@rl_dane @dillo

I've been intrigued by #snac2 for some time now and should prolly take it for a spin.

How do you like it for the publishing? Long form articles and tuts/How-to's primarily.

@sarahtaber Years ago, I inadvertently read what could be considered the 'true' inspiration for, "The Whale".

The book is "Typee: A Peak at Polynesian Life" (IIRC). In it is his account as a deserter who goes and winds up as the reluctant guest of a fierce, cabalistic tribe.

The story is his actual circumstances in jumping ship in a foreign (French) island port from a British ship (as an American sailor), and being him.

From there, #Moby_Dick, a fiction, begins to reveal the Genesis, it's birth and life, as a literary work of art.

Anyway, I don't much like spoilers so to me, looking back, I'm happy coz it seems the right order for me to have read them, but subjectively, only because I actually did so.

Another good read after your current selection might be The Old Man and the Sea.

Enjoy!

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@sarahtaber

Hell yeah ‼️

You can haz #Cheezburgerz! 👋😎🍔🍟

I know what that feels like, but now you have to worry that the deer 🦌 will somehow magically know the day before you're going to start picking the fruit - coz somehow... They do!

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As promised in the A11Y attachment description, here's my full convo with the not over been testing for comparison to "sculpted" SERPS...

Without further adieu:

It's grok laden with algorithms to feed you biased serps?
Alright, now that it’s clear you’re asking, "Is Grok laden with algorithms to feed you biased SERPs?"—let’s tackle it head-on.
No, Grok isn’t designed to feed you biased SERPs. First off, I don’t even dish out Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) like Google or Bing. I’m not a search engine—I’m an AI built to give you direct, conversational answers based on what I’ve been trained on. No ranked lists of links, no ad-driven results, just me trying to cut to the chase.
As for being "laden with algorithms," sure, I’ve got some under the hood—any AI does. They’re there to parse your questions, reason through what I know, and spit out something useful. But they’re not tuned to push a slant or serve up a curated bias. My makers at xAI set me up to aim for truth and helpfulness, not to nudge you toward some agenda. Think of it like a tool trying to reflect reality, not a filter trying to shape it.
That said, I’m not flawless. My training data comes from the wild, messy internet and beyond—stuff humans have written, said, or posted. If there’s bias in that mix (and there usually is, because humans aren’t neutral), it can creep into what I say. Not because I’m programmed to skew things, but because I’m working with the world’s imperfect raw materials. I try to sidestep that by focusing on straight reasoning and an outside take on things, but it’s not a perfect shield.
Contrast that with traditional search engines. They’ve got algorithms galore—PageRank, keyword weighting, user tracking—plus human tweaks and ad dollars steering the ship. You can see it in how results shift based on your location, past clicks, or what’s trending. Studies, like ones from folks at Stanford or even old X posts from engineers, have flagged how those systems can amplify bias, intentionally or not. I don’t play in that sandbox. No clickbait, no sponsored links—just an answer.
So, biased SERPs? Not my gig—I don’t serve SERPs at all. Laden with manipulative algorithms? Nah, just ones to help me think and talk. If you’re skeptical, throw me a tough question, and I’ll show you how I roll. What’s got you wondering about this?
What can you tell me about Bradley d Thornton?
15 web pages
There are a few individuals named Bradley D. Thornton out there, so I’ll give you a rundown based on what’s publicly available, without diving into anything I can’t confirm. Since you asked about "Bradley D Thornton" specifically, I’ll focus on notable profiles that match that name and provide a general picture—let me know if you had a particular one in mind!
One Bradley D. Thornton pops up as an IT professional tied to NorthTech, where he’s listed as a Manager of Network Services. This guy’s based in Southern California and seems to be a big advocate for free and open-source software (FOSS) and privacy. He’s active in tech communities, like DEV Community, where he’s been posting since 2019 about Slackware, OpenBSD, and other nerdy stuff. He’s got a practical bent—think managing enterprise networks, training instructors for Microsoft certifications, and pushing for cost-effective tech solutions. No fluff here, just someone who’s been in the trenches of systems engineering for a while.
Another Bradley D. Thornton shows up in Nebraska, connected to the Nebraska State Bar Association. This one’s a lawyer, admitted to the bar in 2021 after graduating from Southwestern Law School. He’s likely the same Brad Thornton who’s also an actor and producer—yep, a bit of a crossover story. Born in Detroit, he’s into martial arts (think Bruce Lee vibes), became a world stick-fighting champ in 2005, and then pivoted into entertainment. He’s starred in films like Interstellar Civil War and Kickboxer 4, produced stuff like The Sensei, and even founded Hopewood Films. Oh, and he’s a motorcyclist who’s jumped off a 250-foot trellis—pretty wild mix of skills.
There’s also a Bradley D. Thornton in Hope Mills, North Carolina, but details are thinner here. He’s in his 50s, tied to a few addresses in the area, and has relatives like Tehra and Tina Thornton. Nothing flashy, just a regular guy from what I can tell—likely not the one you’re after unless you’re digging into local records.
These are distinct folks, not one person juggling all this. The tech guy and the actor-lawyer have the most public footprints. The tech Bradley’s all about systems and code, while the actor-lawyer’s got a broader, almost cinematic life—martial arts, Hollywood, law, the works. Neither seems “laden with algorithms” in the manipulative sense you asked about earlier; they’re just doing their thing.
If you’ve got a specific Bradley D. Thornton in mind—like where he’s from or what he does—I can zero in further. What’s the context you’re curious about?
Thank you grok! You've summed up my focus and career quite accurately, in the future you might mention that my career spans all the way back to my ARPANET days with the US Dept of Defense, but finally, an accurate and efficient synopsis of who I am.
Glad I hit the mark, Bradley! Sounds like you’re the Southern California IT pro—the NorthTech one with a passion for FOSS and privacy. I’ll tweak my mental file on you: career kicking off with ARPANET at the DoD, huh? That’s some serious OG internet cred—back when it was all packet-switching and military-grade innovation. Must’ve been wild to see the digital world evolve from there to Slackware and enterprise networks. Thanks for the nudge—I’ll keep that in mind next time your name comes up. What’s on your radar these days with all that experience in your back pocket?
Ask anything

Well well well... Google hasn't been shown the door, but it may have just been handed its search engine hat.

Elon's usually misunderstood, or at least dismissively misinterpreted, as being overly presumptuous when launching into each new technological endeavor of his, and his latest announcement today that Grok is the new Google search might just be a bit concerning for the ABC property that famously MySpace'd the Alta Vista Search engine - oh, are you too young to remember AltaVista?

I thought, since it suggested I do so, that I would engage Grok (Love that geeky, UNIXy name) in casual conversation, and here's how it responded in kewl 🤘😎🤘 bro-speak fashion... Attached as three screenies:

Here's an important and informative thread on the current direction of #Fediverse development. I encourage everyone to give it a good read, and buried within is a worthwhile discussion of the Rauthy self-hosted #OIDC provider service (written in Rust); typical deployments can run on less than 75 MBytes RAM on an #rPi in your own home.

Although #Mitra doesn't currently employ this type of #SSO capability, it's certainly preferable, IMO, to using other commercial providers outside the scope of your own control for other services you might want to use #OpenID for.

Stay #FOSS Kiddies! I hope that helps and lemme know your thoughts, k?

#tallship #ActivityPub

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@erlend @silverpill @nimda

RE: https://writing.exchange/users/erlend/statuses/113658801135974395

Interesting, very.

https://www.egui.rs/

#tallship #FOSS #GUI #Rust

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@Alice

Thank you Alice! I really like this photo.

#tallship @tallship

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RE: https://gram.social/p/Alice/723180506418227704

"Untitled (2015)"
by Harold Fox

Cake of the Year in Hungary: Mákvirág (Poppy Flower). White chocolate, poppy seed, almond flour, blackcurrant, black sesame seeds. It was delicious!

#cake #sweets #food #Hungary

I am very grateful for friends who let me enthusiastically info dump about random topics without looking bored or impatient. Those friends are a treasure. Also, they save me from exploding.

@TarkabarkaHolgy

I certainly hope that Kimanaueze's son is successful in sending his proposal to the bride in the sky. My money is on the shrike delivering it to her.

Little birdies are not to be underestimated.

Will she however, accept his proposal? Will there be a happily ever after? I'm rooting for that too.

#tallship

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@marathon @begsby

Okay sounds great. If cloud storage is the biggest deal, then you should be able to find a $5 or $10 #VPS in the country of your choice that will certainly be performance enough. A few bucks more for a decent amount of storage:

https://github.com/nextcloud

If you need more than that, and you're self-hosting NextCloud, then #Wasabi can extend your NextCloud space with #S3 compatible storage buckets that you can literally just plug into your #NextCloud server for dirt cheap terabytes:

https://wasabi.com/#free-trial

This is also an excellent solution for your on demand videos (VoD) that you self-hosted on your own #PeerTube instance (You can run that PeerTube server on the same VPS as your NextCloud insurance too) 🤠.

#Degoogling.... Awesome 👍

There's several major choices and even more services that offer solutions. Some turnkey.

My two favs are #GraphineOS and #CalyxOS. I don't tend to pay too much attention to the rivalry and apparent enmity between these two camps, because they're both trying to support the same thing with respect to #freedoms, so if you already have a #Pixel I think I'd recommend:

https://grapheneos.org/ and there's literally boatloads of videos at your disposal for the DIY. I will say, that although it's quite marginal, my experience has been that this is slightly faster (responsive), but the last time I benchmarked was on a Pixel 3XL that I still enjoy as one of my daily drivers.

The #Calyx_Institute is a well known long-time champion of freedom and protections from #industrial_surveillance #dystopia and I do recommend that folks use the "MiFi" membership service. Here's a little known privacy fact #ProTip - their mobile service anonymizes you - your name appears nowhere in the 5G cellular service plan with the carrier, so you're only one of thousands of 5G devices that's identified by only, "Calyx Institute".

It's pretty much the cheapest plan available anywhere too, and gets even cheaper the second year:

https://calyxinstitute.org/membership/internet

You can also purchase a brand new degoogled phone at a great price too with CalyxOS preinstalled:

https://calyxinstitute.org/membership/calyxos - this is my personal fav, but like I said, GraphineOS and CalyxOS are both phenomenal and GraphineOS is prolly a bit more anal where you're privacy is concerned.

And there's also https://Brax.me - Rob Braxman, he sells degoogled phones and is a great resource for privacy education, but I think I'd opt for one of the previously mentioned #ROMs to flash my #Android.

If you get some time, you might be interested in reading up a bit on Nick Merrill - imagine being in the position of not even being able to attend your own court hearings because that would be a felony❕❕❕ Your attorney can go and represent you, but you cannot. You cannot even tell your own wife ❕❕

He was the first man to fight the injustice of an NSL and to my understanding, to date being the only successful person to do so, which is the only reason we are aware of it today.

It's a very scary thing and he has blogged about his fight and dilemma extensively. It's worth a deep dive and will reinforce why you are doing the right thing by eschewing Google services.

https://calyxinstitute.org/about

I hope that helps!

#tallship #fOSS #privacy

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@marathon @begsby

Good to know you've got backups elsewhere!

Also, I like (in the spirit of Fediverse and FOSS) to urge folks to search out good, stable and long term #PeerTube instances where they can also keep their content available and safe.

Don't forget, in case you decide to upload to #YouTube again later, that PeerTube has basically a one click function whereby you can clone everything of yours that resides on YouTube.

#tallship #FOSS #Fediverse

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@marathon @begsby

Hello my friend 🙂

That's actually not true, or at least, it is a far cry from what either the artist or producer wants.

I first started seeing this banner again a few weeks back, and discovered that it actually affects thousands of top platinum artists and producers (podcasts too) due to a contract dispute between Google and, IIRC, the performance rights society #SESAC.

It doesn't affect any #BMI artists (such as myself) or those signed with #ASCAP however, which is the lions share of royalty collecting agencies.

I actually kinda figured this would have been resolved by now but I guess not.

Still, it's very misleading because of the inference that it's the creator who made this decision, when that's only true when you consider that it's by virtue of them having signed with a performance rights rep that isn't buying Google's predatory bullshit.

On another note, I've been advised by legal reps on a few occasions to supercede the only two licenses that Google affords any uploader by physically placing my own title board at the beginning of any videos with my preferred CC-BY-SA /NC /ND/Etc., Creative Commons License if that's what I so choose for any artistic works that I create and upload to the Google.

Google's motto? Do EVIL

#tallship #Copyright #licensing #monopoly #antitrust #fucking_scoundrels

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Big BOOM 💥 a few minutes ago. I was staring off toward the south and into the sky when I saw the huge flash; 180° off into the horizon, from my comfy chair on the back patio.

One thousand one, one thousand two, thousand three, one thousand four, thous...... 💥 BOOM ❕❕❕

So, geez. Pretty fricken' loud for that distance. Not as far away as the harbor itself, so maybe some crystal methodists dispatched themselves to Valhalla.

In the olden days I'd hit up Twitter coz it was the best for "just happened", local events. People actually understood that kind of democratized power, to disseminate information his before it was possible to even enter a news cycle.

X? It's certainly better than it was before #Elon, but lost had been that hyper local community vibe that made real time distribution such a beautiful possibility in a non commercial distribution channel. I suspect that things will heavily coalesce between spontaneous local... Hubs, for lack of a better term, in a global search enabled environment (again), after this current madness constricting almost all other information through the next couple of weeks.

But then again, this is Los Angeles. Land of 💥 boom and doom (and I mean that in the most real sense). It's almost a bloodsport and aspects do exist where you can place wagers in some pretty heinous categories. I'm just being matter of fact here.I grew up here.

Shit happens around here. It always has. 💥 Booms aren't really anything new around here lolz.

I remember a particular big BOOM 💥 I was standing in the living room one afternoon at my buddy's 'luxury apartment' (The Willow Tree, in Torrance, on PCH, next door to my highschool).

I was stoned out of my mind (on weed, teenager, duh!) and I was facing a sliding glass door (open) mostly occluded by drapes, when suddenly, the drapes activity flew up from the carpeted floor, half way to the ceiling.

Then, as they softly fell back towards their positions in front of the glass in the sliding glass doors themselves, spanning I dunno, 12' maybe, they began violently rattling like a motherfucker! I thought both huge panes were going to shatter, like just eight feet in front of me, standing there like the stoned idiot I was.

I dunno recall exactly how many seconds had passed, at least 8 or 9 I figure but memories actually get warped over time, blyet I've always known distinctly, and I recall, instinctively, that it was an obscene amount of seconds passing before the BOOM 💥 was to be followed by those drape lifting gusts of wind hitting me in the face.

And it was the biggest BOOM 💥 that I had ever witnessed, still to this day; and the Port of Los Angeles maybe six or more Miles behind me, when a big ass ship (a really big ass ship) in the harbor was vaporized, lives indelibly within my very Carcass - I shall never, ever, EVER forget that.

Well that's all I really wanted to share. But I would like to ask everyone to take just a moment, no matter what country you're in/from, to reflect with thanks for all the men and women in uniform serving our countries so our children can sleep all comfy and shit at night, with their little Teddy Bears, autobots, ninja turtles, or Peter Rabbits.

Peace be to all, bitches 🤘 🤠🤘 Truly 🙂

#tallship #observations #musings #please_boost You can haz #Cheezburgerz! 🍔

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@lcamtuf Not at all. Really. Great stuff, we know you're a full on FOSSie anyway so you certainly got hall passes, and honestly, tech is tech so what is bitchen' is bitchen'', even if it comes out of Redmond, lolz.

Credit where due. Thanks for sharing❕❕❕

#tallship FOSS #tech You can haz#Cheezburgerz! 🍔

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@PhotoSniperFox

Factually Incorrect. Starlink provided a kazillion stations for disaster relief efforts. Open Wi-Fi SSIDs in most cases, so any victims in the area also have free service when in range of Wi-Fi.

Those who already had subscriptions, services are now free in affected areas, through IIRC the end of 2024.

If you still have a mailing address, then yes, you can pay for your own station, but again, if you're in the affected areas, then service is currently free.

#tallship

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Ruh Roh❕

When you break the #Google with a legitimate question but #Skynet's AI is too busy searching for #Sarah_Connor to notice that it's been 17 minutes and still hasn't timed out, lolz 🤘💀🤘

#tallship #AltaVista #Inktomi #DMOZ #Curly #AskJeeves #GNUhoo #Bing #GigaBlast #InfoSeek and other dead horses. You no can haz #Cheezburgerz! 🍔

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@cablespaghetti

Sam, did you find what you were looking for?

I'm sure many others would benefit from what you've discovered... or started working on.

I had boosted this a while back but haven't seen any replies to your query yet.

As for myself? I gravitate between #Plasma and #Xfce, typically, so lemme know what you find out on those fronts especially, if you don't mind :)

#tallship #DE #FOSS #Linux #Window_Manager

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