Mastodon Feed: Posts

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

this is disgusting

https://www.thedailybeast.com/families-fume-over-pathetic-meals-for-american-forces-in-trumps-war/

EmilyEnough@hachyderm.io ("Emily 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️") wrote:

I stepping outside and saw 3 bright spots in the dusk to the west.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
r@glauca.space ("R") wrote:

🌟 Project Release Announcement Time! 🎉

I wrote a WebUSB extension for Firefox.

This lets web pages access USB devices (with your permission). This has long been supported by Chrome, but Mozilla has not wanted it, at least by default. Fortunately, because add-ons are a thing (for now. make sure to keep fighting for this!), it's possible to change that!

Common reasons for wanting this include programming microcontrollers, 3d-printers, smartphone bootloaders, and similar "physical computing" projects.

This works on Windows, Linux, and macOS

You can get the source code here: https://github.com/ArcaneNibble/awawausb

In order to make this work, you will need to install a small program on your computer. This is explained in the README. You can then install the .xpi file (on the GitHub Releases page) into your browser (which was _just_ auto-approved while I was typing this announcement up).

Please boost (if you want), test, report bugs, etc. etc. (although do keep in mind that this code is entirely written by a single catgirl)

i think this is the perfect type of project to drop late on a sunday / very early on a monday?

Attachments:

• gifv: a demonstration of WebADB working in Firefox Developer Edition

Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

I’ve been on a bit of a Wim Wenders streak recently. Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas, and now Perfect Days.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
whitequark@treehouse.systems ("✧✦Catherine✦✧") wrote:

do any of you have experience with Windows code signing certificates?

(i could always go to the cheaters' forums, they know everything about Windows code signing, but would rather not)

Boosted by jwz:
Robotistry@fediscience.org wrote:

@graydon @johnzajac @jwz @mikej @mjg59 @glyph Long covid took away my ability to interpret symbols for months.

I went from a paperback-a-day habit plus intense cognitive work to picture books because I couldn't hold a word and its meaning in my head simultaneously.

I lost English, math, music, programming, graphs - everything that involved interpreting symbolic information. Spell checking was like crawling over gravel.

These were all things that I *knew* I used to be able to do, but my brain couldn't access the actual skill anymore.

Doing something by writing a prompt would have been just as difficult as doing the job. And evaluating whether the prompt accomplished the task or not? Impossible.

(I'm better now, but bad symptom flares still trigger cognitive impairment and my ceiling is nowhere near where it used to be. On a bad day I communicate the same way an LLM does - by having chunks of pre-stored communication that fall out in response to the right trigger. I'm crashy today and had to deploy the chunk that means "I'm not comprehending what's going on and can't answer questions right now".)

Boosted by jwz:
graydon@canada.masto.host ("Graydon") wrote:

@johnzajac Debugging absolutely requires the short term memory COVID infection shreds. Current ability to debug is not great.

Most people currently employed as programmers are able to remember being able to do this stuff, and vaguely how you do this stuff, but they can't actually do it anymore and are desperate to keep people from finding out that they can't do their jobs.

It makes LLMs very popular; it doesn't get the job done but it does let you look busy.

@jwz @mikej @mjg59 @glyph

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
3x10to8mps ("LisaH") wrote:

Yes

#catsofmastodon #haha #Funny

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

RE: https://live.acarsdrama.com/@acarsdrama/116433601332613747

what a good toilet, eager to please

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

i realised something today. LLM enthusiasts make excellent marks.

i haven't worked out how to profit from this without actually using this godawful shit, but it's worth thinking about.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
TheQuinbox@dragonscave.space wrote:

Would anyone be interested in an LM4000 (one of the old Franklin Language masters) I've got lying around? I just managed to find an LM6000 with bestspeech, the same kind of one I used in school and purchased it, and the 4000 I got months ago doesn't appear to have TTS built-in. I'd ask you to pay shipping and maybe a little for the unit + its case and original instructions but it's not worth much to me as a fully blind individual, so I'm very flexible and willing to have you pay just as much as it costs to get it to your door. Feel free to boost so this might actually get in front of some sighted peoples eyes, I imagine almost no one blind will want this.

bcantrill ("Bryan Cantrill") wrote:

Tomorrow on Oxide and Friends, Polish software engineer Gregorein joins @ahl.bsky.social and me at a Europe-friendly(ish?) time: noon Pacific (9p in Europe) to discuss his work taking apart Garry Tan's code -- and my blog entry reflecting on the peril of laziness lost.

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/the-peril-of-laziness-lost/

Join us live, or catch the recording in syndication (as always):

https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1495535930281296072

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:

This is interesting. In my blogposts analyzing ATproto I had compared the shared heap vs message passing from a CS perspective

https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/

Ian Preston of Peergos did the actual formal mathematical proof of the incentive structure: https://peergos.net/secret/z59vuwzfFDp45jmsA6Wj2jc9hemCjB4JJHB81iosJsA9GAVRtkbrqBs/1024927538#%7B%22app%22:%22markup%22%2c%22path%22:%22ianopolous/docs%22%2c%22args%22:%7B%22filename%22:%22social-scaling.note%22%7D%2c%22writable%22:false%2c%22secretLink%22:true%2c%22linkpassword%22:%22UfAQURKSTTmM%22%2c%22open%22:true%7D

> It is interesting that this is independent of N. Let's say you have 1000 servers, and 1000 followers per user. Then the shared heap model uses about the same network bandwidth. With a small number of servers SH can be better, with many servers AP is better.

> The conclusion is that the shared-heap model builds in a structural incentive to keep M small, and thus has a natural centralizing force. Conversely there is an incentive in AP to keep F small.

Ie, there is a mathematical incentive in ATproto to only have a few large players.

bcrypt@infosec.exchange ("yan") wrote:

extremely niche content for SF parents just launched: restaurant reviews from my baby's perspective https://diracdeltas.github.io/blw/

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

Freebooters, food and drink edition, with Wing

https://video.thepolarbear.co.uk/w/qbDL5gS7Y5RNQ9TMeuAKAx

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

@NfNitLoop odd from the perspective of what i want, not necessarily odd from the perspective of luajit.

also it's not really documented and it's designed for a single threaded environment.

Boosted by jwz:
johnzajac@dice.camp ("John") wrote:

@jwz @mikej @mjg59 @glyph

Well, two of the most common persistent cognitive effects of COVID - memory loss and attention deficit - are ripe for having a fake cybernetic solution swoop in like LLMs and "fill the gaps".

Also, my guess is that low grade CFS and sleep disruption is *widespread*, and most people have less energy overall.

Automation sounds good when you've got no energy.

Boosted by jwz:
cstross@wandering.shop ("Charlie Stross") wrote:

@mjg59

I'm a full-time professional novelist. Have been for 25 years. Before that I was a software dev. From the inside, the cognitive experiences of writing prose fiction and writing software *feel identical*. The creativity exists outside the words, and most of the phrases and grammar I use are unoriginal.

Ball's back in your court.

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@mikej @mjg59 @glyph Running with the leaded gasoline analogy:

LLMs have managed to turn Github into a Superfund site.

Future decades are going to have to spend trillions to even partially remediate the damage done by allowing slop to leech into the soil and aquifer.

Boosted by adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële 🐁!"):
FediTips@social.growyourown.services ("Fedi.Tips") wrote:

If you know someone who wants to move their account from one Mastodon server to another, here's an easy-to-understand step-by-step guide:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server

It tries to answer all the questions people have about transferring Mastodon accounts. If I've missed something let me know 🙂

If you know someone looking for a server to move to, here's a human curated site listing good reliable servers:

➡️ https://fedi.garden

#FediTips #Mastodon

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

@theverge have Ed Zitron on your podcast, you cowards.

zkat@toot.cat ("Katerina Marchán") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@eniko/116433054140983153

This is a good game and you should buy it. “Mario 3 with lesbians” doesn’t even do it justice. It would be amazing even if it wasn’t Mario 3

Boosted by zkat@toot.cat ("Katerina Marchán"):
Lana@beige.party ("𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"") wrote:

Elliot Page has the chance to do the funniest thing

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@mikej @mjg59 @glyph
The tech industry loved Langford's Basilisk so much they made it real.

I also wonder if bulk brain damage and disinhibition from 7+ COVID infections is an inciting factor.

The "find out" phase is going to make this decade look worse than leaded gasoline.

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

@whitequark If you're not tied to PowerShell, #nushell has the nice structured data approach of PowerShell but is cross-platform and a bit more unix-y/FP-y. I use it across Win/*nix/Mac. <3

But definitely agree re: "unserious platform"

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

@dysfun Genuinely curious what the odd choices were. && What's the use case you're wanting a JIT for?

There's of course V8 but that's C++ and AFAIK pretty heavy compared to Lua.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
sethmlarson ("Seth Larson") wrote:

I reworked my #Retroachievements play activity and progress tracker to only account for "Progression" and "Win Condition" achievements. Now I'm feeling a lot more confident about finishing “Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons”. My estimated remaining play time dropped from 25 hours to 5 hours... 😅

https://github.com/sethmlarson/retroachievements-play-activity/commit/0e9a2670131b76cf2e83a37fbc735ad4ee1f592c

#retrogaming #gaming #zelda

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
dreid@wandering.shop wrote:

Part of the point of open source is reuse. And wholesale copying can be valid. But that reuse has always had boundaries and constraints applied to it.

Attribution, open sourcing of modifications, etc.

Thats what the licenses are there for.

If we're saying licenses shouldn't matter then ok that's an argument we can have.

But the "clean room implementation of a thing in the training data" people still seem to think licenses matter or they wouldn't have had to relicense anything.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
whitequark@treehouse.systems ("✧✦Catherine✦✧") wrote:

windows: the new shell is powershell
also windows: the only way to develop is to use "vcvarsall.bat" which has no .ps1 equivalent

deeply unserious platform 🤡

Boosted by jwz:
fazalmajid@vivaldi.net ("Fazal Majid") wrote:

@codinghorror it's funny how economists say incentives are everything, but get all huffy when you suggest who funds their paycheck influences their opinions.