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advertising is a far bigger act of vandalism and nuisance on public spaces than graffiti

An open letter/petition to the Internet Society CEO, setting out the case for blocking the sale of the .org TLD to a private capital firm:

savedotorg.org

They introduced it with a Macromedia Flash Player animation channeling School House Rock. The original has been lost to time because Flash is dying & the server with the loading content is long since dead, but not before being captured & uploaded to YouTube. It was called "Get Perpendicular": youtube.com/watch?v=xb_PyKuI7I

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In 2005, Hitachi claimed advancing hard disk storage density with what it called Perpendicular Magnetic Recording in its Deskstar line and embedded Microdrive: web.archive.org/web/2011071117

But that's only the context for what I wanted to share.

fragile modern tech [-] 

How did we arrive in the timeline where a pocket computer a million times more powerful than the first supercomputers is simultaneously the single slipperiest personal possession AND the single most fragile personal possession?

Guess what just broke, how it broke, & what parts suffered the most damage.

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fragile modern tech [-] 

If I accidentally dropped a 20th Century portable computer gadget from waist high, it would usually survive either completely undamaged or with light cosmetic damage.

If I accidentally drop a 21st Century portable computer gadget from waist high, it's destroyed beyond repair.

hrt 

I'll be honest, doctor, I really just want these pills to turn me into a smooshy fairy

boys: slugs and snails and puppy dog trails

girls: sugar and spice and everything nice

enbies: power, tenderness and everything genderless

day 3: bait. When you're fishing for starfish (starfishing?), what better bait can reach the stars where starfish live than a star balloon?

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rms 

Despite resigning from the FSF, rms is still the leader of the GNU Project. Today, project members released a statement saying that maybe he should go. guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-s

One of the maintainers replied on birdsite to my upgrade woes a few weeks ago, and I forgot to remark here what became of it: This is apparently a regression, and I have a bug open on it. bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show

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I think I can sustain two quick ballpoint drawings a day. day 2: mindless. If you follow the news at all, read it at your pace, don't watch it at the TV's pace.

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It's been so long since I drew anything on paper, & I'm way late. day 1: ring. My av in feline form has bells on the end of her tail, & I never showed any detail of how the band (ring) holds them on.

upgrade from 11 to 12 weekend-destroying gotcha: If your zfs-root geli passphrase has runs of uppercase letters, you can't use the caps lock key anymore because it counts as a keystroke now, & your system won't boot past the new kernel.

Need to upgrade your hard drive? Here's what you were looking at 21 years ago, courtesy of CNN: edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing

Heard of a cool tech-bro-weeding interview technique the other day. A male and female engineer conduct the interview session together. If, when the female engineer asks the candidate a question, he directs his answer to the male engineer, then he's out. They said it happens a lot

Things I liked about 80's/90's computing:
- Total control over my hardware
- Software that worked with me, not against me
- Superior aesthetics (yeah I said it :3 )
- Overall sense of promise and freedom

Things I like about computing today:
- Easy and open access to knowledge
- Insane amounts of storage
- The sheer computing POWERRRR

Now if only we could make these attributes come together instead of being period exclusive. :blobthinking:

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Computer Fairies

Computer Fairies is a Mastodon instance that aims to be as queer, friendly and furry as possible. We welcome all kinds of computer fairies!