Fun thing, the last time I used LimeWire was actually in Linux. So obviously I was immediately highly suspicious about .exe results. (Wouldn’t even have been able to run them anyway. Wine was far less functional back then.)
In 2020 I bought a new tablet just so I could get back to reading books.
99% of time I’ve used it for YouTube.
I’m getting back to reading more ebooks just now, OK?
(A local ebook store said it’s quitting this month. As I was transferring my EPUB purchases to Google Play Books, I realised I hadn’t actually used this app for ages. Despite, you know, it being one of the few ebook readers I like.)
Oh wow, FBReader was literally the first Android EPUB reader I used… In 2013 or so. I guess I need to see how it has improved since then.
Also, Calibre and I have a strong frenemies relationship. Once upon a time I wanted to meticulously download, de-DRM, catalog and locally archive all of my ebooks. But while Calibre has the technological chops to do it, usability is a bit quirky. I actually just installed Calibre at my current system and will bring over my old ebook library as soon as I dig up my old laptop. And also bring over about a decade of Kindle purchases (most unread, yeah).
Edit: Wikipedia on FBReader:
In 2015 the software for all platforms became closed-source: the old open-source code hasn’t been updated since. The Android app was split into Free and Premium versions,
Awwwww crap. Hope there’s an actually maintained open source fork.
True! One of the big things that really put me off from reading ebooks was that I used to buy book bundles (e.g. from HumbleBundle) and then just dumped them in my library. I really should have been cataloging each new book bundle, but I didn’t, somehow. I just saw a giant big mess of my own doing in the ebook library and went “nope” and that just became another Big Pile of Stuff I Need To Deal With Later.
Despite the obvious levity, this is actually serious. It was made by why the lucky stiff, a pretty prominent member of Ruby community, back in the day. This, however, was part of his mysterious burnout manifesto, for lack of better term. He really really bloody needed a break....
got a local library/bookstore that has a “take our free shit” window. They had 4 ds games there today, mint condition, like spotless stuff. 99% durability on those babys. https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/31b8a850-2884-4fed-8ff5-8d4e3782ef34.jpeg
ShinyHunters posted on Tuesday night in a hacking forum that it obtained data from Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, including customers’ names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and order details, Cyber Daily wrote. The group is reportedly attempting to sell the stolen data for $500 million....
Meanwhile, earlier this month, I had to literally disable quite a few bits of adblocks and other extensions just so that Ticketmaster’s crappy CAPTCHA thing would allow me to even log in. Literally screamed “Why are you pestering me, I’m just trying to buy a ticket to a local car show, not a fucking Madonna concert”
Oh last year I paid the ticket in cash, 20€, no problem. This year? 20€, plus 1+bits euros of processing fees. To “deliver” my ticket to the platform of my choice. (…Mobile app.)
So I went to the car show. They still had the cash booth. Mild failure to communicate. I just dodged the field of view of the booth guys, out of shame, and entered like normal, glad the ticket guards were accommodating.
Oh I forgot the best part! When I was trying to log on and the security interfered with CAPTCHAs, Ticketmaster reset my password several times. That’s how you know this company take security seriously. /s (Literally no site does this.)
You Chrome folks need extensions to use non-Google search engines?
Firefox uses just bog standard OpenSearch definitions. No shenanigans. Ships with both Google and Bing if you’re into that sort of things. And you can add arbitrary search URLs, no probalo.
Also shout out to all shell programmers and turtle graphicians and turtle roboticians! Turtles are really awesome, they have shell access! And won’t be rushing to push anything on production too fast either.
(furious scribbling in the scifi worldbuilding notes) “In 2050, the names of the months got inadvertently legally changed when a megacorporation released a new version of their office suite and silently corrupted thousands of government document drafts.”
When I was taking my introductory courses in computer science over 20 years ago, they told me to not use Excel if you can avoid it, because it’s not very, you know, precise. So I’m well aware that this is an ancient joke. Excel will fuck your data up - AI is just another way to do it.
But it is a potential scifi plot point.
However, I will concede that it’s probably not a scifi plot point for too long. Worse things have already happened.
For data gathering? Pretty much anything that doesn’t fiddle with the values. Usually, bespoke apps or applications specifically designed for survey data. People actually use spreadsheet programs a lot, but those who do spend a lot of time on ensuring data gets entered correctly.
In Wikimedia projects (and MediaWiki systems in general) you actually have to pay attention to other people’s usernames (when working with histories and in article discussions), and at least in Wikipedia long long time ago there was a lot of trolling/vandalism where people impersonated other users (particularly the admins) and made bunch of sockpuppets with tiny variations in names when they got banned. So this rule makes sense.
Here’s an amazing business plan: take the old designs for a railbus. Remove chassis, design a new chassis, but make it all futuristic. Show it to the investors. They’ll say “but I want a pod!” And then you say “But it is a pod. A megapod, even!” And they’ll squint and go “oh I see. Let’s make 1000 of them.”
(And actually this is exactly what people have done in the past. Cool futuristic exterior hiding what’s basically just a diesel bus with train wheels.)
Reminds me of the fact that a lot of the terminology for magic is extremely coloured by how it’s used in fantasy fiction and it might not be consistent with other fictional works, let alone how the words were/are used by magic practitioners. Fantasy authors have the benefit of just making the rules up.
(Perhaps most notable example is the term “witch” - pop culture defines that as female magic practitioners, but historically it was more of a gender neutral term in a lot of places. You know, kind of like the word “witchcraft” doesn’t have gender connotations as such.)
Actually this reminds me, what is the deal with tar command recommendations to use or not use dash? I know GNU tar accepts both (e.g.) tar xvf file.tar and tar -xvf file.tar, but at some points people were like “NO! Don’t use the dash! It’s going to maybe cause issues somewhere, who knows!” and I was like “OK”. Something to do with people up designing the Unix specs?
When I read the sentence, I was like “Wh… w… how? WHY? …and OF COURSE it was distributed via FTP, I mean, what else do you use for entertainment in AIX. Or business, for that matter.”...
About 10 years ago I was like “FINE, clearly 512MB of memory isn’t enough to avoid swapping hell, I’ll get 1 GB of extra memory.” …and that was that!
These days I’m like “4 GB on a single board computer? Oh that’s fine. You may need that much to run a browser. And who’s going to run a browser regularly on a SBC? …oh I’ve done it a lot of times and it’s… fine.”
The thing I learned is that you can run a whole bunch of SHIT HOT server software on a system with less than a gigabyte of memory. The moment you run a web browser? FUCK ALL THAT.
And that’s basically what I found out long ago. I had a laptop that had like 32 megs of memory. Could be a perfectly productive person with that. Emacs. Darcs. SSH over a weird USB Wi-Fi dongle. But running a web browser? Can’t do Firefox. Opera kinda worked. Wouldn’t work nowadays, no. But Emacs probably still would.
Oh no. This buddy just heard about the Plumber Brothers and what they've been doing for the past 40+ years. (lemmy.world)
[Not my photo obviously]
Protect yourself friends. (lemmy.ca)
Reader's Block (lemmy.world)
Madlad posted this on the r/libertarian subreddit and they banned him (lemmy.world)
reddit.com/…/how_it_started_vs_how_its_going/
Programmer Pain Chart (lemmy.world)
Despite the obvious levity, this is actually serious. It was made by why the lucky stiff, a pretty prominent member of Ruby community, back in the day. This, however, was part of his mysterious burnout manifesto, for lack of better term. He really really bloody needed a break....
Lucky DS game haul form local librarys "free stuff" section (sh.itjust.works)
got a local library/bookstore that has a “take our free shit” window. They had 4 ds games there today, mint condition, like spotless stuff. 99% durability on those babys. https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/31b8a850-2884-4fed-8ff5-8d4e3782ef34.jpeg
A Ticketmaster hack spilled sensitive data for 560 million customers, hackers say (qz.com)
ShinyHunters posted on Tuesday night in a hacking forum that it obtained data from Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, including customers’ names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and order details, Cyber Daily wrote. The group is reportedly attempting to sell the stolen data for $500 million....
Researchers crack 11-year-old password, recover $3 million in bitcoin (arstechnica.com)
local warzone (lemmy.world)
Happy World Turtle Day! One of my favourite turtle-releated software development things is that Firefox console will show a little turtle icon on slow requests. Picture also related. (lemmy.world)
Also shout out to all shell programmers and turtle graphicians and turtle roboticians! Turtles are really awesome, they have shell access! And won’t be rushing to push anything on production too fast either.
You wanted AI, didn't you (sh.itjust.works)
Of course (lemmy.world)
Tacos. (lemmy.world)
Seriously, Wikibooks? (sh.itjust.works)
Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand (newatlas.com)
Words for an epic quest, part 2 (lemmus.org)
Incidental Comics by Grant Snider, May 16, 2024.
Old XKCD, still relevant (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Was trying to extract a totally legit copy of Skate 3 I downloaded today to play on my Steam Deck
People keep telling me that Nuon is probably the most obscure video game platform ever created. Oh, they've not heard how the greybeards entertain themselves. (lemmy.world)
When I read the sentence, I was like “Wh… w… how? WHY? …and OF COURSE it was distributed via FTP, I mean, what else do you use for entertainment in AIX. Or business, for that matter.”...
Never Forget (mander.xyz)
you don't need more 4GB of RAM (lemmy.dbzer0.com)