@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

LonM

@LonM@vivaldi.net

PhD in Computer Science, teaching at HWU Edinburgh
Vivaldi Forum Moderator, Soprano Tester.
Luddite. Environmentalist. Socialist.

I do not give consent for my posts to be used to train SALAMI models.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

mjg59, to random
@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer avatar

The "Recall can't record DRMed video content" thing is because DRMed video content is entirely invisible to the OS. The OS passes the encrypted content to your GPU and tells it where to draw it, and the GPU decrypts it and displays it there. It's not a policy decision on the Recall side, it's just how computers work.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@waderoberts @mjg59 @pluralistic I always find it infuriating that publishers both pushed for artificial digital scarcity and not allowing us to re-sell our digital purchases. Pick one.

skrishna, to space
@skrishna@wandering.shop avatar

INCREDIBLE images from China's Chang’e 6 lander, which landed on the far side of the moon late on June 1 and lifted off in an ascent vehicle with the first lunar samples from the far side of the moon yesterday.

Image credit: CNSA

the moon’s surface looking browinsh gray, not a lot of large rocks
The moon’s surface with one black and gold lander leg in the photo
A wide angle shot with the lander leg in the front and the moon in the distance

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@skrishna That's impressive. Is the colour accurate on those photos? I guess for some reason I always assumed lunar regolith was neutral and gray, here it looks quite saturated and almost the colour of wet sand.

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Trying to work out if it is worth hooking up my TV to FreeView for the election.

Even "live" the BBC iPlayer seems to be about 90 seconds behind realtime.

(No need to explain to me how video encoding and transmission works, thanks.)

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@Edent Are those 90 seconds important? If it's something like a sporting or cultural event where your immediate interaction with others is part of the experience, sure, but I don't see why it would be important for an election.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@Edent Very true. I'm curious as to what the use case for really live TV would be for election coverage. I should have worded that differently.

gabrielesvelto, to random
@gabrielesvelto@fosstodon.org avatar

I'm gonna say it: I'm really, really grateful to our QA people. Testing stuff over and over and over is not fun, but it's crucially important. There's so many things that can't be caught by automated tests. There's no replacement for a user manually interacting with your software.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@gabrielesvelto there exists a "sysadmins day" every year. Maybe there should be a QA appreciation day too.

LonM, to VideoGames
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

petition update:
🇬🇧 : The UK Petition is now 20% towards requiring a parliamentary debate. With an election looming, an optimistic view would be that opposition parties could recognise this as an issue and make pledges. That might be unlikely, but still worth trying to push for 80K more signatures, and there's many months to achieve this.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071/

🇦🇺 : The Australian petition is now live. Their site says petitions need at least 50 for referral. It's met that already, but the more the better. It closes in just over a week.
https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN6080

🇨🇦 : The Canadian petition is open for a few months. It has passed the minimum goal of 500, but more signatures is always better.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4965

If you care about or please consider sharing this across the web and in person. Thanks!

Edent, to infosec
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

What does this even mean?

I suppose a SIM might contain SMS or contact details - but those are far more likely to be on the phone these days.
Call records aren't stored on there.
So what was "downloaded"?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/27/met-police-admit-downloading-sim-radical-french-publisher-lawyer-claims

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@Edent maybe they meant that they have so far downloaded an esim, but haven't actually reviewed it yet

LonM, to VideoGames
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

The UK petition to is now live! Anyone resident in the UK can sign it. This is an official government petition, so with enough signatures official action needs to be taken by the government.
If you care about videogame preservation, please share even if you can't sign.
Petition Link:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071

stux, to random
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

Remember kids, it is morally okay to pirate #Ubisoft games.

They remove games from people's library so yeah, they don't leave any other ways

:pirate:

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@stux If you don't like this, take a look at https://www.stopkillinggames.com - The initiative is in early phases right now, but aims to challenge and stop publishers killing games.

ianbetteridge, to random
@ianbetteridge@writing.exchange avatar

Imagine, for one second, if a national newspaper referred to gay young people as “sexuality distressed”, rather than just calling them “gay young people”.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@ianbetteridge I've just read the article in full and this part sticks out - "No one is sure why the number of children who identify as transgender has grown exponentially. Many people were disoriented by the sudden simultaneous rise of trans identity". The answer seems kind of obvious.

When we stopped maligning people for being lefties, more people started using their left hand. When we stopped hiding away gay people, more people were openly gay. As feminism grew, women got more rights and status in society. Why "Progressive countries lead to progressive change" isn't a mystery.

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Your periodic reminder that if you:

a) Dislike long threads and;

b) Follow someone who routinely posts long threads;

that is a YOU problem, which you can solve by unfollowing, and, if need be, blocking that user so they don't show up in your federated timeline.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@pluralistic I make a list and put long threaders / frequent posters in it. mastodon lets you segregate lists from your home feed, it's really useful and makes the site easier to read

damianogerli, to random
@damianogerli@mastodon.social avatar

Fast huh?
You mean, like this 2011 Driver San Francisco ad aged?

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@damianogerli Driver:SF was a great game. Ridiculous over the top story, and good gameplay.

Is this ad real? I cant believe that.

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

I'm playing around with my blog's CSS again (what else are weekends for!?)

Do you prefer <blockquote>s with or without a solid black border?

Which do you think is more readable / attractive?

Block quote with a solid black border.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@Edent I prefer quotes with a border on the left edge

rysiek, to infosec
@rysiek@mstdn.social avatar

It just hit me: as shitty and annoying as they are, cookie banners and privacy screens are freaking amazing!

They are teaching a whole generation of Web users:

  1. never to click on the default button;

  2. to always be suspicious of intentions of anything online.

:blobcatcoffee:

#InfoSec #Privacy

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@rysiek Also: 3. Teaching people that adblockers are not just for blocking ads and you can use filter lists to block cookie banners.

That said, I still see people who just click on the default option anyway.

I maintain my position that cookie banners were a mistake, and that legislators should have made browser cookie settings, DNT etc, a legally recognised form of consent / refusal.

Edent, to Electronics
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Anyone know where I can buy one of these USB dongles?

I have a device with a USB Micro socket. I want to plug in to a computer with a USB-C port.

I can find the cable version of this OTG adapter. But I'm struggling to find a small, solid component.

#USB #OTG #USBC #Electronics

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@Edent I've used kenable before, they're a decent seller. They have this, don't know if it's useful because it sits at an angle: https://www.kenable.co.uk/en/usb-cables-adapters/usb-type-c-cables/usb-c-cables/11099-usb-micro-b-socket-to-right-angled-type-c-male-plug-converter-adapter-011099-5055781245930.html

gerrymcgovern, to random
@gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green avatar

Why do lowercase letters save data? Because of text compression, which is more effective when:
There's a smaller variety of characters in the text
The less common characters use used less frequently
Characters or groups of characters are repeated more often.
https://endtimes.dev/why-lowercase-letters-save-data/

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@gerrymcgovern alternatively you could write everything IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

We set up a intranet web server for the CS club and it has student sysadmins and they are having so much fun making accounts, and messing with all the settings. I insisted in the server being a literal computer sitting in the corner of a room because I think it helps them to understand how networks work in a more concrete way.

So much of their experience blends internet, virtual machines, etc in ways that might make it harder to imagine making a network from scratch.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@futurebird that sounds great. Where I'm teaching right now the primary way to explore complex networks is to use a set of docker containers. It does give experience communicating between machines. It makes it faster and cheaper to set up. But maybe a text file descriptor is a good way of understanding network topology. And trying to debug stuff when one docker setup fails to work while an identical setup works for someone else is a nightmare. The class is at a higher level, so I'm assuming that they have a good mental model of networks already, but I can't be certain.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Literacy crisis in college students: Essay from a professor on students who don’t read.”

If you’re like me and your livelihood consists of either selling textual objects or using textual objects to sell services to a youth-obsessed sector (tech) then this is seriously bad news https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@baldur this article is written from an American perspective. Some anecdotal talk from teachers in Scotland suggests something similar happening here. I wonder if there are any countries, or specific languages, where students have managed to avoid this decline in literacy.

LonM, to ai
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

A student today was having trouble with some code, not understanding how it was formed or what type the variables were. I asked how they wrote it, and the student told me they used ChatGPT. I suggested looking at the documentation for the library, and apparently that never occurred to them.

This is a real problem with code generation tools. Sure, you can use them to make something that runs, but you as the programmer are not going to get the deep understanding and learning of the concept involved that you would otherwise have gotten if you had read the docs and written it yourself.

If you're already experienced and want to use these tools to speed up your work, great, you already know this. But if you're learning, the last thing you should do is use code generators.

LonM, to Scotland
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

Nitter going away is going to be bad for public service notices. My local public transport use Twitter as a primary mode of communication, and info given in replies can be more clear than general service status info given through their apps.

I have taken 5 minutes to leave a comment with Scotrail and Stagecoach via their website, to let them know how unusable twitter has become (and to throw a line in about mastodon). I would suggest if there are any bus or train users that feel similarly to take a moment to politely leave a note on their inquiry forms.

clive, to random
@clive@saturation.social avatar

I just realized an interesting client-side filter it would be fun to try and make for Mastodon

I’d like to generate views/panes based on level of activity

A pane devoted to posts by people who don’t post very often …

… and whose posts I might otherwise miss

They’re often terrific gems

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@clive This would be very useful. Users can kind of already do that with lists, but when following someone new it can be hard to judge which list they should go in to, and it needs maintained over time. And how to handle boosts?

internetarchive, to random
@internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org avatar

Welcome to the public domain, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928)! https://archive.org/details/SteamboatWillie

Steamboat Willie

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@internetarchive Everyone focuses on the mouse, but I'm just glad that artists are now free to anthropomorphise steam whistles.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

It’s 38 years since Clive Sinclair launched the ill-fated Sinclair C5 battery-electric recumbent tricycle.

How would a modernized, redesigned equivalent be received by the market today, given the rise of e-bikes and congestion charge zones for cars? (I'm pretty sure an update would be lighter, if only b/c batteries have moved on and e-bike components are available off-the-shelf.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@cstross Electric mopeds that are popular in places like Taiwan seem like the true spiritual successor

rolle, to threads
@rolle@mementomori.social avatar

There is no proper content filtering on any other microblogging service than on Mastodon. I absolutely love I can mute the topics here so that it is like they were never there in the first place. It’s amazing that you can tweak the visibility in any step, mute infinitely or for a certain time and even block whole domains. And while I’m listing these topics I’m blocking out like Trump and US politics in written format right here I can be sure no algorithm is ”learning” and offering me posts relates to exactly the things I do not want to see, like Trump and US politics, after posting this post.

I was bummed that not even Threads have the muted words feature, it is there only for replies. On the other hand why should the big corporate death machine want people to fully control what the users want to see… it is by design. The users are painfully concious about the algorithm there, but completely oblivious about its exploitative nature.

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@rolle I really love the filter feature. It's fun to set it to hide stuff behind a content warning because then you can visualise just how much time and mental space you're saving by not fed the stuff you didn't want.

liaizon, (edited ) to fediverse
@liaizon@wake.st avatar

Way more interesting and healthy fediverse news is happening in the shadows and is barely getting discussed! Discourse has federation between different instances of itself and other software such as Mastodon working!

Attached is a demo video from Angus McLeod via their announcement here: https://meta.discourse.org/t/activitypub-plugin/266794/117

LonM,
@LonM@vivaldi.net avatar

@liaizon Stuff like this will make engaging with new online groups much easier - no need to create a new account for every single place you want to comment at.

I moderate a forum (it uses nodebb) and spam is always a concern, but then the fediverse concept of distributed server moderation and banning entire untrusted servers should help to alleviate that somewhat.

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