@bigiain@aus.social avatar

bigiain

@bigiain@aus.social

Coffee, motorcycles, music, microcontrollers, and Oxford commas. I like to pretend I’m a geek, not a nerd.

Turns out I don't seem to talk much coffee or motorcycles here. (Not entirely sure why? I do motorcycles pretty comprehensively on web forums, but I guess I'm not geeking about coffee much online these days.) And I talk a bit more (Australian) politics than I realised (looking back through my account).

So mostly non-gaming geek stuff, infosec, privacy, music.

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decryption, to random
@decryption@aus.social avatar

any other apple themed stickers I should add to this sheet?

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@decryption While waiting for the image to load I was yelling “Dogcow!” ;-)

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@decryption It’d be just wrong if it wasn’t pixelated.

JuliusGoat, to random
@JuliusGoat@mastodon.social avatar

Isn't it interesting that every killing by every cop is just a single bad apple that should never be thought to spoil the bunch, while every protest by and on behalf of marginalized people must be flawlessly perfect, or all participants deserve the brutality the police exist to deliver to them?

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@StreetDogg @JuliusGoat Reolace “protest” with “police force” in that comment. Holds at least as true that way. And police forces do have hierarchies that could enforce that, unlike protests.

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@StreetDogg @JuliusGoat I don’t think I agree with your assertion that a protest that has assholes show up is a shitty protest. Certainly not in anything like the way that police forces with asshole employees is a shitty police force…

golgaloth, to random
@golgaloth@writing.exchange avatar

"May you have your own Wikipedia entry."
Ancient curse

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@golgaloth “May you live within Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines.” — Modern curse

coffeegeek, to coffee
@coffeegeek@flipboard.social avatar

Really liking this scale from DiFluid.

It's the same price as the Acaia Pearl ($150) but IMO, has a lot more functionality and a way, way better (and frequently updated) app.

Link: ⬇️
https://amzn.to/3W9LR7k

cc @coffee

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@ocramius I did some hardware/software consulting a long time back for someone wanting to design/manufacture an espresso focused scale. There’s a bunch of non obvious things to consider. The big one is that load cells create very low level electrical signals and are hence “noisy”, so everyone uses averages over time to get readable weights. Some scales I’ve reviewed take several seconds worth of average readings, which means you always overshoot when measuring an increasing weight - like grounds coming out of a grinder or espresso coming out of a portafilter. There’s also espresso related features like automatically starting a timer as soon as it detects the first drop of espresso, or sounding an alarm when a set yield weight is reached. And logging of dose/yield weights. You can do way better than just another kitchen scale if you try.

@coffeegeek @coffee

coffeegeek, to coffee
@coffeegeek@flipboard.social avatar

OMFG.

Option-O has a new consumer-focused grinder coming out. The Lagom Casa. Look freakin' awesome. Up to 65mm conical burrs inside. Monster.

Link: ⬇️
https://www.option-o.com/lagom-casa

cc @espresso @coffee

Lagom Casa grinder in aluminum and black anodized
Grinder size of the Lagom Casa

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@RoboticistDuck @coffeegeek @smallerdemon @espresso @coffee Boats: holes in the water surrounded by wood into which you throw money.

reginasbread, to random
@reginasbread@homo.promo avatar

I'm convinced my coffee smells like brussels sprouts. am I dying? which deadly disease has symptoms like this?

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@reginasbread Is it potato flavor maybe? https://garciacoffee.com/coffee-basics-potato-taste-defect/

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

At least there's a "right to repair" for the Voyager probes.

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@lauren “I’m sorry, you need to return your Voyager probe to your closest JohnDeere/Apple repair facility.”

bigiain, to random
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

Idea: A browser plugin that scrapes my Spotify recently played page, looking for tracks with fewer than 1000 streams, and hunts for the artist website looking for donation links or Patreon pages - so I can send them money to make up for what Spotify is stealing.

https://mixmag.net/read/spotify-has-officially-demontised-all-tracks-under-1-000-streams-news

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@Sibbo I propose a xz style subversion of the code or a dependency, to ensure ffmpeg runs poorly on Windows and Azure.

CindyWeinstein, to animals
@CindyWeinstein@zirk.us avatar

Attention !

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@davenicolette @CindyWeinstein Be very careful there, if you do that across state lines it becomes a federal case…

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Raspberry Pi is planning a London IPO, but its CEO expects “no change” in focus

— Yeah, right.

I am looking forward to my Raspberry Pi 7 which will arrive with Windows 11 pre-installed, cost a mere £25, and use the bottom 25% of the desktop for streaming ads (while snooping on my every keystroke). Because this is how enshittification proceeds …

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/raspberry-pi-is-preparing-for-an-ipo-in-london-for-likely-more-than-500m/

bigiain,
@bigiain@aus.social avatar

@cstross And it comes with a SIM card so the camera and microphone feeds are sent to police surveillance 24x7 even when there’s no network connection. And there’s no way to switch that off.

decryption, to random
@decryption@aus.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @decryption
    “The Best Minds of My Generation Are Thinking About How To Make People Click Ads.” — Jeff Hammerbacher

    https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click/

    timbray, to random
    @timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

    Hear me out: Murderbot is coming to the screen. In the books, the “feed” is a big part of all the conversations. So for the show, they should have a scrolling text pane somewhere on the screen showing the feed including MB’s private grouching. Next level: have the main shot be MB’s PoV with all sorts of apparatus and read-outs and multiple little drone-view screens and so on.

    cough @marthawells cough

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @timbray @marthawells I'm quietly hoping for entire episodes which turn out to be something like episode 237 of The Rise And Fall Of Sanctuary Moon or episode 126 of Worldhoppers. Would entire spinoff series for each of Murderbot and ART's favourite shows be too much to hope for???

    mattblaze, to random
    @mattblaze@federate.social avatar

    Ad networks are at least flirting with technologies that monitor microphones in devices to target ads, according to this story: https://www.404media.co/cmg-cox-media-actually-listening-to-phones-smartspeakers-for-ads-marketing/

    It's unclear whether this is currently going on, but it's very clear it could.

    What are the legalities here? In particular, is it wiretapping? Can the government get access to data collected this way? My colleagues @SteveBellovin, Susan Landau, Stephanie Pell, and I explored this and more a few years ago: https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v30/30HarvJLTech1.pdf

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @mattblaze

    According to them on th3 webpage that is not mysteriously redirecting to their homepage...

    "YES- it is totally legal for phones and devices to listen to you. That's because consumers usually give consent when accepting terms and conditions of software updates or app downloads."

    I think it might be enlightening to start tracking T&C changes from Google and to a lesser extent Apple (who at least aren't an advertising company), and from any surveillance capitalism company apps (Facebook/Meta, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, etc), plus any apps that require microphone access and/or run in the background. And especially ad supported "free" games or utilities (which seem to jam any privacy violating SDK they can make a few cents from into themselves).

    @SteveBellovin

    gregeganSF, to random
    @gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz avatar

    Automated sludge at its finest:
    “FunSearch: Making new discoveries in mathematical sciences utilizing Massive Language Fashions”

    (Stumbled on thanks to hundreds of similar spam link-backs on Terry Tao’s blog, https://terrytao.wordpress.com.)

    https://techtrendz.org/funsearch-making-new-discoveries-in-mathematical-sciences-utilizing-massive-language-fashions/

    Also:

    “Google DeepMind used a big language mannequin to find new math”

    https://enjbs.com/google-deepmind-used-a-big-language-mannequin-to-find-new-math/

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @SnoopJ @gregeganSF @mcc The academic fraud detective community call those "tortured phrases". And you don't need ChatGPT to do that, lazy but motivated journal spammers and paper mills have been doing that for decades with a thesaurus and search/replaces.

    "According to Cabanac, he couldn’t understand why researchers in several articles were using phrases like “Colossal Information” instead of “Big Data” or “Haze Figuring” instead of “Cloud Computing” and began to search for those kinds of expressions in various databases.

    Cabanac went on to find some 860 papers that featured one or more of these tortured phrases, and that 31 of those phrases were published in a single journal: Microprocessors and Microsystems." -- https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2021/08/10/using-tortured-phrases-to-spot-problematic-papers/

    evacide, to random
    @evacide@hachyderm.io avatar

    Oh look, it's another company that's very excited about building the Torment Nexus: https://www.404media.co/cmg-cox-media-actually-listening-to-phones-smartspeakers-for-ads-marketing/

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @evacide CMG Local Solutions have redirected the "Active Listening" page on their website and in their nav menus to their homepage, presumably to hide this now it's become known wider than they'd like.

    Luckily: https://web.archive.org/web/20231012202312/https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/cmg-active-listening

    "It's True. Your Devices Are Listening to You."

    "Is this legal? YES- it is TOTALLY legal for phones and devices to listen to you. That's because consumers USUALLY give consent " (capitalised emphasis mine)

    gabek, to random

    I respond to VCs about Owncast pretty often, and I’ve never been super transparent about it. So here’s a response I just sent.

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @gabek “Lets circle back later. I’ll leverage available stakeholder bandwidth to see if there’s a deliverable we can re synergise as a zero sum pivot to move the needle and ensure there’s no cash left on the table.” @darkcisum

    twipped, (edited ) to random
    @twipped@twipped.social avatar

    My father in law just asked me if the solar panels will help with our water bill….

    Yes, really.

    I just stared at him for a moment and replied “no, the water does not come from the sun.”

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @twipped But all available water is contained within the solar system.

    (I had to reread your post a few times to context switch that term...)

    erinwhalen, to california

    I was reading this article on California's plans to ban gas-powered lawn mowers in 2024 and came across a claim that blew my mind: apparently "1 hour use of a gas-powered lawn mower releases as much pollution as a Toyota Camry does over 300 miles."

    What??

    I did a quick search and found a few other sources that said the same thing. Gas-powered lawn mowers pollute WAY more than cars do. Phasing them out seems like a no-brainer?

    https://carboncredits.com/californias-bold-shift-say-goodbye-to-carbon-emission-gas-powered-lawn-mowers-by-2024/

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @masukomi @getalifemike @erinwhalen
    Doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

    The carbon comes from the fuel. A Camry gets, what 50MPG or so? So 6 gallons to go 300 miles. There's no way a lawnmower goes through 6 gallons in an hour. (It's a long long time since I mowed any lawns, but memories from childhood seem to suggest closer to half a gallon an hour?)

    So on straight carbon dioxide emitted that Camry is putting over ten times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as a lawnmower run for an hour.

    There's definitely non CO2 related emissions where the lawnmower is no doubt "worse" than the Camry, but even then it's still using less than a tenth of the fuel, so whatever advantage the Camry has with catalytic ciobnverters and sophisticated fuel injection, it need to overcome the ten times more fuel it's burning.

    (Also, lots of lawnmowers, at least here in Australia, are four strokes these days. )

    shermozle, to llm
    @shermozle@aus.social avatar

    Spicy Autocomplete is such a great putdown for .

    Chapeau @pluralistic

    (Context: https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space )

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @magnetic_tape @BradRubenstein @shermozle @pluralistic From perlkfaq 3: "If you're on Unix you already have an IDE -- Unix itself. The Unix philosophy is the philosophy of several small tools that each do one thing and do it well. it's like a carpenter's toolbox." (Pretty sure it was Tom Christiansen who wrote that, and he was a vi user...)

    josh, to RaspberryPi
    @josh@fediscience.org avatar

    Advice Needed: Looking to get a @Raspberry_Pi starter kit for a 15yo. Suggestions for most enjoyable and/or successful setups welcome. Thanks!

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @josh I reckon you want to think about the kid (and the kids support network) to work out if they’re likely to go down the hardware path, hooking up leds and servos and sensors and so on, or the software path, treating it as a computer where it doesn’t matter if you hose the software/OS by tinkering because you can always just reflash the sd card and start again.

    I’m very much in the hardware tinkering side of things, but if the kid doesn’t know anybody that owns a soldering iron or can explain pull-up resistors to them, the software tinkering side might work out better.

    firstdogonthemoon, to random
    @firstdogonthemoon@aus.social avatar

    What happened?! A mere 18 months ago we were all filled with (a tiny skerrick of) hope about the incoming government and now voters are all yeah nah. Whither Albo? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2023/nov/27/albo-is-ropable-the-polls-are-a-disaster-and-nobody-can-explain-how-this-happened

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @firstdogonthemoon Somehow every single incoming government's Peak of Inflated Expectations is lower than before, and every Trough of Disillusionment is deeper than all the previous ones put together. Even the Slope of Enlightenment angles downward, and the next election cycle hits before we ever reach a Plateau of Productivity.

    rstevens, to random
    @rstevens@mastodon.social avatar

    we replaced your family's thanksgiving cranberry sauce with chili crisp. you won't believe what happened next.

    bigiain,
    @bigiain@aus.social avatar

    @rstevens Angry Lady crispy chilli oil??? I would totally slather that all over roasted turkey and stuffing...

    (Image shamelessly stolen from a @decryption toot yesterday)

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