@leeloo@techhub.social
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

leeloo

@leeloo@techhub.social

Software developer, keyboard player, kayaker, home cook. Casual gamer. Preferred games are no faster than Portal and less violent than chess. I need time to think.

C#, Swift, Javascript, C.

Windows for work, everything else at home. Keeping things separate.

Living in bicycle country. The one without blue in the flag.

I could add a bunch of flags here, but there’s no black, gray, white and purple emoji, and I don’t want pink, white and blue to feel lonely.

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

obeto, to random
@obeto@mas.to avatar

OMG!!!

For years, the antivirus software company harvested information from users’ web browsers without their consent.

And SOLD that data!

Though I have never used any of their products, I pray that this company is sued into oblivion.

What an abhorrent deception! https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24080135/avast-security-privacy-software-ftc-fine-data-harvesting

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@obeto
As I've said for more than two decades: The difference between virus and anti-virus is four letters.

The worst virus I've ever had a computer infected by was the McAfee virus, that thing caused days of lost productivity.

revoluciana, to random
@revoluciana@chaosfem.tw avatar

The people who now say I'm not a girl are the same people who used to tell me I was such a girl before I told them that I actually am a girl.

I think they just don't like girls.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@anjune @revoluciana
"There are only two genders"

"You're not a real man"
"So I'm a woman?"
"No".

There are only two genders, for sufficiently large values of two.

Or maybe they count like Valve. 1, 2, 2e1, 2e2, Alyx.

ovid, to linux
@ovid@fosstodon.org avatar

BitMover's closed-source product, BitKeeper, was used for source control for the kernel. Larry McVoy, CEO of BitMover, was upset because someone tried to figure out how the BitKeeper worked and he pulled the BitKeeper licenses from Linux developers.

Needing distributed source control, Linus Torvalds created in a couple of months.

BitMover is gone and BitKeeper is now open-source, gathering dust, in a git repository.

https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@ovid
Not even figure out how it worked, he figured out the protocol used to talk to the server, to enable him to write an open source client. And he did so by telnetting to the bitkeeper port and typing "help".

That someone was Andrew Tridgell of Samba fame.

Bitkeeper could have gotten a free open source client. Instead they got a free open source competitor (git) and couldn't compete with that.

QasimRashid, to random
@QasimRashid@mastodon.social avatar

A reminder today that the GOP repealed Roe b/c they’re “Pro-Life”—meaning:
•Living wage❌
•Contraception❌
•$35 Insulin cap❌
•Paid family leave?❌
•Free pre-natal care❌
•Universal healthcare❌
•Extend child tax credit?❌
•Force 11-yr-old rape survivors to give birth✅

GOP was never about life. GOP has always been about control of women and girls.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@QasimRashid
Only a couple of those are limited to women and girls. No, it's about controlling anyone who isn't a billionaire cis straight white man in perfect health. Including women an girls, but also for example, people of color. If these assholes thought they could get away with it, slavery would be reinstated tomorrow.

Tevis, to transit
@Tevis@mastodon.social avatar

If you #bike in #Baltimore, you might be interested to know that Margo Bruner-Settles's anti-bike-lane billboard truck ran a red light in front of me today.

#biketooter #bicycle #bikelanes #bmore #cycling #baltimiorecitycouncil

The same truck, now passed to the other side of the still red light.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@Tevis @WhyNotZoidberg
That may be because many places in the US do it backwards. The parking lane should be between the road and the cycle lane. Not the other way around.

Road - parked cars - cycle lane - sidewalk.

angiebaby, to random
@angiebaby@mas.to avatar

What Democrats don't seem to want to accept is, "Once you participate in a genocide, you have lost. You have utterly failed as a democratic institution. You are the Bad Guys."

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@angiebaby
The ones calling for students to be arrested for attempted freefom of speech appear to be fully aware they are the bad guys. They just need to get rid of as much of democracy as possible in preparation for handing the white house over to King Trump.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

I'm going to ramble a bit, but it will hopefully come around to something. When I was growing up, I read a lot of older historical book series, a big one would be the Little House On The Prairie series. While I really enjoyed it, there are some very obviously negative portrayals of Native Americans and African Americans. I remember being angry about it as a kid, and my Dad telling me, that part of learning about history is that we have to acknowledge the people we were, and still are. But because Little House on the Prairie is only semi-autobiographical, I still have mixed feelings about this. I do think they are well written books by a female author, an interesting perspective on early American life, and as an adult I can see and acknowledge the issues with the text. If we try to get rid of every author with racist ideas there wouldn't be much left to read from the 20th Century, and it also feels like being dishonest about who we are. So, I'm very mixed, how do you all feel about it? Do you think children can handle books with racial issues like this if it's explained to them? What is our responsibility here?

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@Elleaster @RickiTarr
You were willing to have the discussion AND you did not treat it as "how the founding fathers intended" manual.

leeloo, to random
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

Could we stop calling tunnel providers "VPNs"? VPN is short for "Virtual Private Network", and if you're using a random company to connect to the internet, there is nothing private about that.

It's a single point of surveilance, anyone who wants to monitor your traffic can siphon it all at the tunnel end point instead of needing your ISP to cooperate. They might even be run by the people who want to monitor you in the first place.

A VPN is what I use to connect to my brothers server. I control both end points, and the data never hits the internet unencrypted.

fkamiah17, to random
@fkamiah17@toot.wales avatar

WEEK 31: Students outside Columbia university passing food and water through the gates to the protesters. Collective punishment going on in the middle of New York City.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@zdl @angiebaby @fkamiah17
Viewed from Europe, I would never call democrats centre-right.

The US has two major parties, the far right and the further right. When I was a child, adults compared them to our two right wing minority parties, and both US parties have been sliding further right since then.

msquebanh, (edited ) to random
@msquebanh@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

I don't have 'controversial' opinions - like weak right wingnuts like to say about me.
I have strong personal, disabled POC woman opinions. They developed via my own life experiences & witnessing injustices as 3rd party.
I don't consider it controversial to stand up/speak up for injustices. I find it controversial, when people don't do that. I find people who don't do that to be cowards in several areas of life too.

People who refuse to live true to their own core values are all cowards.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@msquebanh
To them, your mere existence is controversial.

Last time around they built camps to remove such "controversial" people from existence (disabled, lgbtq, and for some reason, jews).

angiebaby, to random
@angiebaby@mas.to avatar

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@angiebaby
He's all the way to Trump-level alternative facts.

leeloo, to LGBT
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

Creating a trans flag sunset

Take (or download) a picture of a sunset, preferably over water.

Open the picture in Gimp (or whichever alternative software you prefer.
Add a layer mask, "grayscale copy of layer".
Fill the image with white colour.
Add a new layer below the original, filled with black.
Increase the contrast of the layer mask to maximum. I prefer to use the levels dialog.
The image may need to appear over-saturated, any gray level you are not using will be wasted.
Select a pink foreground and a light blue background.
These probably need to be darker than you expect.
Select the gradient tool.
Mode: Bi-linear.
Starting from the center of the sun, create a vertical gradient.

Sunset 2

textfiles, to random
@textfiles@digipres.club avatar

Windows: We have miraculously slammed AI into your operating system, against your will, because we are technical wizards and amazing and you will love our new guessing game software being always sitting there on the toolbar

Also Windows: oh, gee, your operating system is out of date and useless, pay up to upgrade to something that works better than this dogshit

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@textfiles
When was the last time you upgraded to a better Windows version?

The people I talk to would say Vista to Win7. It has been downhill ever since.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@Paxxi @textfiles
Wsl and sandboxing aren't things regular users care - or even know about. And they sure aren't going to convince me to give Windows another try either.

rauschma, to random
@rauschma@fosstodon.org avatar

I’m ambivalent about ad blockers:
– I understand why people use them—most ads have become nasty and obtrusive.
– There really aren’t many good alternatives to ads for content creators: People aren’t willing to pay for content but don’t like ads either.

What are your thoughts?

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@rauschma
I think calling them ads is fraudulent advertising.

If I want my name on a train, I can pay the owner of the train to put my name on it. That's an ad.

Or I can go to the rail yard at night with a spray can. That's called grafitti.

The two options are the same, except in one case I pay the owner of the train.

In my opinion, the same thing applies to the digital world. Those who pay the owner of my computer/monitor (i.e. me) are ads. The ones that don't are grafitti.

Hence I use a grafitti-blocker, and anyone who manages to bypass it can pay me.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@tbroyer @rauschma
It's not about who is meant to see the ad, it's about whose equipment you are using.

You know, the whole concept of ownership of private property.

gabrielesvelto, to steam
@gabrielesvelto@fosstodon.org avatar

Negative reviews on that begin with "this game is too expensive" drive me crazy. Seriously, I'll be the judge of that. If you feel like penalizing an independent game because you think it's too expensive you're an asshole.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@gabrielesvelto
On the other hand, if I get three hours of gameplay for $3, a $50 game better have 50 hours of gameplay, otherwise it IS too expensive - or too short, depending on how you look at it.

gnuplusmatt, to audiophile
@gnuplusmatt@fosstodon.org avatar

Correct me if I am somehow wrong, but buying modern music on vinyl is pointless, right?

The music is digitally mastered, their is no benefit, no rich analogue sound.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@gnuplusmatt
CD audio is better quality than vinyl, so that's not a reason.

However, vinyl has some limitations that improve sound quality. Mastering often involves a device called a compressor (which has nothing to do with mp3 compression), and modern music tends to crank this device up way too high. This is known as the Loudness Wars. Doing this makes listening to the music fatigueing.

Digital formats handle this compressed music perfectly, but on vinyl it reduces the amount of playing time, so more records are needed to hold the same music (costs money) and when turned up really high it can make the needle jump out of the groove.

As a result, mastering for vinyl is different than for digital. Vinyl sounds better because it can't handle the mistreatment done to digital music.

Music mastered like vinyl but delivered digitally would get you the best of both worlds
(Better reproduction from being digital and better mastering for vinyl), but you'll only find that in classical music.

leeloo, to random
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

AI cannot be racist.

The term AI is false advertising, what is sold as AI is just a statistical model. When you ask AI a question, what you are really asking is “what is the most likely answer someone would give to this question”. It answers this based on so-called training data, which is just how other people have answered in the past.

If intelligence is the ability to come up with something new, “AI” is the ability to predict the past.

When AI gives a racist answer, that's not AI being racist. It's AI predicting that if you asked a human the same question, you would likely get a racist answer. Which is objectively true, many people are racist.

When people of color don’t get hired because some AI recommended a white person, that’s not AI being racist, it’s an HR person not understanding the tool that they use.

AI is no more racist than a tape recorder.

We used to have a saying in IT, garbage in, garbage out. In this case, racism in, racism out. Many people have forgotten this.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

When I chose neural networks as an elective in school I told a class mate that I was curious about how these things work. His answer was that we don't actually know.

That was a CS course, so we didn't download some AI software from the net, we wrote it from scratch in C++, after our teacher explained the math. When he did, I recognized the math. It wasn't something magical that we don't understand how it works, it was plain old boring statistics.

Needless to say, I'm not surprised at any of this. When you build a statistical model on racist input, of course you are going to get racist output. What did you expect?

jon, to ArtificialIntelligence
@jon@vivaldi.net avatar

Results on my #survey about trackpad tap to click.

114 responded.

65% enable tap to click and love it!
29% disable tap to click.
6% had tap to click enabled and hate it!

So about two thirds prefer tap to click.

Personally I would argue that it should be off by default, but I belong to the last group. I was finding that I was having a lot of issues with my trackpad and most went away when I changed the setting. I still have an issue at times that clicking sometimes leads to right clicking.

I have been using trackpoints for years, so I guess I am rather used to an experience with clear button clicks.

#Computer #Windows #Mac #Linux #UI

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@jon @kly
I'm sure the quality of the trackpad makes a difference (how good it is at figuring out what the user intended) as well as what people grew up with.

Personally, I find it works perfectly fine on my Macbook, but needed to turn it off on every PC I've ever used - but the one on my Mac is more like a hidden button under the trackpad. I can feel the difference between touching and clicking.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@kly @jon
On a touch screen you don't have a cursor to move, where you touch is where you click.

On a track pad, you touch to move the cursor and touch to click, and the difference can be tiny.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@jon @kly
Like I said, it's a combination of quality and what you grew up with. The one on my Mac works fo me. Doesn't mean it has to work for you.

However, your description also makes me suspect we are talking about different generations. Mine only has two levels - move and click. There is no clicking harder.

dantleech, to random
@dantleech@fosstodon.org avatar

Having a private VPN is cool, on the train in Italy, but connected to my home network! On the not-cool other hand I just got fined 50EUR for not validating a bus ticket after getting off the plane.

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@dantleech
A private VPN?
A private virtual private network?

leeloo,
@leeloo@techhub.social avatar

@hmiron @dantleech
That would be a VPN.

Unlike those single point of survellance providers that should more correctly be called false advertising.

dnc, to pizza
@dnc@vive.im avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    leeloo,
    @leeloo@techhub.social avatar

    @dnc
    That's an unusual lasagne 😉

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