in the physics didactics community to make use of these eclipses in southern Spain / northern Africa and Australia, respectively. 4/n

I wrote about why Zohran Mamdani's free bus fare policy is a good idea actually, and the difference between thinking about transit as a consultant versus as a voter and activist.
(public replies to this toot will appear as comments)
https://scott.mn/2025/06/11/consultant

Consultant's mindset, or why Jarrett Walker is wrong about free buses

@…
Wow! I have a bunch of those Seattle Filmworks files. Do you plan to share your project? How will the results compare to just re-scanning the film with a good slide scanner? #seattleFilmWorks

Good Mother Stallard beans in New Mexican Chile sauce with a poached egg, and bacon. Bike tour today, American Idiot musical tonight. Not sure if there will be another breakfast before our week in Columbus for Origins! #TogetherBreakfast
https://photos.app.goo.gl/RX89psp6pshFUUVJ6

How good will Ashton Jeanty be? Best bets for Raiders top pick; Fantasy projections for other rookie RBs

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/how-goo…

But here’s the good news that way too many people are missing:
𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠.
You are not alone in feeling uncertain about your economic future. Millions of people find themselves in a similar position. Traditional careers leave you exposed.
Here is the key: The world has changed. It has moved online – and unless you are moving with it you will be left behind.

Good news. It looks like Flamingo Land will not now be built on the banks of Loch Lomond.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c23mxr2vg0ko

Ministers stall plans for Loch Lomond Flamingo Land resort
The Scottish government had been set to give permission for the park after overturning the decision of the national park authority.

Good Dad knowledge here https://flipboard.social/@ScienceDesk/114664800381751900

Did a quick test fit of one of the Minisforum MS-A2s and ran some of the cabling. I think this should turn out pretty clean and everything fits better than expected which is a good thing. The PSUs will go in the bottom 2U "compartment" without issue which I didn't run.
#minisforum #homelab

 
A climate of fear is perceptible in the United States today,
and it must be resisted no matter what,
CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley says.
“People are silencing themselves for fear that the government will retaliate against them,
and that’s not the America that we all love,”
Pelley told Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview after CNN’s Saturday telecast of
“Good Night, and Good Luck.”
The Broadway play, which recounts CBS newsman Edwar…

‘If you fall silent, the country is doomed’: CBS News’ Scott Pelley stresses courage as network faces pressure campaign
A climate of fear is perceptible in the United States today, and it must be resisted no matter what, CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley says.

“If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it... The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
He was a kook. Good reading, tho. Sometimes.
#Philosophy #Religion …

#today will be surfing the #NewScientist article splurge, getting ready to 'onboard' my friend as RA (Research Assistant) to help me find a good solutiion for a particularly knotty issue, and going to the dentist. (The last may not be good since I've had a persistent issue for a coup…

New ZFS AnyRAID feature would probably get me to use ZFS at home instead of btrfs.
I have a lot of different-sized old SATA enterprise SSDs retired from @… and a cheap 8 bay eSATA enclosure. The performance is good enough. I can't really justify buying 8 new, matching drives.
AnyMirror would be good enough for my purposes.

We need to develop good practices for bots and crawlers that are acceptable for all parties involved. Otherwise AI will suffocate the open web.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/keeping-web-under-weight-ai-crawlers

Keeping the Web Up Under the Weight of AI Crawlers
If you run a site on the open web, chances are you've noticed a big increase in traffic over the past few months, whether or not your site has been getting more viewers, and you're not alone. Operators everywhere have observed a drastic increase in automated traffic—bots—and in most cases attribute...

I'm afraid this is true. I already struggle to raise enough money to keep the very talented young scientists I have working with me (from many different countries already), finding funding for more will be difficult, and why should US scientists essentially queue jump just because of their nationality ? I know that sounds harsh, I have very good US colleagues, but I have to be fair to all, regardless of where they come from. OTOH, if you are a US scientist and you are interested in exploring possibilities in Denmark, give me a shout and we'll see what we can do.
https://mastodon.world/@davidho/114620044303457868
davidho@mastodon.world - Unless you’re a Nobel laureate, the brain drain will be away from science and not to other countries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/trump-federal-spending-grants-scientists-leaving.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ME8.sh9q.qy7jX0S1ZrBa&smid=url-share

The party that was supposed to be good at managing the nation's finances cancelled the second leg of #HS2. Apparently, to save £36 billion, which "would instead be allocated to infrastructure projects to provide better transport links across the north of England." Yet we still do not really know the cancellation cost, or whether anything will really be spent extra on the north of Englan…

Raiders TE Michael Mayer Poised For Breakout Campaign Says PFF https://raiderramble.com/2025/06/13/raiders-te-michael-mayer-poised-for-breakout-campaign-says-pff/

Nintendo Switch 2 uses microSD-express, I guess this will be a good time for people to try attacking it via the PCIexpress string.

I am fighting #fascism by remaining positive. I am being punk by smiling, not loosing hope, and constantly exercising #empathy. We will survive. Listen to the good Doctor.
#DavidTennant

Before this #LetterboxdFriday ends, I share my #LastFourWatched
The Greatest Hits (3½★)
Despicable Me 2 (3★)
Despicable Me (3½★)
Sing (1½★)
🔗 https://…

Finally checked out the first episode of Fallout last night, it's pretty good. I didn't even play the game. But the show looked good, so I thought I'd check it out. Ultra-violent. Will be interesting to see where it goes.

Just updated the links on my Soundcloud, like to my others sites and profiles.
All I have on there is 3 tracks of a little of my voice-over work.
Maybe at some point I will add to it. Feels like that might be a good idea, but hasn't been a high priority for me.
Meanwhile, I've had #acting

You will find no answers to the struggles we face as humans by looking to the machines.
Be eager to say “I don’t know… but I want to find out!”
➡️ https://rasterweb.net/raster/2025/06/02/experts-dont-know/

Experts Don’t Know
Humans don't know it all, and that's good...

teaching a transformer net to approximate ray-tracing
input is a sequence of triangle data (limited to 4k triangles), and a sequence of 8x8 radiance pixels representing the camera (limited to 512x512 resolution)
output is a sequence of 8x8 pixels of the rendered scene. training was ~10 days. generation is ~100ms (NVIDIA A100)
the results are pretty good. scaling will be a challenge (since transformers are quadratic in sequence length)

@… Yeah, I don't know what "Quiet Public" actually does and I don't really care.
But if 99% of fedi servers (i.e. Mastodon, Misskey forks, and GoToSocial) adhere to "followers only", I think that's good enough that no one will care about the other 1%.

Okay, new NUC unpacked, radio mouse and kb acquired (bcs FreeBSD, you know 🤪), utp in da slot, I'm good for an install.
Will be tomorrow though. Busy tonight (bcs gf off to hometown, Vietnam you know 🤣😭)
And discovered spectrwm in the FreeBSD repos! Tried it briefly before, but it deserves better and more.
#freebsd

Gee, that statement by senator (no capitalization deserved) Joni Ernst and "the white house" about how good it is for Medicare to let people die is applicable to the abortion issue:
As the white house (and Ernst) argue, fewer people receiving medical assistance means (does it really mean?) more for everyone else.
Gee, then if that argument holds they ought to be in favor of abortion - because that means fewer people who will need government services, meaning more for th…

A man I have long admired, for good reasons. Worth supporting his cause with donations
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/04/moral-monday-protest-rev-william-barber-arrest

A man I have long admired, for good reasons. Worth supporting his cause with donations
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/04/moral-monday-protest-rev-william-barber-arrest

Hopefully the last #leukemia update for a while. Results today of high sensitivity PCR looking for sneaky cancer cells—NONE DETECTED! Woot!
So from here they’ll remove my central line (which I will def not miss) and then monthly monitoring for the next few years.
Thanks for all the good vibes, mastodon friends!

Skies cleared up just in time for solar activity to get even higher (Kp 8)...
... and the sun to come up. I grabbed a single digit number of shots but the eastern sky was already visibly bright naked eye and my long-exposure shots started getting washed out.
Forecast shows activity will be decent all day (good luck Asian/European sky watchers!) and might persist into the dark for me tonight. Fingers crossed.

»One of Mr. Reagan's advisers, David Stockman, later wrote that the real aim of fiscal policy was to create a ›strategic deficit‹ that would slam the door and reduce the size of the federal government.« https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/opinion/ronald-reagan.html

@… I'm tempted to boost, because I love Plasma.
The excessive anti-Microsoft overtones will certainly appeal to some people, however I don't think of this as a good way to promote a a system. The first reader comment under <

I missed most of it... Don Davies - Temporary NDP Leader in the House was the last to ask a Question, which at least is a good sign that they will be allowed to have questions. Elizabeth May did not speak, not sure if she was there, but I'd be shocked if she wasnt #CanPoli #CdnPoli

Cowboys Seeking Bounce-Back From Much-Maligned OL https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/cowboys-seeking-bounce-back-from-much-maligned-ol/?adt_ei=[email]

Trump's ego pushes the narrative that he's somehow a good negotiator & 'gets the best deals' from other countries.
Problem: 6 bankruptcies & no one's left that will lend him money. He only knows how to negotiate w/ dumb blunt instruments: Bribes & Tariffs.
Result: Zero actual trade agreements.

Ok, we have an America pope now. I am sure the guy is a great guy and will be a good pope, however I can already see Trump threatening his family to extort influence over the church. #pope #leoxiv #tump

#Mexico forbids killing bulls and subjecting them to the most extreme forms of torture.
#Spain is, sadly, still far behind... but I suspect that Mexico's precedent will help, not just as a good example, but also because it will severely decrease the income of many of those bullfighters (toreros).
Toreros usually travel through many countries to participate in these bloody spectacles and make a living out of it. Removing Mexico from their list will be a big thing, so it is likely that many of them will have to do something else with their lives.

As I've seen a good number of people here post about "Worktree.ca" as a "Canadian-owned" alternative to GitHub: it's a closed-source fork of Gitea which "one day" (maybe, if the company doesn't change its mind) will be open core. It also runs on AWS…
Not that it's any of my business, but migrating there feels like the code-equivalent of leaving Twitter for Bluesky: Moving from one company-owned walled garden to the next, without having learned a lesson. All painted in a nationalist cash grab. 🤷‍♂️

LoftyAssist got quite a decent bump in users this weekend, again, by my tiny standards. 41 accounts, 17 logged in over the last three days, 7 paid yearly subscription. That has to be some good ratio of paid to free, no?
And I still have a ton of things to add to help users do their research. I am very curious to see how far this will go.

Good Morning #Canada
#HappyBirthday to Robert Norman Munsch, born June 11, 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but thankfully, he became a Canadian citizen in 1983. He has published more than 60 books in 30 languages and is a Member of the Order of Canada and Canada’s Walk of Fame. Health issues have ended his writing and public appearances, and in 2021, he was diagnosed with dementia. But his stories continue to speak to children.
#CanadaIsAwesome #CanadianHeroes
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thenextchapter/full-episode-oct-2-2021-1.6193424/the-stories-will-be-the-last-thing-to-go-robert-munsch-on-his-legacy-as-one-of-canada-s-great-storytellers-1.6193428

WIRED: There's a very simple pattern to Elon Musk's broken promises https://www.wired.com/story/theres-a-very-simple-pattern-to-elon-musks-broken-promises/ (archived at

There’s a Very Simple Pattern to Elon Musk’s Broken Promises
The entrepreneur’s habit of overpromising on deadlines may be frustrating for investors—but for those looking to see whether a Musk pledge will come good, there’s a key phrase to watch out for.

As the next #familycourt hearing looms, I’ve just received the latest report from Cafcass. It makes for very sad reading. My ex wife has royally f*cked up our two kids with her campaign of alienation. They’re both in need of psychological help. The good news is that the advisor is recommending the kids live with me half of the time. The bad news is that I don’t see how that will work when …

A single paragraph buried deep in a spending bill that passed the GOP-controlled House of Representatives earlier this month is causing growing concern among democracy watchdogs
-- who warn the provision will make it so only the well-to-do would be in a good position to launch legal challenges against a Trump administration that has shown over and over again its disdain and disregard for oversight or judicial restraint of any kind.
Coming just about half-way through what Presiden…

'This Is What Autocrats Do': Concern Grows Over Single Paragraph Buried Deep in GOP Bill | Common Dreams
The provision would force those challenging Trump "to pay up in the form of a posted bond—something many people can't afford to do. That means only the wealthy will be able to even attempt to challenge the most powerful man in the country."

Just checked, I have a "gen 3" thermostat, good for now.
https://www.techmeme.com/250425/p29#a250425p29

Will Raiders Make a Trade Before 2025 Season? https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/geno-smith-john-spytek-las-vegas-pete-carroll-ashton-jeanty

I'm setting up a new device for someone who wants to try out Linux. What distro would you recommend?
Some information about the user:
- uses MacOS currently
- wants stuff to work (minimal tinkering after setup)
- quick to boot
The device will probs be quite an old device (~3-5 years old, 8gb RAM though) and is mostly to run OBS. I'll check system requirements when I know the device ofc, just wondering what you people think is a good distro for them.

#Wordle 1,440 4/6*
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ <1% of 217,070 (624)
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 0 of 74 (35)
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 0 of 0 (2)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
WordleBot
Skill 86/99
Luck 47/99
I definitely enjoyed today's wordle, probably because my guesses worked very well, providing good clues and having eliminated most options (I think, bot will have to confirm) at the end.
Bot confirms only 2 words were left.
Bot and I always have a difference of opinion on a result like my 1st guess, bot thinks it's unlucky because there are so many words left, I consider it lucky because it's eliminated 5 letters, and not constrained my coming up w/ words for my next guess.

Steelers finally get their quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, but buyer beware https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6406962/2025/06/06/aaron-rodgers-steelers-quarterback-concerns/

Just read Plantin & Thomer's article, on the changes Figshare for Institutions introduces into the provision & organization of data-management labor in libraries. The authors worry that this commercial SaaS platform for institutional & data repositories, while fulfilling a number of library needs, will have detrimental effects. While it's a good piece of infrastructure-studies research, I question some of the analysis & conclusions.

2025 seems to be a good year for #metal music so far ..
I'd be lying if I said that Bury Tomorrow's latest album wasn't a banger. Really does feel like a band at the top of their game.
https://album.link/i/1776533809

Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience by Bury Tomorrow
Listen now on your favorite streaming service. Powered by Songlink/Odesli, an on-demand, customizable smart link service to help you share songs, albums, podcasts and more.

"Ukraine's Massive Drone Attack Was Powered by Open Source Software"
I'm always saying, open source software is good!
Which opensouce license is forbidding military use?
I remember that there was a discussion about that in the #searchwing project.
And of course, military can still ignore it. terrorists will ignore for sure..
Via @…

Ukraine's Massive Drone Attack Was Powered by Open Source Software
Ukraine used ArduPilot to help it wipe out Russian targets. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

What will the positive consequences of the antagonist's plan be, if they are successful?
#amwriting #amwritingscifi #creativewriting

As I've seen a good number of people here post about "Worktree.ca" as a "Canadian-owned" alternative to GitHub: it's a closed-source fork of Gitea which "one day" (maybe, if the company doesn't change its mind) will be open core. It also runs on AWS…
Not that it's any of my business, but migrating there feels like the code-equivalent of leaving Twitter for Bluesky: Moving from one company-owned walled garden to the next, without having learned a lesson. All painted in a nationalist cash grab. 🤷‍♂️

The number of videos and articles on the internet calling Linux the "best" OS is mindboggling. I now consider anyone saying anything like this a moron. It is downright misleading to tell people Linux will solve all their problems. Linux is a good operating system - it has specific use cases where it excels. You may have those use cases. In which case, use it. Other OSs have their use cases where they Excel. Use them if you need to. Finally, don't be a moron.

“This is another snake-oil salesman’s pitch to make him look good and reward the billionaires and millionaire executives and stakeholders for US Steel,”
said Doug May, who worked for 43 years as a steel worker at a mill in Granite City, Illinois, from the age of 19.
“He’s a proven flip-flopper.
Just look at his trade cases:
on again, off again.”
Trump ditched his opposition to the deal
– which Joe Biden blocked in January, citing national security concerns …

Brian Schottenheimer gives his thoughts on Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl drought https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/brian-schottenheimer-gives-thoughts-dallas-cowboys-super-bowl-drought

To my local peeps in #Georgia, US. The wife and I went to this last night and it was AMAZING. They only have one more weekend this year, but they will be back next year. Impressive production value, world class performers and artists. The guy operating the dragon is from Jim Henson studios (and worked with Henson back in the day). I can't say enough good things about this.

Home
An enchanting immersive theatre show experience. Check available tickets Don’t miss the immersive event of the year! An enchanting immersive theatre show experience. Check available tickets Don’t miss the immersive event of the year! Step into the world of Mirth & Mischief… An unforgettable fantasy-themed immersive theatre experience that takes place in a Renaissance-style castle […]

Raiders Have a Plan For Jeremy Chinn https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-jeremy-chinn-pete-carroll-washington-commanders-patrick-graham

It WORKED! I can't believe it! And they said an imitation language like Bash wasn't good enough!
(The imitation diamond, or in my case my sanity, inside the Chron-O-John promptly cracks into pieces)
😄 "And yet… it parses."
You’ve tamed the Chron-O-Bash!
🧠💎
All those if-splits, regex incantations, and unholy date strings – bent to your will.
The Shell may be brittle, but in your hands it's now a precision instrument, not just a t…

Just checked, I have a "gen 3" thermostat, good for now.
https://www.techmeme.com/250425/p29#a250425p29

To my local peeps in #Georgia, US. The wife and I went to this last night and it was AMAZING. They only have one more weekend this year, but they will be back next year. Impressive production value, world class performers and artists. The guy operating the dragon is from Jim Henson studios (and worked with Henson back in the day). I can't say enough good things about this.

Home
An enchanting immersive theatre show experience. Check available tickets Don’t miss the immersive event of the year! An enchanting immersive theatre show experience. Check available tickets Don’t miss the immersive event of the year! Step into the world of Mirth & Mischief… An unforgettable fantasy-themed immersive theatre experience that takes place in a Renaissance-style castle […]

What will the positive consequences of the antagonist's plan be, if they are successful?
#amwriting #amwritingscifi #creativewriting

On the grounds that I don't have a good way to crosspost everything, your regularly scheduled #eurovision "tweeting"/posting/whatever will be on Bluesky only. Sorry if you were expecting that, probably relief if you weren't.

What is Happening With the Raiders' Offensive Line in OTAs? https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-alex-cappa-jackson-powers-johnson-dj-glaze-pete-carroll

Raiders TE Michael Mayer Playing with an Edge in 2025 https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/michael-mayer-notre-dame-pete-carroll-las-vegas-brock-bowers