floof.org
Days without erasing anything from my white board
Just wish they hadn't evolved into glorified child care centers. They've been doing more in recent years, but they still have that ball and chain, which really makes things difficult.
lennyaa the explorer
#fursuit #kemonofursuit #kemono #furry #furryfandom #fursuiter #fursuiting #kemonosuit #fursuitphotography #furrycommunity #catfurry #catfursuit #fursuits
#ai #generativeAI
Edit: went back and found my friend that originated the quote from Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/sQGLoN9wumXfgqHU/
The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from skill the ability to access wealth.www.facebook.com
iโm working on de-optimizing a project
the original dev built it with this ridiculous idea that weโd have millions of total users and tens of thousands of simultaneous users
in actuality itโs an internal tool used by like three people, and thatโs all it was meant to be
The English water companies are demanding more money from the public after decades of neglecting infrastructure, taking on huge loans and paying out equally huge dividends.
What the water companies have done is taken away our human right to clean drinking water and in the process essentially committed theft at a large scale
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2lgl9kypno
The boss of Water UK says the UK's system is old and that bill rises proposed should be higher.Charlotte Edwards & Mitchell Labiak (BBC News)
Apple Repaired My iPhone Screen, But Now My Social Media Account Is Banned
How taking my phone in for an AppleCare-covered replacement got me banned from Snapchat, and how it could happen to you too.
What is your purpose, funny numbers stick?
We came across it on our recent spontaneous outing to Kallmรผnz, a small town in the area.
๐ธ&๐ชก @Areksim (Vino Studios)
My wife told me to take the spider out instead of killing him.
Went out. Had a few drinks. Nice guy. He's a web designer.
Specialises in debugging.
The Rocket City Trash Pandas were featured on the English Wikipedia's front page yesterday.
Their mascot is amazing?? https://www.milb.com/rocket-city/community/mascot-appearances
Schedule an appearance from Rocket City Trash Pandas mascot, Sprocket!MiLB.com
W-where did all the beautiful days at #EAST go? This thing was over so fast, I can't believe it 
At least I came back with a lot of stunning memories and wonderful new friends.
Thank you so much @Argon1001 and Maru for making this con such a special and unforgettable experience. You guys are the best 
๐: Maru
๐บ๏ธ: EAST 12, Suhl - Germany
๐ท: @Argon1001
#fursuiteveryday #furry #furryfandom #fursuit #fursuiter #fursuiting #east12 #furrycon
A whopping 80% of new US electricity capacity this year came from solar and battery storage
The number is set to rise to 96% by the end of the year
https://www.techspot.com/news/104451-whopping-80-new-us-electricity-capacity-year-came.html
Solar alone made up 60% of the 20.2 gigawatts of fresh capacity that went online from January through June. A large chunk of this can be attributed...Zo Ahmed (TechSpot)
Okay, putting it out for all who want to read:
I'm writing a fantasy novel. It's very isekai, inspired by countless anime I love to watch.
Currently at 36 chapters and will continue with a new chapter EVERY SINGLE DAY forever, or until I stop.
Work on foyer reveals John Sainsburyโs note buried in extension to Londonโs National GalleryMartin Bailey (The Art Newspaper - International art news and events)
Amazon is convenient. But multiple times recently I've discovered stuff; ordinary stuff, cheaper elsewhere.
Example today:
Patterson & Ilford Film Processing Starter Kit
ยฃ99.00 on Amazon
or you could go (as I did) to a non-gigantic behemoth company, Bristol Cameras, who are literally a camera shop... in Bristol, and pay ยฃ81, including delivery, for the exact same item. And give the business to a small firm who might possibly appreciate it.
Sadly it is often the case Amazon prime free delivery makes the difference to make Amazon cheaper. Not always, I agree.
Also, the Amazon "comes on Saturday" and "comes on Sunday", and "comes on bank holiday Monday" factor that few others manage, sadly.
I have moved on from Whisky from Amazon now, though...
Friend sent me this and it made me realize how many people see the writing on the wall, yet are entirely powerless to prevent this from happening.
Not that many of us are blind to the fact that democracy is under threat, yet our ability to stop the billionaires from crushing it entirely is limited.
We are watching the collapse of a system that brought us tremendous wealth and technological advancement. And the billionaires, in their quest for more personal wealth, are willing to sacrifices all our lives for it.
So, have you ever thought your devices were listening to what you were saying, and then ads for that thing would show up...and all the pundits kept telling us it was coincidence and we were just seeing patterns because people seek patterns?
Yeah...naw. @404mediaco in their tradition of breaking all kinds of news, would like to tell you that you're not insane, and the pundits were wrong.
404 brings receipts: Cox Media Group (CMG) says it can target adverts based on what potential customers said out loud near device microphones, and explicitly points to Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Bing as CMG partners.
MindSift boasted about targeting advertisements by listening to peoplesโ everyday conversations through microphones in their smart speakers.
Here's the deck, read it for yourself: https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/
(free signup may be required, iirc, but if you've got spare change, consider subscribing too. They're doing yeoman's work out here on the data front.)
#Enshittification
404 Media previously reported Cox Media Group (CMG) was advertising a service that claimed to target ads based on what potential customers said near device microphones. Now, here is the pitch deck CMG sent to prospective companies.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
Last repost: the city of Amsterdam has asked renowned graphic designer Karel Martens to come up with a pattern to paint on streets with a 30km/h speed limit so they would visually appear smaller and thus reduce speed.
Article in Dutch https://www.amsterdam.nl/ingenieursbureau/nieuws/nieuwsberichten/nieuws/2024-jul-dec/karel-martens-ontdekken/
PSA: how to not get tricked regarding quantum computing
when the quantum-computing hype train says "we only need x qubits to do terrifying thing" they're talking stable, error-free qubits, sometimes called "logical qubits"
when the quantum-computing hype train says "we just built a computer with y qubits" they're talking about physical qubits, which today are not stable, error-free qubits.
we're not even sure how many physical qubits it takes, on average, to get a logical qubit. some experts think dozens. others estimate in the thousands. some people think we can reduce that number using AI or other tricks.
"I have five cars" does not necessarily mean that all five work. "I have a thousand qubits" does not necessarily mean I can run a thousand qubits' worth of processing.
This is why quantum computing news always makes it sound like we're around the corner from world-altering capabilities, but quantum computers have so far not altered the world very much.
Regex isn't hard enough, so I present you with a crossword where all hints are regular expressions!
I confess at first it looked like the hints don't contain enough information to solve the puzzle but after some slow but steady progress I can confirm that they do ๐คฃ
The original puzzle is from https://puzzles.mit.edu/2013/coinheist.com/rubik/a_regular_crossword/
I shared this on my blog: https://mathspp.com/blog/problems/regex-crossword
Can you solve this crossword where all hints are regular expressions?mathspp.com
Not "hallucination", just bullshit !
"The machines are not trying to communicate something they believe or perceive. Their inaccuracy is not due to misperception or hallucination. As we have pointed out, they are not trying to convey information at all. They are bullshitting."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5
Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue.SpringerLink
Especially do not use handbrake, cdrtools, or vlc to copy a DVD, because the library has to pay actual literal money to crooked publishers who demand a fee per circulation for digital books and streamy stuff. It saves the library a lot of money if you copy physical disks instead of stream movies, and that would deny those publishers their right to extract unlimited rent from a library.
https://handbrake.fr/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdrtools
https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_HowTo/Rip_a_DVD/
CD/DVD/Blu-ray command-line recording software
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)For Linux users out there, this is the kind of ffmpeg command that you should not use either:
ffmpeg -analyzeduration 100M -probesize 100M -i "concat:VTS_02_1.VOB|VTS_02_2.VOB|VTS_02_3.VOB|VTS_02_4.VOB" -map 0:v -map 0:a -map 0:s -c copy output.vobCC: @CyberpunkLibrarian@hackers.town
I skip Handbrake and the library as a middleman altogether.
Yes, but then the library doesn't get the funding it needs to support your neighbours who don't have other access!
I'd teach the neighbors that other access if they asked... but they'd rather treat us like crap than equals. They aren't patrons of the library, either, so....
Could you teach me? The last time I tried to get a movie without the library as a middleman, my mother got a nice letter from our ISP saying that we're breaking criminal law, and their buddies at the MPAA want us to know that if we don't stop the downloading, they'll cut off our Internet.
She now refuses to watch movies in any way other than Amazon Prime. I had to beg to get her to let me copy library DVDs.
CC: @deirdrebeth@mas.to @CyberpunkLibrarian@hackers.town
@cy @deirdrebeth
I could try. The most important component is a trustworthy reliable lips-are-sealed VPN. I previously used a blocklist with some success, but when it stopped being aggressively maintained it was time to move on... so now I pay money for a VPN subscription.
The other components in my "workflow" are Flaresolverr, Prowlarr, Sonarr, Radarr, qBittorrent, and Jellyfin... oh, and a big fat 10-bay NAS. The latter was quite the expense, but a worthy investment.
Is there a qualitative difference between an ISP and a VPN?
I don't watch movies enough to justify paying for a VPN anyway, even if I had any way to tell if they were trustworthy and reliable, which I don't.
Guess I'm just saying even the nicest of neighbors might not have the same... options that you do. OTOH, if you could give them a way to copy movies directly from their neighbor...
@nivex @djsundog That is a sad thing indeed. And so short sighted. There are plenty of people who can't afford a phone or a tablet and/or can't afford a decent internet connection.
I don't have a lot of physical media, but that's because I have a choice. Plenty of others don't. ๐
@nivex @djsundog
#respect to the #librarians using #tor to guarantee information is free-as-in-speech-and-beer
https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-library-freedom-project/
Tor at the Heart: Library Freedom Project | Tor Project
blog.torproject.org@dragonsidedd @nivex @djsundog Literally working on not one, but two projects where I hope to facilitate that!
They're not ready to talk about yet... but soon!
"Please don't take a copy of it" ... because it's literally right there, and checking it out again improves the accuracy of the "stuff people check out" statistics!
edit: I think the word I was looking for was "circulation".
Just take a copy of it, and the second time you watch the movie make a note to check it out the next time you get to the library. Then walk in a circle and immediately return it. They get circulation numbers, you get as many copies of your movie as you want, and the disc doesn't get used multiple times, greatly extending its lifetime. It's win/win/win!
Uh, er, I mean, don't do that, because uh, that would be uh, illegal, or something, probably.
@nosaj BIG SAME.
All the good things of Plex, none of the bad, and I don't have to pay to access content on my own server!