Happy belated (15 June) 37th birthday to the GIF image file format. Maybe someday we'll know for certain how your name is pronounced. (But I doubt it.)
It's kinda amazing we're still using you (or at least using you to misname files in more recent formats).
But not, like, glasses with cameras and speakers in the frames. I mean glasses that can change focus and prescription on demand so that I don't have to juggle multiple pairs of glasses because I'm apparently old.
@Kem writes stories @Les Orchard Oh yes, it would be so nice not to have to be stuck with something that corrected whatever my eyes happened to be doing the day I went to the optician. I feel sure my prescription changes depending on some very variable things like tiredness and hydration levels.
Tech companies, please stop making things smaller and thinner, it's not 1998. We want longer battery life and our things to be repairable, instead of replaceable. If you can't think of any actual innovations, stop wasting resources!
@Kierkegaanks I personnaly can't figure out what kind of smartphone people are using just by looking at them. The 150 and 2000$ ones look identical from even the smallest distance.
Hey I didn't even knew there were 2000$ smartphones, I thought the high end ones were at an already too steep for my liking 1300$
@tstrike78 That reinds me of the Nimoy/Spock story.
Leonard Nimoy got tired of being seen as Spock everywhere all the time. He wanted to be known as the skilled director he was. His first autobiography was titled "I'm Not Spock."
Years later, when flip phones were new, he was walking down the street when his phone rang. He picked it up, and in an easy, reflexive movement, flipped it open and put the fingers of his other hand where the knob on the Star Trek communicator would be. It was a motion he had made hundreds of times while in character. At that moment, he realized just how deep an impression that character had made in his life.
His second autobiography was titled "I Am Spock."
I heard this story in an interview with Nimoy years ago, back in the flip phone era.
LB: This is the establishment version of the button that says "No right now" when a software company is trying to push a new feature onto you without your consent.
Until the EU and the wider body politik around the world give us a "no" button; we will have to remain vigilant.
The EU Council and its participants have decided to withdraw the vote on the contentious Chat Control plan proposed by Belgium, the current EU President.
I absolutely *loved* IF back in the 1980s, although I didn't get to play Infocom's stuff until the 1990s. If I had been any good at either writing or playing IF I'd probably still be a part of the IF community - I hung out with them on Usenet for much of the 1990s but never managed to contribute much. While I loved the idea of IF, games with actual deep stories or puzzles were usually beyond me and I couldn't get far, while the easy ones were too trivial. Maybe what I really wanted was just stories written in the second person. I dunno. 🤷♂️
I'm not going to be drawn into a discussion of who "the kids" are voting for. All I care about is that they're doing their research on who the candidates are, what they stand for, and making an informed decision based on that.
@avon_deer They're going to need a lot more than a million people to do that, and statistically speaking, younger people tend to vote left... Based on that, could be they're looking at an even bigger wipeout than the exit polls predict.
I hope people don't get complacent. Everyone who's registered to vote needs to do so.
@avon_deer It'll be wild if the Tory project to create a single party state results in a single party state, but not their party. They're going to come out of this with about as many seats as Lib Dem and the Greens, so we'll have all these small parties, and then Labour.
@tryst @avon_deer Unfortunately I'm well aware of what that will lead to, because it's already happened here inside the council... and it's the same sleaze and corruption the Tories have made infamous. Then when one of the few non-Labour Councillors reports it in, the Labour ones vote together to veto the inquiry.
@Phil M0OFX @Avon DeRussate Personally, I hope when it's time to vote the stats will say the tories are *so* irrelevant I'll be able to vote green without worry.
"Security are saying that we can't use phone lines." (the implication being that we're deliberately holding back progress on the design for an arbitrary security requirement)
No... Openreach are saying that you can't have new phone lines. They are switching the network off soon. It's being replaced with VoIP. There will be no more phone lines available. The POTS is dead. It is no more. It has shuffled off its mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisible. It is pushing up daisies. Dead. Deceased.
"Security are saying that we can't have phone lines."
The Famous Computer Cafe 1984-12-21: interview with Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky about Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy computer game. The...
Yesterday we had another example of LLMs creating support issues for us.
User: "hi, how do I do this thing? Your docs say I can go here and change some options, but there's no settings there" Me: "that's right, we don't have such a feature, but also we don't say you can do it in the docs, where did you read that?" User: "oh I didn't actually read the docs, I asked 'AI' and it hallucinated this answer. Sorry!"
At this rate I'm looking forward to 2025 when I'll be spending 100% of my time doing support to correct falsehoods about our app made up by LLMs
This #pridemonth it's alarming to see the global advance of far-right and religious fundamentalism.
Bigots and fundamentalists publish hate dressed as science: "reviews" of established science and healthcare practices, and then claim epistemic authority in order to hurt queer and trans people.
Remember: science is the light that shines through the darkness of the unknown, and while you can fool some people, ultimately nature cannot be fooled.
Every politician who votes for #ChatControl or anything else that requires back doors to our private digital lives should be required to have a webcam installed in their bedroom with a public IP address, so that anyone can check in on THEIR private lives whenever they feel like it.
Breaking news: We've taken the next step to challenge the ban on puberty blockers
We have asked for an urgent hearing that will seek to quash the ban. It is clear that this ban is having a devastating - and harmful - impact on young trans people and we do not believe that waiting is an option.
Puberty blockers have been prescribed for decades to alleviate the distress many trans young people experience and offer much-needed time to those questioning their gender.
I was either completely unobservant or I wasn't out where you were suiting. Next year if you go I'd love to get a picture together, your suit is awesome!
Hot take, I think more movies should use animatronics and/or puppets. I watched a really interesting video discussing Lake Placid and the incredible animatronic crocodile they made to " swim " in a few scenes and attack a helicopter. The attention to detail is stunning and, honestly, it's one of the best aged things about the film. The CGI was great for the time and is pretty meh by today's standards, but I really feel the animatronic puppet sells it enough that you, like, forget/ ignore the CGI. Idk, just my opinion.
Also, Betty White's character is the fucking best in that movie.
VERY DANGEROUS, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING IT. This option causes hdparm to issue an IDENTIFY command to the kernel, but incorrectly marked as a "non-data" command. This results in the drive being left with its DataReQust(DRQ) line "stuck" high. This confuses the kernel drivers, and may crash the system immediately with massive data loss. The option exists to help in testing and fortifying the kernel against similar real-world drive malfunctions. VERY DANGEROUS, DO NOT USE!!
i love shit like this absolutely fucking terrifying
If you (like me) are American but not Black, you might feel like Juneteenth is a Black holiday that doesn't really apply to you. Nice to have a day off, but not really something to celebrate yourself. That's misguided.
Juneteenth is very much a Black holiday, and we should absolutely center Black people in celebrations of it. But at the same time two things are true:
1. A whole bunch of people were freed from a horribly oppressive institution. Everyone everywhere can celebrate that, even if the specific people who were freed have the most to celebrate. This is a historic change towards a more free & just world, and there aren't that many of those. 2. Like all oppressive institutions, slavery contorted & harmed the oppressors (and those who benefitted indirectly from the oppression). Certainly not to the same degree as the enslaved people, but the harm is real, perhaps most noticeably in how the poison of justifying or even just accepting one oppressive institution invites others to flourish, and also in the ways that harming others or accepting their oppression alienates us from all other humans.
So if you recognize that freedom for anyone is a victory for everyone, then there's good reason to celebrate Juneteenth whether or not your ancestors were enslaved. Again, this doesn't change the need to center Black voices in the celebration, nor does it mean we need to celebrate "America" here. But if you view African-Americans as so "other" that you can't celebrate their emancipation as a great thing for the whole world, and one that makes the world better for everyone including you, then you've got some work to do on your implicit worldview.
@tilton I am not in the city proper so I do still have a car, but we have one car for the family and I drive about once every few weeks or so, now. It’s been cheaper for me to grab an Uber to inconvenient places by far than dish out for a car for myself again.
And oh yeah winter is a bitch. I endured enough sun and humidity in FL, though, that I am kind of enjoying this. For a little while, anyway.
@tilton That's a pretty good deal! I honestly miss going into the office now and then -- its been years and there is a very clear social deficit I endure because of that.
I'm secretly trying to find a way to collect local WFH people together for a meetup but I haven't figured out how to go about that just yet. (every answer is "Facebook" and...just no.)
PLEASE BE AWARE WHEN ANSWERING YOUR PHONE!!! From a friend.... Interesting! | just got a call from a 304 area code. Thinking it was someone | know in WV, | answered. It was a man claiming to be from customer service (didn't say what company, only "customer service") The first thing he asked was "Can you hear me?"| remembered something | saw on Facebook saying people are calling and asking if you can hear them, then using the recording of your "Yes" reply as a way to sign you up for all kinds of stuff. So | replied "I hear you" to which he again asked "so you can hear me?" Me: | hear you Him: | just need a yes or no Me: | hear you Him: *hangs up* Thanks to whoever posted that story. | probably would have answered Yes the 1st time he asked.
