Mastodon Feed: Posts

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

Another hopeless task: saving science communication on YouTube.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/02/24/i-think-that-there-might-be-other-forces-that-kill-my-favorite-youtube-channels/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQjFGx9mEPw

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

Tina Smith, and others, are fighting back against a "billionaire asshole boss".

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/02/24/my-senator-is-doing-the-work/

collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth") wrote:

My casual observation has been that when things are generally good, the vibes are better on Bluesky, but when things are generally bad, the vibes are better here.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
ColinTheMathmo@mathstodon.xyz ("Colin the Mathmo") wrote:

Looking forward to this:

https://fundapromat.org/events/langen/forty-fifth-math-webinar-in-english/?lang=en

"Abstract: Join us as we explore the hyperreal number system, which adds to the real numbers by including infinitely small numbers (infinitesimals) as well as infinitely large numbers, and lots of them – infinitely many different sizes of infinitely large numbers! This playground has an interesting history as well as connections to ideas in calculus and other subjects."

Please feel free to boost to reach people outside my (our!) immediate circle.

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

yup

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2025/02/04/doge-is-a-cybersecurity-crisis-unfolding-in-real-time/

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

morning cat

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (good kind)") wrote:

oh-kay phew. some final cleanup, and then it's time to launch the alpha of this torrent tracker designed for rapid-response data rescue where a bunch of people each scrape chunks of a big thing and then recombine it later, where nobody can store the whole thing in one place because it's too big. then early next week we'll have the system for claiming and handling in-process scrapes. then we start fucking around with the fun stuff. has there ever been a torrent tracker that speaks activitypub to distribute uploads around between instances? because this one is gonna.

#HackThePlanet #MemoryHoleThis #YouCantKillAnIdea #ServersDieSwarmsSurvive #BittorrentIsStillSoGood #OverpoweredP2PProtocolEvenThoughIts20YearsOld

Attachments:

• video: [Screen recording of uploading a torrent that corresponds to a few parts of a larger dataset. The text throughout the example is unimportant, most of it is placeholder text that just has autogenerated corporate-sounding gobbeldygook in it, so i'll only describe the meaningful text] First create a single dataset part "A part" with a description "very special part" and a set of files that are contained within the part. Then create parts in bulk, specifying only a sluglike identifier, "second-part", "third-part" Then return to the list of parts that contains them, and a strip of checkboxes with 'upload' button above them. we check a few boxes and click upload, and a prompt to upload a torrent appears. It shows the parts that the upload will correspond to and a reminder to check the upload guide! We upload test.torrent, and the upload box expands, showing details about the torrent. the files are all from the Tentacoli (1977) OST. We give some more gibberish as the explanation of the scraping method and the upload, and hit upload. we then are shown a download page for what we just uploaded! all the information is there. We are able to click around through pages for the parts, the containing dataset, etc.

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

looking for a cybersecurity teaching gig? RIT is hiring

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonathan-s-weissman%5Fhiring-activity-7295122911193874432-ZBZo?utm%5Fsource=share&utm%5Fmedium=member%5Fios&rcm=ACoAAAB7JkEBQCk8SY-mmP6rvpKfocI7TzIpqK4

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
xandra@tilde.zone ("alexandra") wrote:

today is officially *THREE* weeks until the submission deadline for Good Internet magazine!

Good Internet launches in May 2025. it's a volunteer-run, not-for-profit print and digital quarterly magazine for personal website owners and those interested in using the internet as a means of self-expression, art, and recreation.

🔍 we're looking for 1,500-4,000 word articles about anything related to that!

you could write about:

* #internet history
* personal #websites
* #accessibility on the #indieweb
* finding inspiration for a #blog
* #webdesign trends
* running from the #enshittification of the #web
* lessons or post-mortems from #webdev projects
* news or overviews of #opensource projects

if it relates to hobbies on "this side of the web," whether you call it the #smallweb or indieweb, we probably want to run it!

you can have your article as low-media (meaning only text and images) or interactive, where you code an entire webpage to help tell your story.

if you're interested in learning more, you can sign up for our email list for when we launch or you can check the submission guidelines @ https://goodinternetmagazine.com!

(please boost if you can! <3)

lloydmeta ("Lloyd") wrote:

It also does a really good job of not making you worry about "glue" code (e.g. build-time DI) so you can concentrate on solving your actual problems..

lloydmeta ("Lloyd") wrote:

Took a walk on the #Java side this weekend, finally giving Quarkus a spin.

My initial impression is good.. it's quick, has a slim core, and yet its adoption of J2EE standards means you can add things in piecemeal w/o boilerplate.

Modern Java (w/ Loom!) feels great too.

https://github.com/lloydmeta/qu-iam

Boosted by jwz:
paul@oldfriends.live ("Paul Chambers🚧") wrote:

Tonight, on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, #Mastodon and #PixelFed got a call out for not falling in line with Trump and as an alternative to Meta products.
#USPol #JohnMastodon

Boosted by jwz:
shlee@aus.social (":PUA: Shlee fucked around and") wrote:

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight mentions #Mastodon and #PixelFed as alternatives that are "not as desperate to fall in line with trump".

Attachments:

• video: 603ffab245f30df6.mp4

jwz wrote:

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein we have once again angered Poseidon, or possibly SFDPW.
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/02/23.html?utm%5Fsource=sp%5Fma

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
david_chisnall@infosec.exchange ("David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)") wrote:

Steven Spielberg said, after he made Schindler's List, that it was partly an apology for portraying Nazis in the Indiana Jones franchise as less evil than they really were. I think Hollywood has been guilty of something far worse in recent decades: portraying Nazis as competent.

Germany wasn't a country run by Nazis that happened to lose the Second World War, it was a country that lost because it was run by Nazis.

Take a look at the names of the folks that worked on the Manhattan Project. See how many of them are German? Several of them worked on weapons in the First World War, for the Germans. Germany had a huge lead in developing a nuclear weapon in the '30s, but removed people who weren't Nazi enough from positions of authority in fields related to weapons research. A load of their best scientists were on the various lists that would end up on death camps and managed to leave (others didn't, and died). When you start by saying 'only people from this arbitrary subset of the population based on race / gender / religion / sexuality / whatever may contribute to our society', you won't get the best people.

Hitler maintained control by promoting people based on their personal loyalty to him, not based on their competence. He ensured communication flowed through him and made parallel agencies compete, directing their effort against each other rather than towards shared goals, to avoid any becoming powerful enough to challenge his power structures.

Hitler was almost responsible for most of the German army being wiped out early on in the Second World War because he had an exaggerated opinion of his own ability. The only reason it wasn't was that allied commanders didn't believe anyone could be that stupid and assumed it was a trap (it wasn't, he really was that stupid). He then decided to invade Russia in the winter (which worked so well for Napoleon) against the advice of any of the people who paid attention in school, which was one of the key turning points in the war.

Don't let the smart uniforms fool you. They were not competent people who lost as a result of circumstances beyond their control. They were people with an ideology that was ultimately self defeating in the long term. And, if people with the same views are in positions of power again, they will fail in the same way. The problem is not that they might succeed, it's that they have a habit of taking a lot of other people with them on their way to defeat.

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
klymilark@social.lol ("Kristell L.") wrote:

New post out: On A.I.

A lot of the arguments against AI never really sat with me, even if I still didn't particularly like it. But I think I can finally put into words why. May end up adding more to it

http://klymilark.omg.lol/posts/on-ai/

#blog #ArtificialIntelligence #technology

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

Went to report a bug on the Parallels forums and I just gotta say: I am impressed. Take notes, website hosts, this is how you respect your users in a dark political time.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
MicroSFF@mastodon.art ("Micro SF/F by O. Westin") wrote:

** "On productivity, and lack thereof" - a rare blog post, with a graph!

TL;DR: I almost gave up entirely, but have decided not to.

https://microsff.com/on-productivity-and-lack-thereof
**

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
annaleen@wandering.shop ("Annalee Newitz 🍜") wrote:

Want to know what US government workers actually do, vs. the propaganda spewed by DOGE? This incredible website, "We the Builders," is full of first-person testimonials from government workers about their actual jobs, and how they make the government work for the public. https://www.wethebuilders.org/

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

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/why-a-government-shutdown-in-march-is-so-likely.html

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

Let's do some science and find out

https://www.livescience.com/animals/cats/why-do-cats-have-toe-beans

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

I have been ‘lurking’ on the subreddit for Federal workers, and ppl are starting to get pissed off instead of just panicking

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

"Invited to accompany Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Europe was Jack Posobiec, a far-right influencer who promoted the lie that Democrats were running a pedophile ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, a lie that inspired an armed man to burst in and open fire to save the supposed victims. Mr. Posobiec ended up not going but later accompanied Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/us/politics/trump-alternative-reality.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=highlightShare

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
thewritertype@mastodonapp.uk ("Paul Bassett Davies") wrote:

All you need to know is that Zelensky is willing to sacrifice power for the sake of his country and Trump is willing to sacrifice his country for the sake of power.

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

“The kind of propaganda and disinformation that we see now is not particularly new and not dependent on the internet,” said Benjamin Carter Hett, a historian of World War II at Hunter College. “Exactly the same kind of thing happened in the very diverse and lively German press of the 1920s and 1930s.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/us/politics/trump-alternative-reality.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

denschub@schub.social ("Dennis Schubert") wrote:

I am tired.

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
macmanx@social.lol ("James Huff :prami_pride_pan:") wrote:

@adam Milchick, his waterfall small.

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

#Severance season 2 spoiler

Boosted by jwz:
hairyqldboi@woof.group ("Lachy") wrote:

If you want to support Lego making a stonewall national monument set, here is a link:
https://ideas.lego.com/s/p:ade8101b3af345babe811c3bb7db66c3

#lego #lgbtqia #gay #gayart

Boosted by jwz:
MissingThePt ("Missing The Point") wrote:

Embarrassing that Germany is now better at defeating Nazis than America is. We used to own them on that.