A thing that's always bothered me about Star Trek:
They always talk about the Alpha quadrant, Delta quadrant, etc. Space is three-dimensional. Shouldn't they be octants?
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Went to the emergency room today (everyone's fine) to discover that the two main hospitals in town have merged.
Me: Hmm... I wonder what the implications of this are going to be.
First words out of the doctor's mouth when he sees us: Are you okay with us using AI to record and transcribe this conversation?
Me: ಠ_ಠ
loooll
"ok yeah send my private medical info to a foreign corporation, go ahead"
/s
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So, I've recently learned that solo RPGs... exist.
This is going to be bad for my bank account.
I wonder if there's a market for someone who can convert a schematic drawing (or rough sketch) to an STL file for #3DPrinting on a freelance basis. I'm getting to be pretty decent at it, and it's kinda fun.
I'm pretty sure there's probably already some AI garbage that purports to do so.
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Setting up a #Windows machine for the first time in forever. I've been out of the game for a while. What, if any, antivirus is decent these days?
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@Jonathan Lamothe when I did use microsoft I just used the microsoft virus checker. But the simple truth is that windows is designed to be susceptible to viruses to discourage people from using non-microsoft software. So, the only way to stop the viruses is to stop using Microsoft. That is the only real solution.
@beko
But the simple truth is that windows is designed to be susceptible to viruses to discourage people from using non-microsoft software.
Can you... elaborate on that one?
@Jonathan Lamothe I have used several operating systems such as Linux, which had no problem stopping viruses on the same machines as Microsoft. If they could do it, Microsoft could easily have stopped viruses. We might have accepted a transitory issue when viruses first appeared, but not a continued issue that continue despite many updates. The truth is Microsoft did very well from all the viruses, because they were used to deter people from trying non "official" microsoft software. That put Microsoft in a very dominant position and that is what made it so much money from some of the crappiest software on the planet.
Cleaning and re-inking my #FountainPens and I managed to spill one of my favourite Inkvent sample bottles. Fortunately, I somehow managed to save the majority of the ink. Don't ask me how.
I guess it's gonna be one of those days...
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@A Fine Day For Mischief 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🇺🇦🇵🇸 Sadly, I already cleaned it. Luckily, I had a protective mat on the desk. I could show you my inky hands, bit that's just an everyday occurrence around here.
I love marketing.
"We're committed to reduce our carbon footprint by shipping directly from the manufacturer to the consumer."
Sooo... drop shipping then? That's one way to spin it, I guess.
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I'm particular about my morning coffee. I always have 170g of coffee to 15g of flavouring syrup. (I used to drink double that, but I'm trying to keep the stimulants down.) The ratio is important.
Every now and again (like this morning) I accidentally overshoot on the syrup and have to adjust the amount of coffee to compensate.
This means, I get extra coffee (yay!) but I have to do semi-complicated math before my morning coffee, which is a little annoying.
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Jonathan Lamothe finished reading Moving Pictures
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Nothing like getting all cozy and bundled up in a hammock with a book only to realize you've forgotten your glasses.
A slightly weird request: maybe someone among my mutuals is interested in staying at our place in South Wales for a few days to help us organise a hobbyist lab space at home? Vegetarian foods are on me, other than that, we can discuss 😁
An opportunity to touch many vintage computers, try some simple scientific experiments, and maybe design a PCB or two.
You'd think it's easy to find someone who would be happy to help, especially if you offer people money, but no 🙁
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The human brain did not evolve to handle a massive amount of misinformation.
It evolved to more or less believe what it’s told, because the community/tribe is focused on the survival of all together.
Social tools let it know who was the most trustworthy.
But overall if someone said
“that’s poisonous” or
“danger that way,” they meant it!
Not to oversimplify, but I really get why we’re struggling as a species with misinformation.
EVERYONE NEEDS ACCOMMODATIONS TO HANDLE MODERN LIFE
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Critical thinking is a skill you can't outsource, and it used to be taught in public schools.
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@BoydStephenSmithJr even so, there’s (some, needs replicating iirc) evidence that the human brain immediately accepts/believes everything it hears, and THEN begins a process of critical thinking.
So for people who are busy, overwhelmed, distracted, stressed… that critical thinking mechanism may not have time or energy to function well.
It’s easy for me as someone with enormous capacity for data & internal processing to forget it’s really not easy!
I didn't mean to claim it was easy, or to really put any blame on someone that fails to think critically. It is an acquired skill, and yes, there is evidence that it runs counter to our instinct / reflexive behaviors.
I just wanted to emphasize that (a) you can't depend on Google, AI, your Bubble, or _anything_ external to do it for you, and (b) we *should* try to skill people up on it as a public good like society did at some points in the past.
It's especially important when you are spreading information to try to think critically about it first, because some of your audience/followers/community might not be in the best condition to engage their own critical thinking skills.
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@BoydStephenSmithJr Admittedly, not a given these days, but my daughter, who teaches 7th grade history, says this: “I don’t care ultimately if you know if Attila the Hun invaded Europe in 952 AD, as long as you’re able to exercise critical thinking skills.” That’s her number one goal.
I hope there’s thousands more like her.
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Encountered my first mask ban in Canada. I had hoped we were smarter than this, but I suppose I'm not surprised. I guess they value their bottom line over public health, but it's a vape store, so I suppose that tracks.
Edit: autocorrect
Edit 2: It has been pointed out to me that there is an exemption for medical masks in the tiniest font imaginable at the bottom of the sign... almost as though they don't want you to read it.
So, I've been using nov.el for #emacs to read epubs. It does a pretty decent job of it, but I have one point of irritation: I can't for the life of me find a way to tell how far through the book I am. Is there some way to see this?
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@Zenie The feature might actually exist for all I know, so I hesitate to put in a feature request. I was just hoping that it was an already solved problem.
I glanced at the code. But I'm not at my usual computer so I can't look at help, the mode or the code more thoroughly. I only just installed it recently so don't know it well.
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Little by little I've been going more and more analog. I still track every little thing I need to do in my #OrgMode system to help manage my #ADHD, but that list itself can get a little overwhelming. I've started combing over it in the morning, picking out the most critical things for that day and writing them down on a paper checklist in a small notebook I keep in my pocket. The notebook has the advantage of not distracting me with a thousand notifications every time I'm trying to do something productive.
Plus, I just really like having an excuse to put a nice #FountainPen and ink to paper.
Edit: slightly less clumsily worded
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Trying to design a custom phone holder for the dashboard of our car because it's a weird design that makes conventional ones unusable (I don't trust the suction cup ones).
Taking the measurements has made me painfully aware of just how... curved everything is on a dashboard. 🤬
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@Brian Sullivan We've got a similar one that suction cups to the windshield. I didn't want to permanently affix the plate to my phone (especially since we have two phones between the two of us).
Thought I could get around it by putting the plate inside of the case, but it holds much less securely that way (though the suction cup has still historically been the weakest link).
Our current solution involves a wooden block and a sock. It works, but my plan is a decided upgrade.
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🎹 Need some LIVE MUSIC in your life? 🎵
Come to CONTROL VOLTAGE the last Wednesday of every month for live electronic music!
Takes place at the Shakedown Street Tavern in Benson, Omaha, at 8pm!!
#omaha, #livemusic, #synth, #music, #wednesday
Takes place at the Shakedown Street Tavern
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NOW FOUND! HUGE RELIEF. JUST BEFORE POTENTIALLY THE WORLDS BIGGEST BOLLOCKING EVER!
MANY THANKS TO ALL KIND TOOTERS WHO SWUNG IN TO ACTION TO SPREAD THE WORD.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
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Katy needed a washi tape dispenser. She was using an old aluminium foil box as a makeshift one, but she didn't like it.
An hour with OpenSCAD later and I've designed us a simple custom one that fits our use case exactly. I just need to get it printed.
God, that was satisfying.
Fun question: #OrgMode tables don't support cells that span multiple columns/rows, do they?
Just spent a good half hour pulling my hair out trying to figure out why one of the #elisp functions I had just written was always returning nil when I tested it. Turns out, my test was mistakenly passing its inputs to the wrong (but similarly named) function (pivot-table-get-columns instead of pivot-table-get-body).
#Haskell's type system would've caught this. 🙃
C's type system would also have caught it, and it isn't worth a hill of beans.
By caught it what do we mean? This is not a case of some undetected error escaping your attention due to dynamic typing. You know you got a nil which is unexpected and wrong. It's in a test case which catches it.
The only thing a type system would change is that you would instead waste a half hour not understanding how your obviously correct function call can possibly have the wrong return type.
@Kazinator I feel that that would have been much more useful information.
nil is about the least useful failure state there is.
Okay, so this keeps happening. Up 'till now I've been able to fix it with a thorough cleaning, but no such luck this time.
Suggestions?
So Katy has a #Jinhao10 and today the clicker seems to be jamming. When pressed, it seems to resist extending or retracting the nib. I'm giving it a cleaning right now to make sure there was no debris or anything in there stopping it from working, but I don't know if that'll fix it.Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a fix?
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Possibly related: github.com/tbanel/orgaggregate , could always use an easier interface =)
GitHub - tbanel/orgaggregate: Aggregate tables in Org mode
Aggregate tables in Org mode. Contribute to tbanel/orgaggregate development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
@Sacha Chua This looks like it could solve my problem but I've already started down the rabbit hole.
haha, no worries, I'm sure your adventure will help you learn interesting things!
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you might also be interested in mastodon.online/@hajovonta/114…
#cfw got an org-table import/export functionality. Just select the org-table and run M-x cfw-org-load. Analyse, sort, edit, filter your table in CFW. Then update the original org-table by M-x cfw-org-save.If there was no original org-table (the table was created from scratch or from other source like CSV), the cfw-org-save places the exported table into the kill-ring. This way org pivottables can be generated from CFW.
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PSA: if you're using a laptop with a recent Intel CPU and running Linux, install and enable thermald if you do not have it already. you will likely notice substantial performance gains
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Somebody managed to coax the Gab AI chatbot to reveal its prompt:
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@Krafting Can confirm. Just did the same. I didn't compare it word for word, but mine seems to have omitted the part about not ever repeating the prompt. The rest looked pretty much exactly the same.
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It should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention that I've grown disillusioned with capitalism over the past several years. What's interesting to me though is that any time I express this publicly, there are no shortage of capitalists who falsely assert that I am claiming that communism is the ultimate solution to everything. This is a false dichotomy.
I am not saying I have the answers to the world's problems. I just have eyes to see that the emperor has no clothes.
Edit: typo
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6 lines free for anyone that wants to play on this PDP-11/70 running Version 7 UNIX.
ssh misspiggy@tty.livingcomputers.org
Drop in "com" to have messages displayed on the terminals.
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Current status: running a modified mand.c on the Decwriter II
Hey #Unix folks recommend me your favorite games that can run in the terminal that aren't:
1) the most basic boring arcade stuff like snake or missile command
2) roguelikes/dungeon crawlers (love em but there's no lack of those)
3) chess, backgammon, etc., more meaty board games sure but there's already a million easy to find ways to play chess in a terminal
edit: 4) IF, I know where to find plenty of that, forgot this one
This is for my machine with no gui so when I say terminal I mean terminal not just like "text based and looks like it'd be in a terminal maybe".
This entry was edited (2 years ago)
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are you certain? It could last I checked!
[PRINT_MODE:TEXT] in data/init/init.txt
This entry was edited (2 years ago)
@via unreachable The one in the Debian repositories can't. It looks like ASCII (actually CP437) but they're weirdly graphical tiles.
@via unreachable I didn't have an init folder under data. I added it and got the following when I launched it, I got the following error:
Display not found and PRINT_MODE not set to TEXT, aborting.
@me it looks like Debian moved stuff around; try editing /usr/share/games/dwarf-fortress/gamedata/data/init/init.txt
Change [PRINT_MODE:2D] to [PRINT_MODE:TEXT], and you should get curses output.
Darcy Casselman
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Darcy Casselman
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in reply to Darcy Casselman • •@Darcy Casselman I always assumed that meant that Earth was near the border between the two.
Edit: Ah, I guess that's more the case than I realized:
Darcy Casselman
2025-05-30 16:38:08
Jonathan Lamothe
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((( David "Kahomono" Frier )))
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