Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town
- Website
- http://cryto.net/~joepie91/
- Matrix
- @joepie91:pixie.town
- Pronouns
- they/them, he/him, whatever, it's not like I have any idea either 🙃
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
- No alt text (request) = no boost.
- Boosts OK for all boostable posts.
- DMs are open.
- Flirting welcome, but be explicit if you want something out of it!
- The devil doesn't need an advocate; no combative arguing in my mentions.
Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.
Joined Aug 2019
One of the few fascinating outcomes of the cryptocurrency world is the somewhat-established practice of "hack bounties", where someone hacks an insecure exchange or whatever, steals the funds, and then negotiates to return most-but-not-all of the funds in exchange for not being prosecuted, leaving them with a partial 'bounty' for having found the issue.
This negotiation process succeeds with impressive regularity.
Sven Slootweg
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our lawyers ask you to please scroll to the bottom of this unreasonably tiny box that displays the terms of service before selecting “i agree” so that we can pretend you’ve read it
open-source hardware meta, Prusa
This is an excerpt from the Hackaday article on the new (proprietary) Prusa printer:
"While the lack of design files for these new Prusa printers is unfortunate on a philosophical level, it’s hard to argue that they’re any less repairable, upgradable, or hackable than their predecessors."
This is not meant as a slight against Hackaday, since their point does make sense and I've left out the context. But I do want to draw attention to the phrasing for a moment: "it's hard to argue that..."
This is *exactly* how it works, how companies close up previously open systems. That it's hard to argue is *not* a good thing - instead, it's the crucial property that makes it possible to close things up in the first place.
If you have a reputation for open-source things, you're not going to suddenly close up everything, that would draw way too much attention and ire from the community. What you do instead, is to gradually close little bits, while assuring people that they can keep doing what they were doing.
You keep nominally offering them the *benefits* of open-source, or at least the appearance of those benefits, but without offering them the thing that *guarantees* those benefits. Then you start slowly chipping away at those benefits, only ever reducing the benefits for a small group without enough sway to speak out against it.
Sure, you still get the STLs, you can still print replacement parts! You can no longer modify the designs to create your own modified version, but hey, only a few people did that anyway, so what's the harm, right? Not like those few people can raise enough of a stink.
By segmenting the group of "people who are losing their benefits" into small enough chunks each time, you can eventually close down the entire thing, without ever pissing off enough people *at once* for it to be a risk to your business. Coordinating activist actions across years is very difficult, after all, so you just need to make sure that one group lost interest before pissing off the next one.
I cannot predict the future of Prusa, and it's possible that they end up being the exception to this process, but it's unlikely. Usually this is how it goes.
The moral of the story here is: if something is taken away from you, and it is "hard to argue" that it really harms you, that is *especially* the moment where you need to be paying attention, because it's often deliberate.
Sven Slootweg
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I published a card game on the Internet, called Future Invaders.
It's entirely free to play, you just have to print your copy at home.
A solid year of work went into it, I hope you'll give it a try and enjoy it !
Check out its website, it's fully featured and should answer all your questions.
#futureinvaders #card #game #games #cardgame #boardgame #scifi #space
Sven Slootweg
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Anyone have suggestions on how to suppress hunger pangs that doesn't involve food or copious amounts of water?
Open to suggestions, because if I drink any more water I'm gonna be sick.
Sven Slootweg
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Kinda crazy I'm about to go to the local movie theater to see a full length award winning movie made (almost?) 100% in Blender.
15 years ago people would have laughed at the idea that this would ever happen.
Sven Slootweg
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Sven Slootweg
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Five juvenile ravens moved into town during a recent cold spell. They’re a little bit too boisterous to capture easily in groups but will pose for you occasionally. I have an unreasonable liking for the one with the autofocus mishap. And bonus starlings
Sven Slootweg
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Sven Slootweg
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(girlfriend arc)
hey fedi, do you have the link to that funny warning sign generator?
At least a fair amount of people followed the practice of "do not tell people to use NixOS without mentioning its problems or without a concrete offer of help", so it's less bad than it could have been. But some folks... didn't do that.
I remember the discussion I had with some NixOS community members, warning them that deliberately creating hype and memes around #NixOS would risk ruining its reputation due to people getting annoyingly evangelist about it, and being told that I was worrying too much and there's nothing wrong with a bit of marketing.
Mentioning this for no particular reason.
Sven Slootweg
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Can’t believe we’re already in the time of year where @TechConnectify starts painting lightbulbs in festive colors
Sven Slootweg
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I am so incredibly tired of finding the perfect clothing item and then having to look for something else next time I go to the store because they stopped making it
Sven Slootweg
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fedi pls recommend me some peppermint tea bags available in the US that don't come with each individual sodding bag wrapped in plastic, boosts OK
EDIT: Celestial Seasonings it is then, thanks everyone and sincerely screw you Aldi for giving me another job to do, mumble grumble bloody Bennings mutter plastic crap changed the packaging etc etc
Sven Slootweg
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Sven Slootweg
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#PSA #Authors #Writers #ScamAlert
Bad press alert: #Dreamspinner is once again soliciting submissions, despite the fact that they have not paid royalties owed to some of their authors for over six years!
Here's @victoriastrauss of Writer Beware on them, back in 2019:
Algorithm is not quite working in all cases yet. Back to the drawing board. Again...
Sven Slootweg
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@eniko I've used a projector instead of a TV since I think 2019 and it's been Great.
Bloke on Craigslist sold me a conference room projector for like $300, it was great. Lady on local Buy Nothing group put up an Optoma that didn't work, it just had a knackered colour wheel, ten minute swap job, sold her the old conference room projector cheap, it's Great.
As with anything, used is best; if you spend €250 on a new one it'll be shit, if you spend €250 on one that cost a grand a few years ago you'll be smiling. Office types go through projectors like they go through computers, buy a whole new fleet every few years whether they need them or not so the middle managers look like they're doing something. The old ones show up eventually on Craigslist or eBay or liquidation sites. See what's available in your area and before buying, check prices for lamps (last a couple years) and colour wheels if it's a DLP (last longer, but they're a spinny mechanical part and do eventually wear out). Most importantly plug the model number into https://www.projectorcentral.com/projection-calculator-pro.cfm and that'll tell you how well the projector can fit into your physical space. Nearly every projector has vertical keystone adjustment to give you a bit of wiggle room, some have horizontal as well, some do it by moving physical parts (good), some do it in software (usually acceptable), it's best to not need it but it's there if you do.
You can project onto a screen or onto a blank bit of wall if your walls are light coloured. Screens also come up cheap on craigslist. Just like with thin TVs the sound will be shite, you'll want external speakers (fancy 5.1 home cinema systems are great but you can also use a free old BlackPlasticTat hifi system from the 90's outta the skip if it has a line-in and you get a HDMI audio splitter). You'll want to dim the room and the contrast will not be great but yaknowwhat, it's bloody hard to argue with a hundred-inch picture for less than half a grand.
This is another thing I need to make a blog post about on my blog that doesn't exist
- Website
- http://cryto.net/~joepie91/
- Matrix
- @joepie91:pixie.town
- Pronouns
- they/them, he/him, whatever, it's not like I have any idea either 🙃
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
- No alt text (request) = no boost.
- Boosts OK for all boostable posts.
- DMs are open.
- Flirting welcome, but be explicit if you want something out of it!
- The devil doesn't need an advocate; no combative arguing in my mentions.
Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.
Joined Aug 2019
