@SecurityWriter it was either this or sleep.

If you tell your friends about Mastodon, you’re technically an ambassador of the federation.

@catsalad Huh. I normally have a strong adverse reaction to stuff like this, but this time, nothing. I wonder if it's because of the animated feel?

@nazokiyoubinbou @ai6yr I second the fan cleaning. If you want a second drive, and you don't care about the case, you can do what I did: Drill a hole for the hard drive cable in the side, then drill some screws through the inside to mount the hard drive. It required some careful measuring but it worked and only required two screws. No overheating issues, relatively stable.

Remember, when the internet gets disbanded, don't blame Hasbro Interactive. They had nothing to do with it.

From the back of my Master of Orion II disc.

I'm so tired of AI hype.

@ashwin @Jyoti @tomjennings @crinolinerobot Isn't it just a lust for power? A need to control everything? That's why the amount of money doesn't seem to matter to them. If they purely wanted just money, then theoretically there could be an amount that satisfies. But money buys power, and realistically, there's no limit on how much money is needed for that. You're always afraid someone else is going to get enough money to steal away some corner of what you've purchased, so you have to constantly be working toward having more money than anyone else. And you can't give that money away, because giving it away means ceding just a little bit of your potential power.

Now, why they have this obsessive need to control things? That's a different question. But that's why most, if not all, of these billionaires are also known as terrible micromanagers.

What is the modern equivalent of "Quick! Turn to channel 11!"?

Quick! Open YouTube and search for "Dangerous Thing Happening 2025 Livestream"?

@va3db Ah, no. Not me, then. I do know a couple of people like that, though, and at least one of them is a ham radio operator. 😬

@va3db I think there is definitely overlap. I'm by no means a prepper but I've bought emergency food supplies and have a bug out bag just in case of emergencies. A higher number of ham radio operators are also storm spotters.

I'm part of the Groups.io #hamradio group where I live, and the hardest part of it is how often lately they're announcing deaths of the local #ham operators. For one, they all seem like fantastic people and I'm sad I never got to know them, and for two, it really feels like ham radio is made up of more and more of a dying group. The two facts that I can always bring up as "what's unique about you" style icebreakers is that I'm a ham radio operator and a lapsed puppeteer. Nobody else ever has experience with those two things.

@plup360 @troed Very interesting article. My initial objection was that it would be difficult to implement from a technical standpoint, but I feel Wikipedia has the funding for a few developers.

I do wonder what the overall political and sociological makeup of the majority of Wikipedia editors is. Does it slant right or left? If it slants strongly one way or another, wouldn't that mean this method would fall prey to simple statistics and the majority group would still drive it in their chosen direction? (I guess that's what democracy as a whole is - the majority opinion wins). But I would be worried about someone with unpopular opinions making a number of sock puppets in an attempt to influence things.

It would still be better than what we have currently, so I'd be for it.

@plup360 @troed Hm. Wikipedia is a monopoly in a way, I suppose.

The problem is, most of its benefit seems to come from the fact that it IS a monopoly. It consolidated everyone into working on this common data set.

How do you prevent constant vandalism if you don't track people by accounts?

To be clear, I don't have the answers to any of this. I'm saddened to hear of the controversies and would like to think smarter people than me have solutions. I will likely still work on contributing to Wikipedia in the interim as it is currently (I feel) more good than harm.

@TheBreadmonkey One of my favorite artists has a vaguely Bob Dylan-esque timbre to his voice, and I only occasionally notice it.

https://youtu.be/lbTRP-xw7uE?si=qm8GhS0o_nj8QbUR

@TheBreadmonkey I played my wife some Woody Guthrie songs because we were discussing American folk music, and she asked me if the recording was just off or if he really sounded that bad.

I was briefly offended, but then had to admit that Woody Guthrie sings with all the emotional and physical energy of someone on horse tranquilizers.

I wonder if part of it is just that we're used to overproduced poppy hits?

@plup360 @troed But again, is that an issue with Wikipedia's volunteers and the fact that power tends to attract jerks? Or an issue with Wikipedia as a whole?

@richardnosworthy I think you also have to view it in terms of scale of potential harm. I'm probably not going to leave Proton, at least not in the short term, as they are still leagues better than Gmail.

Firefox is still better than Chrome, for now.

Signal is still better than SMS or MMS.

I think the other side of that coin is that the people out there who have that luxury of time to constantly switch will do so whenever these companies do something off-putting or wrong and urge the rest of us to do so, even though we don't have the same time, knowledge, or in some cases, money.

Also, how long until the alternatives also turn?

@Sibshops @scottwilson That's why I view all my web pages in the terminal by reading the raw HTML.

Kidding, but yeah...I have to switch between three different browsers just to accommodate the various things I want to do. The browser space sucks.