Soulmates. The one who always knows when it’s dinner time. ⌘ Read more
Climate change is turning global wildfires into monsters
Predicting bushfires is difficult at the best of times. But as climate change wreaks havoc with our world’s weather systems it’s getting harder and more important to get right. ⌘ Read more
Trump Said He Wouldn’t Touch the East Wing. Then He Tore It All Down.
Luke Broadwater, Reporter - The New York Times
_Stephan: How symbolic, just as Trump and the Republican Party and the Supreme Court majority are destroying democracy in the United States, so Trump is destroying the White House you have known and seen all your life. Simultaneously, he is telling his administration to give him $230 million in tax dollars of your money and mine, because th … ⌘ Read more
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Advent of Code will be different this year:
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@movq@www.uninformativ.de This is actually a good positive change I think!
Personally, I’ll probably stretch it out over 24 days. Giving myself more time to solve each puzzle and I really want this event to last the entire month. 😅
I might even do AoC this year with the elevated stress/pressure! – The last few times I’ve tried, I’ve always felt far too much pressure and felt like a failure 😞 (mostly ya know because of my vision impairment, I couldn’t keep up!)
Vacation in the Rhön
Yesterday, we came back from some much-needed vacation. We spent 9 nights in Fulda, went hiking a few times, visited some museums, and sometimes also just relaxed. On the way to Fulda, we also made a short break in Kassel and revived some memories. ⌘ Read more
Geochemical research could help identify microbial activity in Earth’s rock record and perhaps in Martian sediments
Because oxygen-bearing sulfate minerals trap and preserve signals from Earth’s atmosphere, scientists closely study how they form. Sulfates are stable over billions of years, so their oxygen isotopes are seen as a time capsule, reflecting atmospheric conditions while they were evolving on early Earth—and possibly on its planetary neighbor Mars. ⌘ Read more
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That was a very non-fun day at work.
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@movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh, we like to be paranoid. We’ve been right so many times. Unfortunately.
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That was a very non-fun day at work.
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@prologic@twtxt.net That sounds horrible. 😅 I wouldn’t want to own such a car. (My plan is not to buy a new car after my current one finally broke down entirely.)
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org First time I heard about eCall. I don’t think I like this. 🫤 Feels like another attempt at going for complete surveillance. Yes, yes, it’s about “security”/“safety” … it always is.
Advent of Code will be different this year:
There will only be 12 puzzles, i.e. only December 1 to December 12. This might make it more interesting for some people, because it’s (probably) less work and a lower chance of people getting burned out. 🤔
Personally, I’ll probably stretch it out over 24 days. Giving myself more time to solve each puzzle and I really want this event to last the entire month. 😅
Maybe this makes it more interesting for some people around here as well?
What about the icons in pifmgr.dll?
Raymond Chen has another great post about some of the classic icons from Windows 95, this time focusing on pifmgr.dll. In this file, there are a variety of random-seeming icons, and it turns out they’re random for a reason: they were just a bunch a fun, generic icons intended for people to use when creating PIF files. The icons in pifmgr.dll were created just for fun. They were not created with any particular programs in mind, with one obvious exception. They w … ⌘ Read more
Simple, minimal SQL database migrations written in Go with generics. Std lib database/sql and SQLX supported OOTB
I built GoSMig for personal projects and open-sourced it. It’s a tiny library for writing migrations in Go (compile-time checks via generics). Supports both transactional and non-transactional steps, rollback, status/version commands, and a built-in CLI handler so you can ship your own tool.
- Zero dependencies (std lib; golang.org/x/term used for pager support)
- database/sql and sqlx supported out of the box, others w … ⌘ Read more
Exploring how dark matter alters electron-capture supernovae and the birth of neutron stars
Electron-capture supernovae (ECSNe) are stellar explosions that occur in stars with initial masses around 8–10 times that of the sun. These stars develop oxygen-neon-magnesium cores, which become unstable when electrons are captured by neon and magnesium nuclei. ⌘ Read more
This is the last time my toddler and 15yo cat will sleep together, in a couple of hours he won’t be sick ever again, but it hurts me so much. ⌘ Read more
Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country ⌘ Read more
The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world
David Robson, Reporter - BBC (U.K.)
_Stephan: I have been telling you since Trump became President for the second time, and began his fascist coup, assisted by the loyal incompetents he appointed to his administration, and the Republican Party at the state and Congressional level, that the only thing that will change this is millions of Americans nonviolently demonstrating. I hope you were one of the people o … ⌘ Read more
Meet the young Americans who want a monarchy — but not ‘King Trump’
George Grylls, Washington Reporter - The Times (U.K.)
Stephan: You hear nothing about this in American media, but there is a growing number of Gen Z Whites who actually have become so disaffected by what has happened to American democracy that they would choose monarchy over democracy. It is a glaring demonstration of how poorly educated about the history of civics these young people are.
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Why one company’s glitch just broke half the internet
When Amazon sneezes, the world catches a cold. It’s time we stopped accepting that as normal. ⌘ Read more
Why is Halloween starting so much earlier each year? A business professor explains
Halloween is a fun, scary time for children and adults alike—but why does the holiday seem to start so much earlier every year? Decades ago, when I was young, Halloween was a much smaller affair, and people didn’t start preparing until mid-October. Today, in my neighborhood near where I grew up in Massachusetts, Halloween decorations start appearing in the middle of summer. ⌘ Read more
A distant comet is forming new rings while we watch in real time
The comet-like object Chiron has been caught in the process of forming new rings, which could help us understand how these complex systems work ⌘ Read more
China imports no US soybeans in September for first time in seven years ⌘ Read more
US falls out of world’s 10 most powerful passports list for first time in 20 years
Marina Dunbar, Guardian U.S. Fellow - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This report in the British Guardian, something you are unlikely to hear, see, or read in the American media, is important because it is another sign demonstrating how Trump and the Republican Party has caused America’s position and presence in the international community to decline.
 one primary write instance for their PostgreSQL cluster with dozens of read replicas. This powers the core ChatGPT service which has hundreds of millions of users and, needless to say, is a critical backbone to it.
The talk implies they shard now, but the whole video emphasises all the optimizations they did in order to support their workload through a single primary. It isn’t mentioned at what time they switched to sharding, but it’s heavily implied that … ⌘ Read more
Windows 11, now with even more “AI” where you don’t want it
Microsoft has posted a blog post about detailing its latest round of additions to Windows 11, and as will surely not surprise you, it’s “AI”, all the time, whether you like it or not. I’m not even going to detail most of these “features”, as I’m sure most of them will just become yet another series of checkboxes on whatever debloating tool you prefer. Still, there’s one recurring theme running throughout Microsoft’s … ⌘ Read more
A deep dive into the Silicon Graphics Indigo² IMPACT 10000
This beautiful purple slab is the Silicon Graphics Indigo² (though, unlike its earlier namesake, not actually indigo coloured) with the upper-tier MIPS R10000 CPU and IMPACT graphics. My recollection was that it worked at the time, but I couldn’t remember if it booted, and of course that was no guarantee that it could still power on. If this machine is to stay working and in the collection, we’re gonna need a … ⌘ Read more
Her very first time being out on a porch ⌘ Read more
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Everything in the realm of “smartphones” is such an incomprehensible clusterfuck. I want to throw this thing out the window.
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@movq@www.uninformativ.de Speaking of “clusterfucks”. Every fucking time I try to type something on my fucking goddamn iPhone’s little tiny ass on-screen keyboard it ends up typing out “I love you!” 🤟 For fucks sake 🤦♂️ – Given the size of the fucking goddamn on-screen keyboards on these things and folks with limited/poor vision, can’t we figure out what I meant to type instead of spitting out total garbage nonsense that I had no intention of typing that makes me just look silly and stupid?! 🤬 Ask @bender@twtxt.net how many times this has happened on IRC whenever I’ve been on my phone 📱
There’s a simple way we could drastically cut AI energy use
If users chose the most efficient model each time they performed a task with AI, researchers calculate it would slash energy consumption by more than a quarter ⌘ Read more
How to navigate GitHub Universe (or any tech conference) if you’re an introvert
If alone time is your love language—don’t worry, it’s ours too—you can still attend, learn from, and enjoy big events like GitHub Universe. Here are some practical tips on how.
The post [How to navigate GitHub Universe (or any tech conference) if you’re an introvert](https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/how-to-navigate-github-universe-or-any-tech-conferen … ⌘ Read more
What’s your go-to strategy for giving engineers access to production?
I’ve been in this field for almost 15 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen two companies handle this the same way
Some other places just hand out just-in-time database access with short-lived credentials, others rely on rigid role-based permission, and others go all in on anonymized data dumps or shadow environments to avoid prod access altogether
What’s your go-to when it comes to giving access to engineers to access production app … ⌘ Read more
Time crystals could power future quantum computers
A glittering hunk of crystal gets its iridescence from a highly regular atomic structure. Frank Wilczek, the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics, proposed quantum systems––like groups of particles––could construct themselves in the same way, but in time instead of space. He dubbed such systems time crystals, defining them by their lowest possible energy state, which perpetually repeats movements without external energy input. Time crystals were experimentall … ⌘ Read more
ProtoVault Breach Forensics Challenge Offsec CTF Week 1
Maverick is back again with a fresh article this time I dug into ProtoVault Breach, the Week 1 forensics challenge from the Offsec CTF…
[Continue reading on InfoSec Write-ups »](ht … ⌘ Read more
Engineers solve the sticky-cell problem in bioreactors and other industries
To help mitigate climate change, companies are using bioreactors to grow algae and other microorganisms that are hundreds of times more efficient at absorbing CO2 than trees. Meanwhile, in the pharmaceutical industry, cell culture is used to manufacture biologic drugs and other advanced treatments, including lifesaving gene and cell therapies. ⌘ Read more
After taking most of the year off from role-playing, I’ve got 3 one-shots coming up in the next month, all of which need some tweaking before I can run them (as do my homebrew rules).
Plus there’s a “build a game” code challenge at work, a pair of media boxes I need to rebuild, a pair of dead machines I need to diagnose, and I’d like to (eventually) get my twtxt apps to a “releasable” state.
So many projects, so little (free) time…
Microsoft Adding AI Facial Recognition, “You can only turn off 3 times a year.”
Al Notepad, Al Paint, Al Excel, Al Word, Al GitHub… ⌘ Read more
10 Popular (and Weird) Ancient Foods
Many foods cherished by our ancestors continue to find a place on tables worldwide. From the staple presence of bread to the remarkable status of beer, countless ancient delights have withstood the test of time. But other foods have faded into oblivion and been mostly uneaten for centuries. Whether due to animal extinction or shifting […]
The post 10 Popular (and Weird) Ancient Foods appea … ⌘ Read more
Can we hear gravitational-wave ‘beats’ in the rhythm of pulsars?
Pulsars suggest that ultra–low-frequency gravitational waves are rippling through the cosmos. The signal seen by international pulsar timing array collaborations in 2023 could come from a stochastic gravitational-wave background—the sum of many distant sources—or from a single nearby binary of supermassive black holes. ⌘ Read more
Almost 75,000 farmed salmon in Scotland escaped into the wild after Storm Amy. Why this may cause lasting damage
When Storm Amy battered the Scottish Highlands in early October, it tore through a salmon farm’s sea pens, releasing around 75,000 fish into open water in Loch Linnhe. The scale of the escape is alarming. It comes at a time when wild Atlantic salmon—already classified as “endangered” in Great Britain—are in decline. ⌘ Read more
SpaceX launches the 11th test flight of its mega Starship rocket with another win
SpaceX launched another of its mammoth Starship rockets on a test flight Monday, successfully making it halfway around the world while releasing mock satellites like last time. ⌘ Read more