@slothrop@chaos.social
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

slothrop

@slothrop@chaos.social

Bumbling through the technosphere. Easily amused.

Messing around with #FOSS, baking #bread, paddling a whitewater #kayak, and #parenting a herd of kids . Sometimes I manage a Hello World without syntax errors in #python.

Professionally, I help to build and run #trains with software and IT stuff.

Middle-aged cishet white guy, trying not to be an asshole about it. Please let me know if I get it wrong.

Toots auto-delete after 2 weeks. #noindex or I will punch you.

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

kissane, to random
@kissane@mas.to avatar

Is there a canonical essay about (the problems with and complexities of) social media aggregation as journalism that I can just link to so I don't have to break down the angles and weirdnesses myself?

There has to be, right?

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@kissane You’re probably looking for a more nuanced take than “everything is going to shit, and what we used to call journalism is leading the way “, right?

BlackAzizAnansi, to random
@BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to avatar

I'm not the biggest Linux fan but I'm thinking about getting a separate laptop with Linux on it just to avoid all of this

widely gestures

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@BlackAzizAnansi Some of my very much non-technical relatives have been using Linux without issue for years.

Installing it isn’t terribly hard either, but it’s a bit more of a hurdle. You could go easy on yourself and just either buy a laptop with Linux preinstalled (as others have suggested); or get someone to install it for you.

Recently a relative needed a new laptop. I helped them pick it; had it shipped to my address; installed and configured Linux; and sent it off to them. Worked great!

ifixcoinops, to random
@ifixcoinops@retro.social avatar

Need some lights for my bike, I see they're all USB rechargeable now and the dynamo-powered ones are scarce and have crap reviews

I mean I figured in the twenty years I've been out of biking, what with LEDs and such, the new lamps would draw so little juice you'd hardly even notice the jenny was engaged, maybe it could even charge up a wee battery or supercapacitor on the downhills, but instead it seems we're all taking our lights with us and plugging them into the wall?

We just not doing dynamos anymore I guess?

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@ifixcoinops Oh but we are! Specifically hub dynamos. Light‘s always on, nearly frictionless.

And maintenance free. Mine hasn’t had a single problem in 12 years.

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@ifixcoinops Oh, and the dynamo charges little capacitors in the lamps, giving you a couple of minutes of (somewhat dimmed) light when you’re not moving. great for stopping at traffic lights in the dark!

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@ifixcoinops Back in the early aughts I used to work in a bike repair shop at the uni.

About half the bikes that came in were having trouble with burned-out bulbs or with their dynamo. I used to keep a few spare bulbs around for the rear light on my own bike, because those broke all the time.

When LED lights and hub dynamos arrived, all that just stopped. These simple technologies have made bikes 50% less annoying in just a few years.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Musk would shout on his way out, “I’m gone! Let that stink in!” while carrying a bag of old garbage, storm over to his CyberTruck parked in a disabled permit space, jump into the vehicle after several tries to open it, and then slam the door—causing all the panels to fall off in cartoon-like succession…and then a pause, and then all four wheels.
https://mastodon.social/@verge/112571252769186651

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@glennf I’d pay good to watch a live stream

ordnung, to random German
@ordnung@chaos.social avatar

And we are back online. There was a problem with the hardware we couldn't fix on our own so we had to wait for a technician to fix it for us. Now there will be some lagging because of full queues for a while.

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@ordnung Yay, thanks for the good work!

slothrop, to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

I´m getting notification spam on my laptop: Some program is constantly sending assorted notifications like "virus found", "Gmail account suspended for spam", etc.

This is in Firefox on Debian Stable.

It´s all bullshit of course.

When clicked (I know), the notifications take me to [random_subdomain].enhancesecurity.co.in.

How can I get rid of these notifications? I´ve already installed Ublock Origin, which doesn´t seem to be helping.

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@Larymir ok, thanks!

Quite unusual -- I´ve never had this before.

w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

Google has accidentally collected childrens’ voice data, leaked the trips and home addresses of car pool users, and made YouTube recommendations based on users’ deleted watch history, among thousands of other employee-reported privacy incidents. https://www.404media.co/google-leak-reveals-thousands-of-privacy-incidents/?

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@w7voa I´m no fan of Google and their data-slurping ways, but I´m not sure what the story is here.

Maintaining a database of such incidents is essential for mitigating them, and learning from them.

It would be irresponsible if Google didn´t have a database like this.

OK, having the database leak is hardly ideal; though it looks like no personal information was exposed.

slothrop, (edited ) to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Kurz vor der Europawahl bekommen die Münchner*Innen noch mal eine Erinnerung, warum Faschos wählen eine blöde Idee war, ist und bleibt.

https://ard.social/@BR24/112573801741387374

slothrop, to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Kayak training today.

The river had a pretty high water level, flooding most of the interesting features. So training was a pretty chill affair.

But I got to see either beavers or nutria up close! Not sure why they’re so visible right now, that’s not usually the case.

One animal sat there for at least two minutes, munching on a stick, ignoring us 🤩

slothrop, to snowboarding German
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Moin liebe Bubble, ich brauch ne neue Regenjacke.

Leicht soll sie sein, robust, und der Hersteller soll einen Reparatur- / Pflegeservice anbieten.

Wer hat da selbst Erfahrungen gemacht und kann mir was empfehlen?

slothrop, to random German
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Wohngemeinnützigkeit klingt gut.

Weiß jemensch da genaueres? https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/jahressteuergesetz-wohnraum-bezahlbar-100.html

slothrop, to random German
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Na super. Das Internet-Sicherheit-Dingens des Arbeitgebers schaltet jetzt eine Warnseite vor, wenn ich tagesschau.de besuchen will

Weil´s eine "Streaming-Seite" ist 🤡

elilla, to random Portuguese
@elilla@transmom.love avatar

de cara que tem dialeto alemão que também chama isso de "penal" #curitiba

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@elilla This made me think of an old German slang word for “pupil”: “Pennäler“. You got me curious, so I looked it up 🤓

The root word is Latin „penna“, writing feather. The penna is kept in a „pennale“, a feather box.

Accordingly, a „Pennäler“ is one who carries a feather box. TIL.

https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/Penn%C3%A4ler

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@elilla Neat!

Now I’m wondering which German dialect uses “Federpennal”.

I’m familiar with quite a few German dialects, but I’ve never encountered this word in the wild.

slothrop, to whitewater
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Time to de-stank the #kayaking gear

slothrop, to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

I’m growing mushrooms in the basement!

Success on the first attempt. This is so exciting!

slothrop, to random German
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Eigentlich hab ich gerade zwei Kajaks zu verkaufen.

Aber es fühlt sich ein bisschen pietätlos an, die jetzt bei Kleinanzeigen mit Standort "Oberbayern" reinzusetzen...

slothrop, to random German
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Künstlerpech

slothrop, to random German
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Ok, Hochwasser ist irgendwie doof. Aber meine -Buddies überlegen gerade, welchen Bach sie zuerst fahren sollen, weil er endlich mal wieder Wasser hat… 🙃

slothrop, to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Resorting to @schratze level follower authentication methods

slothrop,
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

@schratze Nope.

It’s probably after hours over in St. Petersburg

slothrop, to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

Hi @Samantha1ir what are your pronouns, and what is your stance on the Lockheed Martin Pride socks?

slothrop, to random
@slothrop@chaos.social avatar

A fun aspect of LLMs is that they can out-mansplain the mansplainers.

If we could got those guys to talk to an LLM instead of bothering real people on the internet... They could just argue with the machine till the cows come home...

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