Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
DaveWhittle ("David Whittle") wrote:

As human teams get bigger, they get less efficient. But these ants have found a solution
https://theconversation.com/as-human-teams-get-bigger-they-get-less-efficient-but-these-ants-have-found-a-solution-261677

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
kbob@chaos.social ("Kernel Bob") wrote:

Today we got our dishwasher fixed under warranty. To diagnose it, the tech stuck a photosensor+magnet onto the front panel over the green status LED and started reading diagnostics. It turns out the status LED is actually a serial port*, and it's continually transmitting status.

I can think of so many gadgets that could and should use this trick...

*It's probably something other than regular serial -- a UART's TX would flicker. I don't know any details.

#HidingInPlainSight

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
ChemicalEyeGuy@mstdn.science ("Preston MacDougall") wrote:

The #MAGA #Kakistocracy has caused the steepest depreciation of the #UnitedStates dollar during the first 6 months of a Presidency in over 50 years!

If he had anticipated that, he could’ve reduced *imports* and spurred domestic #manufacturing WITHOUT sacrificing *exports*, such as #Kentucky Bourbon, by starting a #TradeWar with his slate of #TrumpTax #tariffs.

#Resist intelligently.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
NewsDesk@flipboard.social ("Flipboard News Desk") wrote:

The White House will vet Smithsonian Museums to fit Trump’s historical vision.

@WSJ reports: "Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the White House’s effort was an affront to the historians and curators trained to ensure historical accuracy."

Gift link: https://flip.it/jI-PE%5F

#Smithsonian #Trump #History #Museum #USPolitics #News

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
chad@mstdn.ca ("Chad :mstdn:") wrote:

DO NOT travel to the US.

New Zealand woman and six-year-old son detained for three weeks by Ice in US enduring ‘terrifying’ ordeal | The Guardian

#canpoli #cdnpoli #uspol

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/13/new-zealand-woman-six-year-old-son-ice-detention-us-ntwnfb

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
faraiwe@mstdn.social ("Faraiwe") wrote:

CAT scan

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
generalising@mastodon.flooey.org ("Andrew") wrote:

I got sucked into running the numbers on that "delete emails to save water" thing. Best estimates I can find are that live datacentre storage in the UK has a median water usage of ~80ml/GB/year. So a terabyte of cloud storage consumes 80 litres a year.

Network losses from leaks are on the order of 10-15,000 litres per person per year.

Glad we can see the culprit is definitely old forwarded cat photos.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
AdventuresofRangerSarah ("Adventures of Ranger Sarah") wrote:

BARK Ranger Mocha leads Ranger Sarah up the Greer Gulch Loop Trail.
— at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park.

#adventuresofrangersarah #hikingadventures #OutdoorAdventure #rangersarah #hike #hiking #hikinglife #Montana #stateparks #montanastateparks #nature

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
errantscience@mas.to ("ErrantScience") wrote:

In my defence sometimes I don't include the attachment with an email because I'm forgetful #Email #Comms

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
MAKS23 ("MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦") wrote:

🇺🇦 Ukraine's 5 demands for an end to the war:

1. Durable ceasefire before any territorial talks – No concessions on borders; no withdrawal from Donbas.

2. Security guarantees – Path to NATO/EU, sustained Western military aid, no forced demilitarization.

3. Russian reparations – Pay hundreds of billions in damages using frozen Russian assets.

4. Return of abducted children & POWs – 20,000 children taken, thousands of prisoners still held.

5. No sanctions relief for Russia .

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

"Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people; used to control people instead of to free them; Time to change all that - we need a... People's Computer Company."

https://archive.org/details/1972-10-peoples-computer-company/

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
aboutsignal ("Signal News & Tips") wrote:

Meta AI, the honest spokesperson for #WhatsApp 🤣

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
tankgrrl@hachyderm.io ("💀 𝓕airchild 💀") wrote:

If you don't have headphones you do not play media on your device in public. That's the rule. Don't be an obnoxious dick.

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
courtcan ("Court Cantrell prefers not to") wrote:

The goal of the companies who run AIs is to

1. get us all to use AI until the point where

2. we're dependent on AI, then

3. remove all access to AI and

4. grant the privilege of use only to those who pay a monthly fee,

5. which will periodically rise

6. while the service becomes worse and worse.

It'll be enshittification of enshittification.

enshittiception

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk ("Neil Brown") wrote:

The UK Environment Agency has some tips for the public to help conserve water, including

> Deleting old emails to reduce pressure on data centre servers

I kid you not.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/england-faces-5-billion-litre-public-water-shortage-by-2055-without-urgent-action

ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕") wrote:

I'm glad I moved away from Bitwarden a few years ago. Looks like the enshitification is happening.

https://github.com/bitwarden/clients/issues/11611

For anyone wondering, I moved to a KeePass database (KeepassXC).

#foss #opensource #bitwarden

Boosted by adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële"):
alexseifert ("Alex Seifert") wrote:

I'm rewriting my personal website to use good ol' fashioned PHP without a framework. This is why and how.

#development #webdevelopment #php #programming #technology

https://blog.alexseifert.com/2025/08/12/rethinking-how-i-create-personal-websites/

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

No time for fine-tuning, but I'm caught up at least! Smaugust day 4: Paper, and day 5: Cinder, together :)

Following the #smaugust2025 prompt list by Katy Lipscomb.

Digital painting made in #krita
#smaugust #dragons #fantasyart #drawingchallenge

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

Ok I worked on this one way longer than planned but I love mixing realism with fantasy! Photo references only take you so far (I have access to hands and cups but alas, no dragons), but it's so much fun trying to expand an image, leaning on the light and colors and just adding stuff.

Anyway. Here's #Smaugust day 12: Porcelain. :)
Sketched on paper, digital painting made in #Krita.

#smaugust2025 #digitalart #fantasyart #dragons

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

Gramercy Park, which sits between Lexington Avenue and Irving Place between 20th and 21st Streets in Manhattan, is a locked private park. At the center of the park is a statute of Edwin Booth, a 19th century actor today best known for being the less murderous sibling of John Wilkes Booth.

Only residents of the surrounding buildings are issued keys. There are a lot of rules, including against photography, so this is as close as we get. If you have to ask, you don't belong. Go away.

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

Captured with Phase One XT IQ4-150 and the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR-Digraron, a sharp ultrawide angle that accommodated just enough shift movement to compose this frame. Captured from the now-shuttered Gramercy Park hotel, on a fittingly grey and joyless winter day.

The wide angle and high, single point perspective emphasize the dominance of the private, locked park's local footprint. Rather than creating public space, it seems to elbow us aside.

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

Gramercy Park, NYC, 2020.

All the pixels, but without the rules or locked gates, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49594943761/

#photography

Boosted by jwz:
violetblue ("Violet Blue") wrote:

From this morning: #DEFCON tidbits, US Pacer hack outs sealed arrests and witnesses, hackers infiltrate Google’s Gemini AI smart home functions via calendar invite, Reddit blocked Internet Archive, Meta surveilled period-tracker app users, and more:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-12-136290025 #Cybersecurity

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
indivisibleteam ("Indivisible ❌👑") wrote:

CW: Sexual assault

In multiple states, men have impersonated ICE agents to kidnap and assault women.

This is one of many reasons we shouldn't have a masked, unaccountable secret police force roaming the streets. Our elected officials can and must act now: https://www.bluestatedefiance.org/no-secret-police

Attachments:

• video: 96ba323ee3f3f796.mp4

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

"evidence that Russia is at least partly responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive records with information that could reveal sources and people charged with national security crimes"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/us/politics/russia-hack-federal-court-system.html

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
UnicornRiot ("Unicorn Riot") wrote:

See the 'Far-Right Investigations' page on our site for deep-dive data exposes on the neo-nazi movement in the US including groups such as Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement, Traditionalist Worker Party and Vanguard America/Patriot Front: https://unicornriot.ninja/far-right-investigations-desk/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
digyoursoul@universeodon.com ("Voting is Your POWER") wrote:

In a huge victory for solar power, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state regulators were given undue deference in deciding to roll back rooftop solar credits for homeowners, reversing an appeals court ruling that upheld the regulators' decision. #solar #California

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/california-supreme-court-rooftop-solar-credits-cpuc-environmental-groups/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
cstross@wandering.shop ("Charlie Stross") wrote:

This is, to put it mildly, utter bullshit.

You can store a decade of email for a million people—call it 10-20Gb each—in a 10-20Tb NAS box that costs about £2000 and sucks less electricity than a laptop.

The environment agency are gaslighting us. One wonders who put them up to it?
https://social.lol/@robb/115016579150112511

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

The consequences of this paper for Apple's arguments re: privacy and the superiority of native apps ought to be fatal. Everything here is also *de rigueur* in iOS-landia, and Apple has so thoroughly stopped trying that it thinks "nutrition labels" are a solution.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22639

Every single service you use as a native app is *worse* for privacy and security than the web equivalent, but the supposed privacy defenders at Apple will never admit as much.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

All I'll say about the Perplexity "offer" re: Chrome is that any commentator who treats it as serious from either a business or technical perspective is an ignoramus.