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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Email: "Hey, we noticed you were in our store looking at stuff and didn't check out"

Hey, I noticed you do a lot of creepy tracking shit you shouldn't be doing and seem to think that following window shoppers home and yelling WHY DIDN'T YOU BUY at their house is somehow a good business model

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


the universe is just a ploy by big bang to sell more spacetime

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


While on the subject of Buzz Aldrin… people have called out his seemingly odd habit of wearing three watches, but those mere mortals fail to realize that he understood the later classified problem of time sanity.

Basically, he wanted an odd number of sources to be able to determine a consensus of what time it really was… a valid concern when one has actually, factually stepped on the surface of another heavenly body, or configured NTP.

in reply to The Gibson screwlisp reshared this.

A man who has a watch knows what time it is. A man who has two watches never knows what time it is. A man who has three watches REALLY knows what time it is.

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in reply to The Gibson

Us watch nuts have a saying:

"A person wearing one watch knows the time, a person wearing two watches is never quite sure."


Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


What are you supposed to be?
... I was supposed to be a lot of things. 😬 :oof:
This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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A text I just sent to my mother (presented with no context):

It's sometimes tricky that my wife and mother have very similar looking names and are alphabetically right next to eachother in my contacts. It's astonishing that that hasn't led to more embarrassing mistakes.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

You really need to add "probably" to one or the other.. as in "probably mother"
in reply to juliadream

@juliadream In practice, it ends up not being a big deal. I typically message my wife over a private Nextcloud instance that my mother is not on. A message for my mother accidentally going to my wife wouldn't be as big a deal.

screwlisp reshared this.


Okay, I'm calling uncle.

I've exported the data from the LibreOffice Base database I've been working on to an SQLite file, and I'm just going to write a proper UI for it.

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


I'm planning a video a few weeks from now talking about "I switched to Linux and enjoy it."

If you've switched to Linux *in the last year*, do you have any uplifting stories you'd like featured to help my viewers?

Message me here, or via email at explainer(at)vkc(dot)sh.

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in reply to Veronica Explains

My wife is literally just switching to Linux. I'll ask her on her thoughts. So far she is mostly confused by the concept of "Free Software" (not "free" but "Free").
in reply to Veronica Explains

I switched about 6 months ago due to the ever-increasing enshittification of Windows: lots of little things were starting to annoy me like audio problems but also pushing CoPilot so hard was the final straw.

While I struggled with DraugerOS and ended up binning it, I tried Pop!_OS next and it was beyond my wildest dreams how easy it was to run the live distro and then subsequently install it. I think the most difficult part was setting up dual boot with Windows.

1/2



Katy and I like to watch psychological thrillers from time to time, but I've noticed a recurring trope that confuses me. It goes like this: Psychopath lives in an outwardly normal looking house, but has a secret passage to a secret murder basement.

Who built this? Am I to believe he excavated the earth, poured the concrete, ran the (usually admittedly shoddy) electrical himself? Did no contractor at any point ever think to themselves: "this doesn't seem right. Perhaps I should alert the authorities?"

Edit: typo

This entry was edited (3 months ago)


Edit: I'm an idiot who confused diameter with circumference for some reason. Embarrassing original post follows.

Was playing around a bit with the OpenWeatherMap API. I wanted to know how precise I needed to be with the latitude & longitude values, so I decided to do some quick calculations.

To get a rough idea, I wanted to determine how much a change of one degree of latitude would move in kilometers. I knew the diameter of the earth was something fairly close to 40,000 km but wanted to verify that factoid. I did a quick duckduckgo search, and the top three results (on seemingly separate web sites) all said 12,756 km. In fact one of them hilariously said 12.756 km.

I assume this is the result of LLMs filling the internet with crap, but it's alarming that if I didn't know any better, I'd have just blindly accepted this as fact.

This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

12.756 km may be a locale difference; if the site wasn't US or UK-based the decimal might be the thousands separator.

the diameter of the earth was something fairly close to 40,000 km


s/diameter/circumference/?

in reply to Ryan Frame

@Ryan Frame Yeah, that was my mistake. I edited the post to reflect that, but Diaspora doesn't support edits.


Fine, I'll watch #wwdc24 to see what everyone's been talking about.

Before a few hours ago, I didn't even realize it was happening.



Today I booked an appointment with my optometrist to get my eyes checked. A few hours later I checked the (postal) mail to find a reminder card from them.

I was shocked at how quick the mail was, only to realize it was just a generic reminder that I was due for an eye exam. It was pure coincidence.


Mx. Luna Corbden reshared this.


Israel/Palestine

Okay, I'm just going to say it because amazingly enough, some people don't seem to get this.

Just because I'm critical of Israel bombing hospitals in Palestine doesn't mean I'm pro-Hamas. I'm not.

It frustrates me that this is a thing that even needs to be said.

Edit: typo

This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Israel/Palestine

Sensitive content

Judy Anderson reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Israel/Palestine

Sensitive content

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

It wouldn't be difficult if Hamas soldiers were firing machine guns at Israeli children, but this isn't the case.


Ugh, another piece of software I have to install from #flatpak because the #Debian repository is too old.
in reply to uhuru

@uhuru FWIW I personally had way more issues with Debian testing than with Arch 🤷
in reply to ilyess

@ilyess
ok, personal experience is a bit different....

using debian unstable for ~15y, 4-5 serious issues.. still remember which ones..
4-5y ago, used arch for a month, and things were breaking every (other?) day...


Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


popcorn: salty styrofoam that sometimes has a pebble in it

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.

in reply to Radical Edward :hackers_town:

Conversely, a guilt-free snack that you can add lots of tasty spices to and guilty levels of butter and/or oil.

(I love using the microwave popcorn bowl thing I have, and covering it with the "popcorn oil" I bought and my homemade salt/garlic/chili pepper grinder mix.)

Unknown parent

I do. It's a trick to prevent me from buying and consuming large bags of other snacks. This is better for the wallet and waist line.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


The CPU is far from being the most sophisticated component of a computer.

At least if we're talking about #permacomputing, or, rather, scavenging and collapse computing. Okay, maybe in open source hardware, too.

Designs of new hobbyist computer architectures are seemingly revolving around inventing a CPU and/or mapping the peripherals on the system bus.

And you could find many simple CPUs based on FPGAs, logic chips, transistors, valves and even relays.

What you usually don't find is custom RAM. Before Intel introduced cheap solid-state RAM in 1969, there were at least six contemporary competing types of RAM used in computers, and at least as many were already considered obsolete.

What you don't find is peripherals. There are rare cool appliances, like punch tape readers. But have you seen a custom hard drive? A printer?

All these are "easy" in terms of relative complexity for industry. But they are simultaneously very hard for a hobbyist/DIYer/tech collapsnik.

Change my mind, show me the good stuff~

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in reply to Nina Kalinina

I think learning to desolder and solder SMD components could be the top skill for a scavenger technologist. The vast majority of discarded tech is going to be SMD....

That's why I'm working on DIY co-processing using 8 bit CPUs from a begone era 😁😬

in reply to Sasha

@sashabilton don't be afraid of SMD. It's very doable by hand soldering except for ball grid arrays. Even for point to point assembly, the limiting factor is going to be just the width of your wire. And making SMD-ready PCBs at home is relatively simple if, for example, you have a decent analogue photo lab.
in reply to Nina Kalinina

I've ordered some cheap SMD practice kits thanks to your encouragement. I look forward to adding tiny LEDs to *everything* 😄. Thanks!
in reply to Sasha

@sashabilton if you can afford it, I recommend getting "helping hands" and a cheap magnifying glass on a stand. Having a sharp soldering iron needle, good tweezers and decent flux won't hurt, either. There's a few YouTube videos that can help you to start, if things won't work out naturally
in reply to Nina Kalinina

@Nina Kalinina I didn't know the term "ball grind array" but had encountered it in the past and based on context was pretty sure I knew what you were talking about.

Looked it up to be sure. Felt like one of my riskier searches.



Decided to learn and use #LibreOffice Base for a thing because I thought it would be an easier way to slap a quick and dirty UI on a database than rolling an app from scratch (which I already knew how to do).

I was wrong, but at this point I'm going full sunk cost fallacy.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

As an alternative, you might be interested in tikitrackers.org (which is part of the Tiki.org featureset, it's just that there is a standalone website to explain the "trackers" feature)

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


periodic reminder: you cannot "pass" a security audit. anybody selling you a passable security audit is selling you a lie, and anybody selling you a product that has "passed' an audit is lying to you.

a security audit can uncover bugs, or not uncover bugs, and can (in the words of the recipient) demonstrate positive or negative qualities about the codebase. but it cannot be "passed" or otherwise *endorse* the product or program itself.

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


You all did it. You (kind of) killed Microsoft Recall.

After weeks of withering privacy and security criticism of the AI-enabled silent recording feature in Windows, Microsoft now says it will be disabled by default when it rolls out later in June.

wired.com/story/microsoft-reca…

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in reply to Viss

@Viss
Or one scummy group policy from your friendly neighborhood corporate overl—employer?
@Viss


I've been using #Linux as my primary OS since the 90s, so I've really not been paying attention to Microsoft. Can anyone explain to me how it is they're trying to spin #Recall as a good thing?


Not to toot my own horn, but I'd forgotten how good my homemade sourdough biscuits were.



Diving into LibreOffice Base to coordinate some tasks that are becoming too cumbersome to do manually. I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it all feels very kludgy, but on the other, if all you're looking to do is slap a somewhat user-friendly UI on a database, it's the easiest way I've found to go about it.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

My disappointment with everything LibreOffice is immense. I have started learning RST, PST2PDF and LaTeX for my reports, reveal.js for presentations, and Juypter for my calculations because its so hard to use them. I really wish that they were just slightly better, and less unpredictable with formatting. But I'm privledged enough to not have to use others tools, and I refuse to use M$ products anymore.
in reply to Jeff MacKinnon

@Jeff MacKinnon Oftentimes, all I need is markdown, CSV, and maybe sqlite. When it's something that Katy is going to use as well, LibreOffice gives her a more familiar (MS Office-like) experience... not that she's ever used Access though... at least not to my knowledge.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Oh, that? That’s just me writing the Windows section of the Kitten¹ installation instructions for the upcoming web site.

¹ codeberg.org/kitten/app

#Microsoft #Windows #Recall #BigTech #Kitten #SmallWeb #SmallTech #privacy #security #tech #web #dev

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.

in reply to Lorena 🍏

@Lorena 🍏 Macs do not work for me and I can generally switch an existing Windows machine over to some Linux distro for $0.

Plus, you say that like everyone's got an extra $600 laying around.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@me OK well in that case feel free to ignore my suggestion if it doesn’t apply to you!

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Oi!

We need to shut down an alt-right anti-trans conference happening in a few weeks here. If you live in Canada, not just Victoria, this is a tourist town and they are a Canada-wide hate group. The more people show that they’re watching and acting, the more likely councilors or the conference centre will take action. Please sign, or at least bump (the latter goes for folks outside the country as well, please).

Happy Pride, please help us keep the fascists down.

#Canada #LGBTQIA2S #2SLGBTQIA #Queer #Pride #MSTDNCA

nmshr.io/s/email/ZBA_BTbEH_TvS…

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Be careful what you wish for.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


if you want the company you work for to switch to linux, all you have to do is file a wrongful dismissal suit that subpoenas your boss’ recall logs and they’ll be running ubuntu by july.

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in reply to ghorwood↙↙↙ Nicole Parsons reshared this.

this is absolutely going to happen. if your boss doesn’t want their emails read back to them in court, they sure as hell don’t want their everything being entered as exhibits a thru aak.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Call the #Ontario Premier's Office and lodge your complaint about the cancellation of #COVID19 Waste Water Surveillance.

I encourage everyone who cares to call and register your opinion.

They monitor this feedback.

416-325-1941

#Sars2 #SARSCoV2 #covidIsNotOver

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


GenX/Xennials dealing with aging parents and grandparents is a whole vibe.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.

in reply to Mx. Luna Corbden

I don’t know which is harder: dealing with aging parents that loved you, or dealing with aging parents that didn’t.
in reply to Aphrodite ☑️ :boost_ok:

@Aphrodite I somehow managed to get both all in one? Like, that "love" me but maybe have a different idea of what love is than I do, or maybe without the capacity to love me the way I'd prefer.

Making strides with mom this week, though. She's trying very hard. So am I.

❤️


Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


"I don't understand why other people don't think like me" says more about one's lack of curiosity or understanding than about the people mentioned. One doesn't have to agree with someone else to understand what underpins their diverging opinion. Worse, it may show one's assuming there's only One True Way of thinking about something which increases one's sensibility to propaganda.

No matter what you believe in, staying curious about why other people think differently allows you to understand exactly why you disagree beyond a knee-jerk reaction and makes you more able to change your own opinions if the reasons for them change.

Unknown parent

Hypolite Petovan

@vic This mindset is independent of specific opinions and invoking it to peddle your personal grievances is exactly what I've been trying to warn about in my post.

In particular, branding anything as "evil" directly falls in the "One True Way" pitfall by preemptively forbidding any understanding of any kind. Again, you don't have to agree to understand.

@vic

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Quick heads up: annihilation.social is the latest home for racist edgelords

#fediblock

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Jonathan Lamothe started reading Sourcery

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Discovering that you're wrong & then changing is an underrated superpower. 💪


Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


It's so funny being het wanting to show solidarity and join in with Pride but not really knowing what some of it means and not wanting to offend anyone. Sort of like I'm your mum trying to join in with your conversation about your interests. I do hope you have a nice time with your leatherfolk friends doing all that kink you like. Don't forget to drink plenty of water and if you must do crime please make sure you're careful.

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in reply to Ben :bc: Adam F. Lawton reshared this.

you are so wholesome. Every clique has its quirks and jerks, but as long as you're asking for knowledge, and in good faith, we will explain and explore with you.

None of us have all the answers, and we're often wrong. Being wrong isn't bad, nor is asking dumb. Let's learn together.

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


King Street in downtown Kitchener feels like it’s most of the way to being pedestrianized

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.

in reply to Michael Druker 💙💛 Shannon Prickett reshared this.

I remember before the pandemic there was a plan to shut it down regularly on weekends, I don’t suppose they’ve picked that up again.

And I’m probably biased because I lived at the park but I also want the same treatment for jubilee dr.



mh (ADHD) alc

So, the one advantage to being out of ADHD meds is that I can have a drink without worrying about drug interactions.

I'll take my victories where I can.


Bob Jonkman reshared this.


Okay, sqlitebrowser (from the #Debian repositories) is actually a pretty decent tool. It provides a nice point-and-click interface that makes working with #sqlite3 databases a little bit nicer. Knowledge of how to write an #SQL query is still a requirement, but it makes creating/editing tables more convenient. Maybe it's well known, but I just discovered it yesterday.

Edit: sqlite browser, not mysqlbrowser

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


The verdict means: That, IN FACT, Trump unlawfully cheated to win the 2016 election.

Then the election law felon went on to nominate 3 SCOTUS judges.

What profound injustice to us all that our system has no mechanism to right this history-altering crime.

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