it sounds like something out of the style guide, which just dictates how people within the company are allowed to use their logos and fonts and colors, etc.
So messed up right now. Only an hour or two ago I was getting stressed out about never being able to get on with anything and having such a huge backlog of stuff to do that I was feeling utterly overwhelmed by it all, and now I'm sitting here at a loose end, unable to think what to do with myself.
I can only think I need a break. (In both senses, maybe.)
Anyone in south-west London TOMORROW who'd want to come to Mitcham Carnival with me?
I'm going to do the same as last year, and could do with someone to take a few pics (I don't get the chance myself, really) and maybe help a bit with "managing" the people wanting to get photos with Spidey!
I probably won't stay all day, more likely just a couple of hours or so, and it's mainly when I first arrive that help would be most welcome, so it could just be for a short time.
A long shot, I know, and a bit late to ask, butโฆ I have to ask, just in case.
Okay, that was a rather nice time! From the moment I got there I was swamped with people wanting photos. Walked around the showground once or twice, had a lot of nice encounters and a small number where I wasn't sure what was going on but none that were actually bad, which is good. ๐
No time for pictures while I was there, but I did get a few on the way home.
I occasionally teach tech-related stuff to people of every age. Today I was in a classroom with kids ages 9-11. They had almost pristine laptops with Windows 11.
What I wanted to do: - have them create an avatar with Picrew - have them write a slide about themselves, and paste the picrew avatar in it - start playing around with Scratch
Also mandatory from the course's management: have everyone login to the Google Workspace of the course. (I also put the links to the Picrews in the Classroom)
Tech issues I encountered: - the "smart" classroom touchscreen whiteboard has some HDMI ports, but those ports mysteriously refused to work with my linux laptop. They also refused to work with some of the Windows computers the school had. Kept displaying a message about "trying to connect" or whatever. I've never had an issue connecting via HDMI to a "dumb" monitor, so I don't know what it was trying to do there. - The school teacher I was paired up with was familiar with some of the other whiteboards the school has, which require a proprietary program that only runs on Windows to connect via bluetooth. This one was different anyway. - The whiteboard was an Android device and had its own browser. This object that, I'm sure, cost north of 2000โฌ was barely powerful enough to open Google slides or Picrew, with noticeable slowdowns, and absolutely collapsed under the "weight" of Scratch - The laptops the kids use have a regular blue Windows popup "Antivirus protection expired" because the McAfee trial version expired. I had to explain to them that there was nothing wrong with their computer, and they didn't catch a virus or anything. We didn't have the administrator password ready so I couldn't uninstall McAfee and get rid of the popup even if I had the time to do it for 20+ computers while I'm trying to teach. - Picrew is absolutely inundated with ads, including some fullscreen images that obscure the screen until dismissed. One of the ads was creepy AF and scared a kid, and he didn't want to look at the screen anymore. I had to install ublock origin on all the Edge browsers, one by one (I know, but it was the only browser installed, and again, no admin password and no time even if I did) - Some people straight up got pop up ads, with videos that started playing at max volume, disturbing the lesson. Many of them didn't even know how to dismiss them. I had to explain to them that it wasn't their fault. (again, solved by installing ublock origin) - The new tab of Microsoft edge isn't mostly empty, but it's just full of news and links and stuff. There's nothing straight up NSFW, but most of it is inappropriate and distracting to kids. - Millions of popups throughout the whole process. Popups for cookies, Popups for so-called tutorials, and "I understand" and "I accept" to click through to do anything at all.
Honestly, it made me kinda hate tech. I don't know how I'm supposed to transmit my passion for tech when every little interaction is such a minefield to navigate.
And here's the thing: None of this stuff makes me angry. Annoyed, sure, but I've been around computers since I was a toddler, and I have to solve shit problems like these for myself every day.
What makes me angry is: What about all the folks who aren't computer people? How the absolute fuck do they survive in a world where you can no longer function as an employee, a family member, any sort of citizen without encountering this stuff?
Those people are fucking heroes, and I'm angry for them.
Content warning: I love tech, but tech is unapproachable and inhumane
1. have them create an avatar with https://gimp.org 2. have them write a Fediverse profile about themselves and paste the avatar in it 3. start playing around with https://godotengine.org ... ... ... ... ... 4. show them how to jailbreak their laptops and install Linux
Content warning: I love tech, but tech is unapproachable and inhumane
@cy As much as I'm a proponent for GIMP, I think it really only shines for touching up or editing existing photos. Making stuff from scratch, I'd look for something more suited to the task. Idk, Krita or something. I don't work with digital art, so I'm less familiar with the options out there
I don't work with digital art either, but what I make from scratch is either GIMP or Inkscape. Mypaint was great for tablet sensitivity, but it kind of collapsed. I'd love to see an open source program that did vector art but brush strokes, like Adobe does.
I'd try Krita, but Qt is the only software that's ever managed to softlock my system's upgrade process. Buggy and bloated as heck as to be expected from C++.
Police have told anyone heading to see Swift in Cardiff that extra officers - including armed police, officers on horseback and facial recognition technology - would be deployed so people can expect a "safe and welcoming environment".
Nothing says โwelcomingโ quite like guns and live wide scale facial recognition cameras.
"Welcome" to nineteen eighty-four. Getting their doublethink practice in?
I suppose it'd only truly feel "safe and welcoming" if you were 100% sure such a system wouldn't take action against you. So either you'd have to have the warm glow of feeling you were in the "in group", where you could do no wrong and "obviously" the authorities wouldn't bother you, or you'd have to climb your way up the power structures to the point where you can make sure the rules (and the enforcement of them) wouldn't bother you.
So that's tory voters and tory politicians explained, I suppose, maybe, hmm.
stop using optifine(a guide, and psa!) if you're already using prism launcher or are ok with switching to it, get additive from modrinth: modrinth.com/modpack/additive(fabulously optimised is another option but i dont like how it changes so many default settings and comes with experimental mods that can cause unrecoverable issues with your worlds) if you're using the minecraft launcher and don't want to switch or organise mods manually, just download additive installer. it takes the same amount of effort as installing optifine: github.com/skywardmc/additive-installer additive is a free and open source modpack that boasts feature parity with optifine (including capes, zoom, shaders, etc) while running significantly better, having much better implementations of optifines own features, and having almost flawless support with other fabric/quilt mods (unlike optifine which is infamous for breaking everything)
Wow, truly the end of an era. I was beta tester 324 for ICQ when it came out. #110324. I got the dev's attention because I was hosting the largest and most popular Powwow servers at the time.
There are some truths that when you think about them, they can inform your actions. The biggest one is that there is enough food that no human should go hungry. There are enough resources so that everyone can have shelter. The fact that we have hunger and homelessness is a direct result of billionaires and the lack of will to fix distribution of the food and houses. It is a direct result of greed. -> more #NoBillionaires #hunger #homelessness #taxbillionaires
I wish that we could feed and shelter everyone, but that's setting yourself up to be sealioned into oblivion. They'll try to say it's impossible to keep everyone fed, because of disease, and calamity, and supply chain failures, and they will be right. But we have to remember that the rent extraction makes things even worse on top of the already necessary suffering. More people, vastly more people, orders of magnitude more people are suffering than necessary.
Those swine will try to equivocate accidents to their needless, entitled, elitist murder of their fellow man. We must not let them frame the goal as impossible, so I don't really like to talk about it in terms of feeding everyone, or ending suffering. Minimizing suffering, strengthening community, empowering people to live their best lives.
that was one of my grandfather's favourite comments. Another was to point at any car that overtook us at speed and say "we'll be home before them" Because we were going to our home, and they weren't.
We were at Llyn Tegid a couple of weeks ago, a lovely sunny day and I was paddling in the lake, and I heard a siren behind me up on the road, so I turned to look, and the only thing I could see was an ice cream van turning into the car park! So I thought instantly of Eric Morecambe.
My constituency, with changes, has been a safe Tory seat since 19-FUCKING-10, so previously my vote really didnโt matter.
Thanks to boundary changes and the Tory collapse, itโs now a Tory/Lib Dem marginal, so Iโll be holding my nose and voting Lib Dem on 4 July, because Iโd vote for Sutekh himself if it got the #ToriesOut.
Itโs worth checking how your own constituency stands this time round for #tacticalvoting:
Looked at this polling map by New Statesman yesterday I was very suprised. There are constituencies in #Norfolk long considered to be โtrue blueโ that are set to change hands.
It will be interesting to see if it does all come to pass in areas like rural NorfolkโฆI think a change to Lib Dems is more likely than Labour in some of the constituencies theyโve shown changing.
But this will be without doubt a seismic election result.
In 2019 Boris Johnson's Conservatives scored an astonishing general election win, relegating the Labour party to one of its worst defeats in history. The slogan "Get Brexit Done" had currency, and wit
More than 4 GW of solar PV capacity was added to the Dutch electricity grid in 2023, taking the total solar capacity to 24 GW. Last year, solar PV was good for 1/6 of all electricity generated in the Netherlands; this year it will certainly be more than that. 42% of total capacity is on residential roofs. The other 58% is on roofs of larger buildings and in 'solar parks' on the ground. #solarPV #solarenergy #renewables
This is impressive. I was very disappointed to learn last week that only 4.5% of UK homes have solar PV panels. We could have offset our personal energy bills, decreased our emissions and contributed to the national grid during the recent energy crisisโฆbut the Tories just crushed the retrofit industry during their 14 years of power. Letโs hope we now turn a corner with a new government soon to be elected.
A few years ago, a kid mourning his dad handed me over 300 DVDs his dad had made of local bands in his London Suburb in the 2010s before passing on. He didn't know what do with them. I did. All of them are up at Internet Archive, hundreds of hours of cover bands playing in a bar, and now, thanks to a volunteer, Ducky, we have them all with dates and descriptions, where known. Enjoy.
Today, June 17, is both National Mascot Day and World Crocodile Day, which is also why itโs Crocโs birthday.
Heโs meant everything to me over the past 30 years, heโs helped me come to terms with liking myself, heโs been a beacon of kindness and a way to bring joy to strangers AND friends.
I donโt know why or how it happened, but Croc and I are permanently embedded in each other and Iโm so grateful for him.
Thank you so much to everyone who has ever liked, loved or supported him, and me.
I was gonna reshare the best parts of this thread, but in the end that turned out to be most of it, and that would bung up people's timelines too much. So please click through to the original site and read the whole thing, it's very relatable.
I think I'm becoming utterly disillusioned on tech stuff lately. I'm hugely aware of the "you like stuff you grew up with" and "you have less patience for stuff as you age" biases, but even so...
Streaming is shit. Searching is shit. Researching is shit. Shopping is shit. Troubleshooting is shit. My phone is shit. Autocorrect, touchscreen keyboards, Bluetooth, AI, Android Auto, Spotify, all shit.
It's not even capitalism or consumerism, I'm just tired of arguing and fighting with things I own.
I think I'm becoming utterly disillusioned on tech stuff lately. I'm hugely aware of the "you like stuff you grew up with" and "you have less patience for stuff as you age" biases, but even so...
Streaming is shit. Searching is shit. Researching is shit. Shopping is shit. Troubleshooting is shit. My phone is shit. Autocorrect, touchscreen keyboards, Bluetooth, AI, Android Auto, Spotify, all shit.
It's not even capitalism or consumerism, I'm just tired of arguing and fighting with things I own.
My phone sometimes hangs hard and reboots when I plug it into my car. It's too many taps to navigate to the single digit number of locations I have saved. I'll be mid-playlist, and Spotify will forget and switch to random songs based on the last one it played. People can't hear me on a whatsapp call even after granting it every permission it asks for. The album I had on last week won't play anymore because licensing.
And at the end of the drive it asks me if the fucking sound quality was okay.
You hand over your entire life story to a website for a shipping quote just for it to tell you the thing's out of stock and the product page is just weasel words. Everything you've ever told any website ever has already been sold to other companies and other countries. The thing you buy never arrives because it's possible for a courier company to operate in Australia without delivering to PO boxes. Amazon mixes legit stock with counterfeits but at least your lucky dip item ships free with Prime.
The call centre's scripts are circular and they flat out lie to you about getting a call back or any sort of update or movement happening. The website says it's gone back to the airport but you drive three hours to a courier's warehouse in western Sydney on a hunch and your parcel is sitting on the shelf in plain sight behind the underpaid girl at the counter. You pay extra to refuel your car because you didn't have time to find an app that tells you prices and the pump plays a video ad at you.
Your oven - a device with one moving part, and which functionally can be either "on" or "off" - stops working because a tiny capacitor exploded on the circuit board buried deep in the control panel and it costs hundreds of dollars to get a visit from an authorised screwdriver turner to replace it. The oven still doesn't work until you collectively figure out you have to set the time on the digital clock first, and you're reminded of this needless complication every time there's a power outage.
Your login session at work lasts exactly 168 hours (24*7) and at 168 hours and one minute, you get two MFA prompts simultaneously. You can't click on Outlook yet because the MFA system "didn't hear from you". After logging on, you join your daily Teams standup anonymously, because you don't have time to dig through dialog boxes that ding at you when you click on them to find the one with the working login button. A password prompt appears for a moment, you start typing, then it disappears again.
That 168-hours-and-a-bit slowly cycles later and later into each passing week, and you fucking dread when it reaches late Friday afternoon, because it means Monday morning will be written off by logging in, rebooting, and patting multiple Microsoft applications on the head, and you're useless to your busy colleagues until you do.
This program with no icon or name is preventing you from restarting. You click Cancel. It restarts anyway.
Also, how likely are you to recommend Teams to a friend?
Your cheap home PC doesn't have the physical space for another hard drive inside, so you buy an external one and your wireless keybbbbbbbbboard starts acting up when you're backing up.
Seriously, USB 3 devices put out a bunch of 2.4GHz interference and it fucks up wireless gear. Put your dongles on cheap USB extension cables and blutack them to the underside of your desk, I promise you'll stop hating Bluetooth quite so much if you do this.
Bluetooth is still shit, but this one's USB's fault.
You buy a second-hand but still quite new wireless gamepad. It dies unexpectedly at the approximate age of 16 months. There's a listing for a replacement battery on Amazon and a disassembly guide on iFixit, so you take a punt on a new battery and swap it in.
The gamepad's still dead, so you email its manufacturer for A) a repair, or B) spare parts, or C) to offer them even more money to fix it, but they don't provide any of those for a device still sold new today.
And here's the thing: None of this stuff makes me angry. Annoyed, sure, but I've been around computers since I was a toddler, and I have to solve shit problems like these for myself every day.
What makes me angry is: What about all the folks who aren't computer people? How the absolute fuck do they survive in a world where you can no longer function as an employee, a family member, any sort of citizen without encountering this stuff?
Those people are fucking heroes, and I'm angry for them.
This shit is why, when banks announced they were going to stop processing physical checks and a whole wave of elderly folks protested, I understood. It's one of the last fleeting vestiges of anything in their lives that still makes sense, and arguing about the cost of supporting obsolete systems is an absolute red herring.
It's not about the money. It's not about the tech. It's about kindness, and being fucking human to each other.
Do you work in IT? Do you support a system? Do you work on a helpdesk? Do you take calls, answer emails?
Congratulations. That's no longer your job title. From the moment you read this, you're a user advocate.
Process issue holding something up? Bug in the app? Is a particular system always down? Advocate for your users. Go to bat for them with the teams responsible for their struggles.
Folks will say "oh thank christ, it's you" when they hear your voice on the phone if you advocate for them.
tl;dr: In a world where companies will fleece you, scammers will steal your grandmother's savings, your chat program algorithmically charts your gender, and your car's manufacturer sells analytics about the way you drive without a second thought:
The only thing that matters is kindness, and we could all do with a lot more of it.
Also, I'm going to go have a drink or two now. Holy hell, that little rant has been building up for a while now.
Surprise! You're logged out of this website you were using ten minutes ago. Surprise! You're also logged out of LastPass, so first you have to pull down the notification shade, tap the LastPass icon, wait for some boxes to appear and move about, then you can log into LastPass. Then you can pull the shade back down, tap on LastPass again, tap the one matching site in your vault, and finally log back into that website.
Surprise! Would you like to save your login for this website to LastPass?
Dominos Australia's website having a totally normal one today. I appreciate the camelCase in the second screenshot here.
Not even going to address the derangement required to categorise "butter chicken" as a "traditional pizza" - you work with the system you've got, and they probably have decades of marketing research telling them "Traditional" is an incredibly valuable category name.
My wireless keyboard gives me so many varied and wonderful settings to handle what it does when I haven't touched it in a little while. I can make it dim the lights, or pulse them; I can set the brightness of them; I can tell it how long to wait after I stop typing to dim, and whether or not to turn the lights off entirely.
What I actually want it to do is use a $1 sensor to know if I'm sitting at my desk, and light up if I am, and be dark if I'm not. That's it. Where's that option, Logitech?
This description of a wireless gamepad on eBay is AI-generated, right? No human would describe it as weighing "only 1.5kg", that it is "compatible with games and controllers" and "has an unknown cable length" (I repeat: wireless gamepad), and that it "comes with an unknown manufacturer warranty".
This is worse than just leaving the description blank. I can't wait for the day I have to force a seller into processing a return and refund because the automatic lying machine misrepresented an item.
It's from April 2012. The industry's known about this for 12 years, and it's been so well-communicated that you absolutely knew about it before reading my post on it today. More shit.
