@UP8@mastodon.socialHere's Nº 31 Zoraida Icabalceta from IC's Bombers Turning a Corner and the back Side of Nº 11 June Dickson -- College sports is starting up again and I'm looking forward to seeing some Soccer games and developing Cornell Basketball shots from last Winter while waiting for the season to start
#photo
@yaxu@post.lurk.orgI'm going to say it... Wordpress (as self-hosted, multi-site website creating software) is a really awesome bit of free/open source software. I've tried a _lot_ of alternatives in the past but always come back to it, and it keeps getting better.
@tgpo@social.linux.pizzaAfter 2 weeks of having my office deconstructed and scattered across three rooms downstairs while the upstairs gets the ceiling scrapped and the walls painted, I'm ecstatic to be slowly moving my stuff back in!
1st thing I set up? The record player, of course!
I finally get to listen to the three records I picked up on a weekend trip.
#MyBloodyValentine - Love…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries B, Episode 05 - Pressure Point
BLAKE: Time's up. We're pulling out. Jenna, I want the shortest way out of this system. Avon, run a proximity check on battle fleet patrols.
VILA: Shall I get back to the flight deck, then?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/205/195 B7B2
@callunavulgaris@mastodon.scotAhh bliss. For the first time since Mum went into hospital just over 2wks ago I've actually slept through the night for nearly 9hrs! Sleep fell to pieces initially, no more than 2hrs at a time for several nights which was murder, esp as I still had to go to work, go to hosp, speak to docs etc. I'm back on the magnesium bisglycinate and have chucked in valerian again too for the time being. Added now we know the plan for her and have certainty that she's not coming home so my brai…
@peterhoneyman@a2mi.socialno one is home so i'm cranking it up and ... uh oh ... that sounds BAD. do i need new speakers? sob! i've had these fishers since 1986. I don't think they were anything special back then, but they have grown on me. and oh no, new speakers are expensive. 😭
oh wait the balance settings all screwed up here ⚙️ just a sec 🛠️ and 🔊 ok everything is fine. phew.
my stereo is ok — just ok — but i don't care because all i do is play scratchy old LPs anyway.
@Billybobbell@twit.socialThis is a good plan for sorting out the abonimable #water system in the United Kingdom. Time to sort this shit out!
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/water-
@compfu@mograph.socialThe modern Magnificent Seven movie starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt is still on Amazon Prime for a few days -- at least here in Germany.
We did some VFX for it. Back in the day I was still doing comp and comp supervision. My shot that I'm most proud of is the knife action on the straw dummy. Our company's showreel of that movie starts with a breakdown of it:
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialWhy AI can't possibly make you more productive; long
#AI and "productivity", some thoughts:
Edit: fixed some typos.
Productivity is a concept that isn't entirely meaningless outside the context of capitalism, but it's a concept that is heavily inflected in a capitalist context. In many uses today it effectively means "how much you can satisfy and/or exceed your boss' expectations." This is not really what it should mean: even in an anarchist utopia, people would care about things like how many shirts they can produce in a week, although in an "I'd like to voluntarily help more people" way rather than an "I need to meet this quota to earn my survival" way. But let's roll with this definition for a second, because it's almost certainly what your boss means when they say "productivity", and understanding that word in a different (even if truer) sense is therefore inherently dangerous.
Accepting "productivity" to mean "satisfying your boss' expectations," I will now claim: the use of generative AI cannot increase your productivity.
Before I dive in, it's imperative to note that the big generative models which most people think of as constituting "AI" today are evil. They are 1: pouring fuel on our burning planet, 2: psychologically strip-mining a class of data laborers who are exploited for their precarity, 3: enclosing, exploiting, and polluting the digital commons, and 4: stealing labor from broad classes of people many of whom are otherwise glad to give that labor away for free provided they get a simple acknowledgement in return. Any of these four "ethical issues" should be enough *alone* to cause everyone to simply not use the technology. These ethical issues are the reason that I do not use generative AI right now, except for in extremely extenuating circumstances. These issues are also convincing for a wide range of people I talk to, from experts to those with no computer science background. So before I launch into a critique of the effectiveness of generative AI, I want to emphasize that such a critique should be entirely unnecessary.
But back to my thesis: generative AI cannot increase your productivity, where "productivity" has been defined as "how much you can satisfy and/or exceed your boss' expectations."
Why? In fact, what the fuck? Every AI booster I've met has claimed the opposite. They've given me personal examples of time saved by using generative AI. Some of them even truly believe this. Sometimes I even believe they saved time without horribly compromising on quality (and often, your boss doesn't care about quality anyways if the lack of quality is hard to measure of doesn't seem likely to impact short-term sales/feedback/revenue). So if generative AI genuinely lets you write more emails in a shorter period of time, or close more tickets, or something else along these lines, how can I say it isn't increasing your ability to meet your boss' expectations?
The problem is simple: your boss' expectations are not a fixed target. Never have been. In virtue of being someone who oversees and pays wages to others under capitalism, your boss' game has always been: pay you less than the worth of your labor, so that they can accumulate profit and thus more capital to remain in charge instead of being forced into working for a wage themselves. Sure, there are layers of management caught in between who aren't fully in this mode, but they are irrelevant to this analysis. It matters not how much you please your manager if your CEO thinks your work is not worth the wages you are being paid. And using AI actively lowers the value of your work relative to your wages.
Why do I say that? It's actually true in several ways. The most obvious: using generative AI lowers the quality of your work, because the work it produces is shot through with errors, and when your job is reduced to proofreading slop, you are bound to tire a bit, relax your diligence, and let some mistakes through. More than you would have if you are actually doing and taking pride in the work. Examples are innumerable and frequent, from journalists to lawyers to programmers, and we laugh at them "haha how stupid to not check whether the books the AI reviewed for you actually existed!" but on a deeper level if we're honest we know we'd eventually make the same mistake ourselves (bonus game: spot the swipe-typing typos I missed in this post; I'm sure there will be some).
But using generative AI also lowers the value of your work in another much more frightening way: in this era of hype, it demonstrates to your boss that you could be replaced by AI. The more you use it, and no matter how much you can see that your human skills are really necessary to correct its mistakes, the more it appears to your boss that they should hire the AI instead of you. Or perhaps retain 10% of the people in roles like yours to manage the AI doing the other 90% of the work. Paradoxically, the *more* you get done in terms of raw output using generative AI, the more it looks to your boss as if there's an opportunity to get enough work done with even fewer expensive humans. Of course, the decision to fire you and lean more heavily into AI isn't really a good one for long-term profits and success, but the modern boss did not get where they are by considering long-term profits. By using AI, you are merely demonstrating your redundancy, and the more you get done with it, the more redundant you seem.
In fact, there's even a third dimension to this: by using generative AI, you're also providing its purveyors with invaluable training data that allows them to make it better at replacing you. It's generally quite shitty right now, but the more use it gets by competent & clever people, the better it can become at the tasks those specific people use it for. Using the currently-popular algorithm family, there are limits to this; I'm not saying it will eventually transcend the mediocrity it's entwined with. But it can absolutely go from underwhelmingly mediocre to almost-reasonably mediocre with the right training data, and data from prompting sessions is both rarer and more useful than the base datasets it's built on.
For all of these reasons, using generative AI in your job is a mistake that will likely lead to your future unemployment. To reiterate, you should already not be using it because it is evil and causes specific and inexcusable harms, but in case like so many you just don't care about those harms, I've just explained to you why for entirely selfish reasons you should not use it.
If you're in a position where your boss is forcing you to use it, my condolences. I suggest leaning into its failures instead of trying to get the most out of it, and as much as possible, showing your boss very clearly how it wastes your time and makes things slower. Also, point out the dangers of legal liability for its mistakes, and make sure your boss is aware of the degree to which any of your AI-eager coworkers are producing low-quality work that harms organizational goals.
Also, if you've read this far and aren't yet of an anarchist mindset, I encourage you to think about the implications of firing 75% of (at least the white-collar) workforce in order to make more profit while fueling the climate crisis and in most cases also propping up dictatorial figureheads in government. When *either* the AI bubble bursts *or* if the techbros get to live out the beginnings of their worker-replacement fantasies, there are going to be an unimaginable number of economically desperate people living in increasingly expensive times. I'm the kind of optimist who thinks that the resulting social crucible, though perhaps through terrible violence, will lead to deep social changes that effectively unseat from power the ultra-rich that continue to drag us all down this destructive path, and I think its worth some thinking now about what you might want the succeeding stable social configuration to look like so you can advocate towards that during points of malleability.
As others have said more eloquently, generative AI *should* be a technology that makes human lives on average easier, and it would be were it developed & controlled by humanists. The only reason that it's not, is that it's developed and controlled by terrible greedy people who use their unfairly hoarded wealth to immiserate the rest of us in order to maintain their dominance. In the long run, for our very survival, we need to depose them, and I look forward to what the term "generative AI" will mean after that finally happens.
@finlaydag33k@social.linux.pizzaI'm the kind of friend that you sometimes don't hear from for months or even years, then randomly DM's you something I knew you liked back then (like a video of a specific kind of bird I randomly spotted in my feed).
@JSkier@social.linux.pizzaVO₂ max is back, and a better pace, thanks to medications I'm sure. Uppers and downers for #ADHD and #LongCovid 🫠
This is perfect #running weather though: sunny, cool, and a sane level…
@hex@kolektiva.socialNow that I'm back, I'm gonna follow up with a few worthwhile things. Since I'm not from the Army, I checked in with my dad to make sure I wasn't reading too much into things. His response was..
"Yeah, this is one of the biggest protests i've ever seen by the military"
That seems pretty consistent with @KnittingCultLady's YouTube take:
https://youtu.be/UDJ0INvxLLI
There was a whole vets protest. Other mil folks have echoed similar things. Yeah, I'm pretty confident in my take.
@mlippert@vmst.io@… I'm having scrolling issues w/ the latest web mastodon version v4.5.0-alpha.1@7d3ef27 io on vmst.io. I'm running the latest firefox v141.
When I scroll down, things work fine, when I try to go up, the feed jumps back down, I think when going over posts w/ embedded links, but it doesn't seem to be all of them so I'm not sure of the condition which is setting this off.
It happens scrolling w/ the mouse wheel and the keyboard arrow keys, but not the dragging the scrollbar.
@pre@boing.world
There's a woman I know who, when she was pregnant, was very keen to hear the opinions of crystal diviners and homeopath medics on what sex her new baby would be but wouldn't let the ultrasound-scan technician that actually knows tells her because Spoilers.
On that note, I'm happy to watch #doctorWho #badWolf #tv
@hikingdude@mastodon.socialHey! We just came back from a nice afterwork cycling.
Currently we do an hour of easy cycling every day.
Especially after work it really a blessing.
As I'm STILL behind with the recent trips I just browsed the archives for some beautiful memories of a hike last year.
This trail doesn't offer epic vistas but the trail itself is just a gem.
The blog:
@lornajane@indieweb.socialI've always written short blog posts but now I'm doing a whole lot of post updates (the many syntax highlight plugins over the years eventually caught up with me), it's even more striking that there's content in a format that you rarely see these days (although yes I do read Seth Godin). 208 words in this post, I should try to go back to writing like this even if "the algorithm" doesn't like it :)
@raiders@darktundra.xyzAshton Jeanty on Geno Smith: 'I'm blessed to have a quarterback like him' https://www.raiders.com/video/offense-ashton-jeanty-raiders-training-camp-presser-nfl-072425
@pavelasamsonov@mastodon.socialis AI real life
is it just fantasy
caught up in the hype
no escape from reality
#ai #llm #vibecoding
@evemassacre@assemblag.esBin wieder hier! I'm back here!
All problems solved. Still glad to have a second home over at tldr.nettime.org. Mucho thanks to the people who do all the hosting work to make a comfy home for us here in the mastodon wilds!
@cjhearn@mastodonapp.ukAfter 2½ weeks off (a beautiful 11-night cruise to Bruges and ports along the Portuguese and Spanish coasts), I've had a reasonably good first day back in work. Managed to clear / triage my inbox before going out-of-office again as I'm attending a conference for the next few days in Harrogate.
Which lets me ask the questions: Onde estš Harrogate? Où est Harrogate? Wo ist Harrogate?... etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFp3nMldzkM
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systemsSo there's this new "#eDoręczenia" (~ "eDelivery") system that's supposed to replace the previous "ePUAP" system for exchanging signed messages between citizens and offices. I've finally had the opportunity of testing it today, and I have to say, it's magic.
So I wrote the message, attached the ~300 KiB attachment and clicked "Send". Now a status bar appeared on top, saying (in translation):
> Sending message, it can take up to 20 minutes!
Roughly two minutes later the status bar disappeared and I got a blank new message form. So I go into "sent", nothing there. I go into "drafts", there's my message, apparently listed with "delivery data". I click it, click "send" again — the same bar appears, but after a few seconds I'm back to the list. I click "sent", it's finally sent. Magic!
#Poland
@jake4480@c.imRetro style fantasy fps Wizordum is coming to consoles September 23, and I'm psyched to grab it (when it goes on sale, as I usually wait for). Have to decide if I want it for Switch and/or Xbox. I played the demo on Steam a while back (it's here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1715…
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it
@w6kme@mastodon.radioMy son just got a letter, with an enclosed trading card, asking for an autograph (he shares a name with a prominent NFL star.) This happens from time to time. In this one, the request was a photocopy 😂
I told him to send it back with a note saying "sorry, wrong guy...I'm the (name here) who doesn't beat his girlfriend."It's a real shame that bastard has the same name as my kid, who had the name first I should add.
@pre@boing.worldInteresting thing about tomorrow's tarot show, rendering now, is that I upgraded from Blender 4.0 to blender 4.4 and it's quite a bit nicer to look at the timeline editor.
Was sad to find that the render time was up though. From about 3 seconds per frame usually to more like 12!?
Trying it with an old version I see that the lights and textures look way better with 4.4 than 4.0 though. A substantial step up in the way the show looks without me even doing anything other than waiting four times longer per frame.
Seems to be heavily dependent upon lighting now. The slow frames are like 12 seconds but the fast frames with minimal lighting and close up on the video are more like 2.
Looks too beautiful now to go back though. Upgraded my cloud-remote render machines too. We will render on four machines tonight. FOUR! The power of it all.
g3.4xlarge is no faster than g3.large but g6.xlarge seems to be twice the speed.
But hard to be sure really coz of the massive variance in time depending on the lighting.
Anyway, great show coming tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm trying to do with it but tomorrow's show is the answer. Hide the angry bitter political rant behind a strange CGI tarot show. When the rant comes together well I like it.
https://wordcloudtarot.com/@wordcloudtarot/statuses/01JYFF0GQV1680Z0VG0YTFZDTP
@NFL@darktundra.xyzCowboys' Joe Milton claps back at critics of his throwing style, reveals area of improvement
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/cowboys…
@losttourist@social.chatty.monsterGloria Estefan's video is leaking back in time. Either that or I'm just gonna see people i cat costumes everywhere I go from now on. #TOPT
@joe@toot.worksBack in January, I signed up for a CSA. I got an email yesterday that the first delivery is going to consist of:
- Green Garlic
- Bok Choy
- Lettuce
- Radishes
- Herb, Dill
- Spinach
- Tokyo Bekana
- Maple Syrup (Drewry Farms)
I'm supposed to go pick up the food but leave the box. I'm not sure how big of a bag to bring, though.
#CSA
@felwert@fedihum.org @blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries A, Episode 01 - The Way Back
VARON: Thank you.
GLYND: You know Morag, don't you?
VARON: Yes. Morag.
MORAG: Varon.
GLYND: I've got a defence assignment for you. Not a very pleasant one, I'm afraid.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/101/146 B7B5
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI'm back! This morning was fun, I did a 7.6 mile ride on the borrowed ebike, and almost the entire ride was without pedal assist. I kicked it in for the hills (about 6 in total) but the majority of the ride was pedal powered.
Using the assist just for hills is doable. It's a bit more work but that's okay. It's probably the same amount of work I would do on my lighter Trek.
Average speed was pretty close to what I would get on the non-powered Trek.
@kcase@mastodon.social“zpool import -FX” is not my favorite command. But when the hosting system panics and leaves the virtual devices backing a FreeBSD VM’s zfs filesystem in an inconsistent state, I'm sure glad it exists.
(I do have hourly zfs snapshots mirrored to a different system that I could restore from if necessary, which comforts me in situations like this. But it's nice not to have to roll back by even a few minutes, other than for the few affected files identified by “zpool scrub” checks…
@catsalad@infosec.exchange"I'm nimble like a cat."
Yeah, but like which cat?
@thesaigoneer@social.linux.pizzaChanged all flatpaks back to sourced versions. Librewolf, Brave, Vlc, Joplin, Libreoffice, Deluge. The last two with entirely different applications (Softmaker & Tixati).
This is what Niri does to you 😂 And I'm very much okay with it.
So anyone telling you Slackware hardly seems up to date these days:
With another Slacker0ni production I've now got Slackware Current, Niri 25.05.1, kernel 6.15.7 and all ye goodies, like nwg-panel. waybar, fuzzel, nwg-drawer, a…
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialA tale of crime, real crime, in DC...
Back in the early '90s we would put on a big Internet networking show, Interop. Sometimes in was in Washington, DC.
I'm part of the team that designed & built the show network (see link below).
One night about 40 of us set out to dinner in Georgetown. We all had Motorola radios blipping and making other annoying sounds. Most of us had big Leathermen and other sharp edged tools. Several among us were ex-military.
On t…
@mrysav@social.linux.pizzaI'm sure I'm preaching to the choir on the Fediverse, but Audiobookshelf is just so good. I have a ton of audiobooks I purchased on various platforms over the years that are now in one place, and when I have the ePub version as well, I can upload it and reference back to passages when I want.
https://www.audiobookshelf.org/
@alejandrobdn@social.linux.pizzaDuplicati is in the process of saving my ass again, but their backup restores are extremely slow.
Their web interface is neat and the handling is more or less intuitive, but I think I'm going back to the rsync & cron script formula.
It's what I've done on my server all my life until I installed Docker, but in this case I'm going back to my simple origins.
#docker
@tante@tldr.nettime.orgI wished I could disagree with this post but sadly I cannot. I had high hopes for Matrix and still use it but boy is it not fixing the core and conceptual issues.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/im-never-going-back-to-matrix/
@cjust@infosec.exchangeA good friend of mine has the Muppet character "Beaker" as his avatar. For reasons.
He offers me advice. I offer him advice. We chat. These are #ChatsWithBeaker
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzTyler Booker grateful for guidance, all set for Cowboys' training camp: 'I'm not gonna hold the offense back' https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/tyler-booker-grateful-for-guidance…
@hex@kolektiva.socialEpstein shit and adjacent, Rural America, Poverty, Abuse
Everyone who's not a pedophile thinks pedophiles are bad, but there's this special obsessed hatred you'll find among poor rural Americans. The whole QAnon/Epstein obsession may not really make sense to folks raised in cities. Like, why do these people think *so much* about pedophiles? Why do they think that everyone in power is a pedophile? Why would the Pizzagate thing make sense to anyone? What is this unhinged shit? A lot of folks (who aren't anarchists) might be inclined to ask "why can't these people just let the cops take care of it?"
I was watching Legal Eagle's run down on the Trump Epstein thing earlier today and I woke up thinking about something I don't know if I've ever talked about. Now that I'm not in the US, I'm not at any risk of talking about it. I don't know how much I would have been before, but that's not something I'm gonna dig into right now. So let me tell you a story that might explain a few things.
I'm like 16, maybe 17. I have my license, so this girl I was dating/not dating/just friends with/whatever would regularly convince me to drive her and her friends around. I think she's like 15 at the time. Her friends are younger than her.
She tells me that there's a party we can go to where they have beer. She was told to invite her friends, so I can come too. We're going to pick her friends up (we regularly fill the VW Golf well beyond the legal limit and drive places) and head to the party.
So I take these girls, at least is 13 years old, down to this party. I'm already a bit sketched out bringing a 13 year old to a party. We drive out for a while. It's in the country. We drive down a long dark road. Three are some barrel fires and a shack. This is all a bit strange, but not too abnormal for this area. We're a little ways outside of a place called Mill City (in Oregon).
We park and walk towards the shack. This dude who looks like a rat comes up and offers us beer. He laughs and talks to the girl who invited me, "What's he doing here? You're supposed to bring your girl friends." She's like, "He's our ride." I don't remember if he offered me a beer or not.
We go over to this shed and everyone starts smoking, except me because I didn't smoke until I turned 18. The other girls start talking about the rat face dude, who's wandered over by the fire with some other guys. They're mainly teasing one of the 13 year old girls about having sex with him a bunch of times. They say he's like, 32 or something. The other girls joke about him only having sex with 13 year olds because he's too ugly to have sex with anyone closer to his own age.
Somewhere along the line it comes out that he's a cop. I never forgot that, it's absolutely seared in to my memory. I can picture his face perfectly still, decades later, and them talking about how he's a deputy, he was in his 30's, and he was having sex with a 13 year old girl. I was the only boy there, but there were a few older men. This was a chunk of the good ol' boys club of the town. I think there were a couple of cops besides the one deputy, and a judge or the mayor or some kind of big local VIP.
I kept trying to get my friend to leave, but she wanted to stay. Turns out under age drinking with cops seems like a great deal if you're a kid because you know you won't get busted. I left alone, creeped the fuck out.
I was told later that I wasn't invited and that I couldn't talk about it, I've always been good at compartmentalization, so I never did.
Decades later it occurred to me what was actually happening. I'm pretty sure that cop was giving meth he'd seized as evidence to these kids. This wasn't some one-off thing. It was regular. Who knows how many decades it went on after I left, or how many decades it had been going on before I found out. I knew this type of thing had happened at least a few times before because that's how that 13 year old girl and that 32 year old cop had hooked up in the first place.
Hearing about Epstein's MO, targeting these teenage girls from fucked up backgrounds, it's right there for me. I wouldn't be surprised if they were involved in sex trafficking of minors or some shit like that... but who would you call if you found out? Half the sheriff's department was there and the other half would cover for them.
You live in the city and shit like that doesn't happen, or at least you don't think it happens. But rural poor folks have this intuition about power and abuse. It's right there and you know it.
Trump is such a familiar character for me, because he's exactly that small town mayor or sheriff. He'll will talk about being tough on crime and hunting down pedophiles, while hanging out at a party that exists so people can fuck 8th graders.
The problem with the whole thing is that rural folks will never break the cognitive dissonance between "kill the peods" and "back the blue." They'll never go kill those cops. No, the pedos must be somewhere else. It must be the elites. It must be outsiders. It can't be the cops and good ol' boys everyone respects. It can't be the mayor who rigs the election to win every time. It can't be the "good upstanding" sheriff. Nah, it's the Clintons.
To be fair, it's probably also the Clitnons, a bunch of other politicians, billionaires, etc. Epstein was exactly who everyone thought he was, and he didn't get away with it for so long without a whole lot of really powerful help.
There are still powerful people who got away with involvement with #Epstein. #Trump is one of them, but I don't really believe that he's the only one.
#USPol #ACAB
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries B, Episode 12 - The Keeper
GOLA: Guards, bring the other fool back up. Be well my love. [To Tara] Will she be well?
TARA: [Keeping a straight face] Oh yes.
GOLA: Good.
JENNA: [Looking at the amulet again] Oh, I'm sorry, it is forbidden.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/212/417…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust finished Transiruby, along with a 9k-line journal file for it. I almost got 100, but not quite; I don't have time to go back to it before the semester starts though.
If you like exploration games, it's an excellent one, with great level design & tons of secrets. It actually makes you do significant secret-finding and map-reading in order to beat the game, not just for extras or a special ending, which is something that a lot of metroidvania games since Super Metroid don't do. My one complaint is that the map system isn't perfect, and finding obscure secrets to progress is fine when the map hints at them but much less fun when it hints incorrectly (I looked one progress item up in a speedrun video because of this).
Decently cool movement mechanics, although the combat does take a back seat and almost all of the bosses are easy (I beat the final two bosses in the third and second tries respectively). I don't think that's any better or worse than a game like Nine Sols where the final boss took me hundreds of tries though; just a different flavor. The world-building isn't as rich as the more epic metroidvanias like Hollow Knight or Lone Fungus (or again, Nine Sols) but again I'm fine with that. It's just a more casual game that has really excellent level design & exploration poetics.
#AmPlaying
@shriramk@mastodon.socialLovely piece, and why I often take small hotel rooms in cities: so I'm forced out to go explore. I especially love this line: "I understood how a metropolis allows you to be solitary without being lonely." People who don't live in cities don't get this.
https://www.nytim…
@frankel@mastodon.topI Replaced #SpringBoot with #Quarkus — Here’s What Happened (And Why I’m Never Going Back)
@Demirramon@cyberfurz.socialEvery time I see someone saying something like "we should bring this back" or "how come no website/app does this anymore" I just go like "bet" and implement it into my own website because fuck the modern internet "standards" set by shitty companies I'm gonna use my free will to do whatever I want (and so should you).
@muz4now@mastodon.worldGet Well Soon
- my friend is back in the hospital with pneumonia so I'm sending this as a get-well card -
#OrchestralMusic #NowPlaying
@newstik@social.heise.deFor a few days, I drove a 2024 #Toyota. I'm afraid that all those #DriverAssist systems are a terrible cocktail.
Several times a day, the car would suddenly break for no reason. Dangerous! I turned that off, but after every restart, it was back on.
Changing lanes or overtaking w…
@detondev@social.linux.pizzai said funnies in a signal convo fairly recently and got no clue how to do the tried-and-true "make it into a standalone post when ur outta ideas for what to post" thing here soooo
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeGetting ready to tear down the current LATENTRED prototyping setup. I'm at the point that it makes sense to not do much future development until I get the final switch engine board back from fab.
Which i haven't ordered, because I haven't had a chance to finish the last few SI simulations and do signoff review.
But it's getting in the way of other projects (including work related things) competing for the same 3 square feet of bench space so I'm gonna have to …
@niqdanger@social.linux.pizzaI really know nothing about babies. I'm not like, a fan or anything. A friend just had a baby and I thought "I'll sew a bib, babies drool a lot!". I printed a pattern, cut it, and sewed it. It came out pretty good! Until I looked a little more closely and saw that I had somehow printed the pattern at 1/2 scale. Unless this baby has a 2" neck, this thing isn't going to fit. Ooops. Back to the cutting board.
@samvarma@fosstodon.orgJust made a typo typing an email and called FB Faecebook
I'm never going back
@jamesthebard@social.linux.pizzaSo, the encode finished. Seems I'm saving about 10 to 15 minutes per encode using "Performance Mode" on the MS-A2. It doesn't quite get me back to 5950X encoding times, but close enough that it doesn't matter.
```
info: {
start_time: '2025-06-20 00:01:34.253422 00:00',
worker: 'encoder02',
worker_id: '3eb1c3d7-2809-4a28-88fd-27e529624d36',
version: '1.5.9',
comp…
@hikingdude@mastodon.socialBack home from a bike and hike with a friend. I'm absolutely devastated.
Every muscle from my hips downward hurts. But I made it!
#nature #landscape #hiking
@NFL@darktundra.xyzLions RB Jahmyr Gibbs: I'm being split out wide 'way more' than the past two years https://www.nfl.com/news/lions-rb-jahmyr-gibbs-i-m-being-split-out-wide-way-more-than-the-past-two-years
@shaun@mastodon.xyzReplaced the garbage #disposal last night. It's one of those jobs like redoing the guts of a toilet; seemed intimidating but it was far easier than I expected. (Replacing with the same model helps.) #insinkerator #diy
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netD05 - Animals
SERVALAN: I suggest you make sure that your connection with their disappearance is never discovered. Without any records to back you up, it might be hard to explain.
BORR: There's no cause for concern, Commissioner. I was - very discrete.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/405/222
@candide@vis.social
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizzaI even fixed my Pixel 6a back in December. Unfortunately, I broke the new screen a few weeks ago.
I'm glad I upgraded to my Pixel 9a when I did. I love GrapheneOS and have been using it since early May 2023 with my 6a.
#GrapheneOS #Android
@marcus@hachyderm.ioGot Ori and the will of the wisps as part of a humble bundle a couple of weeks back. Such a good game. Runs great on the steamdeck as well. Apparently I'm 31% through it. Should be done with it by the time silksong is out. Just hope this rumor is right. 😇 https://fandomwire.com/did-we-just-get-a-hollow-knight-silksong-release-window-major-leak-says-yes/
@andycarolan@social.lolI'm back from the supermarket... every salad item was in a plastic bag or wrap... forget about straws, those were just a minor part of a much bigger problem.
#Plastics #Sustainability
@lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nzHoly cow, only 24 hrs after putting it out in the yard, the silvereyes ('tauhou' in te reo Māori, which means 'new arrivals' as they've migrated here to Aotearoa without human assistance) have already found the new sugar water feeder! I'm delighted 🤩🤗 Will try to get some better pictures.
@spamless@mastodon.socialMy fine "new" (2023) bike is in the shop, so I unmothballed my trusty classic steed for today's ride. After a go with the tire pump, I was off like the wind. There's something exquisite about a strong and simple piece of engineering. That old bike is 39 years old! I bought it new back in California in the day. It's still a sweet ride.
#roadbike
@CerstinMahlow@mastodon.acm.org
@StampedingLonghorn@social.linux.pizzaI'm back from taking a break on Mastodon after wiping my phone because it was out of space. Space was occupied by memes and dashcam videos, if you're curious. I usually wipe my phone every year.
@shoppingtonz@mastodon.socialSo back in Albion EU now...let us check how my 1 day and 8 hour 0% Tax guild "Mastodon Fediverse Unity" is doing...
A little glimpse and we've got...
4/8 players online including me who is also online in the guild.
Here are my notes on etherpad(attached image) where I've made available some data regarding my ore gathering round 4...
Trivia: Premium cost is 25 M silver.
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzTyler Booker grateful for guidance, all set for Cowboys' training camp: 'I'm not gonna hold the offense back' https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/tyler-booker-grateful-for-guidance…
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI'm finally pleased with my 3D printed sign handle. It's two parts, bolts together with a cardboard sign between the pieces. I've made the back side larger so it can be glued to the sign to help stabilize it in wind. (Learned I needed that the hard way!)
#3Dprinting #protest
@losttourist@social.chatty.monsterI sat down on the sofa for five minutes after lunch to browse Mastodon. Unfortunately this happened and now I can't move and so with the greatest of regret 😆 I will be informing my boss that I'm not coming back online this afternoon. I'm sure he'll understand.
#CatsOfMastodon #floof
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itThe libxml2 maintainer is basically shrugging his shoulders and saying "deal with your own fucking security issues; libxml was never meant to be used in your projects" to google and the rest of the giant corporations that are using his labor without contributing back. I'm totally on board with that.
https://
@raiders@darktundra.xyzGeno Smith: 'I'm looking forward to getting back to work' https://www.raiders.com/video/geno-smith-raiders-preseason-week-2-vs-49ers-locker-room-scrum-08162025
@tante@tldr.nettime.org"LLMs are okay at coding, but at scale they build jumbled messes. I’ve scaled back my use of AI when coding and gone back to using my brain and pen and paper."
https://albertofortin.com/writing/coding-with-ai
@NFL@darktundra.xyzPatriots DT Christian Barmore out to 'prove I'm still me' after blood clots cut 2024 season short https://www.nfl.com/news/patriots-dt-christian-barmore-out-to-prove-i-m-still-me-after-blood-clots-cut-2…
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeDoes anyone know how to get a competent Comcast business support engineer to actually talk to you? I've called their support line three times, each time they tried rebooting the modem (saying they would only do this once, liars) and then disconnected me saying that I could call back if I was still having problems.
I have yet to reach even a level 1 support drone.
I'm trying to a) get my CPE password reset because the password in my password manager doesn't work anymor…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialSpeculative politics
As an anarchist (okay, maybe not in practice), I'm tired of hearing why we have to suffer X and Y indignity to "preserve the rule of law" or "maintain Democratic norms." So here's an example of what representative democracy (a form of government that I believe is inherently flawed) could look like if its proponents had even an ounce of imagination, and/or weren't actively trying to rig it to favor a rich donor class:
1. Unicameral legislature, where representatives pass laws directly. Each state elects 3 statewide representatives: the three most-popular candidates in a statewide race where each person votes for one candidate (ranked preference voting would be even better but might not be necessary, and is not a solution by itself). Instead of each representative getting one vote in the chamber, they get N votes, where N is the number of people who voted for them. This means that in a close race, instead of the winner getting all the power, the power is split. Having 3 representatives trades off between leisure size and ensuring that two parties can't dominate together.
2. Any individual citizen can contact their local election office to switch or withdraw their vote at any time (maybe with a 3-day delay or something). Voting power of representatives can thus shift even without an election. They are limited to choosing one of the three elected representatives, or "none of the above." If the "none of the above" fraction exceeds 20% of eligible voters, a new election is triggered for that state. If turnout is less than 80%, a second election happens immediately, with results being final even at lower turnout until 6 months later (some better mechanism for turnout management might be needed).
3. All elections allow mail-in ballots, and in-person voting happens Sunday-Tuesday with the Monday being a mandatory holiday. (Yes, election integrity is not better in this system and that's a big weakness.)
4. Separate nationwide elections elect three positions for head-of-state: one with diplomatic/administrative powers, another with military powers, and a third with veto power. For each position, the top three candidates serve together, with only the first-place winner having actual power until vote switches or withdrawals change who that is. Once one of these heads loses their first-place status, they cannot get it again until another election, even if voters switch preferences back (to avoid dithering). An election for one of these positions is triggered when 20% have withdrawn their votes, or if all three people initially elected have been disqualified by losing their lead in the vote count.
5. Laws that involve spending money are packaged with specific taxes to pay for them, and may only be paid for by those specific revenues. Each tax may be opted into or out of by each taxpayer; where possible opting out of the tax also opts you out of the service. (I'm well aware of a lot of the drawbacks of this, but also feel like they'd not necessarily be worse than the drawbacks of our current system.) A small mandatory tax would cover election expenses.
6. I'm running out of attention, but similar multi-winner elections could elect panels of judges from which a subset is chosen randomly to preside in each case.
Now I'll point out once again that this system, in not directly confronting capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc., is probably doomed to the same failures as our current system. But if you profess to want a "representative democracy" as opposed to something more libratory, I hope you'll at least advocate for something like this that actually includes meaningful representation as opposed to the current US system that's engineered to quash it.
Key questions: "Why should we have winner-take-all elections when winners-take-proportionately-to-votes is right there?" and "Why should elected officials get to ignore their constituents' approval except during elections, when vote-withdrawal or -switching is possible?"
2/2
#Democracy
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI think I'm finally starting to get past being sick. It started last week Tuesday, but I had to conduct online training sessions at work so I soldiered through until Friday when I was able to stay home and rest. I thought I was better Saturday but I was wrong... Sunday rolled around and still not great but I think finally this afternoon I am starting to get my energy back.
@pre@boing.worldSo farewell then Pinetime Watch 🪦.
It isn't showing any signs of charging. even after a completely-flat battery reset. Last hope gone.
Now nobody at all is running my custom software I think, and I have no way to fix the bugs.
Could replace it, but I'm not really paying any attention to the things it measures anyway. Heartrate is too unreliable to be useful and steps seems likely to be counting my leg-jiggles since I tend to hit 10,000 most days without trying or leaving the flat.
The software which tracks my time and mood is probably better running on the phone really. Easier to add notes and detail. Can't really input text from a watch. Location data can be added in ways the watch couldn't.
So back to not wearing a watch at all I think. Who needs it now we all carry pocket watches with internet and telephony.
#pineTime #smartWatch
@catsalad@infosec.exchangeI would say I'm sorry for flooding the timeline with cats (but that would be a lie) :ablobcatblink:
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systemsA while ago the media reported that most of the long-distance "suburban" trains between #Wrocław and #Poznań will be discontinued, and instead one will have to change trains midway. Irrespective of whether it's actually going to happen, let's consider it.
As you can probably tell by now, I'm not a stranger to changing trains. In fact, there are some direct connections that I do criticize. For example:
• Poznań — Szczecin — Świnoujście, where arriving at Szczecin Główny and turning back to leave the city is a waste of time. It's better to change trains at Szczecin Dąbie.
• Poznań — Krzyż — Kostrzyn, where instead of using a single railbus, you can use a larger EMU for the Poznań — Krzyż segment, and a smaller DMU for Krzyż — Kostrzyn (in fact, only recently the "direct" Poznań — Kostrzyn train involved just that, but it was supposed to be temporary).
However, good matches are the key. Say:
1. Max 10 minutes (when there are no delays) from one train to the other.
2. "Door-to-door" transfer — without having to carry all your luggage across platforms.
3. Reliable connection — if one train is delayed, the other train waits for it (or there are so many alternatives that it doesn't have to).
Can such a thing happen on Poznań — Wrocław route? I have my doubts.
I've been using these trains for years, and I can say this: there is no effort to match train from/to Poznań with other trains in Wrocław. Sometimes the trains depart 10 minutes before the first train from Poznań arrives, sometimes I need to transfer in 10 minutes, and sometimes I have to wait over an hour. And the same in the other direction.
Perhaps things would actually improve if the route is split. Perhaps people would actually care. Maybe even the trains would be fitted better to the timetable in Wrocław. But I find it hard to believe.
EDIT: One final thought — since there is no real reason to split these connections (except for profiteering), why make travellers' lives harder?
#rail
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries A, Episode 12 - Deliverance
TRAVIS: I've told you, I want my command back. It's the only way I can catch -
SERVALAN: You really are obsessed with Blake, aren't you?
TRAVIS: It's my right.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/112/237 B7B4
@NFL@darktundra.xyzRavens RB Keaton Mitchell: I feel like I'm better than before 2023 knee injury https://www.nfl.com/news/ravens-rb-keaton-mitchell-i-feel-like-i-m-better-than-before-2023-knee-injury
@hex@kolektiva.socialRelated to understanding firearms, "rifles" and hand guns tend to be rifled. Rifling is grooving that runs in a helical pattern down the barrel. When purchasing a firearm, it's important to check the rifling.
First check that the firearm is unloaded. Empty or remove the magazine, cycle the weapon. Next, check again that it's unloaded by looking both down the barrel and into the magazine. Now, shine a light down the barrel and look down it. In the absence of a light, you may be able to reflect light off your thumbnail.
Rifling should look as though it's drawn on with a sharp pencil, and the barrel should look otherwise completely smooth and clean. If the rifling looks like bumpy mountains, then the owner probably used corrosive ammo and didn't clean it enough. It will probably still shoot, but not at all accurately.
Both the rifling and the pin can be used in forensic analysis to match a bullet to a gun. I don't honestly know how accurate this is because a lot of forensic "science" is just made up stuff that relies on the CSI effect and doesn't actually work as advertised.
However, not all firearms are not all rifled. Shotguns are "smoothbore" firearms, meaning they lack rifling. It is not possible to perform forensic analysis of a smoothbore firearm. It *is* possible to check for powder on the hands of someone who has used a firearm within the last few days, but it's not possible to distinguish between firing inside and outside a range.
I've been gathering all kinds of tidbits like this, partially just out of curiosity and partially because I've been wanting to write a story about a revolutionary group fighting a modern authoritarian society. I'm always happy to learn other bits, if anyone has anything else I could throw in my narrative (whenever I finally get back to writing it).
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialThis brings me back to the mid/late 1980s... I remember doing an interview (by mail) with Eric from Life Sentence for my first zine. (He had a tragic ending in 2016, glad we still have the music.)
https://lifesentence.bandcamp.com/album/life-sentence-remastered …
@NFL@darktundra.xyzSteelers RB Jaylen Warren has 'no doubt' he can shoulder larger workload: 'That's the way I'm training' https://www.nfl.com/news/steelers-rb-jaylen-warren-has-no-doubt-he-can-shoulder-lar…
@losttourist@social.chatty.monsterNo Top of the Pops tonight and I'm far too uninterested to watch the Glastonbury stuff. So I'm sitting on iPlayer watching series 1 of Race Across the World.
I've already watched series 4 and 5 as they were being broadcast, so now I'm going back to the beginning to catch up on what I missed.
#TOTP #RaceAcrossTheWorld
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries A, Episode 03 - Cygnus Alpha
BLAKE: [Whispers] Vila. [Pause, then louder] Vila. [Pause] Gan. [Pause] Gan.
GAN: [Moves to bars] Blake.
BLAKE: What is it? What's the matter with everybody?
GAN: How did you get here?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/103/377 …
@hex@kolektiva.socialI'm pretty sure all the white folks (and anyone else who didn't learn the underlying lessons first hand) were assigned to learn about Red Summer, the Chinese Exclusion Acts, Wilmington 1898, and more than a few other things that came up in cultural conversation during the last Trump presidency. This is all on the test, and you're taking it now.
But in case anyone missed the assignment, I'll give you the TL;DR: ethnic cleansing has been central to American politics basically forever, which shouldn't be surprising given it's a nation founded on genocide and the belief in the right to commit it without constraint.
If you haven't done the math yet, I'll help you out. The "Haitian Immigrants" lets them grab black folks, they've been grabbing folks from Mexico south and lumping in indigenous Americans (just so they don't skip out on the oldest American genocide), and the Muslim ban/Hamas rhetoric lets them grab anyone who else they see fit.
The lack of due process lets them grab anyone and they don't have to prove anything. They're talking about deporting "one million" and possibly"millions" of people. So how do they get those numbers?
There are already reports that they're just grabbing random brown folks, trying to take 3k people per day. They fly to blue cities and grab as many black and brown people as they can, then send them to death camps in foreign countries and pretend they have no way to get them back. That's it. That's the game.
This isn't new. The big difference now is that the cops aren't hiding their uniforms under white hoods this time. Do you get it yet?
@NFL@darktundra.xyzRaiders HC Pete Carroll on backfield approach with No. 6 pick Ashton Jeanty: 'I'm not relying on one guy' https://www.nfl.com/news/raiders-hc-pete-carroll-on-backfield-approach-with-no-6-pick-asht…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries B, Episode 11 - Gambit
JENNA: Did you find him?
BLAKE: I missed him by a couple of minutes. There's a back entrance. Something must have scared him.
CALLY: Cevedic, presumably.
JENNA: Well he could be anywhere by now.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/211/330 B7B6
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialWell I'm glad I got one NAS backing up to the other last week because I accidentally wiped my Jellyfin library last night.
A long running rsync command got everything back in place. Whew!
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI may need to get back to doing illustrations again since it's been about a year that I took a break...
Hand drawn stuff (even if digitally) might be the future of human art with all this AI bullshit going on.
➡️ https://rasterweb.net/raster/projects/illustrations/
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries D, Episode 11 - Orbit
VILA: I'm not the type for this sort of thing, Avon.
AVON: Why not?
VILA: This Egrorian, you said he was some kind of genius.
AVON: They said he was supposed to be some time back.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/411/62 B7B5
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net @rasterweb@mastodon.socialI love arguing with a dude who is telling me the device I sell can be found for 1/8th the price, twice now, with no links or other info to back up his claim.
I'm really close to the 2.6x cost of goods with a little extra to cover shipping materials, support, and custom programming that is offered...
And if so, why doesn't he just buy the competitor's product instead of bugging me?
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries A, Episode 01 - The Way Back
BLAKE: I wish to make a statement.
ARBITER: There can be no more said regarding this case. The matter has been assessed and judgment made.
BLAKE: But the evidence is false. These charges are lies.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/101/215 B7B4
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net#Blakes7 Series D, Episode 01 - Rescue
AVON: Cally is dead.
TARRANT: Are you sure?
AVON: [Pause] Yes, I'm sure.
DAYNA: He went back in.
TARRANT: You wanted to be a hero too?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/401…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries A, Episode 01 - The Way Back
BLAKE: I have to think.
FOSTER: Of course. We'll talk after the meeting.
BLAKE: Hmm.
DEV TARRANT: What do you think?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/101/89 B7B4
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries D, Episode 11 - Orbit
PINDER: Egrorian? Egrorian? They're here! Come and see. [Egrorian enters. He slaps Pinder away from the monitor. They look at the monitor and laugh hysterically.]
[Back on Scorpio]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/411/9 B7B3
