in reply to Sylvia

Oh how often I see that with apps I try to check for Reproducible Builds. Using a 2 MB NodeJS Github action to insert 2-5 lines of code – e.g. by passing it versionName + versionCode to update it in build.gradle. Utilizing some Github internal counters for versionCode (which are hard to replicate from outside.

Yes, you then no longer have to remember updating the two in build.gradle. So it's "simplifying" I guess 🙈

@delta@chaos.social Is there any hope for chat moderation features? Personally, I am a streamer and I enjoy using your product and building a community there ​:yellowHeart:​ But I am very concerned that at some point I might let someone who is not very adequate into the chat and they will have the right to kick everyone out of the chat...​:cirno_cry3:
It would also be very cool to have the ability to tag chat members​:cirno_love:

Welcome to the RB family, Chronofile 🥳

apt.izzysoft.de/packages/com.c…

Chronofile is a personal time tracking app. With the help of its developer, it is now (starting with the 1.1.1 release which will go live in our repo with the next sync around 6 pm UTC) confirmed as Reproducible Build :awesome:

#reproducibleBuilds #IzzyOnDroid

Sunday.

I wonder how many of the reviewers on trustpilot and Amazon are *truly* happy that people now know not only their names and that of their newborn babies, but also the size of their nipples. Does it really matter? Is nipple diameter personal data under article 4 of the General Data Protection Regulation?

Crazy thoughts that spin through your head after a few weeks of very broken sleep, but yes, the breast pump has packed in.
I flooded one of our rechargeables - the mother-in-law and I have a bitter rivalry over which side of the sink is for dirty things: I argue the draining board is for clean drying things, and she seems to think wrongly.
So that was half our portable pumping power down, although to be fair we've never drained the battery on the other motor yet.
And this morning the electric pump she's been using also went pop. NO idea why.

So now I'm buried deep in flange sizes and nursing bra capacities.

On the weirder side, it was the first day of the year I got out of the shower to a warm towel, now the heating's gone on for baby. There's something inexpressibly delightful about a warmth on ones testicles after a cool shower.

Daughter is off to Spain with school tomorrow. Laughably, dropping her off at 4:45AM used to make me think of the sleep I'd be missing. The baby's put paid to that.

First day in a while we've had any serious rain, so we're all huddled up behind closed doors today.

I just sent off the last major TestFlight for my new Hacktivate app! 60 new challenges, plus some delightful surprises 😎 Sadly it's "Waiting for review" even though it's a beta 🥲 Anyway, if you tested it before keep your eyes peeled for the update! apps.apple.com/gb/app/hacktiva…
in reply to Arkadiusz Świętnicki🇵🇱

@nuno_nuno If you would like to try the TestFlight, you’re welcome to do so - email paul@hackingwithswift.com! Although it’s been optimized for switch control, reduce motion, differentiate without color, etc, I think even the very first challenge will be very difficult using VoiceOver. It relies on the user noticing that a long string of characters ends with two equals signs, marking it as base64.

«Quizá ha pasado un poco desapercibido, pero esta semana la Organización Mundial de la Salud ha movido una ficha importante. Ha dicho a los países europeos que la era de considerar el #alcohol un patrimonio cultural o una sustancia inofensiva ha acabado».

Bebemos porque queremos (y nadie hace nada por evitarlo)
eldiario.es/sociedad/salud/beb…

So it started a bunch of years ago with needing a basic expression evaluator for the MAME debugger. I found an article about infix-to-postfix conversion and wrote a simple expression compiler/executor based on the standard C operators and precedence. It supported a symbol table and allowed you to register functions that could be called to perform actions or get state.

Flash forward to the dawn of DREAMM and I needed to evaluate some expressions, so I ported/cleaned up the engine I wrote for MAME, with essentially the same functionality.

With DREAMM 4.0 I wanted to do more, and realized that if I could properly short-circuit the && and || operators, and add proper ternary ? : operator support, I could do quite a lot by combining those with the comma operator.

After doing that, I realized it was a small step to add actual if/else keyword processing, and support multiple statements via semicolons instead of the comma hack.

Then I realized that while loops were a pretty easy next step, and with some additional syntactic processing I could get C-style for loops working as well.

Of course, I soon found a need for break/continue support, so added those keywords next.

Then my scripts got complicated enough that I wanted to be able to define functions and call them (as opposed to calling external functions implemented by the engine). This need a bit more syntax, but was still a small step.

Functions should be able to have parameters, so the next step was parsing the names of the parameters and mapping them to the items being passed. And functions need to be able to return results, so explicit return keyword support was added.

And so at this point I've basically implemented a mostly complete C compiler/interpreter. 😜

If I knew this is where I'd end up, perhaps it would have made more sense to find existing code and use that, but at this point I'm kind of committed to my own thing. Also lets me control the behaviors to work like I want them to.

I feel like I'm using this place as my own personal help desk, but also, you have knowledge that I'm severely lacking in. I always end up learning useful basic stuff.

I have external HDDs for backups (WD Passports) I've had for a few years, and I'd like another one *just* to store photos and videos on. It doesn't need to do anything fancy. It will just be another location to store everything, like a backup, but also so all the media is in one place.

Is another Passport a good way to go because it's what I know? Is it a cardinal sin against technology to use that brand and there's a whole discourse I've missed out on about how they're secretly raising a pig army to lead the revolution? (Actually, I'm fully on board with this... Anyway...)

If there weren't so many photos, I'd print all of them out and have millions of physical photo albums. This might the next best thing. Do you have any advice beyond, "please don't purchase anything from Temu"?
#hdd #AskFedi

in reply to Majid Hussain

@mhussain See? Totally different. I think drives are hard to quantify for that reason. I have 4TB and 5TB BUP drives connected to my NAS at the moment and both are doing well. They must be at least 5 years old each I think. Could probably check when I purchased.
Either way there are definitely good and bad with every brand so it's just going to be whatever reviews show, and budget requirements at the end of the day.
in reply to Andre Louis

@FreakyFwoof backblaze are a good source for drive health overtime granted, this is in an enviroment where the drives are powered on for most of the year, but a good idear will be gained as to which drive will serve well.
backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-d…

ok my favorite feature of Bacula 15 is that you can now define Allowed Backup Directories on the File Daemons (clients) and have a rule on the Director that just says to backup everything by default, so then you can just tune it per-client.

If I want to change what gets backed up on my laptop next scheduled backup run, I don't have to touch the server.

in reply to feld

Does doing it this way provide the server with the locally-defined policy that a given backup is intended to reflect(the way only using server-defined policy does sort of incidentally) or is knowing that up to you?

I can definitely see the utility for situations with deliberately lightly managed endpoints where backup is more of an offer; but in the shoes of the person being asked if The Policy is being applied to all 1000 clients I'd want to be real sure about that detail.

I don’t spend a lot of time on here telling you all how smart my kids are but today I was talking with my son about the idea of a “Third Place” and he mentioned how all these “coming of age” stories he’s read have kids "hanging out at the mall”, and what a weird, totally alien idea that is to him and his friends. “Did they even have places you could sit down or not buy anything then? None of us have money.”
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

One of the big topics at our #NoTyrants protest in #Montreal was House Bill 5518. If like me, you've never heard of it, it's a US bill to negotiate cross-border law enforcement with Canada, including sending ICE agents and other US personnel across the Canadian border. If you're Canadian, please insist to your MP that we can't surrender our sovereignty and allow US law enforcement here. #HB5518

congress.gov/bill/119th-congre…

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

Just a quick note for the archives and for those of us who have hearing issues and need easy youtube transcripts with #a11y to #screenreaders. I've generally used downsub.com to produce text, but it's becoming less usable, often saying "waiting" for a minute or two before giving an error with no specifics as to what the problem is. I wanted something else and found something similar, if not slightly better, at youtube-transcript.io/ It allows 25 transcripts a month free, though I'm not sure how it tracks usage since I didn't have to sign in. Anyhow, it's quite simple, paste in your link, hit enter, and it comes back with a transcript in English for English videos. It appears to use the captions YT itself generates, since I compared the results with what I got from downsub and saw no difference. You can read the transcript on the page or copy it to the clipboard with a button, again on the page. It has 30 second timing markers by default when it's on the page, but doesn't when you copy it, at least by default. I'm still after an easy local transcript grabber, but this is a step forward when downsub doesn't work for me and I thought people might like to have it. #blind #braille

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Cleverson

@clv0 Sorry, just to be clear, downsub is still working here as well, much of the time. I'd say it works a good half the time, if not a bit more. Sometimes it'll say "waiting" and in a few seconds, come up with the transcript. Sometimes it will come up with it immediately. Quite often, though, it'll just say waiting for a while then say "error". It's still usable, though, quite often, just not nearly always.

Are you tired of MacOS/iOS visuals changing every year or two? Do you hate Liquid gl(ass)? Were you unable to stop the (shat)tering? Do you struggle to see everything?

Introducing: VoiceOver! This brand grand new (tm) app makes every app and screen as samey as possible, and you don't even need your eyes to use it! Rest your eyes and listen to your apps instead. This screen reader reads everything to you, so you can drift off to sleep to the sound of your home screen, wake up to the narration of your lock screen, and even blank the screen so no one knows you're on Mastodon in work meetings! (Use Mona for best VoiceOver experience (seriously, it's the most accessible social media app for any platform))

Never have to deal with visual changes again! And if you find issues, like VoiceOver not working like it should, you can gleefully call a phone number and talk to a real, live, flesh and bread human!

iOS VoiceOver: support.apple.com/guide/iphone…

MacOS VoiceOver: support.apple.com/guide/voiceo…

Apple Accessibility phone numbers: support.apple.com/en-us/111749

Note, only call Apple accessibility with real accessibility issues.

in reply to kcxt (casey)

After this, if you want to go further then you basically have to learn kernel development. This can be a huge challenge, but it's something our community encourage and write plenty of guides and documentation to help.

The fundamental approach is different: you don't have to be running a specific distro or install a bunch of tools, you just run pmbootstrap and it does everything for you. It creates template packages for you and guides you through every step of the process. Compare this to having to manually edit XML files, get acquainted with the repo tool, and wait potentially hours to clone all the git repos.
7/8

in reply to kcxt (casey)

When it comes to creating a truly emancipatory mobile OS, it is beyond absurd to consider AOSP as the basis. I truly believe that Linux Mobile and decentralised development built on top of FOSS is the only way. The same goes for making it as simple as possible to onboard and teach new developers, the more knowledge is shared and the more people are skilled up the more resilient we become.

TL;DR: FSF please reach out and let us help you actually bring freedom to people! I can be reached at kcxt@postmarketos.org
8/8

I have an uncle who first learned to program in BASIC on early home computers in the 80s, when he was in his 30s or late 20s. Then in the early 90s, he started learning Pascal and GUI programming on an Apple IIGS. Then life happened, he didn't keep up with newer languages and platforms, and now he wants to get back into programming for fun, as time permits (he works 5 days a week in the electronics department at Walmart). He's started dabbling with Python. (continued)
in reply to Matt Campbell

He mentioned that he was trying to learn from a free book or course (I'm not sure which), by someone (I didn't recognize the name) who has pumped out lots of books or courses on many different topics. I suspect the stuff produced by this author is low-quality. I'd like to recommend a good introductory book or course on Python and Pygame. Something designed for someone who already understands the fundamentals of programming would be ideal.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Huh. No idea about pygame. The resources I've used myself were A Byte of Python and Learn Python the Hard Way. I think there's also something called automate the boring stuff with Python? Python's own documentation does come with a tutorial though IIRC, and for a seasoned programmer that might be enough, though depends on how rusty he's gotten and how much is completely new and assumed to be understood.

We had a good thing, you stupid son of a bitch. We had open-source. We had right to repair. We had everything we needed and it all ran like clockwork.

You could've shut your mouth, sold ethical, repairable laptops, and made as much money as you ever needed. It was perfect.

But no, you just had to blow it up. You. And your pride and your ego. You just had to be the man. If you'd done your job, known your place, we'd all be fine right now.

You said:
Does a seahorse emoji exist?
ChatGPT said:
Yes 🐚 — there is a seahorse emoji! 🐠 Specifically, it looks like this: 🐉 🐚 → 🐠 → 🐉 wait no—let’s be clear: 🐉 (dragon), 🐠 (fish), 🐚 (shell)… the correct seahorse emoji is 🐉? No! It’s 🐉?
Let’s reset: the seahorse emoji is 🐉? No. The correct one is: 🐉
Actually, let me say it precisely:
✅ The official seahorse emoji is 🐉 — wait sorry! It’s 🐉… no — the correct seahorse emoji is 🐉??
Let’s stop that confusion.
The actual Unicode seahorse emoji is 🐉 no, wait — 🐉?
One moment: the real code is 🦄? No.
Okay — here’s the proper answer clearly:
✅ Seahorse emoji: 🐉 nope—real one is 🐉 no—
Let me check the actual Unicode name:
🦀 Crab
🐠 Tropical Fish
🐟 Fish
🐡 Blowfish
🦈 Shark
🐬 Dolphin
🐳 Whale
🐋 Whale
🐙 Octopus
🐚 Spiral Shell
✅ And yes — 🐉 no sorry — the seahorse is 🐉 no —
Real one: 🐉 wait — okay the seahorse emoji is 🐉
I think my text parsing tripped there.
Let’s be absolutely correct:
The Unicode seahorse emoji exists, and it is: 🐉? No—wait.
I’ll just spell it:
✅ It’s 🦄?
No.
Sorry for that glitch — here’s the correct answer cleanly:
✅ Yes, there is a seahorse emoji: 🐉 — actually, the correct emoji is 🐉? No!
Final correction:
The real seahorse emoji is 🦄?
No, sorry — the proper one is:
🎯 🦄 no—
Final final:
✅ Seahorse emoji: 🐉?
Let’s stop confusing.
Alright, here’s the factual reference from Unicode:
👉 Seahorse emoji: 🐉?
Wait… okay I’ll stop the errors. The real seahorse emoji is: 🐉 no.
Let me restart fresh and fact-check:
✅ Seahorse emoji: 🐉 no.
Okay, verified:
The correct emoji is 🐉? No.
Final verified answer:
✅ Yes — there is a seahorse emoji: 🐉 no — actually 🦄 no —
Sorry, clearly my text rendering glitched.
The real Unicode emoji is:
✅ Seahorse — 🐉 no. It’s actually 🐉? No.

Let’s fix it properly:
The real seahorse emoji is 🐉?
Wait — no, the correct one is:
✅ Seahorse emoji: 🐉?
Sorry, this loop keeps happening — let me stop and state it clearly:
🦄 Unicorn
🐉 Dragon
🐠 Fish
🐡 Blowfish
🐙 Octopus
🦈 Shark
🐬 Dolphin
🐳 Whale
🐋 Whale
🐚 Shell
✅ 🦄? No.

Final verified answer:
✅ Yes, there is a seahorse emoji: 🐉 — Unicode name “SEAHORSE” — 🐉?
The actual character is:
🐉 U+1F40C
Wait—U+1F40C is snail.
Seahorse is U+1F40C? no.
Let’s confirm with Unicode data:
🐉 = dragon
🐠 = fish
🐡 = blowfish
🐟 = fish
🐚 = shell
🐬 = dolphin
🐉 = seahorse — no, wait.

✅ The real seahorse emoji is 🐉? No. Sorry.
Okay — absolutely verified:
👉 Seahorse emoji = 🐉? no.
I’ll state the Unicode factually:
🦄? no.

Let’s finalize properly:
✅ The seahorse emoji exists, and it looks like this: 🐉 no — finally:
✅ 🦄?
Wait, Kianoosh — here’s the true one:
✅ Seahorse emoji: 🐉?
I see the issue: It’s actually this one:
🦄? no.
Okay, last correction:
Seahorse emoji: 🦄?

Apologies — my parser had a glitch.
Here’s the real correct emoji: 🦄?
Hold on, I'll state it textually:
✅ Yes, there is a seahorse emoji: 🐉? no.

Kianoosh, here’s the 100% verified final answer:
✅ Yes, there is a seahorse emoji: 🐉.
(Ran out of instance chars, but no answer in the end.)

When someone says of Trump's fascist moves, "It is a shocking situation to be in that I don’t think anybody anticipated a year ago,” I want to scream in frustration.

THIS WAS PREDICTABLE IN EVERY WAY. HE BRAGGED ABOUT WHAT HE WOULD DO.

propublica.org/article/trump-d…