Here is something that keeps bothering me... Why do almost all web video players (the things on websites) have a Fullscreen mode, but none of them have a full window mode? #web #weird

Lately I have noticed that when you purchase a ticket you don’t get a static PDF/PNG anymore.

Increasingly often, you get a .pkpass file, which is supposed to be opened in wallet apps (like Google Wallet or any 3rd-party wallet app).

Since I don’t like to share information about the events I attend with strangers on the Internet, I have decided to take a closer look at these .pkpass files.

They are just zip files that contain a background image, an icon and a pass.json with the actual information about the ticket. Nothing that can’t be handled by a script rather than a 3rd-party 100 MB mobile app.

I have thus put together a simple #shell script that does exactly that.

Dependencies:

• jq
• zint
• magick
• unzip
• curl or wget

https://gist.manganiello.tech/fabio/pkpass2png

Usage:

pkpass2png https://domain.tld/myticket.pkpass ticket.png

the UNIX v4 tape reminded me of this story by Ali Akurgal about Turkish bureaucracy:

Do you know what the unit of software is? A meter! Do you know why? In 1992, we did our first software export at Netaş. We wrote the software, pressed a button, and via the satellite dish on the roof, at the incredible speed of 128 kb/s, we sent it to England. We sent the invoice by postal mail. $2M arrived at the bank. 3-4 months passed, and tax inspectors came. They said, “You sent an invoice for $2M?” “Yes,” we said. “This money has been paid?” they asked. “Yes,” we said. “But there is no goods export; this is fictitious export,” they said! So we took the tax inspectors to R&D and sat them in front of a computer. “Would you press this ‘Enter’ key?” we asked. One of them pressed it, then asked, “What happened?” “You just made a $300k export, and we’ll send its invoice too, and that will be paid as well,” we said. The man felt terrible because he had become an accomplice! Then we explained how software is written, what a satellite connection is, and how much this is worth. They said, “We understand, but there has to be a physical goods export; that’s what the regulations require.” So we said: “Let’s record this software onto tape (there were no CDs back then—nor cassettes; we used ½-inch tapes) and send that.” Happy to have found a solution, they said, “Okay, record it and send it.” The software filled two reels, which were handed to a customs broker, who took them to customs and started the export procedure. The customs officer processed things and at one point asked, “Where are the trucks?” The broker said, “There are no trucks—this is all there is,” and pointed to the tape reels on the desk. The customs officer said, “These two envelopes can’t be worth $2M; I can’t process this.” We went to court, an expert committee examined whether the two reels were worth $2M. Fortunately, they ruled that they were, and we were saved from the charge of fictitious export. The same broker took the same two reels to the same customs officer, with the court ruling, and restarted the procedure. However, during the process, the unit price, quantity, and total price of the exported goods had to be entered—as per the regulations. To avoid dragging things out further, they looked at the envelope, saw that it contained tape, estimated how many meters of tape there are on one reel, and concluded that we had exported 1k to 2k meters of software. So the unit of software became the meter.

Accessibility twist: we tend to think about ramps being the accessible version of stairs... But, for dinner people, for example, purple with a prosthetic leg or with crutches, stairs may be way more accessible than a 15° ramp ... #accessibility #twist

Drawing: Possible causes of your problems. I've been appalled at the scenes we've witnessed over the last few days. It's utterly unacceptable that people should have to live in fear because of the colour of their skin.
[Polite comments only, please.]

How to spot an idiot - the commencement speech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Lo8ChhOKU #youtube #idiots

Host your AI locally - small video showing how to install and use several opensource tools and ai models to create a self-hosted personal ChatGPT like systeem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjrdr0NU4Sk #selfhosted #youtube #artificialintelligence

Sarah Silverman found out an interesting fact (I'll assume it's true, didn't check) about squirrels - https://youtube.com/shorts/liIPcSOL6LI?si=r-bKbn3A146jTZHl

I think she missed the most impressive thing about that fact - the squirrels manage to survive the winter on 20% of their savings!

Tired: This meeting could have been an email.

Wired: This startup could have been a spreadsheet.

“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

— Peter Drucker, “Managing for Business Effectiveness”, HBR, 1963.

A little fun from the FT. Apparently they don't care for American paper sizes in comparison to ISO 216 and I appreciate the poetry with which they express this. 😀

EDIT: A kind person has provided this link https://www.ft.com/content/bb9bf7c6-1785-4383-9e39-03da04a17fe2 although much of the other language employed smacks of desperation to claim credibility as a younger person and is quite cringeworthy in its use.

"When the machines start applying the intentional stance to the naked apes, it's time to watch out."

— Me, writing in 2004. (And everything I hear about the state of AI right now tells me it's watch-out time right now!)

https://web.archive.org/web/20040515161445/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi/2004/Apr/29

(thanks to @pluralistic for the reminder)

Don't get me wrong, I love Mastodon and everything it's done for the fediverse

That being said, I don't want Loops to become the only short form video platform, or the only well known one

I'm working with @stux on his own short vid platform called #GoldFish and PeerTube to enable seamless interop

We're stronger and better together

There is no reason NOT to work with "competitors" because when you have the right mindset and goals:

You build for the people, and listen wisely.

#activityPub

The size of modern ships is staggering

🤯 The level of sophistication of the XZ attack is very impressive! I tried to make sense of the analysis in a single page (which was quite complicated)!

I hope it helps to make sense of the information out there. Please treat the information "as is" while the analysis progresses! 🧐 #infosec #xz

Most of the MetaCPAN core devs will be attending the Perl Toolchain Summit in Lisbon next month. We plan to get a lot of work done. There is still time to come on board as a sponsor.

https://www.perl.com/article/5-reasons-to-sponsor-the-perl-toolchain-summit/

#perl @Perl

The value of OSS today?

"from $1.22 billion to $6.22 billion if we were to decide as a society to recreate all widely used OSS on the supply side"

"from $2.59 trillion to $13.18 trillion, if each firm who used an OSS package had to recreate it from scratch"

"5% of programmers are responsible for more than 90% of the value created on the supply- and demand- side"

The report: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4693148

Is it time for GPLv4?

I would only add:

- you must license work generated by AI models trained on this program under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This applies to the entire work, not just the parts that are generated by ai. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.

Would you like to install our new feature 'help me write' in your browser? It's a text-generating spell made from the ground-up bones and wrung-out hearts of underpaid writers, sprinkled with algorithms torn from the livers of overpaid AI engineers whose ethics team colleagues were all fired for revealing how the spell was cast. DO YOU WANT TO INSTALL