Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
FediTips@social.growyourown.services ("Fedi.Tips") wrote:

I am an unpaid volunteer, I run five websites and five accounts helping people use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. These all cause bills each month, which I pay.

If you want to help these sites & accounts keep going, you can buy me a coffee:

➡️ https://ko-fi.com/fedithing

(No registration, choose any amount, all currencies work.)

Alternatively, become a patron:

➡️ https://liberapay.com/FediThing

All support very greatly appreciated! 🙂

❤️ @FediTips, @FediFollows, @FediVideo, @FediGarden & @homegrown

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
rbreich@masto.ai ("Robert Reich") wrote:

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

How Pakistan shot down India's fighter jet using Chinese gear - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/how-pakistan-shot-down-indias-cutting-edge-fighter-using-chinese-gear-2025-08-02/

“Central to its downing was an Indian intelligence failure concerning the range of the China-made PL-15 missile fired by the J-10 fighter. China and Pakistan are the only countries to operate both J-10s, known as Vigorous Dragons, and PL-15s.”

Boosted by jwz:
Nick_Stevens_graphics@mastodon.art ("Nick Stevens Graphics") wrote:

It's utterly disgusting to see a beautiful golf course ruined by an unsightly wind turbine.

Boosted by jwz:
r_flash@mastodon.r-flash.eu ("Adam P") wrote:

Some more random experiments with a morphing colorful tiling on the Poincaré disk.

Attachments:

• gifv: Rotating random colorful shapes tiling the Poincaré disk, getting infinitely fine as they approach the circle's edge.

Boosted by jwz:
gleick@mas.to ("James Gleick") wrote:

If these numbers are hard to process, think of it this way.

Your lemonade stand has pulled in $8 dollars in cash. To get the $8 dollars, though, you spent $443 making the lemonade.

That’s right. You spent $443 to collect $8. Total loss: $435.

Is this a promising business? No. It’s no business at all.

But you tell passersby, “Look at my thriving lemonade stand!” And they decide your business is actually worth $47,000. https://mastodon.social/@jeffjarvis/114959489116169895

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Quite the opposite, actually! I love going back into that universe and exploring it again. That said, one thing that's important to me is that when I go back, a have a good story to tell the rest of you. I'm willing to wait for that to happen. The Shattering Peace qualifies.

RE: https://www.threads.com/@octernion/post/DM3F5YfpnHb

Boosted by jwz:
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD") wrote:

The awful impact of RFK Jr.’s actions won’t be fully revealed for years. With prevention of chronic disease, it usually takes a number of years before we see an effect. It was at least a decade after the HPV vaccine was released before we could measure the incredible reduction in cervical cancer.

Boosted by NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈"):
aral@mastodon.ar.al ("Aral Balkan") wrote:

“I’m not political” (phrase):

The policies of the people in charge don’t affect me negatively (at least not yet) and I don’t care if other people are suffering because of them.

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (good kind)") wrote:

if you haven't taught someone who is helplessly addicted to LLMs, LLM brain is so much worse than you can possibly imagine. the problems i'm seeing from someone i am currently teaching are indistinguishable from illiteracy - this person literally cannot read single-line, fully descriptive error messages, and proceeds to just copy and paste whatever they say into the chatbot and copy/paste whatever it spits out, and in this problem domain the LLM is wrong nearly 100% of the time. when i ask them to stop and think about what the problem is, what steps they might need to take to diagnose and resolve it, and how does that fit in with the context of what we've been doing together for >6 months, they literally can't.

Edit: Oop this post escaped containment. I am not implying that it is impossible to learn with an LLM, so if it works for you then that is basically irrelevant to my description of this one very specific pattern of learning with which I have direct and repeated experience. This person is otherwise very smart and competent, I am describing the impact of the LLM on their mode of learning the things I am trying to teach them.

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

So I'm looking at options for doing some basic HTML parsing in #rust

I found html5ever made by the Servo project, but can't figure out how to use it. I check their docs. Aha, you need an implementation of TreeSink which is not provided by the crate. Their example docs use markup5ever_rcdom.

I go to read that crate's docs, and it's a stern warning not to use it – it's only designed for testing.

I settle on some other library for parsing.

… later, I learn that under the hood, it's rcdom. 🤦‍♂️

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam"):
drmaddkap@meow.social ("Dr. Maddkap, Werepsychologist") wrote:

I mean, I’m sure some of them do. Why do you ask?

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
brakeoutgaming@gamerstavern.online ("BrakeOut Gaming") wrote:

God bless GOG:

"Censorship is quietly deciding which games you can buy.

"We are fighting back.

"Some games vanish. Not because they broke the law but because someone decided they shouldn’t exist.

"For 48 hours, these games are free, because if a game is legal, you should be free to buy it."

https://freedomtobuy.games/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
NorcalGma2@sfba.social ("Norcal Gma 2") wrote:

If you ever drive to northern California on hwy 101 be sure to side quest down the Avenue of the Giants. It is a beautiful diversion.
Today, the Avenue was on our way to the river. Summer was deserving of some fun. The temperature was 73°F and the sky was blue. Hard to resist.
My husband's family has their own redwood grove on the avenue. I pointed the sign out to Summer, but her attention was already looking forward to jumping in the Eel River.
A worthwhile afternoon adventure.
A couple of scenes fom our drive.
#Humboldt #Redwoods

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
xinicit@beige.party ("Xavier Horatio Xinicit") wrote:

My wife swears I’m going to be a trophy husband even if she has to study taxidermy

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
s0@cathode.church ("s0 Traingirl Era") wrote:

Here’s a #teardown of one of these cheap, unbranded “65W”/33W GaN chargers from AliExpress!

The one I tested was purchased from this listing, for only AU$5 each! (At the time.)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006320421253.html

First up, the advertising is a bit misleading, as they only support 33W on either outlet, one at a time (or shared, at 5V only). But it does support QualComm QC 2 and 3 on the USB A port, providing up to 20V 2A there.
On the USB-C, it also supports USB PD 3.0 and PPS from 3.3-16V, 2-3A.

I tested one non-destructively for insulation resistance at 500V and as well as sustained USB output, and it passed just fine. But taking things a step further, here’s what’s inside.

One decent quality 2-layer FR4 PCB with solder mask and full silkscreen! It’s marked “BK-384B 33W / Rev 1.0 / 2024.01.18”

(Cont. 1/2)
#Electronics

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
copter_chief@mstdn.party ("CopterDoctor") wrote:

When will the European Union condemn Hungary for bypassing sanctions and fixing Russian military equipment? They are a part of NATO and they’re helping Russia kill Ukrainians. Is anybody gonna stand up to Orban?

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
rvps2001 ("Russia-Ukraine Daily News") wrote:

🇭🇺🇷🇺 #Hungary has emerged as a critical conduit for #Russia’s defense industry to circumvent EU sanctions, according to a new investigation by InformNapalm and Militant Intelligence, based on documents obtained through the OpsHackRussia’sDay cyber operation.

https://united24media.com/latest-news/leaked-docs-reveal-how-hungary-became-russias-maintenance-hub-inside-nato-10385

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
heidilifeldman ("Heidi Li Feldman") wrote:

I was researching a legal matter all day and am just now getting caught up with news. Among the items that seem important but lost among all the Trump regime craziness is this, reporting on a 9 day hunger strike by a detainee at the Florida Everglades ICE detention camp. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/alligator-alcatraz-florida-hunger-strike-b2800557.html

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

We are pleased to announce the final* schedule of talks for the 2025 Symposium on Election Security at the DEF CON Voting Village, August 8-10, in quiet, sleepy Las Vegas.

Hope to see you there!

https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/VV2025-schedule.pdf

* -subject to change

#VotingVillage #DEFCON33 #Elections

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
chris@video.thepolarbear.co.uk ("Chris Were but on PeerTube") wrote:

IceWM - on Debian Linux - desktop tour

https://video.thepolarbear.co.uk/w/aaKasgKnszPkU6V5RfLt4V

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

Fuck you, Ryan Kulp. On behalf of all of the minority groups.

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

Just learned some really sad things about Ryan Kulp, the guy who makes the TRMNL. Would not have bought one if I had known beforehand.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

I measure my stress by how bad the junk food I consume becomes.

This morning, I am at Twinkie-levels of anxiety.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
allrite@allrite.at wrote:

Turns out those tech bros were right. With the aid of AI, humanity achieved singularity. Well, the so called elite did. Yes, they were right, but they were also so wrong.

In typical elite fashion, the Singularity decided that ordinary humans were redundant and eliminated them.

Also in typical elite fashion it didn't understand what supported it and only thought short term.

The systems failed with nobody to replace them. Nobody was left to mourn the Singularity's end.

#MicroFiction #tootfic

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
logicalelegance@mastodon.online ("Elecia White") wrote:

The Datasaurus Dozen is one of the most amusing datasets I've ever seen. Mean and standard deviation: same. X Y correlation: same!

Images: different!

How to lie with statistics. And dinosaurs.

https://www.research.autodesk.com/publications/same-stats-different-graphs/

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
Kjaerulv ("kjaerulv") wrote:

“Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we’re built for.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

This (starred!) review from Kirkus has mild spoilers for the book, but I'll give you the summation: "Classic Scalzi space opera at its wisecracking, politically pointed, and, somehow, fiercely optimistic finest." I'll take it!

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-scalzi/the-shattering-peace/

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

I asked my local spider about the validity of divining fate by consulting spiders. She told me yes, but you can't trust the humans who report their answers.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/08/02/i-can-do-arachnomancy-too/

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
timnitGebru@dair-community.social ("Timnit Gebru (she/her).") wrote:

When it’s the likes of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair doing serious journalism on Silicon Valley because other so-called serious news outlets are doing more press-releases-as-journalism to maintain their access….Via @lopalasi

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/christianity-was-borderline-illegal-in-silicon-valley-now-its-the-new-religion