From David Goldfield: an Introduction to Mastodon Note: As Groups.io defaults to masking what it thinks are email addresses in its Web archive, a portion of my Mastodon handle was cut off. It should read @DavidGoldfield
Did you deliberately omit your full username from your post? "If anyone on Mastodon would like to follow me, my handle is @DavidGoldfield@.... I typically don't" ...
You do mention earlier that you use tweesecake.social, but it's not close to the bit where you give your account name.
@cachondo Thanks for alerting me about that. Groups.io masks what it thinks are email addresses by default in its message archives. Apologies for that.
LibreOffice stands out as a privacy-respecting open source office suite. Unlike proprietary alternatives, the software is designed with privacy, user control and transparency in mind.
@nshiell Well, that depends on what you mean by "new". The @libodesign team created the tabbed user interface a couple of years ago and is working on improvements. Or do you mean something else?
I made that switch in ~2014, and I've had no use for Microsoft Office ever since.
My employer, on the other hand, is still using the full MS Office suite, and it makes me wonder how much HIPAA-protected patient information we're feeding into the AI slop machine.
Accidentally stumbled upon the AI company that was scraping the fediverse. Site design is criminal, keep scrolling and you'll see it in the timeline it draws
Back when Apple first revealed Aqua, there was a quote from an executive at a paper company. I haven't been able to find it in years, but it said something to the effect of, “we spend tons of R&D money trying to make paper as opaque as possible, and here Apple is spending CPU cycles deliberately making things translucent.”
That's been on my mind ever since, as UIs have gone through Aqua, Aero, iOS 7, etc.
Seventeenth Van Cliburn International Piano CompetitionPreliminary Round RecitalMay 22, 2025Van Cliburn Concert Hall at TCUMagdalene HoMalaysiaAge 21BACH Toc...
Tahoe flips the colors in the Finder icon, which has the darker color on the left FOREVER and they gotta roll this change back.
https://512pixels.net/2025/06/wwdc25-macos-tahoe-breaks-decades-of-finder-history/
Apple: Feedback FB17840162
It's amusing to me to see them adopting this code now, since they were the first project to adopt #RandomX. Early to adopt my recent work, late to adopt my early work. Also interesting to see that they use #Erlang - I first tried to develop an erlang wrapper for LMDB years ago to use in #riak, but all of that was abandoned.
This PR implements HyperBEAM launch milestone 3, beta 1.
The core focus of the milestone 3 release is to enable support for AO legacynet process execution in the HyperBEAM environment on trust-mini...
Years ago, I suspected the new dishwasher detergent tablets and pods being heavily pushed were a ripoff. I put a tablet in a Ziploc bag and crushed it with a hammer, then measured the resultant powder: about 2 tablespoons (30 mL). That struck me as grossly excessive, in line with the "always fill all detergent cups to maximum for best results" instrux on detergent powder boxes (and then liquid/gel bottles).
So I bought a box of regular ol' normal ol' boring ol' dishwasher powder and started experimenting. 1 tablespoon (15 mL): dishes completely clean. 2 teaspoons (10 mL): dishes completely clean. Mind, I scrape off loose leavings, but almost no dishes get rinsed before they go in the dishwasher.
The math quickly showed that yup, the pods and powders are a complete scam. So for years now, we've had this what you see here under the sink, with a teaspoon measure in.
The dishes consistently get perfectly clean, but I've never liked that dishwasher-detergent smell they have after. It occurred to me the other night I'd stopped the experiment without inceeding 2 teaspoons, so I tried 1 teaspoon (5 mL — probably more like 6ish; I don't level off the teaspoon, just scoop-shake-dispense).
Result: dishes perfectly clean. They couldn't possibly be any cleaner, so all the marketing babble about the pods unlocking whole new levels of Ultra Platinum Extreme Clean are bulk wrap. And the dishes now come out smelling of…nothing.
I'm not gonna retire on the savings, but every bit helps. There's a whole lot less waste this way, in money and detergent and packaging and production. The powder comes in a recyclable-for-real paperboard box rather than a recyclable-nudge-wink-lol plastic tub.
As I've done this much schtick, I might's well make a complete job of it: Consumer Reports' latest test of dishwasher detergent doesn't include powders, they say, because most people buy pods and tablets. That's antithetical to CR's nominal mission; decades ago they'd've done my same math and experiments and recommended avoiding the scam and buying the powders they found to work well.
you actually do want some bits of food in there though as they're used as additional "free" grit to apply mechanical action for scraping the dishes clean.
But I totally agree, I went back to the powder. Cheaper and more effective.
They're selling convenience and Americans are stupid
#AudioMo When I decided to go watch our local actors in training perform a short stage play called "Vamptopia" I certainly didn't expect this quite impressive variation of "Part of your world" from the Little Mermaid to happen. I'm pretty happy to have witnessed it, and luckily for you, I've had my trusty stealth recording kit with me. Although the intro is in German, no worries, the actual song starts at 00:51.
Today I invited a couple friends to the #NoKings protest this Saturday, and they were more open to it than I thought. (Not my most political friends.) Turning out lots of folks who don't usually protest would be amazing. I hope Saturday is the day many people wake up and realize the resisting this administration is not fringe, it's what most Americans want.
If you're in the USA, I hope you'll join us! nokings.org/
On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else.
Trump deployed forces against American citizens to chill dissent, spark confrontation, and create an excuse to seize even more power. We won’t back down, but we need to be prepared to handle encounters with law enforcement and de-escalate tense situations. Attend tomorrow’s “Know Your Rights” training with the ACLU to help keep No Kings protests safe and non-violent: act.aclu.org/a/2025-kyr-traini…
My least favorite work interactions are with customers’ 3rd party “rockstar” consultants. I never know how to respond to certain sorts of queries. Ones where I could answer the question as asked but it really implies a deeper misunderstanding. I feel like I want to write him a treatise on VPNs: what they are and how they work. And Cc his boss (who shares his surname…) to communicate the depth of the problem.
I’m letting my boss handle it. He’s the networking guy anyway…
well, there is vpnc (ipsec) and OpenConnect (SSL) which was banned for us to use when I worked at Cisco but we could just spoof the software version IIRC and it worked fine... 🥲
Google Tightens Android Sideloading—At What Cost to Digital Freedom?
Google has begun blocking sideloaded Android apps in Singapore, citing security concerns over apps requesting sensitive permissions like SMS and accessibility services.
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
So even when apps ask for permission and you explicitly give it to them, that's too much lack of security. I mean sure: To scourges like #Google and the government, security means people need to be "protected" by force against their own selves. That's the thinking we see everywhere these days, because we've allowed complete psychopaths in all positions of power.
We're starting to roll out a new screen curtain feature to black out the display when using Narrator - thanks, as always, for folks that have shared feedback about this 😊
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.4250 (KB5060820) to the Beta Channel for Windows Insiders on Windows 11, version 24H2.
Changes in Beta Channel b
📣 Po pokuse obviniť muža s valaškou a snahách dokázať, že očkovanie robí z ľudí kukuricu, prišiel originálny únos busty.Čo dokáže politická mlaď, Martina Ši...
You can restrict the audience of your posts on Mastodon using post visibility settings. You can set each post's visibility separately if you want, and you can also choose a default visibility.
There are four or five different visibility settings which let you control who can see your posts and how easily they can be discovered.
Instructions on how to set Mastodon's post visibilities (and lots of questions answered about this feature) at:
Thanks! These days we teach newcomers to add tagged nodes using @vespucci_editor . After the party, we also share a @MapComplete link so people can add ratings and reviews (to @mangroveReviews) for the restaurant we dined at.
What's been lost... Entomologists from Krefeld, Germany, collected flying insects for two weeks in August 1994 (left) and—at the same site, with an identical trap— in August 2016 (right). Similar data from 63 German protected areas overall gave a shocking result: a 76 percent drop in insect biomass between 1989 and 2016. It has worsened significantly in the past 9 years. Photographed at Entomological Society of Krefeld
Sean Randall
in reply to David Goldfield • • •Did you deliberately omit your full username from your post?
"If anyone on Mastodon would like to follow me, my handle is @DavidGoldfield@.... I typically don't" ...
You do mention earlier that you use tweesecake.social, but it's not close to the bit where you give your account name.
David Goldfield
in reply to Sean Randall • • •