winterknell

winterknell, 29 days ago

@glynmoody Good riddance.

Even though I don't live in the EU, I quit Facebook pre-emptively on the basis of Facebook's proposed "pay or OK". Whether or not they get it through in the EU, they're likely to think of using it elsewhere. That was the last straw for me.

Hurt like hell. I gave up family, old friends and associates that I have no other means to contact. Some may fall back into my orbit in time, but some are lost to me forever.

🤷‍♂️ Facebook's price was more than I was willing to pay.

winterknell, 29 days ago

@jon Set your system to index the drive! USB3 HDD is plenty fast.

Put files into folders by year/month/day taken: gives you a date. Then for each folder, add an approximate location in a text file, spreadsheet or database.

Date | Location | Event
2002/09/01 | Venice | Regatta Storica

I have a database with 76,660 photos, from 1979 (although mostly since 1987 and with gaps before I went digital in 2002). It's way over-engineered for most people, but I can find anything within minutes.

winterknell, 29 days ago

@jon You're copying the things from the cloud to a 5 Tb HDD later, right? I thought your issue was finding old stuff on that slow HDD. Using a script to sort the photos by date after download is simple enough.

But if the files are in the cloud, just create a local text file/spreadsheet/whatever from image metadata. By metadata I mean things like file name, date/time, size and (if available) location. It's always going to be faster to search in a local file than to search through a remote drive.

winterknell, 2 months ago

@jmcleod It will also be opposed by those of us who don't drive and have no cars, and who have for years been struggling with people parking where they shouldn't be.

At a previous flat, people who didn't even live in our building kept parking in our reserved parking space, at all hours, right outside our bedroom window. So we blocked the entry then smilingly allowed known neighbours to park in front of that.

I expect you're right, and this will fly through. But don't expect prices to fall!

winterknell, 2 months ago

@jmcleod The other observation I'd make is that the hilarity ensued long ago. Living a 5 minute walk from public transport has not led people to ditch their cars anywhere I've lived. Places like Richmond, for example, where workers cottages back when were built in rows with no allowance for cars. Those cottages now sell for millions, and the owners park their cars - often one for each resident - in the street.

winterknell, 3 months ago

@sam @maegul @mastodonmigration @stuart @vruz @snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed

> "It's one of the servers in the network."

No, it is not.

Bluesky is not part of the ActivityPub network, any more than are Twitter or Facebook.

https://cathode.church/fedi-scraper-counter.html

I could actually kinda-sorta-maybe get behind a bridge like this, IF IT WAS OPT IN. This is not opt in. It does not even respect flags that say hoovering up a Mastodon person's or instance's data is OK with that person or that instance.

winterknell, 3 months ago

@maegul @sam @mastodonmigration @stuart @vruz @snarfed.org@snarfed.org @snarfed

Ask MySpace about Facebook's bridge.

My objection is not addressed to the protocols, but to the ethics. Public posts on Mastodon and on Bluesky are easily scraped. That does not mean that any arsehole can just go ahead and bot-scrape it and pass it on.

As a Masto instance, indieweb.social is welcome to receive whatever is not blocked from them, but not to pass it on wholesale beyond the edge of the Fediverse.

winterknell, 3 months ago

@caseynewton "OK, I have booked your flight to Japan.

DEPARTING MEL Terminal 2, 29 February 2025

ARRIVING EDO Terminal NaN, 24 March 1603"

winterknell, 6 months ago

@humantransit
Paragraph - what, 21? - of 24: "Although transit’s share of total Tallinn trips has fallen sharply, the absolute number of rides HAS RISEN ..." (emphasis mine)

Lede successfully buried.

This was such an annoying article. Yes, they eventually got around to discussing how to improve ridership, but only at the end of the piece, long after many people would've stopped reading.

winterknell, 6 months ago

@albertcardona @ElleGray My new word of the day is "croud". I see it was nabbed long ago by some marketing mob, which takes the shine off it, but as a portmanteau of "cloud" and "crowd" it's a nifty term.

winterknell, 7 months ago

@pluralistic Wayback link to the Permalink for that classic XKCD:

https://web.archive.org/web/20081014233010/https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/steal_this_comic.png

Words to live by.

winterknell, 7 months ago

@CatsOfYore Mum doesn't look so sure! 😐

winterknell, 8 months ago

@pluralistic I'd like to say I've now read it cover to cover, but as you know, that is literally impossible with the ebook. I have, however read every page.

It's a daunting manifesto. We're currently fighting just to be able to change our phone batteries! (My first mobile phone had replaceable batteries.)

I like the Interoperator's Defense. We've seen how anti-SLAPP short-circuits SLAPP suits and Section 230 short-circuits other nonsense. Too far out? I don't think so.

Starve them out!

winterknell, 6 months ago

@FlockOfCats @selzero You should always check your cheque for spelling and maths.

I just told my Firefox to use English(GB) in preference to English(US). It's not perfect, since I'm a Kiwi who lives in Australia and Firefox only offers US, GB and CA (presumably that's Canadian), but way less grar-inducing than watching it red-underline "kilometre".

winterknell, 9 months ago

@ai6yr That picture of the fires burning near the Temple of Segesta is wild. The temple seems to be running away from the flames, and yet - how many fires has that building seen pass by during the 2400 years it has been there?

winterknell, 9 months ago

@StillIRise1963
They really work. Yazd has (or had, in 2007) a Water Museum filled with details on the building and maintenance of badgirs and qanats. Well worth seeing.

On a stinking hot day when I was drenched with sweat walking around outside, I visited a couple of houses cooled this way. They were as cool and comfortable inside as if by modern air-con. But they were quite large, and how well the system would work for a tiny bungalow is open to question.

Pics my own, from 2007.

In the courtyard of the Yazd Water Museum, showing a display dummy using a wooden rotary hoist to draw water from a well. The hoist is two x-shaped frames with joists connecting them at middle and corners. It rotates on the centre joist, which is fixed to the ground by posts, and the rope is wound on the outer joists as the device rotates.
Inside the Yazd Water Museum, showing a room with heavy walls and a number of glass cases holding exhibits.
Inside the Yazd Water Museum, showing the paddle of a water-driven mill.Some blades are missing but the remaining blades show how they were angled and set in a rotating case built around a fixed metal shaft.

winterknell, 9 months ago

@StillIRise1963
Small correction, although Yazd does have such houses, and the Water Museum is in Yazd, turns out the traditional houses I remembered visiting were actually the Ameriha, Borujerdi and Abbasin Houses in Kashan.

Looking out through a window. There is, IIRC, no glass in this one, just decorative masonry.
Three stained glass windows in the Ameriha House, in patterns of blue and gold. The arched top panels are shaped to resemble half-flowers; the lower panels are four rectangles of with coloured glass around the edges and a white panel in the middle of each. The photo is deliberately dim to show up the colours.
Courtyard of the Ameriha House showing a reflecting pool that cools the yard, and deep-set windows and doorways. A badgir (wind tower) is visible against the sky.

winterknell, 9 months ago

@StillIRise1963
The Abbasin House had a handy model inside, showing its major features.

Model of the Abbasin House shwing the arrangement of courtyards, ariwells and badgirs. This one focuses on the main courtyard.
Low-angle view of the model, highlighting the dome and two airwells
The real thing. Although the image looks dim, you can see the afternoon sun spilling into a passage.

winterknell, 9 months ago

@pluralistic
"But what if, instead of trying to force Zuck to be a better emperor-for-life, we passed rules requiring him to let his subjects flee his tyrannical reign?"

This is crucial.

Meta won't let people delete their Threads account unless they also delete their Instagram account. That's Meta's Berlin Wall around Threads, designed (though they will have lots of "technical" reasons why it isn't) to prevent Threads users leaching away into the Fediverse.

That wall must fall.

winterknell, 9 months ago

@mjeaton @searls @pluralistic Thank you for this. This link-list gave me the pleasure of discovering https://blog.testdouble.com, which I personally hadn't come across before.

Part of the pleasure was that the blog worked perfectly, even with scripting disabled. I browse with Noscript and Ublock Origin, and I'm resigned to landing on pages that show nothing until I allow them to run scripts. A generated page that just works is more impressive to me than any brag-page of past coding achievements.