Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

Reposting something here that I wrote for a conversation elsewhere. It's not going to provide any new insights here, I'm just happy that I finally managed to put it all into one coherent point. Edited for punctuation.

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I have a real problem with the normative culture of "having an opinion about everything", especially from white dudes - at no point do people ask themselves "am I actually qualified to cast an opinion on this, or should I defer my judgment to someone who is materially affected by it and who will be familiar with the details?", instead it is just assumed that "everyone" (read: white men) have a fundamental right to Have An Opinon, and do so loudly, and that it should be taken into account regardless of qualifications or skin in the game.

This is so culturally embedded that even people who do not *intend* to disrupt discussions still end up doing so by displaying the above behaviour, detracting from the subject matter experts, and refusing to ever trust anyone's word on anything unless *they, personally* feel that they fully understand and agree with it. And this happens at such a scale that it is almost impossible to defend against.

That problem makes an appearance in the discourse for just about every marginalized group in some form or another, *and outside of that too*, down to things like technical conversations where people get irritated by people chiming in with useless commentary that wasn't asked for while someone is trying to figure something out.

Once the new footbridge is open in Zwolle, it will be a magnificent location to watch the performance of “Knoop Zwolle”. It is a very dense program where every half hour 10 trains are connecting to each other and the reason why Zwolle is the starting point of the Dutch train timetable.

Na de zoveelste non-profit of goed bedoelende site vol trackers en cookies moest ik dit toch echt even kwijt. Want het hoeft echt niet. En probeer vooral eens uit te zoeken wie in je organisatie iets zou DOEN dan met al die tracking data. Goeie kans dat er niemand naar omkijkt maar je wel het surfgedrag van je gebruikers verklikt aan adverteerders:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/of-je-doet-geen-cookies/

people: its like im sick all the time now. i would give anything to make it stop

me: you could wear a mask

people: no not like that

Hiya fedi, I need your knowledge! The family wants to digitise a big collection of old photographs, negatives and photo slides. I know there’s services we can send the material to that do this for a living, but grandpa is afraid to hand them off for fear of them getting damaged, lost etc. So I need to figure out how to do this “in house” as best I can.

I’ve figured out there’s specific photo scanners, instead of a flat bed scanner, that should be able to handle the negatives and the slides.

But what I don’t know is about good software to scan and archive them properly, what things to watch out for when doing this and what kind of software exists that could help restore and enhance the digital copies.

It doesn’t matter if this is a slow going process, there’s no deadline here.

If you have any recommendations for hardware equipment, software or documentation and protocols to read I’d be very grateful. I would prefer to do this using open source software but if there’s proprietary software that makes a meaningful difference I’m happy to consider it.

(I know how to search the web myself, so I’m looking for advice from folks with practical experience, not just a Google search hit or whatever an LLM misgenerated.)

Boost would be appreciated since unfortunately I’m short on folks with this type of knowledge in my own social circles.

Good morning my brain decided I had to immediately create and post this

In Europe, flying is cheaper than taking the train.

It's an embarrassment, and a major problem: we have to stop flying for silly short distances. Realise that the overheads of flying (reaching the airport, awaiting 2 hours, the flight, the unloading, reaching the destination) largely cancel out any time gains of flying. And the carbon costs are utterly untenable. Not to speak of the modern, dire conditions of the whole flying "experience".

Another embarrassment is that train connections can't be guaranteed when across countries or companies. They aren't even coordinated. As if those who commission and set the schedules didn't travel by train themselves, at least not internationally. In considering how tiny most European countries are, it's frankly bizarre.

There are so many destinations one could travel by train to, yet in practice, it's not sensible. A disgrace.

The upside is that it can be fixed.

#trains #EuroRail

@albertcardona So true! And on top of that, it's often super hard to figure out where/how to buy the relevant tickets. You don't want to know how much time I spent on that. I actually wrote a blog with tips about this: https://mariekevanvugt.blogspot.com/2023/08/how-to-travel-by-train-in-europe.html

I would ask that folks please read the entire thread (the last post in the thread is here https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/112401426707865447 just in case it gets cut off) before considering replying here with comments or questions about the situation :)

StackExchange Inc's deal with OpenAI is extremely frustrating, and users are being left without much recourse.

the story is already hitting the tech press, but much of it is missing important details and context about how StackExchange sites are run, not to mention the history of organised protest against SEI's pro-LLM stance.

I wrote a bunch about it here, in case anyone is interested in learning more about the situation and its impact:

https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/112401284014892261

"that's not the kind of thing a decent human being says" is a fire response in general.

Gotta remember that for when some right-wing shithead tries to argue that people don't deserve rights again.