Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
lemire ("Daniel Lemire") wrote:

Python sets and dictionaries can have quadratic-time performance https://lemire.me/blog/2026/09/03/python-sets-and-dictionaries-can-have-quadratic-time-performance/

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
timbray@cosocial.ca ("Tim Bray 🇨🇦") wrote:

VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital - Anil Dash
https://www.anildash.com/2026/09/02/cancer-capital/

brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:") wrote:

I should look into those box drawing exercises. Those will probably help get my head around triangles

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
gsuberland@chaos.social ("Graham Sutherland / Polynomial") wrote:

we need to start a new movement called good software. software that is good, and does good, for the public good.

the freedom part is the wrong focus. it's a misaligned value judgement. you can write free software that bombs children. you can have a free software project maintained by a fascist or a rapist. software that bombs children, by the very definition, can never be good. projects where fascists and rapists are allowed into positions of power are, by the very definition, not good.

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
futurebird@sauropods.win ("myrmepropagandist") wrote:

But I think we should congratulate and shout out the local protests and people flooding community feedback meetings to oppose data centers.

It's working! By being there with you homemade sign you might inspire others to do the same.

Keep it coming.

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

i made an honest chatbot - it shakes a magic 8 ball

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
sstephenson@indieweb.social ("Sam Stephenson") wrote:

💡Did you know? If someone writes something you appreciate, you can just send them a note to say thanks

krig@goto.liten.app wrote:

I wanted a Gram shirt to wear to Goatmire (goatmire.com) at the end of September so added one to my shop. Thought I'd link to it in case anyone else is as into toads as I am

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

Maybe Death is MAGA, because it has made some terrible choices lately.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/09/03/another-loss-gloria-steinem-is-dead/

brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:") wrote:

I mean, I say I'm good at drawing from reference, but d20s are a special kind of triangular hell

brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:") wrote:

One of the advantages of doing that YouTube drawing tutorial rabbit hole dive a few days ago is that I found a video where pikat explains that drawing from reference and drawing from imagination (or more accurately, drawing from memory) are very separate skills.

I'm pretty good at drawing from reference but I struggle when constructing drawings. The only way to get better is practice, but it's demoralising having good reference-based drawings and poor imagination ones in my sketchbook.

Solution: Next to the date jot down what sort of reference I used. Then I can track improvements in different kinds of drawing

Boosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
redsad@ohai.social ("captain acab :antifa:🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸") wrote:

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
c_9@mstdn.ca ("Cameron MacLeod") wrote:

Recognize beauty around you.

Realize you can’t control everything.

Reflect on how choices can make change.

Refuse to be stored in black plastic sacks and placed in the containers provided.

Boosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
karlbode.com@bsky.brid.gy ("Karl Bode") wrote:

over at threads(TM) the Apple fanboys are taking my last two newsletter posts about Apple well

one sweetly suggesting I have a several overlapping mental illnesses because I suggested the tech press downplayed Tim Cook's support of authoritarians

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
lcamtuf@infosec.exchange ("lcamtuf :verified: :verified: :verified:") wrote:

A vicious loop, because there's no way to troubleshoot an outage when the chatbot is down

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“Why office workers are turning against AI”

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-office-workers-are-turning-against

> It’s also because bosses are much less accountable for their AI use. They may use it to write emails and company memos or to experiment with task automation, but they’re not going to be disciplined or fired if there are errors or inconsistencies in that stuff.

neatnik@social.lol ("Neatnik :prami:") wrote:

Small update to https://some.pics. The EXIF data table now includes classes for each data element, which means you can now use CSS (in your custom template) to work with those.

One practical application is only showing the fields that you care about, and hiding the others. Here's some sample CSS for that:

tr:not(:has(
td:first-child.field-of-view,
td:first-child.megapixels,
td:first-child.lens-id
)) {
display: none;
}

Boosted by firepoet@tech.lgbt ("Stephen 🌈 (he/him)"):
jessie ("Jess Rose") wrote:

Junior tech jobs are rare right now, so I was delighted to see the Welsh Government is hiring a Digital Data + Tech Apprentice. No experience needed!

2 year post, £27k, apply by 28/09/2026

Must be at least 16 years old, but there's no upper age limit!

https://cais.tal.net/vx/appcentre-ext/brand-7/spa-1/candidate/so/pm/1/pl/3/opp/4096-Digital-Data-and-Technology-Apprentice/en-GB

#fedihire

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
mausmalone wrote:

@glyph This is only barely related but one of my favorite game dev anecdotes is how the Dragon's Dogma 2 team were given budget/time to make realistic looking food for you to cook at a campfire and instead they spent the money on real food and just filmed it then enjoyed some high-quality food.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/the-mystery-meat-in-dragons-dogma-2-is-actually-real-food-not-cg-we-decided-to-spend-the-same-amount-of-money-on-better-quality-meat/

Boosted by pixxl:
da_667@infosec.exchange wrote:

Use linux. Accept the curse of the automatroid: most major distros are accepting AI commits. Accept that systemd has been a cancer for a very long time.

Use macOS. Accept the curse of the Walled garden: You may run only what we tell you to run, when we tell you to run it. The rules change with every major OS update. You will accept them or you will go elsewhere.

Use Windows. Accept the curse of the hunted: You are being watched. You cannot slip your pursuer, you cannot obfuscate yourself. Even if you think you've hidden yourself, because of how convoluted Windows is, you can't really be 100% sure that you are not being watched. And even if you aren't you won't know whether or not a critical update re-enables the watcher in the walls.

Boosted by pixxl:
da_667@infosec.exchange wrote:

But then you're like "Firefox sounds okay" and then you see how hard Mozilla is deep-throating AI, and cutting their developer staff, trying desperately to be hip and relevant to shitheads who think hacker news comment section is the equivalent of greek philosophical debate

db@social.lol ("David Bushell 🪿") wrote:

blogged: Plagiarism ain’t cool bro :(

https://dbushell.com/2026/09/04/plagiarism/

what ya reckon, was my website copied? plagiarism or homage?

Boosted by pixxl:
sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place ("The Seven Voyages Of Steve") wrote:

When even the supposedly alternative thinking free software community is increasingly buying into this, with the rationale seemingly being “we can have so much more drinking water by letting just a little bit of shit into it”, I think my faith in the wider software ecosystem is pretty shot.

But I can at least not shit in my own well. It’s not a lot, because I can’t not drink other people’s water sometimes, but it’s something.

Boosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
nova@lunar.place ("Nova :neocat_floof_cute:") wrote:

​:neocat_floof_catmode:​

Boosted by pixxl:
sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place ("The Seven Voyages Of Steve") wrote:

Because the alternative is awful to me. To cave to the call to “joiiin usss, thinnkk of the prrroductivvivvity”. To be one of the people pulling levers that they think are directly attached to anything, but are in practice just giving vague signals to a planet-burning mass theft database someone else controls, which could choose to do almost anything. But right now chooses to string you along for far, far less than even the direct cost. Wonder why they’re doing that? 🤔

Boosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
nova@lunar.place ("Nova :neocat_floof_cute:") wrote:

​:neocat_floof_owo:​

Boosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
nova@lunar.place ("Nova :neocat_floof_cute:") wrote:

​:neocat_floof_cute:​

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
simontatham@hachyderm.io ("Simon Tatham") wrote:

A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection. I'm pleased to say that the new Mines is now completed and live! You can now play Minesweeper on a wide range of tilings in your browser
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html
or download a desktop version from the parent page which supports the same set of grids.

As well as the support for lots of grid types, there's also a new user preference (off by default) to make it easier to play on them. When you click on a clue square to potentially clear around it, the existing flags adjacent to the square light up, to make it easier to count them and work out how many more mines you're still expecting. Particularly useful in the hat tiling, where it's easy to mistake exactly what is adjacent to what!

I expect different people will prefer different grids. Personally I think the triangular grid is particularly tricky and puzzly; the hexagonal honeycomb makes a gentle introduction; the Cairo, Floret and Kites tilings are a nice set in between those extremes; and of course the aperiodic tilings are there to keep you on your toes and ready for anything.

Many thanks to Anders Höglund for this excellent piece of work.

cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@jzb/117207618016534587

Great words from @jzb on deradicalization being valuable, but pointing to people doing the hard work of empathy and deradicalization to *excuse* bad behavior is just dangerously counter-productive

(Some extra context is this part of the thread https://lobste.rs/s/ipy9xw/normalized%5Ffascism%5Fopen%5Fsource%5F12#c%5Fn5ohiz )

Boosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
jzb@hachyderm.io ("Joe Brockmeier") wrote:

@cwebber Two things can be true: Daryl Davis seems to be a truly wonderful human being doing The Lord's Work(TM) in trying to reach out to people who are racist, etc., and teach them better ways. I admire him greatly.

I sometimes wonder if Davis is unintentionally doing more harm than good, though, because his story gets trotted out in so many discussions with the implication (or outright assertion) that you can't be intolerant of bigots because they allegedly can be turned around if everybody just works hard enough. It's not their fault, really; they're just misguided. Don't be mean to them; even when they're openly working toward eradicating whole groups of people, *you* just have to work harder!

The fact that someone like Davis can *sometimes* reach those folks and walk them back does not excuse them one iota. It certainly does not obligate the rest of us to tolerate bigotry and worse when people like DHH use their position to advocate for what amounts to genocide or at least apartheid. (Being charitable, let's assume that DHH and Co. would be content to "merely" segregate Europe and the US so that white people are the majority and hold power.)

In my mind, the right approach is to ostracize bigots, etc., and work to prevent harm. Only after they are unable to inflict harm on their targets is it a priority to reach them and try to bring them back into a healthy society. As long as they are hurting people it is not reasonable to let that continue in the hopes that *maybe* they can be compassioned into reason. And there are some folks, like DHH, that I don't think can be reached regardless.

Some people are bigoted and cruel because it's what they've learned and they can unlearn it. Some people just like it, and you could try everything under the Sun and never reach them. It is unimportant to me to try to distinguish between those groups as long as they are a threat to innocent people.