FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

you wouldn't pirate a toot

the human body's internal sense of its own shape, weight, momentum, and ability to predict forces that will be acting on it is amazing. i had a dream just now where i was running around in some kind of strange spy thriller inspired thing. that was so cool

In 2019, Iceland became one of the first countries to approve a four-day workweek. Here's how things have been going for them.

2021: "Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success""

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779

2024: "Iceland’s economy is outperforming most European peers after the nationwide introduction of a shorter working week with no loss in pay."

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/25/business/iceland-shorter-working-week-economy/index.html

2025: "The effects of the shorter workweek in Iceland have extended far beyond the office."

https://www.wecb.fm/in-2019-iceland-approved-the-4-day-workweek-nearly-6-years-later-all-predictions-by-generation-z-have-come-true/

#news #labor #WorkersRights #FourDayWorkWeek #work #iceland

I want to go to here; this is the future they stole from us.

Called it. Wrote this back in Sept. 2024, about a clever Windows Powershell phishing scam that was targeting developers at the time. It uses a fake CAPTCHA that asks visitors to distinguish themselves from bots by pressing a combination of keyboard keys that causes Microsoft Windows to download password-stealing malware. Everyone said, bah, devs will never fall for this. Maybe, I said, but your average user would for sure.

Judging from the number of recent media reports, it appears this one is pretty widespread at the moment.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/this-windows-powershell-phish-has-scary-potential/

On my quasi-blog: "Git without a forge"

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/quasiblog/git-no-forge/

Most of my projects are hosted in bare git repositories on the web, and not on a forge site. I talk a bit about this: ways to send patches to a project like that (and which I personally prefer), and reasons why I haven't (yet?) changed my arrangements.

the national grid is a synthesiser

Program goes to Operating System, tears in eyes, says "my state, it is very bad"

Operating System says "is no problem, have good error reporting facility, detailed but concise report, contextual information included. you will submit bug there"

Program sobs loudly "but Operating System, I *am* error reporting facility"

"AI", aka GenAI, aka ChatGPT, aka:

LLM, not "artificial intelligence"
Dunning-Kruger machine
Mediocrity machine
Lazy machine
"I can't be arsed to do my homework"-machine
"I want to skip the real work"-machine
"I hate having to hire a human for this"-machine
Generative bullshit machine
Mansplaining as a service machine
Autocomplete it machine

Add yours!

Collecting them all here: https://www.maaikebrinkhof.nl/an-ai-by-any-other-name/

do you ever think about the malmberg abba star guitar

generally, it is not beneficial or desirable for either the owning company or the project’s contributors if there are outside contributors that have significant amounts of responsibility or influence.

Thus, in general, the proper situation for a corporate open source project is to only accept occasional outside work on a “scratch an itch” basis, only insofar as it benefits the project overall. Anything else is either too exploitative or weakens corporate interests too much.

This, of course, primarily applies to single-owner open source projects. Corporations understand the above pretty well for themselves, which is why things like foundations are desirable: if a project is expected to largely go in a beneficial direction for multiple corporate sponsors, then they place actual ownership in the hands of a third party that ends up acting as a bit of a trusted “escrow” for shared work. Influence in a project is then dictated by individual investment, pretty much.

When things get to this point, it’s much more reasonable to start bringing in individual community contributors, because there’s going to be a better shared understanding of project goals and direction, and it’s very difficult for a corporation to go rogue and tear everything down/“Business Source™️” all its community’s work just because their CEO had one too many conversations with ChatGPT about how to do their damn job and now they’re completely unhinged.

From: @DoctorBLLK
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@DoctorBLLK/114147175269360944

there's this weird notion, which we've seen several op-eds attempting to explain, that supporting hatred, genocide, etc represents a change for silicon valley executives

Japanese hospitals evolving to meet diverse needs of LGBTQ+ community https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250311/p2g/00m/0na/044000c

TIL: Whatever #ebooks or documents you put on a #Kindle, they're being indexed & uploaded automatically to the #Amazon server if the device has an internet connection. Just found out with an unpublished #manuscript that someone wanted to read on their Kindle and it ended up on the Amazon server, although it was put onto the Kindle manually via cable. Whatever you do with Amazon devices, you're adding everything to Amazon's data collection. #Enshittification #AuthorRights #IntellectualProperty

i just learned this yesterday but: if you're trans and you were born in the state of New Jersey, there's a fastpass discounted system in place to ammend your birth documents.

https://www.nj.gov/health/vital/correcting-vital/sexdesignation/

it costs 6$ if you're just doing gender marker, 8$ if you're doing name as well, 10$ total for an extra (second) copy of the new birth cert. they obliterate the old record through all state systems & replace it with the corrected one. this takes 8-10 weeks. and they have a badass name: Record Modification Unit.

it includes nb options
it includes options for parents w trans kids

someone in 2018 understood the need for this and absolutely nailed their assignment perfectly.

i think every state should model on this tbh

So that's what's going on down there.

#severance #doom #funny

I made this and then lost the thread it was going to be a reply to, so the bit is ruined, but from its ashes, a new, yet more sureal bit arises.

1995: Hey, how is it there in 2025?

2025: uhh....

1995: How's technology? Did they make copy/pasting better?

2025: It's worse. That and everything else is worse.

1995: Worse? How did they make a simple feature like copy/paste WORSE?

2025, loading laser gun: No time to talk, "Paste without formatting" is haunted.

So 3DMark, a graphics card benchmark, has achievements. Some of them are just for trying things, like running a test at night or at 4k, some are hardware based, like running a test with an iGPU or ≥12-thread CPU, while others are score based, like over 9k points or under 5fps in Fire Strike... and then there's three *temperature* based achievements, for completing benchmark runs with low hardware temps. I got the GPU ones by opening my case and pointing a box fan in, but no luck with the CPU.

...so I got thinking my i5-8500T mini-PC's CPU produces less heat, and what if I pointed the most unreasonable fan I could find at that?

Pretty sure this isn't how you're supposed to get this achievement.