Mastodon Feed: Posts

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
ahrienby@transfem.social ("Ahri phi nhị giới :nb_verified:") wrote:

Do you think Microsoft understands what consent is?

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
revoluciana@chaosfem.tw ("🌈Lucy🏳️‍⚧️ | Revoluciana") wrote:

"Typically, each time you print, your printer creates a series of dots all over your printed paper using only the yellow ink. They're small and hard to spot with the naked eye, but they're much easier to see with a black light."

Side by side image of two close-ups of the same document with and without a black light shone on it. In the image with the black light, the dots are clearly visible, but don't seem visible in the one without the black light.

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
nanochess ("Óscar Toledo G.") wrote:

And now you can test my transputer emulator in Javascript 😀 You can do almost all except running the 3D modeler and Ray Tracer because currrently there is no floating-point support. #transputer https://nanochess.org/transputer%5Femulator.html

Mastodon Feed

adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold") wrote:

Senator Booker breaking Strom Thurmond’s record for the longest senate floor speech is gonna be awesome, not as an impressive feat of stamina or political determination, but because he’s a black man taking the record from a white racist.

Thurmond’s record was set in 1957, and his speech was an argument against civil rights. His position was that civil rights shouldn’t be federally guaranteed, but left to the states. (Sound familiar?)

This will be good history painting over awful history.

Mastodon Feed

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

but of course

Attachments:

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
jamey@toot.cat ("Jamey Sharp") wrote:

I guess this is as good a day as any to share a silly thing I made: an interpreter for SKI combinator calculus, written in WebAssembly. (No part of this is useful but I had fun.) https://github.com/jameysharp/skism

Thanks to @monoidmusician for suggesting this project and answering many questions for me!

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
selfsame@tiny.tilde.website ("guts.gibgub.gom") wrote:

if you're a student and you're not using LLMs just stick with it you are going to be running absolute mental circles around your peers by the time you graduate

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
karlauerbach@sfba.social ("Karl Auerbach") wrote:

@aram Back in 2018 after TFG started with his "coins" I wrote the following (incomplete) proposal:

A Bill to ensure that United States Treasury funds are not expended for certain purposes of personal aggrandizement or self promotion.

https://www.cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/no%5Fcoin/

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org ("Daniel Lakeland") wrote:

Unfortunate news today that an internet friend and important engineer Dave Täht died recently. Dave was responsible for the bufferbloat project and the development of the Cake qdisc in the Linux kernel. He also pushed for much better control of latency across all internet hardware. He's a major reason why cable modem all have queue management algorithms. I interacted with him off and on for 15 years or so. He was about 59 years old so far too young.

via @toke

https://social.kernel.org/objects/bb4f56d3-5c79-4942-ab00-2b0310eb72d0
#openwrt

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
shauna@social.coop ("Shauna GM") wrote:

low key want to write a talk that compares object oriented programming and object relations theory but i have no idea what kind of conference would accept it

Mastodon Feed

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

‘In the phantasy world of each user lives the Good Method and the Bad Method. When the user taps and the program freezes, then the Bad Method comes to the fore. When the user taps and the bytes flow, then the Good Method emerges. When the patient is neurotic, one or the other may become all encompassing and seemingly eternal. To hold the Good Method and the Bad Method both at once is the goal.’

(maybe followed by a Family Systems Theory riff, with echoes of R. D. Laing)

https://social.coop/@shauna/114264665552147485

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
kevinrothrock@infosec.exchange ("Kevin Rothrock") wrote:

Would certainly be something if the main result of all Trump’s efforts to win over Putin is merely that Washington ups the level of its enforcement of sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet.

Mastodon Feed

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

‘Sometimes, China’s military does not spell out why it holds drills. This time, officials and state media reports were clear: “This is firm punishment for the Lai Ching-te administration’s rampant ‘pro-independence’ provocations,” Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government’s office on Taiwanese affairs, said in a statement.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/world/asia/china-taiwan-military-drills.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Mastodon Feed

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

The truth about universities is that they aren't run by liberal professors and radical students, although they get the blame. We're run by wealthy and often conservative CEOs and lawyers.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/01/the-dirty-little-secret-of-universities-everywhere/

Seal of the Minnesota board of regents

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
trashheap@tech.lgbt ("trashHeap :hehim: :verified_gay:") wrote:

HEADLINE: #Netflix CEO says movie theaters are dead

CORRECTED: Number one competitor to traditional movie theaters would like you to think theaters have no future. Will likely hike rates again within six months.

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
trashheap@tech.lgbt ("trashHeap :hehim: :verified_gay:") wrote:

HEADLINE: 'No Longer Think You Should Learn To Code,' Says CEO of AI Coding Startup

CORRECTED: CEO Of Company Whose Flimsy Business Model Is Only Hypothetically Viable If You Cant Code For Yourself; Says You Should Stop Learning To Code.

#AI #MachineLearning #Eliza #StochasticParrots #LLM #LLMs

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by keul@fosstodon.org ("Luca Fabbri"):
francoisz@fosstodon.org ("François Zaninotto") wrote:

JavaScript Date is slow, JavaScript Temporal is overdue. This npm package finally solves all your date problems with one simple trick. #AprilFoolsDay https://marmelab.com/blog/2025/04/01/get-current-day.html

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
StuntmAEn_Bob@mastodon.art wrote:

Just a peaceful night at the ocean

#PixelArt

Pixel art landscape - front: plants, flowers, a lot of grass and a guy with his dog (left in the middle). Middle: Waves of the ocean. Background: Dark sky full of shining stars and some planets.

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Note, important safety tip: you can get closer to this tower without clearly trespassing or jumping fences than most other 50KW broadcast antennas I've encountered. I measured a field strength of over 80V/m a bit outside the tower fence, which is an incredibly strong signal (though still within OSHA limits at the frequency involved).

Resist any temptation to jump the fence and climb the (energized) tower. You'd be electrocuted as soon as you touch it.

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

The antenna field is in the final approach and takeoff flightpath for SFO airport's runways 28L/R (and 10L/R), and so the site has special markings to warn pilots of a collision hazard. In addition to the usual tower lights and red/white paint, 3-dimensional "HAZ" warnings were installed around the field. These are easily visible in areal photos; see, e.g., https://earth.google.com/web/@37.5471204,-122.23429544,0.73120256a,577.14725587d,35y,0.01179999h,0t,0r/data=CgRCAggBQgIIAEoNCP%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5FwEQAA

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by jwz:
mwl@io.mwl.io ("Michael Lucas :flan_set_fire:") wrote:

Happy April Fools' everyone.

Attachments:

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

This distinctive stacked dual antenna arrangement is used to lower the radiation angle of the antenna, concentrating transmitted power to the "ground wave" and reducing energy that would otherwise be sent upward into the sky.

The smaller (300 foot) freestanding mast in the background left is not in current use. It can be used as an emergency spare antenna for KNBR during maintenance of the taller main antenna.

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

The taller tower (550 feet) at right is the main KNBR antenna, built in 1949. It employs an unusual "pseudo-Franklin" design; it's actually an array of two antennas stacked atop one another. The 400 foot lower section is insulated from the ground. The upper 150 foot section is insulated from the lower section. The large (50 foot) diameter "capacitance hat" at the top (reminiscent of the Parachute Jump at Coney Island) electrically lengthens the top section, saving 250 feet of additional height.

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Mediumwave (AM) broadcast radio uses lower frequencies than other modern broadcasting and so requires much larger antennas (generally getting larger and larger as the frequency gets lower on the dial). This often entails highly customized antenna designs engineered for the particular site and station frequencies. For most radio stations (FM, TV, etc), the towers are there simply to get the relatively small antennas up high, but for AM stations like KNBR, the towers generally ARE the antennas.

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

KNBR is a 50KW "Class A" (formerly "clear channel") mediumwave (AM) rado station broadcasting on 680 KHz, serving the San Francisco Bay area (and, at night, most of the west coast of the US). Opened in 1922, It was originally known as KPO, (later KNBC, and still later KNBR), and soon became the flagship station for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC)'s new western radio network. It is currently owned by Cumulus Media and now broadcasts a sports format.

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Rodenstock 50mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens (@ f/6.3), Phase One IQ4-150 digital back, Cambo 1250 camera (vertically shifted -23mm).

This simple photo pushed the 50mm lens to the limits of its image circle with the large shift required to keep the tall antenna mast fully in the frame while maintaining its geometry. Hard vignetting of the upper corners was visible in the full sensor image, but fortunately the composition benefited from a narrower aspect ratio that cropped out the dark corners.

Mastodon Feed

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

KNBR (AM 680) Antennas, Redwood City, CA, 2024

All the pixels, none of the vertigo, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54131419266

#photography

Two radio antenna masts in a field. The taller mast, on the left, is a guyed tower with a hexagonal structure at the top. The shorter mast on the right, toward the background, is freestanding.

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by jwz:
MLNow@sfba.social ("Mission Local") wrote:

S.F. Drag queen Heklina’s cause of death is still a mystery, and the show goes on

“I'm just going to read this,” says Bobby Barber, a solid, bearded man standing in front of the glittery backdrop of the stage at The Stud, before the drag show protesting London’s Metropolitan Police Service begins. It’s 6:30 p.m. on Monday in San Francisco, and London is a long ways off. “So many people have so many questions,” Barber continues. …

https://missionlocal.org/2025/04/s-f-drag-queen-heklinas-cause-of-death-is-still-a-mystery-and-the-show-goes-on/

Mastodon Feed

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
flamingspork@tacobelllabs.net ("spork (sleepy)") wrote:

I've written a new story: "I Helped A Stranger Fare Evade On The MBTA And Now There's An Elven Mage On My Couch"

when Rachel helps a strange pink-haired woman fare evade on a MBTA train, she doesn't expect to end up having to help a mage get home to another world

https://philo.gay/stories/isekai.html

Mastodon Feed

jwz wrote:

Hello to my new completely legit follower named "wedding venues near delhi".