@bojo as long as both servers you are choosing beteeen have solid moderation (so are unlikely to be blocked by other servers for hosting bad actors/spam etc) your Mastadon experience will mostly be dictated by who you follow. Some servers might run either software other than Mastadon core or make changes to it (like allowing posts longer than 500 characters) which some people like/prefer.
For a great experience I recommend following a bunch of interesting people - and then watch who they boost
@anirvan they have an active presence here - @libreture offers a drm free place to store ebooks onljne and they promote a lot of places to buy drm free ebooks. So they are a good option to explore whatever client you use to read the ebooks. Many libraries have one or more services they offer to anyone with a local card which can also be a great source for ebooks (and libraries pay often more than individuals for their ebooks)
So I noticed that the "now playing" info on the KEXP website comes from a paginated API endpoint that let's you see previously played songs as well as the currently playing track.
It was kinda neat to poke at it to see how far back I could go. You could just keep rewinding to see all the tracks that aired going pretty far back.
And just how far back was that? 2,650,000 tracks, all the way back to 2005.
I love finding little secret info holes like this. I scraped all that data up to play with.
@Alex that’s awesome. I suspect that KCRW in LA has similarly deep digital archives but haven’t poked around. They have shows listed as available on demand that haven’t aired in many many years. (Really great public radio station with amazing streaming options and in the midst of a pledge drive)
@inthehands it’s so bizarrely dumb. All kinds of tech put to such a horrifically bad purpose. Even beyond now being the target for any external bad actor, anyone who shares your physical space, lawyers who now have an incredible target for discovery it serves next to no actual useful purpose. And when it does the actual value is minuscule compared to the risks it introduces.
And I can only imagine government agencies and corporations CTO and CISO’s looking at this and saying nope nope nope
@capraobscura@inthehands exactly. The closest I’ve ever come to wanting some history is with FB being so eh “helpful” these days and refreshing the FB app to a random newsfeed of stuff they pushed at me days ago when I had clicked into a post a friend shared but hadn’t finished reading it… but it took me all of eh 2 mins to find that friend’s feed and find the link again and then open it into an external browser.
But on my laptop nope never had a need and MacOS actually has solid local search
I just called Brightspeed (formerly CenturyLink) to cancel my voice service. They cancelled my entire Internet connection, which disconnected instantly. Can’t they turn it back on? Heavens, no. A technician will have to come out tomorrow and replace the modem and I have no phone or internet until then, just a wisp of a cell signal.
They’re just the worst damned company. And they’re a monopoly here! I have zero recourse. Argh.
@waldoj and this is the type of stuff that companies had to be pushed and prodded into doing. But in the end having done it (and it being mandated for all providers) means they almost certainly have an easier sales cycle, happier customers, reduced customer service costs (from customer calling to cancel/complain about deceptive marketing/pricing) and it hopefully incentivizes investments in improving availability and quality of service vs marketing due to high churn
@ajroach42 that’s a show I have fond memories of when I caught it as a kid (we didn’t have a tv until I was practically in high school so missed out on a lot) but I’m almost afraid to watch it now - curious how well it holds up. In my memories the humor was fairly tame (funny but not full of stereotypes etc) but it was also the 1980’s when I watched it…
@ajroach42 I just might. Though I don’t have a lot of time for watching things. I’m probably going to watch some of the old dungeons and dragons cartoon in honor of it being the 50th year of D&D
Hydroponic ultra ripe vertically farmed strawberries are very popular in NYC but flown in from Japan. Restaurants buy them at $2 per berry (not even big ones) they are very good— but do you know what’s more fancy than Japanese vertically farmed berries? LOCAL ONES. Why don’t we have a flouncy berry farm in NYC yet?
@futurebird looks like NYC does have a bunch of vertical farms seems like strawberries would be a natural addition (One company Bowery seems to be NYC based and has sold vertically farmed berries in the past but unclear if from NYC based farms and doesn't seem like they have them currently - though their site may be searching for their products in California where I am) but Farm.One and Gotham Greens seem mostly greens focused.
@futurebird seems like some (Bowery) have VC funding so might not be nimble enough, while others seem less focused on fruits. But yes, seems like a logical alternative if berries flown to NYC from Japan are selling at any volume for $2 a berry - surely a local verical farm could make a tidy profit...
@jeff the "Note: Do not strike hard surfaces with CyberHammer. Intended for display or gym use." is kinda epic. The couldn't even make a hammer (well one that works vs one that looks shiny but doesn't actually do anything)
examples of "I don't think they actual test apps at Google anymore"
YouTube (iOS app) - if you have screen rotation turned off - still rotates a video if you play it and push the full screen - and then there is no way to return to the main navigation (i.e. if you had done a search) just options for their next suggested video
Gmail - I was browsing past the first 50 messages, new message came in, it was displayed on my screen as message 51, then as message 1 when I returned in all messages view
I'm absolutely convinced that the folks building gmail don't think anyone actually wants to use the All messages view as they break it all the time (and force you into other views when you first open gmail in a new browser tab) but I don't want the view that hides messages - I signed up for the messages, I want to see them and choose which to read when - frequently stuff gmail filters out of my inbox (not due to my numerous rules to do that) are actually messages with time sensitive contents
@danilo Valleywag was excellent (I'm also biased @owenthomas - who is not really active here alas - is a friend and my former editor in college) but he and the others at Valleywag did a fantastic and much needed job covering tech.
But yes, it is sad that the horrible people seem to have in many ways "won" - I think there are plenty of exceptions but they get far less (attention, money, news cycles, followers etc)
Business advice (and yes based on real experiences). Do not send a bill to a non-verified email address. If you do send one - don’t send it from a no-reply address.
Because, inevitably you will send a bill to the wrong person who will be annoyed and will not pay your bill all while the actual customer won’t pay it because you haven’t emailed them at their actual address.
And no most strangers aren’t going to call a phone number of a business they have no relationship with just to fix this
Every week. Emails from businesses in states I do not live in sent to strangers who think my email address is theirs. With no easy way for me to correct this. When it comes from an actual human I reply and inform them of the mistake. But I don’t call up random businesses to try to explain the situation.
Again this happens 3-5x a week. (With bills and the like) and multiple times a day with just random mailing lists.