for me, hacking on graphics stuff always ends up with me getting absolutely unexpected results that are mighty pretty. this isnât even close to what I wanted, but the pattern is really coolâŠ
We all know about the Pioneer Plaque and Voyagerâs Golden Record but have you seen the âWater Wordsâ on the Europa Clipper. It is a plate made of tantalum and has the waveforms of the sound of the word water in 103 languages engraved on one side.
Its a plate of semiotic beauty and I hope future lifeforms will not listen to it backwards.
https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/vault-plate/?ref=longnow.org
uspol, labor organizing
"Trump is playing Grinch here â he's descended upon Whoville to take all the Christmas decorations, in the belief that these are the source of Christmas. But the Grinch was wrong (and so is Trump): Christmas was in the heart of the Whos, and the tinsel and baubles were the expression of that Christmas spirit. Likewise, labor rights come from labor organizing, not the other way around."
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/29/which-side-are-you-on/#strike-three-yer-out
There are so many elements here that I feel people miss â or refuse to understand â about coups.
For example, none of what the South Korean president did was legal. But that alone would not have stopped the coup.
If people just waited, twiddled their thumbs, and thoughtfully commented how "this is illegal", the coup would have probably succeeded.
Remember the coup attempt in South Korea two months ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_crisis
It started with late night declaration of martial law. Proceeded to military being actually deployed.
People came out into the streets in the middle of the night and physically refused to follow directions by military personnel enforcing the martial law.
Policymakers voted to end the martial law, inside the National Assembly building that was being stormed by the military.
Coup ended within 6h.
I've had a lot of people ask how BlueSky compares to Mastodon and the Fediverse. I've tried to make the answer as simple and easy to understand as possible:
đŠ BlueSky is designed to give corporations and wealthy people full control of the network. All of its traffic has to flow through expensive-to-run corporate relays.
The Fediverse is to designed to give ordinary people control of the network. All of its traffic flows directly from one cheap-to-run server to another.
@hikari It's great how accessibility and availability are the same word in Swedish
Vanguard might be the one finance sector company that I actually respect
This morning, on February 2nd 2025 at 06:58 (GMT+1) I've received an E-Mail by Oracle stating âYour Oracle Cloud account has been reactivated.â
I couldn't believe my eyes and didn't really understand how to respond. At the point in time where I received this E-mail, my post regarding Oracle's mistreatment has already gathered thousands of shares and was also discussed heavily on Hacker News among other platforms.
My many pleas and requests from the past week didn't do anything. My GDPR request didn't do anything so far. But within a few hours of public complaints and so many people telling me to take this to court... I guess this was simply the easiest way.
I still don't fully understand the E-Mail I've gotten. It talks about an order about universal credits that occurred at 5:20 AM, where I've been cold asleep. When I login to Oracle Cloud, no such credits exist. Additionally, they don't show up when I look into the âCost and Usage Reportsâ under my account management. Even more interesting are the dozens of files showing an account and server activity, with the calculated cost of it all, for a time period where my account was supposedly irreversibly deleted.
I'll share more interesting findings soon. I am honestly just shocked about this development. I would've expected many things except for a 180.
Interestingly, two days before Oracle deleted my account and all servers associated with it, I publicly criticized Oracle's CEO in a viral post for promising dystopian AI surveillance technology to his investors.
https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/113879369270806353
What a weird coincidence.
The tech person at Oracle at least lets me know that they'd feel similarly betrayed and dislike this handling of user data too đ„Čâ
I also love how I ask âIs there anything I can do to avoid this happening in the future?â and they respond with âOh, don't worry. You don't have a future at Oracle. This will not happen to you again, as we don't allow for you to make another account.â
Trans woman, bisexual, someone's fiancée, forever a programmer, poly, and former total mess