Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
TIL that the last version of NCSA Mosaic, with juuuust a few modifications, is available as a Flatpak, 1996-era UI widgets and all.
https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.fries1234.ncsa-mosaic
The Github project also has directions on building on Arch and Ubuntu.
Unfortunately, modern TLS and SNI aren't supported, so #Mosaic can't connect to a lot of websites, but it's still a fun look back at a piece of #WebHistory !
Happy over here on this social network, no need to reconnect with my X.
Interesting point: the two biggest markers of the anthropocene era in geology would be radioactive isotopes from nuclear weapons and microplastics from mass production and consumerism…both of which are major aspects of the modern world that really got going after World War II…and are handily represented by Barbie and Oppenheimer. https://wapo.st/3OkTKlH
“For the last six months, EFF, our supporters, and dozens of other groups have been sounding the alarm about several #BadInternetBills that have been put forward in Congress. We’ve made it clear that these bills are terrible ideas, but Congress is now considering packaging them together—possibly into must-pass legislation.”
@eff provides a brief explanation of each and (for those of us in the US) tools to contact your senators & representative:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/you-can-help-stop-these-bad-internet-bills
Fascinating article comparing interactions with LLMs to interactions with a psychic doing cold readings, and how the same mechanisms that create the illusion of mind-reading for the audience can create the illusion of actual understanding, even for the people building the chatbots.
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
#ai #llm (via metafilter)
Lemmy.world appears to be backfilling posts from remote communities I’m subscribing to. One post from a few months ago:
“Why did we stop building with dirt?”
And all I can think is “Because creepers can blow it up too easily.”
No locator beacon. Bolts on the outside.
How meta is it that someone skimped on safety features on a sub designed to visit *the Titanic*, which famously skimped on safety features (like lifeboats) because they figured they wouldn’t need them?
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/20/23766998/oceangate-titanic-submersible-tour-logitech-f710
Ugh… I was hoping KMail had gotten more reliable since I last tried it, but just setting up an IMAP account I had multiple issues:
That last one was first reported 10 years ago, supposedly fixed, and then it came back.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316153
There’s a workaround that involves messing around with the akonadi console, but apparently even that’s only temporary!
I wanted to use the defaults on this system as much as possible before bringing in other stuff, especially since I could theoretically share contacts and calendar accounts across multiple apps without signing in on every single one…but I think I’m going to just install Thunderbird and have done with it.
Gyahhh, now I’m thinking of that old Apple commercial where the actor who played Lord Refa on B5 is trying to set up a Windows program and his kid eventually gets frustrated and says, “I’m going over to so-and-so’s house. They have a Mac.”
#DS9 rewatch got to Quark & Garak's conversation about root beer a couple of days ago.
One of the titles you can unlock in #NoMansSky is “…Awash With Foam”
So now I'm playing the NMS expedition as “Insidious Root Beer, Awash With Foam”
#StarTrek
I'm also reminded of a line from Cat Valente's “Space Opera” about how wars, when it comes down to it, are about deciding who are people and who are just meat.
#DS9 rewatch: Gul Dukat telling Major Kira that the Cardassian occupation was *good* for Bajor because they're stronger now is both peak colonialism and peak (retroactively applied) longtermism
#StarTrek
“I think we are dealing with a dominant cultural belief—one might say a national spirit—that believes that any people who suffer aren’t actually people, because if they aren’t people then we won’t have to take care of them—and so, if neglect makes them so desperate or unsightly that they cause us discomfort, then we can get rid of them, blaming them for causing the discomfort that resulted in our having to inconvenience ourselves with their disposal.”
politics (general)
I figure that's how we ended up with a bunch of religious rural working-class folks voting overwhelmingly for the multiply-divorced big-city hotshot who barges in and thinks he knows how to do your job better than you can. Twice. And remolding themselves to be more like him as the years went on.
That's how you end up with people calling Liz Cheney's political suicide “cowardly,” because she “sided with the Dems” in the Jan. 6 probe
politics (general)
I mean, *everything* gets shoved into a binary. Coke vs. Pepsi, Windows vs. Mac, Twitter vs. Mastodon.
And then those binaries get lumped together, as if all Coke drinkers use Windows and all Pepsi drinkers use Macs. Even though they don't.
And then those groupings start to homogenize. The Coke drinkers who use Macs start thinking maybe they should use Windows, or maybe they should keep the Mac and start drinking Pepsi instead.
Politics should not be a team sport with only two sides, where your team is always right and their team is always wrong, and any criticism of someone who happens to be on your team is dismissed whether it’s in good faith or not.
We should have shifting coalitions based on each issue being discussed. Not semi-permanent factions where everyone has to pledge allegiance to one side or the other.
But everything gets shoved into a binary.
Maybe (most) humans are just wired for it
If you use a Nextcloud server, there’s a good collection of apps (some official, some third-party) that work with it. The ones I use:
Nextcloud – main app, does authentication, file access, optional auto-upload photos
Nextcloud Notes – kind of like Google Keep, but simpler. (IIRC Carnet is more like Keep, and also open) Nextcloud Talk – instant messaging, supposedly can do voice but I’ve never used it for that
Nextcloud News – RSS reader that syncs your feeds and read/unread through your Nextcloud server
Plus these apps that aren’t Nextcloud-specific, but work with it and other sync methods:
OpenTasks – ToDo list (needs Dav5x to sync)
DAVx5 – Syncs contacts, calendars and to-do items between any CalDav, CardDav or WebDav servers and your Android system, so you can access them with any local contacts or calendar app. (For instance: K-9 Mail can use contacts from my Google account and my Nextcloud account, and Simple Calendar can do the same with my calendars.)
Floccus – Bookmarks manager that can sync across multiple desktop browsers and the mobile app, using any of several sync options including Nextcloud
Software developers when they get back to work after a break: “And now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming.”
Fowl Language: Sad Hulk
Interesting: I only know the term “bodega” in its borrowed-into-English small-convenience-store sense, and since this clearly wasn't one, I looked up the actual Spanish meaning…
…and discovered that bodega, apothecary and boutique all come from the ancient Greek word for storehouse, ἀποθήκη.
https://pixelfed.social/p/bobfisherphoto/567679150312415191
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bodega
#language #linguistics #etymology #bodega
