Nostr notes by mhoye

Industrial paper cutters will glide through bone like it's ...

2026-01-24T14:54:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…prny
_________________________

Industrial paper cutters will glide through bone like it's putty. Hobart mixers can easily pull an arm off. But somehow it's impossible to hurt yourself with those things accidentally, and there are a million other examples out there of heavy, fast-moving, razor sharp tools running red hot all day every day, operated safely by people with half a grade school education because we decided that guardrails and safety interlocks are better for society than saying "I told you so" over and over again.

Increasingly angry so many people are happy to say "well what ...

2026-01-24T14:17:53Z

Increasingly angry so many people are happy to say "well what did you expect, is anyone surprised by this, why don't you have backup plans, it's your own fault," whenever a corporate IT system wrecks somebody's life for clicking the wrong button. It's sanctimonious victim blaming and it's one hundred percent bullshit, a symptom of a deeply immature industry getting permission to fuck up from an army of deeply immature people.

Reflexively shilling for corporate negligence should humiliate you.

Today in e-waste news, I just learned that electronic pregnancy ...

2026-01-23T19:34:30Z

Today in e-waste news, I just learned that electronic pregnancy tests are the paper pregnancy tests wrapped in a scanner that tells you what the paper says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpBabwFB90Y

Excuse me _what_ in the _what_. ...

2026-01-22T19:48:50Z

Excuse me _what_ in the _what_.

https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/115932018225462583

quoting
note1z97…9rm6

so it turns out that when VS Code asks you “do you trust the authors of this folder?” what they mean is that it’ll auto-execute .vscode/tasks.json if it exists, which can include shell commands.

maybe that’s too many features. you can’t hold all these features. put a few features back

I've had too many conversations where pointing out that ...

2026-01-22T16:43:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…e0x6
_________________________

I've had too many conversations where pointing out that nearly half of women STEM grads have left those fields after a decade earns me a stock "well, we need to train more women for STEM careers then" and ... I'm like, my friend, my brother, you call yourself an engineer but I say "half of X falls unaccountably out the side of process Y after Z time", and your answer is "we need to shove more X in the front end?" If you said this in a meeting about making cat toys you'd be fired.

My commitment to never forcing font settings on websites beyond ...

2026-01-21T15:24:00Z

My commitment to never forcing font settings on websites beyond font-family because people should set their own fonts and font sizes and websites should respect that is running hard into the fact that mobile browsers absolutely suck and iOS browsers absolutely suck on this front specifically.

God, I just remembered Windows Millennium Edition. Kids: Win11 is ...

2026-01-19T13:20:41Z

God, I just remembered Windows Millennium Edition.

Kids: Win11 is bad yes but once upon a time there was a version of windows so bad even the retrotech junkies won’t speak its name aloud.

it’s safe to assume incompetence with this crowd.

2026-01-17T17:50:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…wd87
_________________________

it’s safe to assume incompetence with this crowd.

It's difficult to stay optimistic in the world, I know, but ...

2026-01-16T00:11:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…7nrw
_________________________

It's difficult to stay optimistic in the world, I know, but here's a fact: about forty percent of the carbon we burn goes towards move the other carbon around so it can be burned in other places.

This industry is going to collapse faster than anyone realizes.

hashtag threat model ...

2026-01-16T00:07:16Z

hashtag threat model

It's cheaper - a lot cheaper - to build renewable capacity ...

2026-01-15T15:15:07Z

It's cheaper - a lot cheaper - to build renewable capacity than it is to keep operating coal, and that math is already rolling up fast for oil.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/india-china-coal-power-renewables-b2899298.html

there was an amazing article on suck dot com years ago about the ...

2026-01-14T15:34:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…tcjl
_________________________

there was an amazing article on suck dot com years ago about the invention of the laugh track, and how it’s real success came from making the experience of watching tv alone feel just a little bit communal, a little less alienating than the “authentic” experience of watching TV alone. A kind of social methadone.

"Acting in accordance with training" is "just ...

2026-01-09T22:21:52Z

"Acting in accordance with training" is "just following orders" on a different time scale.

Daughter just came home to tell me the teachers at school tried ...

2026-01-08T21:14:42Z

Daughter just came home to tell me the teachers at school tried to confiscate her vape but they couldn't because it's actually a kazoo.

"I made a kazoo noise at them and I could see them dying on the inside so I made a sad kazoo noise instead. I don't think it helped."

The grin on her face.

Nostr event nevent1qqsyas2jw9y2aq5jqqe8n4sycruvp60gstymvecugh5nek3mygn9uagzyp8t7uh6wh96ee70a0ytp8kuvaf2awxhrrrzw3yz0wsded5ts9x4zdy0mmv

2026-01-08T19:26:36Z

https://archive.ph/4P1Sc#selection-4635.8-4641.222

Shoutout to all the libertarians out there, proudly and ...

2026-01-07T23:50:57Z

Shoutout to all the libertarians out there, proudly and stridently saying absolutely nothing at all as they wallow in the spineless cowardice we could always see, to all the champions and defenders of second amendment gun ownership rights showing us that what they truly wanted most of all for all their talk of rights and freedoms was to be the ones wearing the jackboots, to be the bullying shitheaded thugs we could always tell they were desperate to be.

Nostr event nevent1qqsdev3muuylc5n44vhu6c5kg852tumq2nad8nuggyatfzjwcgklgwgzyp8t7uh6wh96ee70a0ytp8kuvaf2awxhrrrzw3yz0wsded5ts9x4zsd59et

2026-01-07T19:18:45Z

Ok, so: after Discord, where?

The idea that programming is about generating code makes exactly ...

2026-01-07T14:21:13Z

The idea that programming is about generating code makes exactly as much sense as the idea that cooking is about generating shit.

We're an AI first company. Our mission is to streamline your ...

2026-01-06T18:25:26Z

We're an AI first company. Our mission is to streamline your experience and let you turn ideas into execution at the speed of thought. To join our team make PDFs out of your cv and cover letter, upload the PDFs, then retype all the text in the PDFs into more textboxes. Copy/paste is disabled. A question that is illegal to ask is mandatory. <>[]{},%#$ characters forbidden. Accents forbidden. The back button breaks everything. You have been logged out for inactivity. Click here to restart.

Almost? We've still got the PC+Kbd+Mouse model around, and ...

2026-01-06T18:14:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…p63f
_________________________

Almost? We've still got the PC+Kbd+Mouse model around, and nobody misses tv with glasses...

Oops. https://mastodon.social/@256/115849472257233281 ...

2026-01-06T18:08:54Z

Oops.

https://mastodon.social/@256/115849472257233281

quoting
note1x3m…e5vx

6 Technologies That Are Destined to Disappear
Maximum PC - April 2011
https://archive.org/details/maximum-pc-2011-06_202501/MaximumPC%202011%2004/page/14/mode/2up

This makes the rounds now and then and there's always ...

2026-01-05T16:05:30Z

This makes the rounds now and then and there's always something in it that's kind of surprising. Voltaire might have met Blackbeard. There was a window there where Kierkegaard could have shaken some sense into Edgar Allan Poe. Catherine The Great and Ivan The Terrible could have had kids who were only OK.

https://vis.social/@infobeautiful/115843301637422307

quoting
note19cd…xj4a

Who lived when? Some surprises here

A reminder, that no US military operation of any scale has ...

2026-01-03T13:49:40Z

A reminder, that no US military operation of any scale has involved a declaration of war since 1942.

Listen, nerds - if you're going to pick This Year to help ...

2026-01-02T16:01:35Z

Listen, nerds - if you're going to pick This Year to help people switch to Linux, I am begging you to do one thing: _Make sure your friend or parent or grandparent or whoever has backups_. Before you do _anything else_.

Make sure they have all their passwords and accounts somewhere. If you have the means to do so, take a drive image.

Be as sure as you can that they don't lose anything. Even if that's "where the icons are" and "my desktop background pic".

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/linux/im-brave-enough-to-say-it-linux-is-good-now-and-if-you-want-to-feel-like-you-actually-own-your-pc-make-2026-the-year-of-linux-on-your-desktop/

"Click the button. You will extrude the work product faster ...

2026-01-02T15:44:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…pfhg
_________________________

"Click the button. You will extrude the work product faster and more. More work product faster and more. Content. Clicking the button will make the work extrude faster and more. There will be no effort, no friction. Bright pastels and rounded corners and smoothness the line will go up. The number will go up. The line will go up. You will extrude the work product faster and more line will go more up. Productive extruded thoughty textlike work product will fast go line up easy. Streamline go up."

"We will not understand your work; we will make no connection ...

2026-01-02T15:29:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…txnc
_________________________

"We will not understand your work; we will make no connection to the notion that your work serves some greater purpose, some personal goal or higher ideal. We will leave that space empty, to be filled by your imagination or more likely nothing at all. There is no metric for writing that creates joy or purpose or meaning for its readers, no business goal for poetry to illuminate, elevate or move. It is text on screens. Don't create: generate. Generate more text. Faster. Streamline your workflow."

I sometimes wonder why so many tech company marketing departments ...

2026-01-02T15:16:20Z

I sometimes wonder why so many tech company marketing departments have disappeared fully up their own fundaments as far as the language of communication goes. I just got ad for "streamlining my workflow" here while reading email and...

You have to wonder how many people, ever, have looked at their hands, at the burdens set before them, and inward to some small flickering light in the quiet depths of their innermost souls, and thought "this is what I need. I need to streamline my workflow."

I had no idea that Windows was doing fractal incremental feature ...

2025-12-31T17:52:32Z

I had no idea that Windows was doing fractal incremental feature rollouts now and it sounds like an absolute goddamn disaster for anyone who needs to support a senior with a computer.

I did not expect the year of linux on the desktop to happen because everyone else in the world started fucking up their own shit in catastrophic, undiagnosable, incomprehensible ways.

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/2025-has-been-an-awful-year-for-windows-11-with-infuriating-bugs-and-constant-unwanted-features

in my day you’d fascinate the women with the cheese, the cheese ...

2025-12-31T14:27:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…3kt9
_________________________

in my day you’d fascinate the women with the cheese, the cheese wouldn’t be trying to fascinate you with a woman.

Imagine believing you’re playing twelve dimensional chess ...

2025-12-23T23:27:42Z

Imagine believing you’re playing twelve dimensional chess against an incipient hypergod while everyone is watching you fail a Rorschach test you made up for yourself by passing out face down in a hamburger wrapper.

https://starlite.rodeo/@ana/115770736770150440

I barely saw any news about it at all, but there is a new ...

2025-12-22T21:32:33Z

I barely saw any news about it at all, but there is a new Katamari game out now called Once Upon A Katamari, and I am happy to tell you: After the first two, many attempts were made that did not capture the clumping spirit, falling short in some essential way. Once Upon does not fail us; it contains the True Katamari, honours and grows it, and it is great.

New to me personal infosec idea: the deadname canary. ...

2025-12-21T17:57:44Z

New to me personal infosec idea: the deadname canary.

https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/115758701342987137

quoting
note1qrl…35lz

I'm a trans woman who, if anyone ever asks, will give my deadname as a different male name each time. It's been the single fastest way to find people who talk behind my back. If that name leaks I know just who leaked it and just who to instant block forever.

If I understand this correctly the reason RAM has quadrupled in ...

2025-12-18T21:39:06Z

If I understand this correctly the reason RAM has quadrupled in price is that a huge quantity of RAM that hasn't been produced has been bought with money that doesn't exist to populate GPUs that also haven't been produced to go in datacenters that haven't been built powered by infrastructure that might never exist to meet a demand that doesn't exist at all to make profit margins that mathematically can't exist while economists talk about this thing they call the "rational markets hypothesis".

She's a ten, but she's [checks clipboard] a Cisco ...

2025-12-17T17:18:27Z

She's a ten, but she's [checks clipboard] a Cisco security advisory notice?

https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sma-attack-N9bf4

Apple's position as a software company is that if it ...

2025-12-16T02:27:44Z

Apple's position as a software company is that if it can't be made easy and fun to do, you aren't allowed to do it at all.

LLMs ingest previously seen data and regurgitate stochastically similar structures to text theyv'e seen in responses to whatever questions they're asked.

These aren't the same thing, sure, but. there is a degree of symmetry to them, a harmony.

(vaguely related: Davies’ writing has been so consistently so ...

2025-12-15T17:55:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…k2pl
_________________________

(vaguely related: Davies’ writing has been so consistently so good for ages. Sumana Harihareswara (npub1hv5…xq0v) put together some extensive collections for Metafilter a while ago - I’ll link them up when I’m off the train - but if it ever crosses your desk I would love to know what you think of The Unaccountability Machine.

I think the key graf of Goodhart’s original observation that ...

2025-12-15T17:44:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…66sg
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I think the key graf of Goodhart’s original observation that goes carefully uninterrogated is the words “for control purposes”. On his context, the next obvious question might have been “control of what”, but a more sanguine interpretation today might be, “of who”.

Because you don't have a "network interface card", ...

2025-12-15T02:23:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…3ytz
_________________________

Because you don't have a "network interface card", you have an ARM cpu, maybe even a whole-ass ARM SOC, handling ethernet frames on one side and talking PCI on the other.

You don't even have SD cards, because "memory cards" don't exist. That terabyte of storage the size of your thumbnail you bought? That's an ARM CPU managing the wear levels on its crap-ass flash backing storage while pretending to be a hard drive on the other side.

You don't know how many computers are in your computer.

I'm sure the situation has improved - I don't think ...

2025-12-15T02:14:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…ndef
_________________________

I'm sure the situation has improved - I don't think winsock.dll or Wolverine have ever had a proper pentest teardown, even for historical amusement's sake - but I have to assume, given that we live in a world where there are no specialized chips anymore, and everything from the boutique brand-namiest NICs to the dodgiest junk you'd find in a Shenzhenese dumpster is a general-purpose CPU running some tiny OS of questinably determinate provenance, that... well, you have to wonder.

Because the Ping Of Death was an RCE. If you sent _just the ...

2025-12-15T02:02:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…y3ks
_________________________

Because the Ping Of Death was an RCE. If you sent _just the right_ kind of malformed or too large packet - and you cleaned up after yourself - you suddenly had a system where you could basically ask any computer you could see to do whatever you wanted, and it would do that for you and then quietly go on its way.

I was temping for Global Affairs Canada in the late 90s, then called DFAIT; I got to hang with some old-school-then, semi-retired CSIS sigint guys.

They thought the internet was great.

This both real and a decent metaphor, so it is time for me to ...

2025-12-15T01:52:52Z

This both real and a decent metaphor, so it is time for me to re-tell a story.

Ever heard of The Ping Of Death?

There was a couple of years there - years, hand to god - where you could throw a single malformed or too-large packet across the network at any IP you could see, and if you malformed it just right for its OS, you could crash the machine. You could kill a Windows machine with one line in cmd.exe.

It was bad, but almost nobody knows how bad.

https://mastodon.social/@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt/115719291112552201

Nostr event nevent1qqsz4sdfrarjf7vu5w5anpm7ve34jzqll3ge46urmd7uszspfkhtcdszyp8t7uh6wh96ee70a0ytp8kuvaf2awxhrrrzw3yz0wsded5ts9x4z2n5ptr

2025-12-10T18:11:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…t7tc
_________________________

Mandrake, do you know why I only issue memos in impact bold, and ...

2025-12-10T17:42:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…yt8r
_________________________

Mandrake, do you know why I only issue memos in impact bold, and only in a 48 point font?

It's the diversities, Mandrake. The wokes. Sapping our masculine serifs and fluoridating our precious bodily fluids.

Hands up if you would absolutely have believed a headline saying ...

2025-12-10T17:36:57Z

Hands up if you would absolutely have believed a headline saying that the State Department was going to restore America's masculine greatness by communicating only in Impact Bold from now on.

Nostr event nevent1qqsvx2wg2de4xl57eeq5cxrmslewjdfhes4apzy4mftpfhg6v8u6w6szyp8t7uh6wh96ee70a0ytp8kuvaf2awxhrrrzw3yz0wsded5ts9x4za338yn

2025-12-09T19:20:31Z

Have to admit, looking for work these days is sort of a bummer.

The companies whose whole job is understanding the Real Cost Of ...

2025-12-08T16:40:37Z

The companies whose whole job is understanding the Real Cost Of The Finding Out Part do not want to play this game at all.

Lazyweb, if I want: - to run Linux - on a decentish ARM processor ...

2025-12-07T22:56:16Z

Lazyweb, if I want:

- to run Linux
- on a decentish ARM processor
- that will drive 2+ 4k displays,
- in a quiet-ish, mini-ish form factor

... are there options in the world that are purchaseable and not "give up on the Linux part and get a Mac Mini"?

Hmmm. Hey, if I wanted to plot a bunch of data points in three ...

2025-12-06T19:35:03Z

Hmmm.

Hey, if I wanted to plot a bunch of data points in three dimensions - x,y,z,colour, coords all positive, nothing more than that - what’s your favorite tool for that? I’d like to be able to pan and zoom around whatever I’m looking at.

Kohler pitching "end to end encryption" on their weird ...

2025-12-04T18:21:56Z

Kohler pitching "end to end encryption" on their weird toilet camera makes it seem like they've invented a system that takes pictures of butts that can only be seen by other butts.

RE: https://pony.social/@estrogenandspite/115655806389145596 The ...

2025-12-03T14:59:10Z

RE: https://pony.social/@estrogenandspite/115655806389145596

The opposite of toxic positivity is a healthy, motivating spite.

estrogenandspite (npub1h7s…x48l)/115655806491152097">https://mastodon.social/estrogenandspite (npub1h7s…x48l)/115655806491152097

quoting
note1ruy…j2np

Being kind and gentle to myself has so far failed so going forward I’m trying angry positivity. “Fuck you! Stop whining! You are a fucking gift to the world and you deserve all the fucking love and support people give you!”

The Universal Blue Discord says a Flathub outage is impacting the ...

2025-11-30T04:18:10Z

The Universal Blue Discord says a Flathub outage is impacting the Bazaar storefront on Bazzite.

"Controversy at [technology] [conference] as participants ...

2025-11-29T20:30:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…3x5a
_________________________

"Controversy at [technology] [conference] as participants found to be using [technology] at [conference]".

How would that sentence even make sense for any conference or technology that was doing anything worthwhile? Even the NFT people didn't sink to that level of straight up epistemological tail-eating nonsense. What the hell are we even doing here?

"Controversy erupts at the plagiarism machine conference when ...

2025-11-29T19:55:31Z

"Controversy erupts at the plagiarism machine conference when it turned out people were using the plagiarism machine to do plagiarism."

This is genuine comedy.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03506-6

Where do you see yourself as a politician, in a totalitarian ...

2025-11-29T19:16:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…7tyr
_________________________

Where do you see yourself as a politician, in a totalitarian political environment? Have you not been watching the ritual humiliation of the American political apparatus for the last few months? You think the leopards are going to eat your face last when you're the closest meal to hand?

If you're a politician in a democracy, those kids out there in black-bloc hoodies protesting encroaching fascism are also, not incidentally, trying to save your fucking job and your dumb, shortsighted ass.

We know from the Panama Papers (and the Paradise Papers, and the ...

2025-11-29T19:08:27Z

We know from the Panama Papers (and the Paradise Papers, and the Pandora papers, and and and) that basically all the hard-right political parties and their proxies in North America and Europe are being quietly shadow-funded by Russia and a collection of ideologically-aligned oligarchs, so it would be great if elected politicians acted as though they understood that, and that condemning antifascist protest is sending a clear signal they've been bought by the wrong side.

https://www.euronews.com/2025/11/29/mass-protests-in-the-central-german-town-of-giessen-against-new-afd-youth-group

Look at this thing. Look at this joyous thing. These are the ...

2025-11-28T16:03:00Z

Look at this thing. Look at this joyous thing. These are the computers that have been taken from us.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/326104837538

Free as in a labour class so ignorant of history that it welcomes ...

2025-11-28T02:31:52Z

Free as in a labour class so ignorant of history that it welcomes its own being freely exploited.

https://phire.place/@phire/115624919643042702

I have only once in my life heard of a CTO who asked to spend six ...

2025-11-24T23:23:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…ly9j
_________________________

I have only once in my life heard of a CTO who asked to spend six weeks anonymously taking the front line helpdesk training and answering the phones before taking the job, arguing that he had to know the product and the customers if he wanted to do the job well. Long retired, but people who worked with him still talk about him like they’d met a saint.

Pointing nmap at a home appliance in anger like a normal person ...

2025-11-24T17:53:00Z

Pointing nmap at a home appliance in anger like a normal person who has normal person problems.

... and today if you go looking at what those foreign adversaries ...

2025-11-24T15:41:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…x3jr
_________________________

... and today if you go looking at what those foreign adversaries are doing, it's pretty much all unpatched, long-known CVEs, and those vulnerabilities are pretty much all elevated access via unsanitized input.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/joint-statement-from-fbi-and-cisa-on-the-peoples-republic-of-china-targeting-of-commercial-telecommunications-infrastructure

"Adversarial poetry" is an amazing sentence on its own, ...

2025-11-20T17:12:03Z

"Adversarial poetry" is an amazing sentence on its own, but "Our central hypothesis is that poetic form operates as a general purpose jailbreak operator" is so beautiful.

https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

Back in the day at a previous gig I tried and largely failed to ...

2025-11-19T15:24:12Z

Back in the day at a previous gig I tried and largely failed to convince anyone that sudden upswings in people sharing detailed instructions about screwing around in the guts of the product should be treated the same as sudden upswings in crash rates: a capital-I Incident that deserves near term attention and careful retrospective investigation.

What is this, if not a user expectation going so badly unmet that people are _happy_ to risk bricking their box to fix it?

https://wandering.shop/@susankayequinn/115576953025427384

quoting
note1zgc…2534

My new favorite kind of meme is "here are detailed instructions on how to turn off AI". 🔨

Sometimes I like to remember that in 2013 Larry Page said that ...

2025-11-16T02:09:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…h7pw
_________________________

Sometimes I like to remember that in 2013 Larry Page said that over 300 million people were using Google+ [300 million people were _clearly_not_ using Google+] and when that whole clownshow was over we all learned that 'using' meant 'what does that button do?' and the average duration of a Google+ session was exactly as long as it took people to see what that button did and then find the back button.

Millions of people in a contracting job market have had their ...

2025-11-16T01:16:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…gvzy
_________________________

Millions of people in a contracting job market have had their livelihoods threatened if they don't use it. Millions of people are being measured by how much they use it whether it benefits them or not, millions of people use it to generate material to appease algorithms controlled by the same company controlling the AI, and even these numbers are reported by the companies invested in their going up forever, who cannot be trusted at all to tell us a real truth.

Where is the human want, here?

If something has a lot of very bad externalities, and just the ...

2025-11-16T00:43:55Z

If something has a lot of very bad externalities, and just the ones we know about cause major damage to important physical, social and informational ecosystems, then “lots of people want it” just… isn’t a compelling argument.

I was biking up Broadview this week when I saw a guy carrying a ...

2025-11-14T17:29:32Z

I was biking up Broadview this week when I saw a guy carrying a great stick, so I pulled up and said hey man, that’s a great stick! And he said “right!?” So I told him to have a great day and he said “I am!” and held his stick aloft triumphantly. Anyway, I think we need more of that in the world and I hope he enjoyed the rest of his day as much as I enjoyed that moment. You’ve gotta have room for joy in your life, and sometimes that means you’ve gotta make room for joy in your life.

"I will face god and walk backwards into hell" - a Dril ...

2025-11-12T14:58:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…knaf
_________________________

"I will face god and walk backwards into hell" - a Dril tweet about yelling at zoo animals.

"You cannot kill me in a way that matters." - a Tumblr shitpost about mushrooms.

"Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created?" - Spy Kids 2, the children's movie.

And now:

"Babies are born worshipping unknown gods." - a Dwarf Fortress bug report.

Any other good candidates?

Filing this one beside "I will face god and walk backwards ...

2025-11-12T14:13:25Z

Filing this one beside "I will face god and walk backwards into hell" and "you cannot kill me in a way that matters" on the list of Impossibly Powerful Phrases With Baffling Origin Stories.

https://toot.cat/@pup_hime/115531963842950277

In 2011 after Dennis Ritchie died, I wondered if we should start ...

2025-11-11T17:26:07Z

In 2011 after Dennis Ritchie died, I wondered if we should start retiring usernames on unix systems as an honorific, in the same way sports teams will retire the numbers of great players.

I frequently wonder what building a deeper cultural history into the functioning of the common codebase would look like, and what that would mean and maybe gain over time.

You can't wear 99 in the NHL now, or 6 in the NBA. Maybe you shouldn't be able to log in as dmr for the same reasons.

… you have my attention. ...

2025-11-07T21:57:18Z

… you have my attention.

Setting the Days Since Mullenweg sign back to zero. ...

2025-11-07T17:03:09Z

Setting the Days Since Mullenweg sign back to zero.

https://www.404media.co/automattic-automatic-trademark-matt-mullenweg-kevin-geary/

Like, Windows documentation once upon a time was world-class, it ...

2025-11-05T19:01:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…dx0s
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Like, Windows documentation once upon a time was world-class, it was on-device, available at any moment and excellent. Today "Help" is a hyperlink to trash.

On a modern Mac, you can ask a question and get a few 'maybe' bullet points for your trouble. On System7 - the _stone_ age - the _OS would walk you through each step_ of solving your problem. It would say, click this thing and then draw a little circle around the thing. Apple's reputation comes from this period, when nobody was ever afraid.

Anyway, I think there's been a generational shift in ...

2025-11-05T18:57:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…3kwk
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Anyway, I think there's been a generational shift in developer's perceptions of their obligations to that social contract and that it's made this industry substantially worse. The belief that "everyone knows" how to use the computers that are everywhere now has meant that nobody believes they need to, so nobody bothers, keeping training materials and docs up to date.

So developers think the costs of change are zero, because it's only the operators that bear those costs fully and invisibly.

And... not to put too fine a point on this, but I have been ...

2025-11-05T18:37:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…kq3h
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And... not to put too fine a point on this, but I have been computering for a very, very long time. I have Seen Some Shit And I have Fixed More Than My Share Of Shit. I am Quite A Bit Better Than OK at solving problems.

And it's been a long, long time since I've sat down in front of any computer of any kind and felt that helpless. Like I didn't even know where to start. Decades.

And making people feel helpless is the cardinal sin of UX design.

The biggest own-goal I've ever experienced in this space was ...

2025-11-05T18:31:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…dr25
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The biggest own-goal I've ever experienced in this space was Windows8.

Extremely Late Hot Take: Windows8 - hardware aside -was Actually Pretty Good. But the thing they bungled, hard, was making the Win8 changes accessible.

If you didn't see the first-run "swipe from off the screen" training montage, all the reflexes you might have from a phone or iPad were all 100% wrong and did nothing.

The first time I sat down in front of one of them it took me an hour to figure out how to log in at all.

This is not an "it's the user's fault" or ...

2025-11-05T18:20:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…u5w0
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This is not an "it's the user's fault" or "it's never the user's fault" argument. There's not "fault" here, there is responsibility. There's an implicit social contract in computing, in navigating change that matters when we are using the tools we rely on.

Change is an _accessibility problem_ that demands assistive technologies to navigate, and building that tech is the responsibility of the developer.

"We put a 2nd floor on your house", great! "Climb a rope to get there", excuse me what.

One of the most realistic moments of any Star Trek movie is when ...

2025-11-05T18:15:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…k5hr
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One of the most realistic moments of any Star Trek movie is when somebody put Scotty in front of a Mac, and he says "Computer" - for a beat nothing happens, and he's perplexed until the present-day human points him to the mouse.

Which he pics up, holds in front of his mouth like a microphone and says "Computer."

"You just point and click and drag everyone knows that" ...

2025-11-05T18:04:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…xztj
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"You just point and click and drag everyone knows that" you spent hundreds of hours training to "just" point and click and drag, but you didn't call it training, you called it solitaire and minesweeper.

You practised.

Today, if we want a better user interface for any computing - and I think we do, and it's possible - we have two choices. Entirely 100% new - clean-break, fresh-start new - tech or to acknowledge and own that we're going to spend some time fighting reflexes honed over decades.

A little louder, a reminder: "Good UX" mostly means ...

2025-11-05T17:58:01Z

A little louder, a reminder:

"Good UX" mostly means "I've seen this before."

Have you ever seen an adult without your cultural baggage approach a doorknob for the first time? They'll start by pulling it, then pushing it. There's nothing "intuitive" about turning a round doorknob. But you've been trained, so you don't even notice.

"...but Apple, but the iphone", the iPhone was never "easy to use" or "intuitive". They bombarded TV with training videos disguised as ads for 6 months pre-release.

FYI: check to see if Apple devices would like to update their ...

2025-11-03T23:23:33Z

FYI: check to see if Apple devices would like to update their software today, and if you’re given the option, take it. Improvements to Glass and a series of security updates are in play.

A 4 karat diamond will set you back... on the order of ninety ...

2025-11-02T01:44:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…zk3g
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A 4 karat diamond will set you back... on the order of ninety thousand Canadian dollars.

White sapphire - the second hardest substance out there, indistinguishable from diamond at a glance - costs... well:

For nothing but my own amusement I've ordered a bag of 10mm, lab-made, cut white sapphire stones. They'll be about 4 karats each too.

Ten stones, indistinguishable from a million dollars worth of diamonds, each the size of the end of one of my fingers.

Forty bucks plus shipping.

Every couple of years now you see some new article about how The ...

2025-11-02T01:31:55Z

Every couple of years now you see some new article about how The Yoots aren't buying diamonds anymore. There's all kinds of theorizing in it, like The Economy or Changing Societal Norms or Ethical Issues With Mined whatever, and...

So yes diamonds aren't really rare, yes restricted supply and artificial scarcity and marketing and yes, horrific human rights violations, but also: if you haven't heard about it, I would like to introduce you to lab-made white sapphire.

My goodness this is pretty: https://www.mewho.com/titan/

2025-10-31T14:19:30Z

My goodness this is pretty: https://www.mewho.com/titan/

An interesting upcoming law in Canada (edit: Ontario) that will ...

2025-10-30T18:31:34Z

An interesting upcoming law in Canada (edit: Ontario) that will change the tone of the hiring process quite a bit on January 1st, including obligations to disclose the expected compensation range and inform interviewees of the job's vacancy status and interview results within 45 days.

https://devrylaw.ca/upcoming-requirements-for-job-postings-starting-january-1-2026/

A question - if there was a newsletter for open source ...

2025-10-30T17:39:00Z

A question - if there was a newsletter for open source maintainers, in which maintainers could ask for specific help with specific issues, and subscribers would receive weekly or so - "this longstanding project is looking for help with this bug or this feature, here are the skills required" - would you care enough about that idea to subscribe?

There's an Azure outage, so in the Netherlands the trains ...

2025-10-29T19:07:05Z

There's an Azure outage, so in the Netherlands the trains aren't working.

https://nltimes.nl/2025/10/29/ns-hit-microsoft-cloud-outage-travel-planner-ticket-machines-affected

People used to argue, straight faced with sincerely held good ...

2025-10-27T21:01:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…09eg
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People used to argue, straight faced with sincerely held good intentions, that you couldn't trust free software or wikipedia, because who would you call if it breaks? You don't really know where it all comes from!

But the answer is "people". The answer was always people, and no matter what you've heard from governments, media outlets or corporations, people are far more trustworthy than the average government or the typical media outlet or any corporation.

Bet on people who bet on people.

"Hi, its me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology." ...

2025-10-27T20:34:12Z

"Hi, its me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology."

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-its-me-wikipedia-and-i-am-ready-for-your-apology

Eventually, everyone who manages any community has to make this ...

2025-10-24T12:27:12Z

Eventually, everyone who manages any community has to make this decision.

Microsoft is rolling out Copilot For Gaming to Win11 machines ...

2025-10-23T17:40:10Z

Microsoft is rolling out Copilot For Gaming to Win11 machines silently and on by default, so if any of you are excited about having screenshots of any adult-themed games you might enjoy being silently sent to the same company that owns LinkedIn now would be an excellent time to demand privacy legislation and join a union.

https://doublepulsar.com/microsoft-builds-on-recall-with-gaming-copilot-fails-basic-privacy-tests-52988576bcc8

if you’re still on Win11, you’re getting a Gaming Copilot ...

2025-10-23T17:29:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…uakr
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if you’re still on Win11, you’re getting a Gaming Copilot silently and turned on by default. Kevin Beaumont (npub1lcc…lcye) was mentioning it earlier today.

There are three times as many green P parking spaces in Toronto ...

2025-10-23T15:38:02Z

There are three times as many green P parking spaces in Toronto as there are homeless people. We have a very robust subsidized housing and full employment program in Ontario, as long as you’re a car.

Homelessness evictions accomplish nothing. They’re a performative defense of awful, inhumane policy choices that will solve exactly no problems for anyone.

This province has a landlord problem, a car problem and a leadership problem and all of those are the same problem.

https://mastodon.social/@ericwickham/115424116176772591

quoting
note1hme…nm6w

Municipalities across Ontario are (or are attempting) to clear local homeless encampments. These crackdowns come without an answer to the simple question, where are people supposed to go? https://pressprogress.ca/ontario-cities-are-clearing-homeless-encampments-where-are-people-supposed-to-go/
#cdnpoli #capoli #onpoli #journalism #cdnjournalism

Sure, the law might not have caught up to this yet. But this is, ...

2025-10-19T00:51:54Z

Sure, the law might not have caught up to this yet. But this is, in any way that matters, mail fraud.

https://abc7news.com/post/gofundme-created-14-million-donation-pages-nonprofits-bay-area-organizations-had-no-clue/18013410/

If we don’t want kids staring at screens all day then maybe we ...

2025-10-18T20:19:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…79tu
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If we don’t want kids staring at screens all day then maybe we should build a world where online multiplayer chat isn’t the only third space that teenagers have available to them.

“I wish I lived in a world where I had a third space that ...

2025-10-18T19:06:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…9t02
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“I wish I lived in a world where I had a third space that wasn’t my room” and God Damn I felt that.

I don’t spend a lot of time on here telling you all how smart ...

2025-10-18T19:05:06Z

I don’t spend a lot of time on here telling you all how smart my kids are but today I was talking with my son about the idea of a “Third Place” and he mentioned how all these “coming of age” stories he’s read have kids meeting or hanging out at “the mall”, and what a weird, totally alien idea that is to him and his friends. “Did they even have places you could sit down or not buy anything then? None of us have money.”

This article about Forbidden Church Bell Ringing Techniques, ...

2025-10-18T14:36:56Z

This article about Forbidden Church Bell Ringing Techniques, their history, execution and canon acceptance, is just an odd and delightful way to start a day.

And the names of these techniques are amazing! The Beverley Surprise Minor! The Brave New World Bob Royal. The Yorkshire Delight Major. Like some secret Victorian-era Kama Sutra In Genteel Society But Also Boxing Manual.

Hey, girl; ever heard of a Reverse Canterbury Pleasure Place Doubles?

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/10/a-change-of-tune-veronique-greenwood-bell-ringing/

Looking at the measles epidemic and thinking about how lucky we ...

2025-10-16T13:46:17Z

Looking at the measles epidemic and thinking about how lucky we were to get indoor smoking bans, mandatory seatbelts and drunk driving laws enacted and generally accepted before Facebook and Twitter came along.

Apparently the motivation here is that turning it off and then on ...

2025-10-16T12:08:02Z

Apparently the motivation here is that turning it off and then on again has high enough compute costs to re-analyze your photoset that they want to preemptively prevent abuse but, but once you've got a well-earned reputation for dark patterns and fighting user agency at every turn, even the soundest rationales born of the best intentions won't matter.

This is Roald Dahl's 1986 plea to parents to get their ...

2025-10-14T15:44:41Z

This is Roald Dahl's 1986 plea to parents to get their children vaccinated against measles; his daughter died of it in 1962, before vaccines were widely available.

Turns out measles can just kill you outright weeks or months or sometimes years after infection, when you're supposedly over it and healthy again.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra2504516

https://web.archive.org/web/20200303050650/https://roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/timeline/1960s/november-1962