There's so much fear in the fediverse about bad admins/mods, and honestly it's no different to the days where we had forums with bad admins/mods.
The problem is that largely for the past decade people have been in walled gardens either never thinking of moderation, or actively needing to work against moderation to exist.
And you didn't have a choice, because you were locked into that provider & their moderation policies.
@thisismissem The second forum I administered for years came into existence because of crappy admin decisions on a different forum we were all on. I guess this sort of fracturing is uncommon for people whose entire Internet experience is centralization.
RIP Larry Allen, the strongest human ever to play in the NFL.
I usually flex on NFL players, because I'm stronger than almost all of them. But not Larry Allen. No sir. I flex on people because my bench PR is almost their deadlift PR. Larry Allen almost benches my deadlift PR.🤯 There's levels to this.
Axios specifically says all states will be "invited to participate" so not clear to me if states can choose to opt out. Also not clear, do you have to be a U.S. resident. In the pilot, expatriates could not participate even if our state of last residence was in the pilot.
@mcc Yeah. I was very excited, but then slightly less so when I noticed "invited". Still, inching closer to punting the HR Block software once and for all.
@lertsenem@mekkaokereke@stux I suppose at least it's partially a technical issue here, rather than something fed by the industrial surveillance complex, for want of a better description.
This has been a fascinating discussion, thanks to everyone participating (and who will not see this, due to the nature of Mastodon conversations).
@evan imagine spending the time to legislate against people abroad voting, given they're almost certainly a fraction of the number of domestic folks who don't vote. Invest that energy in making it easier for everyone to vote.
I'm glad they UK recently overturned the law that said I couldn't vote after 15 years abroad.
After 2 ish years, I just went to report my first post. As I went through the motions, I realized this was going to my server's mods, because it asked which rule of ours it broke.
Is there a way to report it to the user's server? I assume they're the ones who would take action.
i've been working on a project with a Pico W and DVI output that includes weather data. we're having a thunderstorm so that means a rare appearance of the pixelated lightning bolt sprite
Hello @Mojeek! Apropos of, oh I don't know, everything relying on Bing being busted today, could you please help me understand the Search Selections?
I went hunting for a way to make Mojeek my default Firefox search and noticed that section in the settings, which had Brave, Ecosia, and Startpage checked by default. I read the linked blurb but didn't understand it.
Here are the much anticipated 10 images taken by the Euclid "Dark Matter Hunter" space telescope.
The images and accompanying papers were presented today at a gathering by the Euclid Consortium. We have seen the first image before.
These are part of the Euclid Early Release Observation program. The first results from Euclid’s wide and deep main surveys will take until fall, first cosmology papers at least until late 2025.
@AkaSci this may be an odd question, but how much sky are we looking at here? I see how far away this cluster is, and how wide, so we could presumably work it out. I just wondered how large a portion of sky is home to 50,000 galaxies (just a staggering number, really).
I should probably know these things, but I'm decades out of practice.
#PenPlotter maintenance today. My HP 7585B stopped responding over RS-232. Diagnostics revealed a problem with the interface card. Luckily I have a spare machine that can donate a new working card!
@paulrickards That's astonishing engineering. Perhaps par for the course for plotters, alas I never got to use one, but the precision needed to return the paper to the exact location multiple times without drift. Brilliant.
A particularly dangerous situation (PDS) tornado watch for northwestern Illinois, eastern and central Iowa, southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin valid until 9 p.m. CDT.
A tornado watch for western Iowa and northwest Missouri until 5 p.m. CDT.
A tornado watch for most of western Missouri, extreme eastern Kansas, northeast Oklahoma and extreme northwest Arkansas until 10 p.m. CDT.
As a youngster, I made my first Deluxe Paint pixel art on an Amiga 1000 in 1986. Coming from a Commodore 64 with a fixed palette of 16 colors, the Amiga was revolutionary at the time.
I went on to use "DPaint" professionally on a daily basis for around 10 years, creating pixel graphics for games, advertising agencies and television shows.
@metin Yes! Dpaint blew teenage me away, but unfortunately I didn't have an Amiga. However, eventually found a PC version for sale, and while it didn't have HAM it did have 256 color SVGA (800x600). Did all my school artwork in that.
Every winter: 🦝 ah, time to make the annual "Here's how to DIY an anti-SAD lightbox" post
Every summer: 🦝 oho, time to make the annual "Here's how to suck cold air in" post
Got me a 27" Panasonic telly, it's a CT-27E13G. It's got some linearity problems.
In an arcade monitor, I'd twist the pot marked VLIN until it looked alright, but instead the manufacturers invented a new system where you try to find the codes for the remote control that you don't have so that you can get the damn thing into a service menu and seriously am I missing something or have we just totally dropped the ball on the whole infrared remote control codes thing
Like, it's 2024, I've got a phone in a drawer with an IR blaster in it, we've had websites full of remote codes for going on three decades now, how come none of them know how to squirt out the "Recall" button for a CT-27E13G
@ifixcoinops On a whim, I put them in mojeek. Nothing for both, 5 results for the first one and 4 for the second. Wowsers, remember when search results did that? Instead of 20,000 links of SEO nonsense.
Here comes a thread on light pollution from satellites, with a concrete action that you all can take to help push for regulation of satellites in orbit!
Astronomers have been worried about light pollution from satellites (if you've been following me for more than 24 hours, you've perhaps heard a bit about this). Astronomers spent SO much time and effort begging and pleading with Starlink to make their satellites fainter, with mixed results.
@sundogplanets Ugh. Who the heck is asking for these satellites? Or is it rich people who are another chance to capture a market without paying for ground-based infrastructure?
1/2 I still struggle getting used to the fact that the smallest mirrors of the Extremely Large Telescope are similar in size to the primary mirrors of many current telescopes!
The M5 – the fifth mirror in the optical path – has reached a key milestone: its blank, the piece that will be later polished, has been finalised.
@astro_jcm absolutely cannot get my head around a mirror that size tilting 10 times a second. Bonkers engineering. I remember getting a hold of a little CCD that had tip tilt adaptive optics as an undergrad, and that seemed like witchcraft.
@ifixcoinops Aye, I had the Samsung 720p 27" TV around the time of the Xbox 360 launch. Used DVI if memory serves, not HDMI, was the screen they'd always show off that system on.
Anyway, shield on speakers knackered and that weird color effect on the picture I literally thought could only affect CRTs suddenly appeared. Out of warranty, obviously. Absolute shite.
@ifixcoinops mind, we've got a house full of excellent Samsung phones, have done for years, and so "it's a Samsung" effect in full swing I bought all their appliances. They're all slowly imploding like that old telly from nearly 20 years ago.
@thomasfuchs I mean, for years Terry Wogan would try not to reveal how drunk he was and spend the evening remarking on the politics, as he commentated for the BBC. It has always been nakedly political, as seen by who votes for who.
