Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

People who use albuterol rescue inhalers, have you noticed a dip in effectiveness over the last year or so? I thought it was just me but been talking to some coworkers and they're having that experience too

fine people of the internet: I want to purchase a pair of speakers that can adequately render the entire range of a full sized piano that I can set up on or near my full sized piano for comfortable listening to my full sized piano in a normal living room sized space and I'd like to hear the bass end with some reasonable clarity *without* it being The Earthquake Machine that causes my upstairs neighbor who is the condo board president to pass new "bylaws"

anyone got any recommendations?

I haven't told anyone about this yet, so let's go: Last fall, attorney's working for a certain social media company we will call "Schmeta" reached out to me asking for help with a copyright suit specifically because I was an academic who is also an 'expert' with Blender. 🧵

This page shows various amounts of wealth shown to scale, in visual form.

If you think you can imagine it without clicking, even somewhat, I dare you to verify that yourself.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

I’d like to know about the cost of clothes in the absence of globalization. I think the answer would start with a small herd of sheep, the salary of the herder (let’s assume living salaries for all involved!), the amount of wool produced, washing, spinning, weaving (or other techniques), cutting, sewing, etc. how many hours for each step? I’d also like to see pictures of all the steps involved. The only semi-non-industrial pullovers I remember were the Icelandic sheep wool pullovers of my youth. I was born in Iceland so my parents and some and wore them for many winters.

How long do you steep your tea? 🍵

meme, medical

"There is a way through this. But we have to remember who actually cares for us, and who is responsible, who we can trust, and who is trying to profit off of false solutions."

A poem, i think.

https://petergelderloos.substack.com/p/there-is-a-way-through-this

"Here’s the real, ugly truth: This is just how every major climate disaster is going to unfold online from here on out. There will be criticisms and expressions of fury, some more fair and reasoned than others, But in an ecosystem where social media outlets have purposefully hobbled their ability to provide real-time, reliable updates to users, the people affected by those disasters are literally left in the dark." https://slate.com/technology/2025/01/california-los-angeles-palisades-wildfire-conspiracy-theories.html?ref=organizingmythoughts.org

me in 2010: yeah windows and google services are not perfect but pretty damn good but let's just fiddle around with linux and self hosted stuff for fun

me in 2017: can't be bothered anymore, i just use mostly windows and let my stuff float around in the cloud, it's probably fine

me in recent years: god no your questionable ai can not have my data let me self host everything sensitive and use mostly linux again

Have you had that "Upcoming price change for your Microsoft 365 subscription" email yet? They want to charge you an extra ~60% for AI features, and they do *not* make it easy to find the way to turn it off. It took me minutes of searching - this is a particularly evil dark pattern.

"Switch plan" just lets you pick between annual and monthly billing. You want "Turn off recurring billing" and then "Current subscription without AI".

You're welcome. Please boost for others.

idk if this has been shared yet by others here but like, beyond just what Meta’s “transparency center” already describes publicly, the leaked internal documents are Insane.

full article: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/

@NOS journaal brengt het bericht dat we vorig jaar officieel door de 1,5 graad opwarming zijn gegaan. Het was een record-warm jaar. Er worden een paar redenen gegeven, el nino kan invloed gehad hebben, maar toen kwam er een gekmakend zinnetje:

"Er werd nog nooit zoveel co2 uitgestoten als vorig jaar."

...

Hoe de fuck kun je dat zo neutraal en mat zeggen?! Hoe kun je niet die camera grijpen, eraan schudden en met bloeddoorlopen ogen brullen als je die zin op de autocue ziet?!

We weten al bekant een halve eeuw dat schijt de ventilator gaat raken, als we niet snel minderen met de mest hoger en hoger smijten. Jaar na jaar gaat de hele teringwereld door met smerigere en smerigere drollen in steeds ingenieuzere katapulten proppen. En nou flapt de bruine drek tegen de eerste wieken aan, waardoor iedereen en diens ouder/verzorger aan ziet komen dat de stront over ons allemaal heen gaat spetteren.
Het wordt godverdomme tijd dat we kappen met doen alsof groeiende co2-uitstoot een natuurwet is. Het is een keuze die gemaakt wordt door kapitalistische machthebbers, een misdadige keuze die alleen geld verdienen als drijfveer heeft. Geld waar je geen fuck aan hebt als je villawijk in de fik staat (kijkt sarcastisch smalend naar LA). Blijkt je strontparaplu toch lek te wezen.

Ik heb een tijdje niet lopen fulmineren hier op de socials. En het zal nou ook wel weer geen zin hebben. Maar van dit bericht werd ik wel zo godentyfus cynisch. Kan ik vegan zijn en leuke circulaire huizen bouwen wat ik wil, als de rest door blijft gaan met diarree richting draaiende objecten spuiten dan kan ik niet anders dan wanhopig loeien hoe uitgesproken dom het allemaal is.

As if scraping free content to train #AI models wasn’t enough (and #Meta already has plenty of free content created by billions of users on its platforms), as if refusing to pay a fair share to those content creators wasn’t enough, imagine working in a place where AI engineers send emails asking for clearance to use LibGen or BitTorrent in the office, in order to download GBs of pirated copyright work that can be fed to those models, and getting thumbs up from the CEO himself.

The next judge who harshly punishes a teenager for downloading his favorite movie or TV series deserves to be hit with a rubber hose under his feet. No single user of pirated content ought to be punished until the tech giants that in the past couple of years have played all kinds of dirty games with user content in order to get the best AI model are punished.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/meta_libgen_allegation/

So far the majority of the submissions for #FluConf2025 have come from demographics that are over-represented in tech and especially open-source.

While that doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the quality of the sessions, and there are some great ideas being proposed, we are painfully aware of the disparities that are common at tech conferences (gender, race, and many more).

We encourage all those who are typically underrepresented at such events to consider applying. FluConf is largely about challenging the status quo and imagining a future that includes more voices.

Before applying please consider checking if any of your underrepresented colleagues would like to present or co-present your team's work.

#FOSS #openSource #openScience #lgbtq #software #solidarity