@c_dan4th you're welcome and happy Saturnalia!

@donncha great pic. We're coming to Cork in the spring to see Springsteen, what else should we do while there?

That was fun getting out in photograph Cork City, particularly Grand Parade tonight. It was quieter than I expected, but then again, there's an awful wind and it's cold.
Didn't stop a bunch of drunks going up on the Big wheel!

#Cork #photo

Still one of the best Solstice songs, also good for Christmas, thanks Dar Williams!
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=U1yMS9NOus4&si=2MNKs0vBp-LG8QrN

@mwfc @Ruth_Mottram

I wouldn't use living persons. We use planets and moons to name our servers, and I am sure that flower and bird names would be nice, too.

I have a list of adventurers https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzerin:WiseWoman/Entdeckerinnen , scientists https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzerin:WiseWoman/Wissenschaftlerinnen and artists https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzerin:WiseWoman/K%C3%BCnstlerinnen that were "women in red" in the Wikipedia, that is, without an article. Slowly articles are growing, thanks to initiatives such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Red

From @pluralistic AKA the inimitable Cory Doctorow, a year's worth of illustrations from an accomplished artist

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/21/collages-r-us/#ki-bosch

@xurizaemon which? Maybe a 'gift link' I can share

Listening to Ethiopian Jazz. You could be listening to Ethiopian Jazz, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_jytxxPoo

Bring it, anonymous cowards!

The Mastodon project operates on a truly shoestring budget. Will you pitch in today?

https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors

Evening thought: the amount of funding Mastodon got this year is probably less than the salary for one of the top engineers working on Threads.
Not sure what to make of it, but maybe it helps understand why things take time to be implemented.

Also a reason why we want to focus on getting more money in 2024 so we can hire more people and iterate more quickly on Mastodon ✊

The State of the Federation, with Mastodon's Eugen Rochko

https://flipboard.video/videos/watch/60495342-c321-4949-9cc9-0fa1a1f2d788

Fighting hunger takes policies that work & dedicated people working to implement them. Thank you @USDA @SecVilsack for recognizing DC Central Kitchen for “feeding people & feeding them well.” See how @dcck is putting federal nutrition programs to work at https://bit.ly/48htgsG. #craigstable

Did you know that IKEA will send you spare parts, for free? Neither did I.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/returns-claims/spareparts/

@evan @Google Cool, but how to make it happen? For example, are there @google@mastodon.social folks that have been involved in the W3C ActivityPub stuff at all? Are there Google-employed devs that are contributors to any of the various fediverse projects? Will look for those later, just wondering if off the top of your head you know of any involvement.

@evan I'm also a strong yes, and as one of the relatively few people that actually use @Google Fi for phone service, think that it's a real opportunity for them to differentiate themselves from other phone service providers. Generally, Google should really jump in on ActivityPub support as a way to get back into the social network space. And Google Cloud could provide an easy way for ordinary folks to host their own Mastodon, etc instances.

Wow, surprising results.

I'm a strong yes. First, I think any way that we can get more people on the fediverse is good. The more people that are here, the more likelihood that you can connect to people you care about on an open social network.

It's not my problem to make business cases for mobile phone service providers, but I think there's a chance to shift their service more to the centre of their customers' attention.

New: a machine learning dataset, used by Google and Stable Diffusion, has been taken offline after researchers found it contained child abuse material. In short, these abusive images may have been influencing major AI products using the dataset https://www.404media.co/laion-datasets-removed-stanford-csam-child-abuse/

@Caution @mike I'll defer to your wild guess, beyond my technical capabilities to figure out 🙂 . Maybe the @IceCubesApp folks have some thoughts?