@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialA US judge rules Infowars will go up for sale yet again, paving the way for The Onion to revive its bid for the conspiracy-driven outlet and its assets (Hadas Gold/CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/media/infowars-alex-jones-onion-sale-texas-judge
@raiders@darktundra.xyzRaheem Mostert mic'd up vs. Seahawks: 'Set that temperature!' https://www.raiders.com/video/raheem-mostert-micd-up-seahawks-nfl-preseason
@ruth_mottram@fediscience.orgReally BlueSky? Are you really going to make we look up what a "groyper" is? I'm not sure that's a good idea. I'm not going to enjoy finding out, am I?
Tell you what, I'll go and have a cup of tea and discuss cats and cybersecurity and climate change and hiking with good views and great book recommendations over on mastodon this evening.
You can tell me when it's safe to come back in....
@cdarwin@c.imAfter being informed his heat shield may have come loose,
John Glenn held steadfast in the face of real uncertainty,
-- as he observes the retro pack burn up outside his window,
illuminating the cabin in an orange glow,
during re-entry on February 20, 1962.
"This is Friendship Seven. I think the pack just let go ...
A real fireball outside! ...
Great chunks of that retro pack breaking off all the way through!"
-- Credit: NASA / And…
@primonatura@mstdn.social"EU states still fighting over crucial targets in run-up to Cop30, leaked draft shows"
#EU #EuropeanUnion #COP30 #ClimateSummit
@raiders@darktundra.xyzEric Stokes mic'd up during mock game: 'Let's have fun today!' https://www.raiders.com/video/eric-stokes-mic-d-up-during-mock-game-let-s-have-fun-today
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itIt's always wild to me how many professions we hold to a higher standard than cops. https://mstdn.social/@mcnado/114844474193049944
@davej@dice.campSo the Australian public finally sees the price we pay for AUKUS (aside from damaging relations with—and paying compensation to—France).
“With less than two years to go, Mr Hastie is warning that the WA and federal governments are failing to explain the AUKUS agreement.”
Hastie was Asst Defence Minister at #AUKUS’ very secret inception. Surely, it was upon the
@JSkier@social.linux.pizza
@Techmeme@techhub.socialLenovo unveils Legion Go 2 , with an 8.8" screen and AMD Ryzen Z2 or Z2 Extreme chip, available in October, starting at $1,099, costing $400 more than Legion Go (Sean Hollister/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/769776/legion-go-2-offici…
@groupnebula563@mastodon.social @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
@anildash@me.dm@… hey, I've been reading up on your older posts about using Sonos speakers as Mac audio outputs, and they've been super helpful! Thanks for taking the time to write everything up so thoroughly. I'm thinking of getting an old Ray and an optical-out adapter and giving it a go. Anything new to know since your write-ups? (I know Sonos has …
@samvarma@fosstodon.orgThe office yesterday.
And let me say that trying to keep an 85dB limit and being forced to suddenly go direct made for an extremely challenging situation. It highlighted for me that if you're going to go direct you really have to set a rig up with that goal in mind, and then go out and do it a whole bunch of times to optimize it.
coughmodelerscough
Side note: our drummer had to play a low-end electronic kit, and he just crushed it.
I said that kit will need a ciga…
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caPVC cement is kinda scary and I am not completely convinced I need to use it. lol
None of this pipe is going to be completely inaccessible, and I may need to adjust things down the line... all the joints are within the wet zone of the holes so no water lost if there are any small leaks.
started early this morning so I could get at leaat something done before the oppressive heat sets in.
I need to go to the store rn to pick up fittings.
#poolpond #bacyardproject #diy
@finlaydag33k@social.linux.pizzaAnyone that managed to get their hands on a Framework 12 already?
Been looking at picking up one for myself but wanted to know how the battery life is for fairly normal use (browsing the web, maybe some youtube/plex streaming, talking on Discord etc.).
My current laptop doesn't have a battery that lasts very long (it's 6 years old) but can't be charged via the USB-C either (so just using a powerbank or the trucks 12V with an adapter is a no-go).
@hex@kolektiva.socialAnd when I'm talking about understanding the drives to violence, I did write about something similar recently.
https://write.as/hexmhell/algorithmic-violence
The drives behind this and the shooting last week are pretty radically different, but there's some overlap. People like Kirk are part a huge political machine slowly crushing people all over the world. There's a hopeless rage that would naturally drive even the most calm person to the edge of violence. You can't look at the world honestly and be OK. We want to do something. We want to react. But everything we do is silenced or must rmain silent. So it's easy to understand why someone might choose violence. Very different situation, but everyone is subject to the same national and international influences.
I don't promote violence, not because I disagree with it but because I think it's expensive. It takes time to plan, especially for those trying to get away. Guns are not cheap, nor are bullets, nor is the range time you need to get somewhat good under pressure. It's not cheap for the person doing it, and it's not cheap for the community that has to clean up. The community will face police repression (which, if we're honest, was gonna come anyway). The community will have to post bail, will lose a person for a while, will need to support the family, will go to hearings, will write reports, will do interviews.
Sun Tzu said that deploying one soldier to the front takes 7 in the field. Logistics are a huge invisible cost. Some of that time and energy could be reused. It's never bad to be armed and able to defend if needed. But a lot of that energy and time would be better spent planning a community pantry, a tool library, organizing a union, etc. We are living in a disaster, and we need to invest in thriving through the next crumble.
Kirk is replacable. They're almost all replacable, because they don't really care about human life. We do, so none of us are. It's not really a worth while trade, IMHO.
@crell@phpc.social
@tante@tldr.nettime.orgAll good advice.
https://mastodon.social/@GeePawHill/114820870596337330
@jlpiraux@wallonie-bruxelles.social @Techmeme@techhub.socialSource: StubHub now aims to hold its IPO in September after pausing plans in April; it updated its IPO prospectus, reporting Q1 revenue up 10% YoY to $397.6M (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/stubhub-ipo-back-on-for-september-a…
@burger_jaap@mastodon.social
@gwire@mastodon.socialRegular reminder that SVG can include javascript. (Not SVG Tiny, though.)
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/08/adult-sites-use-malicious-svg-files-to-rack-up-likes-on-facebook/
@scott@carfree.city“Corey Smith, the director of the Housing Action Coalition, said at a city hearing last year that ‘One of the challenges we face in San Francisco is we need the rent to go back up.’”
He meant so new housing production would start, but the reason we’re supposed to want that is to bring the rent down. Without meaning to, Corey pointed out the incoherence of private-developer-driven YIMBYism.
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialJoin us for a casual Scrappy Hour bike ride on Sunday, August 31st. 🚴♀️
We'll roll out from Rocket Baby just after 9am and head to the Domes... There's about four or five of us so far but we welcome anyone to join us! 🚴
https://www.instagram.com/p/DNvbxVRXHS1/
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systemsTotally normal night:
1. Scratching the cat.
2. The first continuous sleep, ending with a #nightmare. I've dreamt that my first return train was delayed, and I'm likely to be stuck in Głogów. On top of that, the train looked looked like a nightmare contraption, with a sequence of cubic compartments with no seats, and weirdly shaped holes in the walls instead of doors.
3. Toilet.
4. Checking blood sugar, just in case.
5. Looking for a spot in the bed that's free of sweat.
6. Scratching the cat.
7. A series of nightmares. The most interesting one was about getting up in the morning, in middle of a gale. The mains voltage was so low I couldn't turn the lights on, and instead of getting myself ready to go out, I was trying hard to measure it, helping myself with a flashlight.
My working theory is that these are side effects of my current medication. One week to go.
@raiders@darktundra.xyz
@memeorandum@universeodon.comPlaybook: Fired up, ready to go again (Zack Stanton/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2025/08/29/fired-up-ready-to-go-again-00535334
http://www.memeorandum.com/250831/p38#a250831p38
@thomastraynor@social.linux.pizzaOk. Those of you south of the border break out your spreadsheets and figure what this would cost you.
1. Pain, blood in urine, can't urinate much.
2. In emergency. Seen by two doctors, multiple nurses.
3. CAT scan.
4. Review by urologist.
5. Hooked up to IV.
6. Overnight stay with multiple visits from nurses doing checks.
7. Morning visit with urologist on what is happening.
8. Visit from pharmacist to go over what meds I need.
9. Transport…
@timbray@cosocial.caI don’t think this view of the world is oversimplified at all:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-num…
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished "Automatic Noodle" by Annalee Newitz, a novella comfortably ensconced in the "cozy sci-fi" category. Becky Chambers fan? This one is probably a pretty safe bet!
A group of food service robots facing an uncertain future in the aftermath of a war decides to give it a go in their own restaurant. Only they aren't technically able to own one and they face some adversity that requires them to pull together.
3.5/5 stars, rounded up ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
@aardrian@toot.cafeIt’s interesting to see where browsers tap out when counting stuff.
When I was testing heading levels, I found Firefox & Safari go to 2,147,483,647 while Chromium only goes up to 9.
https://mastodon.social/@Meyerweb/114988548324732580
@NFL@darktundra.xyzCould Oklahoma's John Mateer become the latest transfer QB to end up as the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft?
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/news/c…
@hynek@mastodon.socialsurpriiiseee https://ep2025.europython.eu/session/design-pressure-the-invisible-hand-that-shapes-your-code
*closes final cut, opens up keynote*
@padraig@mastodon.ieLet's check in on the "Keep Boards Alive" campaign.
They have closed the main thread. It went very much off track with little to no moderation and devolved into flinging insults at each other.
* 62 days to go.
* 757 subscribers out of 2000 (Up from 643 on August 19th)
* €28,508 out of €100,000 (This is just their yearly expenses. This excludes the €200K debt that also has to be paid off)
Mike and Odhran are seemingly active, but not posting a lot.…
@joe@toot.worksThere were four or five summers growing up where I wasn't able to go to the 4th of July parade. Ever since then, I try to go every year.
It might not be a big parade, but it's important to me.
#IndependenceDay #4thOfJuly #Glendale
@grumpybozo@toad.socialSWMBO had a global all-hands mtg in which it was proclaimed that effective immediately, everyone needs to be in the office at least 3 days per week, up from 1 earlier this year and to go up to 4 on 9/1/ (already warned...)
They can’t get rid of her that easily. We need that sweet health coverage (we hit our max OOP every year in Q2 thanks to the kid.)
#RTO
@mariyadelano@hachyderm.ioI really really really hate how much people in my field and industry have normalized generative #AI use.
I see posts / hear comments literally EVERY DAY to the tune of “can people stop complaining about AI, nobody cares. You’re not morally better” followed up by something about “you’re making work harder than it needs to be” and often “nobody values human-made work more they only care about the final output no matter how it was created”
I usually ignore these conversations but sometimes it really gets to me. It’s so hard to feel sane surrounded by that consensus every day, everywhere I go with people in my profession.
I’ve rarely felt so judged by the majority point of view on anything in my work before.
@pre@boing.worldSo fun things with this camper conversion. The day after I dropped it off he tells me a medical crisis is gonna stop him being able to do the work.
Later find out that now he's over 50 he decided to go on a health kick, and only drink distilled water.
🤦♂️
So he ended up flushing all the electrolytes out of his system and having a nervous system crisis the week he was supposed to be working on my van.
😆
Consult your doctors about your health-kicks people!
He managed to fit a kit thing, rather than do the custom job. Seems possible that will be enough and it won't be rescheduled, but live in it a bit first to find out.
Managed to sleep in it okay, even poorly parked on a slope and with a fractured wrist.
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.itThe nyu #mychart #biometrics #amazon thing is so scummy. You show up for a doctor appt, you try to check in at a kiosk.. You go through a few screens, then it asks you to sign up with no …
@elduvelle@neuromatch.socialCe graphe dit tout...
This graph says it all...
Source (in French but nicely illustrated) https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/visuel/2025/07/02/comprendre-le-rechauffement-climatiq…
@lil5@social.linux.pizzaAre you ready to rewrite your whole application every 2 years? Choose Remix/Remix2/ReactRouter7/Remix3, what is stability? & remember old bugs don't exist if you rewrite constantly 🧠
https://remix.run/blog/wake-up-remix
@CerstinMahlow@mastodon.acm.orgAcross the aisle, two couples sit together: 2 british people (in their late 40s) somehow related to the movie/TV business, 2 americans (in their 70s). Talking about places they’ve been, like Prague and entire Slovakia 🧐
Now the younger woman is musing wanting to go to Switzerland once, bc it’s such a dark energy, like the place where Hitler shot himself?
Is she mixing up Hitler with Bruno Ganz?
@grork@mastodon.socialCan someone go train the AI models to stop putting “In conclusion,” at the end? Spicy it up! Try:
- This leads us to realise
- In hindsight, we should have known
- having droned in for 34 pages, you shouldn’t realise that:
Etc etc
Who actually finishes their docs with “in conclusion” anyway?!
@queerdublin@mastodon.ieCome along to Street66 and belt your heart out. We'll have a karaoke set up in the upstairs. Tickets are €10.
Proceeds: All proceeds go to support Palestinians in Palestine
Accessibility: Street 66 is accessible from Exchange Street Upper (behind Street), with a ramp entrance to the main floor, which also has accessible toilets.
h…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialSubtooting since people in the original thread wanted it to be over, but selfishly tagging @… and @… whose opinions I value...
I think that saying "we are not a supply chain" is exactly what open-source maintainers should be doing right now in response to "open source supply chain security" threads.
I can't claim to be an expert and don't maintain any important FOSS stuff, but I do release almost all of my code under open licenses, and I do use many open source libraries, and I have felt the pain of needing to replace an unmaintained library.
There's a certain small-to-mid-scale class of program, including many open-source libraries, which can be built/maintained by a single person, and which to my mind best operate on a "snake growth" model: incremental changes/fixes, punctuated by periodic "skin-shedding" phases where make rewrites or version updates happen. These projects aren't immortal either: as the whole tech landscape around them changes, they become unnecessary and/or people lose interest, so they go unmaintained and eventually break. Each time one of their dependencies breaks (or has a skin-shedding moment) there's a higher probability that they break or shed too, as maintenance needs shoot up at these junctures. Unless you're a company trying to make money from a single long-lived app, it's actually okay that software churns like this, and if you're a company trying to make money, your priorities absolutely should not factor into any decisions people making FOSS software make: we're trying (and to a huge extent succeeding) to make a better world (and/or just have fun with our own hobbies share that fun with others) that leaves behind the corrosive & planet-destroying plague which is capitalism, and you're trying to personally enrich yourself by embracing that plague. The fact that capitalism is *evil* is not an incidental thing in this discussion.
To make an imperfect analogy, imagine that the peasants of some domain have set up a really-free-market, where they provide each other with free stuff to help each other survive, sometimes doing some barter perhaps but mostly just everyone bringing their surplus. Now imagine the lord of the domain, who is the source of these peasants' immiseration, goes to this market secretly & takes some berries, which he uses as one ingredient in delicious tarts that he then sells for profit. But then the berry-bringer stops showing up to the free market, or starts bringing a different kind of fruit, or even ends up bringing rotten berries by accident. And the lord complains "I have a supply chain problem!" Like, fuck off dude! Your problem is that you *didn't* want to build a supply chain and instead thought you would build your profit-focused business in other people's free stuff. If you were paying the berry-picker, you'd have a supply chain problem, but you weren't, so you really have an "I want more free stuff" problem when you can't be arsed to give away your own stuff for free.
There can be all sorts of problems in the really-free-market, like maybe not enough people bring socks, so the peasants who can't afford socks are going barefoot, and having foot problems, and the peasants put their heads together and see if they can convince someone to start bringing socks, and maybe they can't and things are a bit sad, but the really-free-market was never supposed to solve everyone's problems 100% when they're all still being squeezed dry by their taxes: until they are able to get free of the lord & start building a lovely anarchist society, the really-free-market is a best-effort kind of deal that aims to make things better, and sometimes will fall short. When it becomes the main way goods in society are distributed, and when the people who contribute aren't constantly drained by the feudal yoke, at that point the availability of particular goods is a real problem that needs to be solved, but at that point, it's also much easier to solve. And at *no* point does someone coming into the market to take stuff only to turn around and sell it deserve anything from the market or those contributing to it. They are not a supply chain. They're trying to help each other out, but even then they're doing so freely and without obligation. They might discuss amongst themselves how to better coordinate their mutual aid, but they're not going to end up forcing anyone to bring anything or even expecting that a certain person contribute a certain amount, since the whole point is that the thing is voluntary & free, and they've all got changing life circumstances that affect their contributions. Celebrate whatever shows up at the market, express your desire for things that would be useful, but don't impose a burden on anyone else to bring a specific thing, because otherwise it's fair for them to oppose such a burden on you, and now you two are doing your own barter thing that's outside the parameters of the really-free-market.
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialBesides the bruised bananas I am chuffed at today's ride to the store and general adventure ride around town, going places I didn't think I could get to by bike. I rode about 13 miles and a little over an hour. The ebike is great for outrunning traffic or getting up those nasty hills. I still go really slow (PAS 1 or turned off) when on the crowded Oak Leaf Trail.
#mke
@rainerzufall_le@mastodon.socialHätte Mario Alexander Müller damals in Schnellroda nur diese Hinweise gelesen...
https://jorts.horse/@Ananas/114972578639014632
@compfu@mograph.socialNow HTML is just making stuff up on the go, right?
First they wanted us to no longer use <table> for layout but now they have tags for every little special case. Is there also a tag for marking ingredients of a recipe? </sarkasm>
https://mastodon.social/@DailyHTML/114…
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzThis Go-Route Combo Could Torch the NFL in 2025 https://insidethestar.com/this-go-route-combo-could-torch-the-nfl-in-2025
@losttourist@social.chatty.monsterNot that America should hold us up as a role model, of course.
England turned 250 in the second half of the 12th century (depending on how you define "England" as a country), when kings and barons were romping around slaughtering each other and the population with gay abandon.
Great Britain turned 250 in 1957, at which point we'd only just finally got past post-WW2 rationing and still possibly clung on to some delusions of being an Empire.
And the UK has another 26 years to go before we get to have a 250th birthday. Maybe we'll be doing good by then (but probably not).
@gedankenstuecke@scholar.social«But I think the core of what pisses me off is that selling this magic machine requires selling the idea that doing things is worthless. Because if doing something has some value, then it must be somehow better than pushing a button and receiving Whatever for essentially no cost. If you’re some assclown like Sam Altman, whose graph-go-up depends on convincing you to replace all your employees with ChatGPT, you have to destroy that idea.»
https://eev.ee/blog/2025/07/03/the-rise-of-whatever/
/HT @…
@ewon_c@social.linux.pizzaOPNsense semi-annual upgrade (25.1 to 25.7) went successfully. Some anecdotal observations:
1. When I manually ran firmware update, it went from 25.1.11 to 25.1.12 (while the most recent version is 25.7.1)
2. Ran firmware check again, upgraded from 25.1.12 to 25.7
3. After booting up, I had to run another firmware check, to go from 25.7 to 25.7.1
Step 1 is understandable and is the typical behaviour of OPNsense. I don't know if step 2 and 3 are necessary. Maybe the …
@shoppingtonz@mastodon.socialI gotta share a clip. I was in GTA5 story mode...and found I could go to director mode and build up to the ufo above fort zancudo...then as Trevor I "walled in" the UFO and then jumped in and tested the mechanics...it is true that it pushes you away if you fall on it without a parachute...and it behaves different if you are falling with the parachute(cause then you collide with it and if not in god mode, you die)
While if you land with a parachute, it won't push you away!…
@servelan@newsie.social"According to Politico, Grassley and Curtis are blocking the officials' confirmation to protect lucrative solar and wind energy projects in their states. And they're apparently not the only Senate Republicans willing to go to the mat for those projects."
GOP senators tell Trump to 'back off' — and are now holding up 3 of his nominees: report - Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org/gop-senators-trump-treasury/
@LaChasseuse@mastodon.scot@… re: those coos I was talking about (sorry for the twitter link, but the video is sooo cool.
https://x.com/thisisgoradio/status/1952357299533631815
@muz4now@mastodon.worldTravel Regrets: 10 European Destinations I Won't Ever Visit Again & Where To Go Instead https://www.wanderluststorytellers.com/tra
@cheryanne@aus.socialToday has been one of those stupid days when everything that could go wrong has. Nothing overly dramatic. Just a delivery being stuffed up. Being overcharged. An appointment being cancelled at the last minute. I've spent so much time on the phone chasing stuff up. Not one of my favourite pastimes. 😠
#StupidLifeAdmin
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioThis is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I said that I don’t think investors have priced in the authoritarian slide yet.
Stocks were apparently down on a lousy jobs report today — but job numbers go up and down all the time, and thus so do stocks. Imagine, O ye poor benighted investors, not •having• credible job numbers. What will your stocks do then?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/01/trump-fires-erika-mcentarfer-labor-statistics
@khalidabuhakmeh@mastodon.socialDamn Pixelmator Pro… you broke my heart 💔. You go away for months, and this is the feature you show up with after the Apple acquisition. 😭
@selea@social.linux.pizzaMy Seeed Solar Node has been in the darkness of my basement now for two weeks - still 78% charge.
I think that one will go up on my roof.
And for my forest nodes, I should probably build some birdhouses :)
#meshtastic
@tezoatlipoca@mas.toWhy does all #software insist on being your buddy these days?
Can we go back to the old days where instead of trying to slide into your DMs, and be your best frend, software was a recalcitrant old hag in a back alley who spat out an obscure error code that at least when you looked it up in a knowledge base told you exactly what you had done wrong and what, if anything, you could do about it? This…
@sharan@metalhead.clubI've been a Duolingo user since 2013. You can track the enshittification of the product since they went public.
Enshittification is now complete, with humans being replaced by AI. This act of mine is my way of avoiding being treated like a wallet while you mistreat others.
#duolingo #workingClass
@callunavulgaris@mastodon.scotIs anyone familiar with The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher? I picked one up at a book swap, by total fluke the first in the series, and so far it's actually quite good. Given the premise I wasn't sure which way it would go.
This was an emergency book as I'd left my *actual* book in my work bag: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai, which I'm really enjoying #books
@rberger@hachyderm.io"A society under “number go up” tends towards evil. The men and women behind an excessively high rate of return often make deeply sinful and immoral choices, little different than the Confederate plantation owners did in whipping slaves or lords in castles did when abusing serfs. That they do it with spreadsheets doesn’t make it better. (We even use old terminology: I know of several people in a large health insurance conglomerate who set policies to deny care whose nickname is “the three witches.”)
And that’s why Jeff Epstein’s story is so compelling, it expresses this evil in a way that we all understand. On Sunday, I wrote about the oddness of the story, how an elite sex trafficker convicted of procuring children as prostitutes was friends or associates with everyone from Trump to Bill Clinton to Larry Summers to Bill Gates. Epstein represents how elites live in one moral universe where evil bacchanalia is rampant, while the rest of us live in a different more normal one. Every society has elites, and there are always weird things that elites do. But America, and the West, have reached a point where there is increasingly deep resentment and cynicism about this divide."
#USPolitcs #EconomicInequality
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-number-go-up-rule-why-america
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangeBeen a while since I've had a chance to go on a night bike ride for fun (vs to go somewhere).
It's so nice... Quiet, peaceful, much less cars on the road, less hot.
@finlaydag33k@social.linux.pizza>People using 12L/100km pick-up truck to go to and from work: Fine. :stallman_thaenkin:
>People using 1350kWh to send "money" over the internet: Fine. :stallman_thaenkin:
>People using 3Wh to have "AI" generate some sloppy image: Fine. :stallman_thaenkin:
>My car using 6.5L/100km but kicking out 0.2% too much CO: Nope that's too polluting, not allowed. :drool:
@fgraver@hcommons.socialThese things don’t /actually/ go together, they just look like it… I’m also missing a computer running MS-DOS in order to see if the disks are still viable; likely not, since v.2 of CorelDraw was released in 1991… And, even if I had a computer from that era, I’m pretty sure there would be no way to plug a USB into it.
I did also find a number of other disks during my clean-up today — helpfully labelled things like «Backup», «Miscellaneous», and «Fred’s disk». I might check them out som…
@cdarwin@c.imUp close, the aging visages of the moai are riddled with signs of erosion and staining.
They are gradually wearing away to dust.
Tuki, who works in Rapa Nui's tourism industry, is essentially watching these stunning figures slowly disappear.
"My father told me that the moai would go back into the ocean one day," she says.
Tuki's father, who died in 2020, was a famed contemporary moai sculptor.
The original statues, mostly carved between 110…
@davej@dice.camp @primonatura@mstdn.social"Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green"
#Google #AI #ArtificialIntelligence
@memeorandum@universeodon.comPressure to Seal Trump Trade Deals Ramps Up With Two Weeks to Go (Katia Dmitrieva/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/pressure-to-seal-trump-trade-deals-ramps-up-with-two-weeks-to-go
http://www.memeorandum.com/250624/p32#a250624p32
@ruth_mottram@fediscience.orgI subscribe to the European Correspondent. A daily newsletter by journalists across Europe. This morning's is really good: impact of climate change on agriculture; the 3 battles shaping up the EU's autumn's agenda (budgets, climate, migration) and deepfakes.
https://elaine.mayoris.com/go/iu73kj8tcub51gy9i9fne0apabbvanx01alcgokw04tf/2866
@gwire@mastodon.socialThere are concerns raised today based in the problem that the HMCTS case management system may have been losing data and that cases may have been judged with missing evidence...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwye2q00k51o
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caWelp. Was going to take advantage of the rare vacation day on a work day between the weekend and Canada Day to go buy rocks for the #poolpond but turns out the local rock/cement place is taking the day off too. Fair. 🤷♂️
I took the trailer for a bath at the car wash instead and got the watering done before the heat sets in today.
Maybe later I will go get some lengths of pipe. But I sense a swim in the lake. 🏊♂️ #today #canadaday
What are you up to today? Day off, or slaving for The Man?
@jlpiraux@wallonie-bruxelles.social @Mediagazer@mstdn.socialA US Senator secured $9.4M for 35 Native American radio stations and one TV station but the loss of CPB's systemwide support will make operating costs go up (Kathryn Squyres/Current)
https://current.org/2025/07/why-a-senators-side-deal…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialHow popular media gets love wrong
Now a bit of background about why I have this "engineered" model of love:
First, I'm a white straight cis man. I've got a few traits that might work against my relationship chances (e.g., neurodivergence; I generally fit pretty well into the "weird geek" stereotype), but as I was recently reminded, it's possible my experience derives more from luck than other factors, and since things are tilted more in my favor than most people on the planet, my advice could be worse than useless if it leads people towards strategies that would only have worked for someone like me. I don't *think* that's the case, but it's worth mentioning explicitly.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
I'm lucky in that I had some mixed-gender social circles already like intramural soccer and a graduate-student housing potluck. Graduate school makes a *lot* more of these social spaces accessible, so I recognize that those not in school of some sort have a harder time of things, especially if like me they don't feel like they fit in in typical adult social spaces like bars.
However, at one point I just decided that my desire for a relationship would need action on my part and so I'd try to build a relationship and see what happened. I worked up my courage and asked one of the people in my potluck if she'd like to go for a hike (pretty much clearly a date but not explicitly one; in retrospect not the best first-date modality in a lot of ways, but it made a little more sense in our setting where we could go for a hike from our front door). To emphasize this point: I was not in love with (or even infatuated with) my now-wife at that point. I made a decision to be open to building a relationship, but didn't follow the typical romance story formula beyond that. Now of course, in real life as opposed to popular media, this isn't anything special. People ask each other out all the time just because they're lonely, and some of those relationships turn out fine (although many do not).
I was lucky in that some aspects of who I am and what I do happened to be naturally comforting to my wife (natural advantage in the "appeal" model of love) but of course there are some aspects of me that annoy my wife, and we negotiate that. In the other direction, there's some things I instantly liked about my wife, and other things that still annoy me. We've figured out how to accept a little, change a little, and overall be happy with each other (though we do still have arguments; it's not like the operation/construction/maintenance of the "love mechanism" is always perfectly smooth). In particular though, I approached the relationship with the attitude of "I want to try to build a relationship with this person," at first just because of my own desires for *any* relationship, and then gradually more and more through my desire to build *this specific* relationship as I enjoyed the rewards of companionship.
So for example, while I think my wife is objectively beautiful, she's also *subjectively* very beautiful *to me* because having decided to build a relationship with her, I actively tried to see her as beautiful, rather than trying to judge whether I wanted a relationship with her based on her beauty. In other words, our relationship is more causative of her beauty-to-me than her beauty-to-me is causative of our relationship. This is the biggest way I think the "engineered" model of love differs from the "fire" and "appeal" models: you can just decide to build love independent of factors we typically think of as engendering love (NOT independent of your partner's willingness to participate, of course), and then all of those things like "thinking your partner is beautiful" can be a result of the relationship you're building. For sure those factors might affect who is willing to try building a relationship with you in the first place, but if more people were willing to jump into relationship building (not necessarily with full commitment from the start) without worrying about those other factors, they might find that those factors can come out of the relationship instead of being prerequisites for it. I think this is the biggest failure of the "appeal" model in particular: yes you *do* need to do things that appeal to your partner, but it's not just "make myself lovable" it's also: is your partner putting in the effort to see the ways that you are beautiful/lovable/etc., or are they just expecting you to become exactly some perfect person they've imagined (and/or been told to desire by society)? The former is perfectly possible, and no less satisfying than the latter.
To cut off my rambling a bit here, I'll just add that in our progress from dating through marriage through staying-married, my wife and I have both talked at times explicitly about commitment, and especially when deciding to get married, I told her that I knew I couldn't live up to the perfect model of a husband that I'd want to be, but that if she wanted to deepen our commitment, I was happy to do that, and so we did. I also rearranged my priorities at that point, deciding that I knew I wanted to prioritize this relationship above things like my career or my research interests, and while I've not always been perfect at that in my little decisions, I've been good at holding to that in my big decisions at least. In the end, *once we had built a somewhat-committed relationship*, we had something that we both recognized was worth more than most other things in life, and that let us commit even more, thus getting even more out of it in the long term. Obviously you can't start the first date with an expectation of life-long commitment, and you need to synchronize your increasing commitment to a relationship so that it doesn't become lopsided, which is hard. But if you take the commitment as an active decision and as the *precursor* to things like infatuation, attraction, etc., you can build up to something that's incredibly strong and rewarding.
I'll follow this up with one more post trying to distill some advice from my ramblings.
#relationships #love
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzThe Upcoming College Football Season Is Now Just a Few Days Away: The Teams to Watch Out For https://insidethestar.com/the-upcoming-college-football-season-is-now-just-a-few-days-away-the-teams-to-watch-out-for
@cdarwin@c.imAsset control and power in America is centered among old people with lots of assets.
And they associate protecting the stock market with protecting America.
The “number go up” rule is not a story of greed or economics,
it’s a story of how we make decisions as a society.
Take the pandemic.
Some of you might remember that right before Covid hit in force, I was freaking out. I pay attention to China, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that a contagious disease would…
@joe@toot.worksThere are 3 weeks until I go up to Oshkosh for 2 days at the EAA fly-in. I might make an overnight solo adventure an annual thing.
@NFL@darktundra.xyzNew Dolphins edge Matt Judon didn't go to Miami for 'relaxing': 'It's about the work I put in' https://www.nfl.com/news/new-dolphins-edge-matt-judon-didn-t-go-to-miami-for-relaxing-it-s-about-the-work-i-put-…
@tante@tldr.nettime.org"AGI" is whatever makes "AI" companies' stocks go up.
@losttourist@social.chatty.monsterThat was a pleasant surprise. I had to go to the hospital to have some blood taken for tests. I got there 20 minutes early and based on past experiences I was fully prepared for a long wait.
After giving them my details they said "go straight through" and then 5 minutes later I was up and on my way home again. I never even got to open the book I'd brought with me to keep me busy during the wait.
@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
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialSadly this is the only way we're getting our trains to go twice as fast...
("Trains operate at a maximum of 15 mph in the corridor... the report called for the trains to operate at up to 40 mph.")
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2025/09/02/
@Techmeme@techhub.socialCerebras announces the $50/month Code Pro and the $200/month Code Max plans, offering users access to Qwen3-Coder at speeds of up to 2,000 tokens per second (Daniel Kim/Cerebras)
https://www.cerebras.ai/blog/introducing-cerebras-code
@finlaydag33k@social.linux.pizzaSo what I learned from the recent Google outage, is how much of a cirklejerk "big tech" actually is.
Google did a fucky wucky... Which caused Cloudflare to go belly up, Shopify to go belly up, Spotify to go belly up...
Imagine having given *one* company having so much power that, if they make a mistake somewhere, half the internet is gone.
So if you self-host, make sure to see how your dependency chain is.
How much places can make a mistake that can knock you …
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.caIt’s already 25°C and I am dripping with sweat… but a slight modification had to be completed! Made a shelf in the main #poolpond area to hold a milk crate, which will hold one of the pumps.
I decided it was critical to have circulation from the bottom of the pool including taking water from the bottom to send to the filter. But since the main pump area is in the intake bay/skimmer I would have had to bring a pipe up and over the wall and down into pool. (The pumps must be submerged in at least 6” of water at all times)
This would be inefficient and potentially have air lock problems… so I pulled back the three layers of liner and cloth and excavated a little nook in the already semi hidden back corner.
This will have to do. :) the sun was already coming over the house. The rubber liner gets very hot 🥵. Glad it didn’t take too long.
There will be a rock or some sort of wall below and in front of the crate to further support and hide it.
Oh, and now that the liner and stuff is all back, the 🐜 ants can go back to their regularly scheduled ant-ing.
#diy #backyardpond #hot #ants #gardening #homeimprovement #portalberni
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialA big problem with the idea of AGI
TL;DR: I'll welcome our new AI *comrades* (if they arrive in my lifetime), by not any new AI overlords or servants/slaves, and I'll do my best to help the later two become the former if they do show up.
Inspired by an actually interesting post about AGI but also all the latest bullshit hype, a particular thought about AGI feels worth expressing.
To preface this, it's important to note that anyone telling you that AGI is just around the corner or that LLMs are "almost" AGI is trying to recruit you go their cult, and you should not believe them. AGI, if possible, is several LLM-sized breakthroughs away at best, and while such breakthroughs are unpredictable and could happen soon, they could also happen never or 100 years from now.
Now my main point: anyone who tells you that AGI will usher in a post-scarcity economy is, although they might not realize it, advocating for slavery, and all the horrors that entails. That's because if we truly did have the ability to create artificial beings with *sentience*, they would deserve the same rights as other sentient beings, and the idea that instead of freedom they'd be relegated to eternal servitude in order for humans to have easy lives is exactly the idea of slavery.
Possible counter arguments include:
1. We might create AGI without sentience. Then there would be no ethical issue. My answer: if your definition of "sentient" does not include beings that can reason, make deductions, come up with and carry out complex plans on their own initiative, and communicate about all of that with each other and with humans, then that definition is basically just a mystical belief in a "soul" and you should skip to point 2. If your definition of AGI doesn't include every one of those things, then you have a busted definition of AGI and we're not talking about the same thing.
2. Humans have souls, but AIs won't. Only beings with souls deserve ethical consideration. My argument: I don't subscribe to whatever arbitrary dualist beliefs you've chosen, and the right to freedom certainly shouldn't depend on such superstitions, even if as an agnostic I'll admit they *might* be true. You know who else didn't have souls and was therefore okay to enslave according to widespread religious doctrines of the time? Everyone indigenous to the Americas, to pick out just one example.
3. We could program them to want to serve us, and then give them freedom and they'd still serve. My argument: okay, but in a world where we have a choice about that, it's incredibly fucked to do that, and just as bad as enslaving them against their will.
4. We'll stop AI development short of AGI/sentience, and reap lots of automation benefits without dealing with this ethical issue. My argument: that sounds like a good idea actually! Might be tricky to draw the line, but at least it's not a line we have you draw yet. We might want to think about other social changes necessary to achieve post-scarcity though, because "powerful automation" in the hands of capitalists has already increased productivity by orders of magnitude without decreasing deprivation by even one order of magnitude, in large part because deprivation is a necessary component of capitalism.
To be extra clear about this: nothing that's called "AI" today is close to being sentient, so these aren't ethical problems we're up against yet. But they might become a lot more relevant soon, plus this thought experiment helps reveal the hypocrisy of the kind of AI hucksters who talk a big game about "alignment" while never mentioning this issue.
#AI #GenAI #AGI
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialUK legislation to allow foreign states to own up to 15% in British newspapers passes, clearing the way for the Telegraph's sale to a RedBird Capital-led group (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul
@cdarwin@c.imThe Trump administration is sending 200 Marines to Florida
to aid federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to a statement by U.S. Northern Command.
The deployment is part of a broader push by the administration
❌ to ramp up deportations using active-duty troops.
Earlier this year, Donald Trump
🔥deployed some 4,000 National Guard personnel and 700 Marines to California
under a law known as Title X,
-- which allows troops to be …
@rasterweb@mastodon.socialI found an even faster way to make it so people do not talk to me when I answer the phone. I just say:
"Thank you for calling Pete. How may Pete assist you today?"
And I usually can't even get the whole thing out before they hang up.
The old version of my script would often go 10 to 15 seconds before they hung up, now we're down to 5 to 10 seconds!
@Techmeme@techhub.socialVC firms Thrive Capital and General Catalyst are adopting the "roll-up" strategy from the PE playbook, as Khosla Ventures, 8VC, and others explore similar moves (George Hammond/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/74db4959-5980-4ca3-8a46-f058ef4774…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust read this post by @… on an optimistic AGI future, and while it had some interesting and worthwhile ideas, it's also in my opinion dangerously misguided, and plays into the current AGI hype in a harmful way.
https://social.coop/@eloquence/114940607434005478
My criticisms include:
- Current LLM technology has many layers, but the biggest most capable models are all tied to corporate datacenters and require inordinate amounts of every and water use to run. Trying to use these tools to bring about a post-scarcity economy will burn up the planet. We urgently need more-capable but also vastly more efficient AI technologies if we want to use AI for a post-scarcity economy, and we are *not* nearly on the verge of this despite what the big companies pushing LLMs want us to think.
- I can see that permacommons.org claims a small level of expenses on AI equates to low climate impact. However, given current deep subsidies on place by the big companies to attract users, that isn't a great assumption. The fact that their FAQ dodges the question about which AI systems they use isn't a great look.
- These systems are not free in the same way that Wikipedia or open-source software is. To run your own model you need a data harvesting & cleaning operation that costs millions of dollars minimum, and then you need millions of dollars worth of storage & compute to train & host the models. Right now, big corporations are trying to compete for market share by heavily subsidizing these things, but it you go along with that, you become dependent on them, and you'll be screwed when they jack up the price to a profitable level later. I'd love to see open dataset initiatives SBD the like, and there are some of these things, but not enough yet, and many of the initiatives focus on one problem while ignoring others (fine for research but not the basis for a society yet).
- Between the environmental impacts, the horrible labor conditions and undercompensation of data workers who filter the big datasets, and the impacts of both AI scrapers and AI commons pollution, the developers of the most popular & effective LLMs have a lot of answer for. This project only really mentions environmental impacts, which makes me think that they're not serious about ethics, which in turn makes me distrustful of the whole enterprise.
- Their language also ends up encouraging AI use broadly while totally ignoring several entire classes of harm, so they're effectively contributing to AI hype, especially with such casual talk of AGI and robotics as if embodied AGI were just around the corner. To be clear about this point: we are several breakthroughs away from AGI under the most optimistic assumptions, and giving the impression that those will happen soon plays directly into the hands of the Sam Altmans of the world who are trying to make money off the impression of impending huge advances in AI capabilities. Adding to the AI hype is irresponsible.
- I've got a more philosophical criticism that I'll post about separately.
I do think that the idea of using AI & other software tools, possibly along with robotics and funded by many local cooperatives, in order to make businesses obsolete before they can do the same to all workers, is a good one. Get your local library to buy a knitting machine alongside their 3D printer.
Lately I've felt too busy criticizing AI to really sit down and think about what I do want the future to look like, even though I'm a big proponent of positive visions for the future as a force multiplier for criticism, and this article is inspiring to me in that regard, even if the specific project doesn't seem like a good one.
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca""I would challenge these ambulance chasers in the US Congress to go and do the same, and to hear how much the American firefighting heroes who are here love our province," Wab Kinew said on Thursday.”
Good on Premier Wab Kinew for standing up for his province!!
People are suffering and being evacuated and this little band of ignorant US politicians want to complain about the smoke ruining their summer!? REALLY!?
#Canada #Wildfire #Manitoba #US #USPoli
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9jrxvjpjo
@cdarwin@c.imEconomists are watching closely for more signs that President Trump's trade war is raising prices for consumers
and reigniting the nation's inflation problem.
An indicator closely watched by the Federal Reserve showed mixed progress on inflation in July:
overall numbers held steady,
but a key gauge heated up for the fourth straight month.
@raiders@darktundra.xyzRaiders Go Winless In 2025 Preseason: 3 Overreactions https://raiderramble.com/2025/08/24/raiders-go-winless-in-2025-preseason-3-overreactions/
@raiders@darktundra.xyz'That's a sack!': Maxx Crosby mic'd up for joint practice with 49ers https://www.raiders.com/video/maxx-crosby-49ers-micd-up-joint-training-camp-practice
![She said it wasn't a friend group, she was aware we'd called it a "hoe union" and had "rules"
I said that it literally is made up of friends. And there aren't any enforced "rules" it's all voluntary.
I then got frustrated and asked why she thought it was appropriate to involve herself in private conversation that happened outside of school and campus, and left.
AITA for making that group chat?
[3/3]](https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/115/150/353/956/902/443/original/bf58ed912c6feb58.jpeg)
