ben_zen

@ben_zen@social.sdf.org

Software engineer by trade, frequently seen on a bike. I design recipes for fun, and sometimes I'm an otter on the internet. Networks fascinate me.

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alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

If you oppose DRM, I encourage you to explore what's been made officially available without it! Pay for it if you can! Share it with your friends.

Broaden your entertainment horizons! How about make your own?

There's plenty to choose from!

Please don't suggest "piracy": I'm not opposing it but as political action it backfires...

If ars Paradoxica can become as much of a must-hear as Back to the Future is a must see, that'd undermine Hollywood's narrative of why they need DRM!

ben_zen,

@alcinnz
This is a large part of why I enjoy buying books from Tor Publishing: their ebooks have always been DRM-free, even now that they're a Macmillan subsidiary.

Smashwords is also a great source of DRM-free epubs.

GossiTheDog, to random
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    ben_zen,

    @GossiTheDog

    @expertenkommision_cyberunfall @jornane

    It's not a bypass at all, though. It just runs it at the same privilege. Here's Raymond's remarks: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20161117-00/?p=94735

    ben_zen, to random

    Seeing "Configuration as Code" rebranded "GitOps" is an amusing shift, but a welcome one for the broader industry.

    #scale21x

    ben_zen,

    @vwbusguy it's a good term! It's absolutely easier for marketing, it's catchy—all good things. If more people put better practices around CI & CD because of it, all the better.

    ben_zen, to random

    "Don't let someone on Mastodon tell you you can't" is a generally-applicable statement from @vwbusguy — he said it in the context of running rpm-ostree, but I think it's generally a good idea 😁

    pixel, to Seattle
    @pixel@urusai.social avatar

    does anyone in the area know how to work on ? i need help with something on mine and I'm not quite sure I have the know-how to fix it myself

    ben_zen,

    @pixel Hey, what're you dealing with? I've built a couple of keyboards over the years.

    ben_zen, to SmallWeb

    One definition of the #SmallWeb that I saw emphasized selfhosting above all else. I'm not sure that's the right approach, really. Community hosting seems like a solid idea, and it's the basis of the more successful parts of the fediverse. I even rely on community hosting for my blog, because that's the most effective use of my and others' resources! But we can't expect uptime to be perfect, when we're doing things on a community scale.

    https://ben.zen.sdf.org/blog/rough-around-the-edges/

    danilo, to random
    @danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

    A thing you’ll see on Mastodon is this kind of gut assumption that wide-open computing and platform strategies are inherently virtuous.

    And that competing approaches with more proprietary or corporate-controlled mechanics are inherently evil and poisonous.

    Another thing you’ll see on Mastodon is waves and waves of spam, as a wide-open community commons finds its social and infrastructure fabric torn apart by bad actors.

    ben_zen,

    @danilo
    That's an exceptionally weak argument, as assembled; a counterpoint is that community-driven services can have community-driven policies & mores, while a commercial service is going to often—not always, but often in tech—have external influences on its rules and policies.

    There's a place for controls and safeguards, but those should be in the service of the community, not curbing expression.

    NatureMC, to cooking
    @NatureMC@mastodon.online avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    ben_zen,

    @NatureMC that's terrible. My boyfriend's mom handed me a lovely jar of blackberry jam from her yard, and I cooked a fine batch of blueberry jam last summer after going picking. Admittedly, this area also produces a lot of local small-batch stuff, but I can't imagine going your entire life not having home-made jam.

    ben_zen,

    @spockrocket it's also a matter of location and familiarity; out in the PNW, berries are everywhere and highly recognizable. Now that I've got some practice identifying berries in the wild, I'd probably be more comfortable foraging back home in Minnesota.

    ben_zen, to Seattle

    Two gay bars were visited by Washington's Liquor Control Board over the weekend, and they issued citations for lewd conduct—some dudes were in jockstraps, and a bartender was either shirtless or had a visible nipple! (The shock, the horror.)

    The board claims this is not a priority enforcement area, but when they're sending a large group into historic queer bars to police queer expression, clearly it is.

    #Seattle #Queer

    https://www.thestranger.com/queer/2024/01/29/79363398/police-fire-and-the-liquor-board-raided-two-seattle-gay-bars/

    ben_zen, to random

    Over the weekend, I signed myself up for refurbishing a #Hobart Kitchenaid that as best I can tell dates to sometime in the mid-1970s. It is probably 50 years old, and it needs some love and care. #RestorationProject

    The side of this Hobart-made Kitchenaid. It's a Model K5-A, the predecessor of today's bowl-lift models.

    ben_zen,

    Further Kitchenaid update, now that I've dismantled it and ordered most of the parts:

    This #Hobart is in amazing condition for being roughly 50 years old. (Based on the date codes in the castings, it was probably made in early 1977, and for some other reasons.)

    There's been one significant issue, which is that the pins linking the planetary housing to its axle and the worm gear to its axle are bent. Those are the only difficult parts.

    Motor armature from a Hobart-built stand mixer. There's a heavy band of carbon build-up on the rotor, but the windings are practically pristine.
    Two unfortunately bent pins; these both have grooves in them, presumably for seating in a smaller-diameter hole. The upper pin is 3/32"×3/4", while the lower pin is 5/32"×7/8".

    GossiTheDog, to random
    @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    ben_zen,

    @GossiTheDog
    "final" or what? Or they start trying to work around the entire population of actors they trained and built up?

    nixCraft, to random
    @nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

    😂

    ben_zen,

    @nixCraft @michaeljoseph All the powerful debugging tools in the world won't help if you can't get them attached to a repro device… but usually you can get a log file.

    thecorodon, to random
    @thecorodon@wandering.shop avatar

    In retrospect you probably shouldn't go up against writers in a contest of who can keep doing something longer while not making any money.

    ben_zen,

    @thecorodon
    Let alone consider controlling the narrative?

    GossiTheDog, to random
    @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

    There’s a court case going on in the US which includes this line:

    “Microsoft controls Mr. Beaumont’s tweets as the principal of Mr. Beaumont.”

    Please laugh, I did. The case is saying Microsoft forced or directed me to say something. No. Microsoft famously did not control what I tweet.

    ben_zen,

    @GossiTheDog
    Uh, what? No? We're kinda constantly reminded exactly the opposite all the time…

    kwf, to random
    @kwf@social.afront.org avatar

    Telephone museum let's fucking GOOOOOO!

    This place has been on my bucket list for more than a decade.

    image/jpeg
    image/jpeg
    image/jpeg

    ben_zen,

    @kwf
    I didn't know you were in town! The connections museum rocks.

    mjgardner, (edited ) to VideoGames
    @mjgardner@social.sdf.org avatar

    So very tired of modern “” . Most of the time it’s stolen valor by devs who weren’t even born when was still riding high with its Voodoo Graphics cards, in hopes that players will overlook the derivative gameplay because they get a frisson from the visuals.

    I paid for all the dots in this “Retina display.” Use them.

    ben_zen,

    @mjgardner there's a charm in lofi video game art, though—or in playing with what pixel art can do. I love the combination of pixel art characters and backgrounds with modern particle effects, because it's amplifying the artifice of it.

    And…if the gameplay isn't entirely boring, even if it is derivative, then what really is the harm?

    ben_zen, to markdown

    Okay, so between my two contestants for #markdown editor with word processing abilities, I am really baffled at my choices:

    • #Obsidian: really intended for smaller notes, has some Notion-like cross-document linking and database aspects
    • #Typora: Handles large documents, but only one file per window. Requires theme editing to change the font
    • #Zettlr: Handles multiple files well, including linkages between them, but is slow as fuck on 27k word files. Gives you a CSS edit box.
    ben_zen,

    @kboyd I also run into the problem that Obsidian just doesn't work well as a word processor without plugins; there's a plugin that does typography, but the base application doesn't handle what I consider a baseline feature. Typora and Zettlr both do; Zettlr's version is a bit more fully-featured and configurable.

    ben_zen,

    @kboyd
    I just mean the things like properly inserting an ellipsis, or getting my dashes right. These are things that bother me much more when I'm writing with a proportional font, which I prefer for prose.

    I'm in this uncomfortable spot where VS Code is the wrong-shaped tool for the job, but the full writing environments are all too heavy or proprietary in some way. Plus in the end I expect to shove what I write through Pandoc for formatting.

    ben_zen,

    @kboyd @indrora that's kinda the root of the problem. I'm not just looking to edit text, I'm working on prose, and there's facilities that make prose editing a lot easier—but which most markdown editors don't have, because their goals are just different.

    TechConnectify, to random
    @TechConnectify@mas.to avatar

    I don't know why it took me this long to articulate this thought, but Tesla's charging model is ultimately a trap for themselves:

    They rely on other folks to provide services near their charging sites. That's clever, BUT it means they do not make any money from those services.

    And that's precisely what keeps gas stations in business. They compete with one another to such an extent that the fuel is sold barely above cost, and the store/car wash/cafe is where they /actually/ make money.

    ben_zen,

    @thesteelrat @TechConnectify we're already seeing charging stations deployed at grocery stores; I'd expect to see it deployed in rest stops and to see more rest stops become like the Oases in Canada, where you have fuel, coffee/donuts (Tim Hortons), and usually some other food options. Take a bit and have a coffee while you charge.

    ben_zen,

    @TechConnectify @thesteelrat absolutely agreed. I wasn't thinking of this as an "instead", but I can see where it'd be taken as such.

    My apartment complex has some chargers in the garage, but it's still limited spaces that require people to re-park regularly; hopefully that changes with time.

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