Show newer

Post from Existential Comics [@existentialcoms]

A silicon valley dude, creating billions of dollars in value: "what if we create an app that takes a little bit of everyone else's money whenever they do anything."

#technology

@itzzen@solarpunk.moe @modulux While that is true for the "littering the public sphere with crap" aspect of it, the "worker exploitation" aspect is hairier - even when building something for a nominally legitimate purpose (which accessibility definitely is, if done right!) it still matters exactly how the training data was sourced.

And while there are plenty of things called "AI" that can pass that test, for LLM stuff in particular it's not clear that it's even *possible* to do with ethical sourcing due to the sheer quantity of training data needed.

Mozilla has, crucially, been very quiet on that point of where they intend to source the training data from.

Doing the “counting the number of people who aren't white men” thing again for the speaker line-up and audience photos for a recent conference for a computer thing.

And as usual, I am thoroughly disappointed 😒

Nice, the entire Faroe Islands is on strike

GNOME shill: "Tray icons are bad UX"
Me, desperately looking for an easy way to see which GUI apps I have running in the background:

The Book Wheel was an invention from the 16th century for people that needed multiple tabs open before browsers were invented.

🏠Have you ever moved house?

Tear down is kind of like that, except it’s not all going to one place, some is time dependent, the truck’s turned up too early, and now it’s started raining. Also everything is muddy, can only be transported with a particular combo of people and vehicles, or has a visiting member of the local wildlife. HQ has a pigeon.

If you have any positive vibes for the tear down crew, leave them here and we’ll make sure they’re passed on this evening when they get a chance to read them.

#emfcamp #emf2024

@interfluidity@zirk.us They were just biding their time until they weren't being scrutinized so closely, as per usual... and people bought into that 🙁

sometimes I see people here CW food and I'm like: ohh, you're remembering that I and other friends need that CW'd. And I feel cared for and warm because someone is showing they care about my needs.

Element's shit handling of notifications (ie. when the server is slow, it takes a long time for the notification indicator to go away) is a big anxiety trigger for me, actually

I've been thinking a lot about centralization and decentralization over the last few days (well, decades, but this particular train of thought has been running for a few days.)

The thing about centralized platforms (for anything! social media, electricity generation, food distribution, government, business, etc.) is they can work really well.

You get a lot of benefits from centralization, a lot of deduplication of effort. Sometimes, in the case of things like power grids, centralization is so much more efficient than decentralization that considering the latter starts to feel ridiculous.

When built correctly, centralized platforms work very well.

But, they fail horribly. Really horribly, and on a scale and in ways that are only possible for centralized platforms.

HEPA filter, old/new.

When I’m thinking about good (somewhere between low- and high) #tech, I’m also thinking HEPA. Randomly fabricated fibers that randomise and trick the movements of particles.

Air purifiers are part of the #solarpunk future. Not only to be equipped for #wildwires. #airpollution

*Edit: great typo: #wildwires instead of #wildfires!

An interesting insight from a conversation about the Fermi paradox and Great Filter theories: what if our entire framing is just wrong?

The way we talk about 'advanced civilizations' seems inextricably tied to capitalism and imperatives of endless growth, rather than genuine techno-social advancement; its almost always about *scale*, rather than about capability, and that is a capitalist mode of thought.

What if the question isn't "how are we the only advanced civilization?", but instead it is "how are we the only civilization that hasn't figured out to make itself sustainable yet"?

What if the Fermi paradox is really just the question of our species' failure to prioritize correctly?

public health advisory, head lice, for queer hacker communities especially :boost_requested: 

I am now aware of 3 separate, geographically distributed cases of head lice infections among folks that are involved in a queer hacker community somehow.

This is beginning to look like a pattern, especially considering how comparatively rare these infections are among adults. So I wonder if we may have a little public health issue on our hands.

I don't know the exact scope, but if you belong to that community, *especially* in or around Germany, please check for head lice! They are generally not harmful, but become very itchy and annoying over time.

(Note: if you find lice elsewhere on your body, instead of your head, talk to your doctor first! Those are different lice, and may be carrying diseases depending on region. Do not try to DIY this.)

If you find lice:
1. Prefer using a lice comb, and conditioner or lice shampoo, to carefully remove lice daily over a span of 14 days. This can be self-administered, or by someone else, but follow the instructions that come with the comb. Available at local pharmacies.

2. If this does not work for you for some reason (eg. uncooperative hair), consider using Prioderm/dimeticon, available at pharmacies. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, this is somewhat finicky stuff to use.

3. If that doesn't work for your hair either, an experimental option (that we've had a lot of success with here) is DIY heat treatment using a hairdryer, drying out the lice and killing them. Heat the (dry) hair, especially near the scalp, as long as you can without hurting. Blow from *under* the hair. Repeat daily for 14 days, and comb what you can.

For any of these treatments, if you still find lice (alive or otherwise) after the treatment period, keep repeating the treatment until you don't. Do not skip days - you'll have to start over. Note that lice can be very small and difficult to see!

So it turns out that someone rewrote node-ffi (the C FFI library) in Rust (still a C FFI library) and it's orders of magnitude faster 🙃

Show older
Pixietown

Small server part of the pixie.town infrastructure. Registration is closed.