Well, sure, with an image classifier, the bird identification is doable. I’m sure I could implement that if I went looking for some open source thingamabob that does that. But it’s still not something I could actually understand. That part definitely hasn’t changed over the years.

Don’t look at the details. Maybe look at the big picture.

A lot of people spend a lot of time zooming in pictures to find the meaning. Perhaps they should zoom out to see the big picture.

Snails on skateboards are going to be slow no matter what.

Turtles are actually surprisingly fast. They only pretend to be fast, as teenagers, while going everywhere on their skateboards. (They may even learn some sick tricks to impress bystanders.) In reality they just apply ✨determination✨ and get wherever they want to go, Eventually.

Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy and Bookwyrm. They all seem to cover most of my social media needs which (in all other cases beside Lemmy) can be described as shouting in the void and being happy if someone else is there too.

There’s always the old piece of wisdom from the Unix jungle: “If you write a complex shellscript, sooner or later you’ll wish you wrote it in a real programming language.”

I wrote a huge PowerShell script over the past few years. I was like “Ooh, guess this is a resume item if anyone asks me if I know PowerShell.” …around the beginning of the year I rewrote the bloody thing in Python and I have zero regrets. It’s no longer a Big Mush of Stuff That Does a Thing. It’s got object orientation now. Design patterns. Things in independent units. Shit like that.

Reminds me: long ago, one comedy website made a bunch of awards that you could put on your own website with if you didn’t get awards from anyone else. (Having a bunch of random awards was the style of the time.) One of these was the coveted Titanic Navigation Award. I don’t think it can be awarded to anyone any more, as the developers of React have been the most deserving one to receive it in recent years, for their unending efforts in making navigation more confusing for everyone.

Yay, I didn’t get spammed! …so the stuff I have on Codeberg is officially stuff nobody but me cares about. (Sadness, or an opportunity?)

Yup, the bottom line is, there was this dude who, upon buying a website, fucked it up.

Upon attaining unprecedented government position, he got access to government systems, and fucked them up.

Did anyone vote for this? No, no one voted for this. Were there supposed to be checks and balances to stop this from happening? Well, theoretically, maybe, but, urgh, the Founding Fathers didn’t expect anyone to unleash the Ultimate Idiot on crucial data infrastructure.

When Elon bought Twitter, I realised right away I’d need to close my account.

What made me hurry up exporting my data and closing the account were the reports of Elon Musk personally fucking with the systems, and the subsequent glitches and outages. Had to get it done while the site was still moderately functional.

And they just let this guy get his hands on actually important national computer infrastructure? Fucking hell.

Whenever Elon speaks of programming, he just spouts the most delusional Point-Haired Boss bullshit imaginable. Truly, he has been promoted to the level of his incompetence.

(It is also highly ironic considering the Dilbert creator’s politics.)

I don’t really watch Star Wars. I’m a more of a Trekkie gal.

🖖

See, you can separate files both ways as long as it’s logical

For Mastodon, the people you follow will also need to switch. This is even harder than getting your friends to switch.

Well I switched from the birdsite to Mastodon because a) I like to shout in the void and b) see what other people are shouting into the void. Doesn’t really ultimately matter who’s doing the shouting. People who go to social media exclusively for news and updates are a bit strange when you really think about it. You’ve got to have the shout in you.

(I’m only being half facetious here)

Matrix. Seems to be the hottest thing for group chats. Also what a lot of open source projects that used IRC before are switching to (or, if not switching, are providing a bridge for).

I’m not really all that invested in trying out Friendica, because Facebook is basically the exact sort of social network service that I really don’t give a darn about. I wanted to check it anyway, but the only tangible information on what Friendica is about is the project/marketing page. I can’t browse the instances. If I go to your massive social platform, the last thing I want to see is just a brick wall of a login page. Then I looked at fedidb and… um, those aren’t huge user numbers.

So I guess I’ll keep posting on the services that seem more sensible to me, like Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy.

“Linux is probably insecure. Also GPL sounds like communism.” …did I just get mysteriously whisked back to 1998? Because that was the last time I heard this shit.

I’ve posted photos daily for 2 years now and I’m getting reasonable levels of likes/reposts. Judging from the stuff I’ve heard from other folks, these levels have fallen a lot from the site’s heyday, but there’s still a whole bunch of users. Just a hunch, but I guess the Twitter/Facebook shenanigans probably drove more people back to Tumblr, too.

Well that’s the neat part, you don’t! If you post on Pixelfed you’re already on Mastodon.

…I suppose you can reshare it if you want. Me, I just point people to my Pixelfed account on my Mastodon profile and vice versa.

• Yes
• Yes, and also delete Electron
• That, and also make me forget I ever even heard about Electron in the first place

I can’t remember it, but I read one Microsoft blog post (in Vista era?) about how one team at Microsoft would develop some amazing new Windows component. They’d proudly name it AmazingNewService.dll. And then the operating system team would come in and say “that’s all fine and good, but you have to conform to the naming convention.” 8+3 filenames. First two letters probably “MS”, because of reasons. …and 15 years later, people still regularly go “What the fuck is MSAMNSVC.DLL?”