Tootfinder

Rant about PHP
You know a technology is declining when the most basic questions about its most bizarre quirks are left completely unanswered for years.
#PHP is like that. Every day I have many of these questions. I look for them. No one asked them before, no one wrote about them before.
I'm baffled by the lack of curiosity and proactivity of its community.
I know it sounds like me piling up on people I don't know anything about, but I used to invest a lot of time programming in PHP. I went to conferences, I made some open source libraries for it, like a PHP kernel for Jupyter Notebooks, I even made a library to work with dataframes, tensors and matrices in PHP (although I lost this one because my laptop was stolen before I released... and I didn't had it in me to rewrite it again).
Then, the ones who I admired the most in that space, like Nikita Popov, started leaving it to work in more intellectually vibrant communities... and it shows.
I'm sure Nikita Popov would be much more gracious than me when talking about it. I can only speculate about his motivations, but at least I can tell you about mine: It was precisely about that same lack of curiosity and creativity that I mentioned before, it felt unbearably grey and sad.

PSA: Do you have a carbon monoxide detector in your home? Do you have more than one (think redundancy)? Does it have a fresh battery (or lifetime battery)? Have you tested the alarm function recently?
If you have appliances that may create carbon monoxide, or an attached garage, now is a good time to check all of the above.
#CarbonMonoxide

I cannot stop posting. It's what I was meant for.

@… is wondering how much trouble a skipped heading level is for screen reader users. Three users have replied but it'd be great to see more feedback. Anyone else willing to reply to Manuel's post? Here is the link:
h…

So #OpenAI is now complaining about IP theft by #DeepSeek? Seriously? What about Suchir Balaji? OpenAI LLMs are created without consent of millions of authors *and* it's clear that LLM output is not copyrighted.

One thing I think about is how flat-earth types could convince themselves, without having to trust anyone, their model of the earth is wrong. I don't think the earth is flat, but it is an interesting problem in #epistemology.
A model needs to explain observations if it is to be believed.
Lately, I've been thinking about day length as seasons change, and how cycle is opposit…

Super happy to see the open source sysdiagnose joining the hackathon.lu held in Luxembourg on April 8th and 9th, 2025.
sysdiagnose is an open-source framework developed to facilitate the analysis of the Apple sysdiagnose files and especially the one generated on mobile devices (iOS / iPadOS). In the light of targeted attacks against journalists, activist, representatives from the civil society and politicians, it empowered incident response team to review device behaviour and ensure th…

I have a relatively new #ASUS ProArt13 laptop where I still have a #Microsoft #Windows installation so I can keep upgrading its firmware (I planned removing it once I have a stable #Linux distro with kernel >= 6.14).
I'm surprised by how unstable it is. Just leaving it doing nothing for more than 10 minutes is enough to trigger a #BlueScreenOfDeath (I can reproduce the issue). If I keep doing stuff, it does not crash.
At this point I'm not sure if it's Microsoft's fault or ASUS'... but I suspect the blame falls on Windows side (nothing like that happens on my Linux installation).
#Windows11

"Quite simply, if you have not read this book yet, read it. If you have a colleague who has yet to read it, get them a copy. If someone asks you what one book to read about software engineering, it is this one. It is not Code Complete, Second Edition, nor is it Clean Code, nor any other book that claims to teach you how to get software right the first time around (you will not)."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/michael-feathers/

For 5 years now I've been learning about web accessibility and reviewing websites. But I'm not a native screen reader user, and my mobile app experience is lacking.
This month I learned about "Accessibility Actions" or "actions available" for VoiceOver and TalkBack. I shoulda known about it for years-- it makes navigation by swiping potentially much quicker.
Would you be willing to share your thoughts and experiences with this feature?

#taxesoda #malbouffe
"une nouvelle étude de l'Université de Washington a montré que les femmes qui
qui boivent au moins une boisson gazeuse pleine de sucre par jour sont environ cinq fois plus de risques de développer un cancer de la cavité buccale que le…

#harvard
https://www.theindex.media/harvard-didnt-blink-the-fight-starts-here/
say it how it is, call

Harvard Didn’t Blink. The Fight Starts Here.
Harvard stood its ground. Now every university faces a choice: comply or resist.

This was it all along and I didn't find it...
sometimes search engines need to make themselves easier to find!
But I'm glad...
I'm glad that I finally found it...after losing it like 2-3 weeks ago!
https://www.tootfinder.ch/

Anyone noticed how the characters in the Alien movies (the ones about Rippley) got progressively dumber as new chapters were released?
Don't remember it? Try to watch them in a row, it's astonishing. It's a good "exercise" because them being part of the same series makes it much easier to make comparisons.
I'd say that's what makes a big difference between the first one and the rest, not the plot in itself, but how idiotic are the characters after the first chapter.

Defunct railroad building.
Taken 4 August 2024.
#WindowFriday #FensterFreitag #Abandoned #Ohio

Did I mention I love Floating Points? Someone recommended Cascade to me and I couldn't stop listening to it. It's a beautiful album, full of fast paced club-electronica, with a gorgeous ambient ending.
Check it out: https://floatingpoints.bandcamp.com/album/cascade

Ordis et tablettes Š l'école:
"Le gouvernement régional de Madrid a dévoilé des plans visant Š limiter l'utilisation des ordinateurs et des tablettes dans les écoles primaires Š un maximum de deux heures par semaine afin de lutter contre « les risques associés Š l'utilisation précoce, intensive et inappropriée des technologies de l'information »."

#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.

"It is an interesting phrase, “the business”, especially when used by engineers to label the group of non-engineers in the organisation. It implies that everybody else is engaged in getting customers and making money, while engineering is a cost centre funded presumably through altruistic motives."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/enough-agile/

TABS. It is a question of #accessibility, you morons!
Death to #smartTabs (aka random haphazard inserts of spaces depending on the IDE at hand)!
#codingStyle

Years ago, I thought it was rather strange to store and provide an additional copy of a already published article. „Doppelt hält besser“ commented @… back then.
Well, he was right back then. But I still couldn't have imagined how important additional copies would become if data and publishers suddenly disappeared.
One more reason why

Die Einschaltquoten sind relevant für die Folgeverträge. Wir müssen endlich über diese ganzen #Talkshows reden und dass sie extern produziert werden, von profitorientierten Unternehmen. It's the economy, stupid!

Weidel beschert Miosga die höchste Reichweite seit Scholz - DWDL.de
Am Sonntagabend begrüßte Caren Miosga die AfD-Kanzlerkandidatin Alice Weidel in ihrem ARD-Talk. Das Interesse war enorm: Bislang gab es nur zwei Ausgaben mit höherer Reichweite, zuletzt jene mit Olaf Scholz.

Shout out to Calvo's GPT for R, https://chatgpt.com/g/g-iedyANQtM-r-and-r-studio-tutor. It really came through yesterday. Handled the tedious tasks of function input checks and roxygen docs and helped me out of mental rut. I was convinced walk2 could add attributes…

Two years ago at #CSUN I learned about what became my favorite browser extension, BeeLine Reader. I've been a subscriber ever since.
It's easy to set up on desktop, but has been some struggle to get working on Android. But this week I discovered it works with Microsoft's Edge Canary mobile browser, which has experimental support for extensions. Instructions are here:

David Brooks: "What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal"
- -
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power."
--

Opinion | What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.
It will take a concerted effort by every sector of our society to respond to Trumpism’s threat.

"The Tax Foundation is a veteran anti-tax campaign organization from the United States. It has been around since 1937 when it was founded by top brass from companies such as Standard Oil and General Motors. Close links to some of the biggest corporations in the US has been a constant feature of the organization, as has its political aim of bringing down taxes"
#lobbying

Make it so that you can decide if ie. only followed users or followers(and amount of time followed rules) can reply in comments to all posts or make it to specific ones.
This in a fight against reply guys!
#ReplyGuys #MastodonFeatureRequest

There is a new #Fediverse bot that facilitates web forensic analysis of websites.
You can submit a domain for crawling by messaging @…, and it will respond with the analysis results.

Lookyloo
Lookyloo captures websites and let you investigate them.

"Jim Coplien ends his talk with a simple call to action: at every conference where new technology is introduced, software engineers should strive to be skeptical; to ask whether it improves the quality of life of society as a whole, and to take it home only to increase the human value of our products and services.
Focus on the people. Again and again. Because that is what Agile and OOP were all about, to begin with."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/james-coplien/

🚅🚅 Trenitalia France, que recientemente obtuvo permiso para operar sus V3000 #Zefiro en 2⃣ doble composición, recuperarš los servicios París ↔️ Milšn el 1 de Abril
👉 El 15 de Junio, extenderš sus servicios a #Marseille, tal como #Renfe

#Tesla shares are kind of slowly recovering their past price.
I suspect it's not just people "buying the dip", but also "the market" reacting to boycotters being caught.
Please, be careful, be smart, don't get caught.
#boycotttesla

Oh, it was a multistep process...step 2, put full username in a field at https://tootfinder.ch/join.php
Ok, just did it!
"Magic word searchable found. From now on, you are indexed."
✅ (all green text btw!) ✅
✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅

Could anyone spare a "Like" for these kids who are trying to plant some seeds of Open Source in the USA Midwest?
#FOSS

WEBCAST JAN 30-31: Trinidad and Tobago Internet Governance Forum 2025
TTIGF 2025 has the theme ‘Building Our Multistakeholder Digital Future‘. The theme was inspired by the UNIGF 2024 theme as an important area that needs to reach the local discussion forum for a way forward in Trinidad and Tobago’s Internet Governance. It will include a Youth Forum on Day 2.

uspolitics, trump
I keep seeing smart people writing stuff like
> [the US] kept peace through strength balanced with restraint, and wielded influence through culture, values, and diplomacy
I understand that #Trump is terrible and some people feel tempted to idealize what they had before him, but we should be more discerning, or otherwise it becomes impossible to understand how this happened in the first place.
Let's start with some questions:
- peace where? and for who? was it true peace, or "Pax Romana"?
- are we going to take seriously that statement on "restraint"? after all the lies, internal witch hunting, sanctions, coups, wars, invasions, genocides, and last but not least, 2 unnecessary nuclear strikes on Japan?
Now, on "culture, values, and diplomacy". Sure. Why not. Not everything was going to be bad, right?
But the thing is, abusive husbands aren't bad all the time either. From time to time they know how to be sweet and seem to care: one present here, flowers the next day, a little bit of gaslighting, and fake apologies after that "accidental" slap.
Given enough time (if the wife is still alive), at some point the victim decides to leave, and then all hell breaks loose. Trump is the manifestation of that moment. He does not represent a change in #USA's nature, but a hidden side that was "always" there, just waiting to play its role.
Others believe this is because #US citizens have been intentionally dumbed down by a combination of propaganda and a disfunctional education system, and I'm sure it's partly true... But let's see what many of their most brilliant and educated citizens are choosing to do with their lives today: https://sfstandard.com/2025/03/12/stanford-students-want-in-on-the-military-tech-gold-rush/
So, all I'm asking is: please drop the act. It was always a clusterfuck.

"It is no secret that the latest SARS outbreak has reshaped the world of work. Particularly in software engineering: where the work can be done anywhere with an internet connection so codes can be pasted from Stack Overflow, and the practitioners generally have a dislike of meetings. Your average software engineer would rather build the wrong thing for eight hours in a flow state, than have a 15-minute conversation in which they find out what direction they should go."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/your-place-or-mine/

I'm not a font expert, but I like #GNOME replacing Cantarell with Adwaita Sans. Cantarell is more distinctive, but I find it distracting. It feels of a time, specifically the 2000s decade, along with Microsoft's Verdana and Tahoma. The new one seems more timeless and utilitarian.

Mastodon feature request: make it so that search results can be shared...since it takes so much resources from your servers that you'll only let logged in users search using quotation marks
#Mastodon #MastodonFeatureRequest

Ok, so... late to the "party", but I'm reading that also @… is jumping into the #LLMs bandwagon.
It's just so... sad, stupid, and infuriating. Really, why?

"In this particular case, it is not uncommon for software developers to not only ignore, but even dismiss the required understanding of design language and primitives. At the same time, designers often lack the knowledge required to understand the various constraints imposed by software and hardware platforms."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-impossible-dialogue-revisited/

Maybe it will be easier for me to understand neodb if I actually use it

I'm 37 years old and I finally finished a #JRPG game for the first time in my life ( #SeaOfStars ).
I like them a lot, but I often get bored of the grinding, or I have to leave it for some time and when I come back I don't remember what I was doing.
Why I managed to finish it this time? Because I had more important, stressing and boring things to do instead, and my brain demanded procrastination. #ADHD

"It is fair to say that Microsoft spent at least the first five years of its history in relative obscurity. The first appearance of the name “Microsoft” on the pages of Byte was a short mention of their BASIC interpreter in an advertising on page 47 of the May 1977 issue. In contrast, page 34 of the same issue included an article about the Apple II by Steve Wozniak. The Woz and Gary Kildall were the biggest stars of the microcomputer industry at the end of the 1970s."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/where-does-microsoft-want-to-go-today/

Is my profile hostile enough?
I mean am I saying:
"If you do x, I will mute you"
"If you do y, I will block you"
etc.?
I guess my most "hostile" thing in my profile is:
"Replyguys/Attackers vs Mastodon/Fediverse: What happened? Did the attack stop!?"
It was more hostile earlier, I said something like:
I won you loser Replyguys, I have a filter shield now!
I try to make it nicer and more neutral...…

Tar Hollow State Park
Taken 8 May 2024
#ThickTrunkTuesday #FallenTree #Ohio #StatePark

@…
I'd like to join tootfinder.ch.
I see in your profile that you link to it but I did find your fedi address first on your site:
https://tootfinder.ch/join.php

Just deleted my post about zirk.us...
They may be the best instance in the world...who am I to judge?
If anyone got evidence of any wrongdoing please provide it
...and also if they were under attack by spammers we can help them by reporting the spam.
Also remember to:
Gather Evidence!
Gather evidence for any instance on the fediverse being under attack or where there are signs of a "Fedi Civil War".
I'm gonna...

@… thank you for noticing my zirk.us post.
At the time I did not have any receipts, I just blocked them for personal reasons...
If I get any future receipts I'll save them so I can show them...
Also I'm deleting that post since otherwise it may seem like I'm throwing baseless accusations at instances...

A lost cupcake couple
Taken 28 March 2025
#Urban #Street #Ground #Cupcake

WTF #LLM #LLMs #AI #UK #UKPolitics