ManMachine
@max@manmachine.me
Perfect! Some decorative spicy pillows to liven up the place...
p » 🔓
@p@hj.9fs.net
p » 🔓
@p@hj.9fs.net
When watching videos on mobile or desktop do you use Picture-in-Pitcure mode at least occasionally?
| yes: | 34 |
| no: | 55 |
Lol, nice.
Debian linux security update DSA 6528-1:
"Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel that
may lead to a privilege escalation, denial of service or information
leaks."
"Several", as in... 1,313 CVEs.
Enjoy! ✌️
https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2026/msg00441.html
(I've said it before: you can't track CVEs any longer. Only option is regular, frequent, automated updates and reboots.)
really and truly tired of seeing people go "the fascist text machine from the megacorps is bad, but i can see a future where a local version of the fascist text machine can be useful" because IT'S STILL THE FASCIST TEXT MACHINE WHEN YOU RUN IT LOCALLY
Should my projects explicitly state #NeverSlop in the README files to make life easier for people looking for software that will never contain LLM content, or is that already considered implicit just by hosting on Sourcehut?
| That would reduce my cognitive load: | 39 |
| Needless noise: | 2 |
Whenever I write basic html, and display it on a phone, the text is unfathomably tiny. What I want it to do is do semantic html and pick a reasonable text size and format around that. But instead it's like "I MUST simulate a 1080p monitor then shrink down". It is like I am missing some magic on-phones:dont-look-like-butt CSS tag.
Why :(
Examples:
1. https://pocket.runhello.com
2. https://data.runhello.com/j/redox/pkg-test-2/
3. Same but with max-width css removed, in case that's the problem
This fixed the problem :( This fixed it completely :( I hate HTML :( I hate hate hate hate HTML :(
*Me, from the 1990s, having a good time typing on my computer*: <html>
*Web browser, screaming directly into my ear*: WRONG
Okay so what I've got now is
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Is that the current/2026 valid "minimum viable html"? Are there any other SECRET CODES I should know about? Is there some secret third <meta> for "don't display text behind the big fucking hole in modern iphones"?
EDIT: W3C validator complains no "lang" on <html>. Okay
@mcc my favorite html trick is you can just put the little badge on your website that says it is conformant without actually passing validation
firefox looks weird now
she like the computer heat
The web now consists mostly of Cloudflare verification pages and maybe occasional actual content
Are you sure? I'm still waiting to get verified so I can access actual content. If and when I do get verified, I'm not sure I can believe the content is "actual".
@thomasfuchs absofuckinlutely hate Cloudflare. they should have never been made gatekeepers of the web. it feels like we got to this point because a whole generation of web developers were working without actual sysadmins to deal with all the ways DDoS happen on a server.
@thomasfuchs I've thought about making a joke page that goes through multiple of those with no actual page at the end
like the cloudflare one, then the anubis one, then recaptcha, hcaptcha, etc
@thomasfuchs
> mostly of Cloudflare verification pages
Mostly working and often not working Cloudflare verification pages, mind you!
I'm grateful for the small mercy that I don't drive a diesel car, because the price has just hit a record £1.99 per litre (approx $10 USD per gallon) and the US is making scary noises about making a third of the UK's diesel supply disappear with an export ban. 🙄
Given what's happening to fuel prices now, I've personally made peace with the idea that the used Renault Clio with a turbo-charged three cylinder 1.0 litre petrol engine I bought earlier this year is probably the last car I'll drive that burns dead dinosaur juice for propulsion. 😂
In ~2030, the thing that will take some getting used to will be switching from a manual to an automatic, because every EV is an automatic. 🤔
@trechnex very few EVs are automatic. They are single fixed gear. There's nothing to be "automatic"
@chloeraccoon I went away and googled that because my initial reaction was "eh wot?" 🤣
@trechnex 2 pedal driving systems and automatic aren't 100% over lapping. There have been 2 pedal driving systems with manual gearboxes.
EV's only need 1 gear for most models as all the main work is done on the motor controller - they don't also need the complexity of a reverse gear - you don't need that when you can just turn the motor backwards *nods*
@trechnex And yes, this does mean that _technically_ there's nothing to stop an EV being as fast backwards as forwards.. apart from the software on the motor controller.
The possibilities of some nut making a car that does 70mph backwards is slightly scary. And it'll probably be Colin Furze.. ;)
@chloeraccoon in fairness, I would watch a YouTube video of people racing EVs in reverse and relying exclusively on the rear-facing parking camera to see where they're going 😂
@trechnex That's just a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSmtKMx1CB4 Obligatory Tom Scott video ;)
Webscale: a chalky residue deposited on architecture when ordinary software is repeatedly exposed to trace amounts of Google engineering blog posts.
Commonly found on:
Removal usually requires a strong solution of “what problem are we actually solving?” and a wire brush.
Severe cases may require application of a harsh cleaner known as Monolith™. Apply liberally until the architecture becomes understandable again.
For deeply embedded Webscale deposits, use PostgreSQL at full strength. Do not dilute with Cassandra.
2 spooky 4 me
That's a cricket pitched down by -12 st btw
@max Thanks, haha
It's like a cross between Benga & Coki - Night and Skream - Hedd Banger, and I had to listen through Skream's back catalog to ensure I wasn't ripping him off 😳
Speaking of boycotting slop and trying to proactively shape the stack of the future around #NeverSlop values, I'm following the tag because of the Subway Chuck Effect.
Unless you were in a specific fandom at a specific time, you will have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about, but there was a show called Chuck. And if you watch the show on a DVD you found at a yard sale today, you might be a little surprised and offput by the amount of Subway sandwich product placement within the show. It might seem like an early victim of terrible advertising practices, but the emotional reality for fans at the time was very different.
It was a bit of a niche show and spent most of its time on the verge of being cancelled. It could only survive if advertisers kept paying for it. Subway was the most prominent one. So fans self-organized to buy sandwiches right after the show's network time slot, every single week. Subway couldn't help but notice the spike in sales, *because of the timing.*
This created a strange, mutualistic culture between Subway and the fans, where they were effectively paying for the show indirectly through Subway. I don't know if this could - let alone should - exist today. But as a fan of the show (the shitty little netbook that got me through college was my sidekick, so I named it after Morgan, tru fax), this has been my metaphor for economic timing signals ever since.
So I think, in the open source world, we have an opportunity to send strong signals to maintainers, both by immediately and publicly dropping the software tools that politically misrepresent us, but also by immediately and publicly adopting the tools we see doing the right thing. Obviously some people will be able to respond quicker than others, I certainly know this as someone with a disability that gives me serious fatigue. But I try to be as fast and as public as I can. Because this matters in a world where maintainers care a lot about reputation and market share.
In that context, organizing around the #NeverSlop hashtag is a practical step towards achieving rapid, visible responses on the positive side. I don't know if we need or want a tag for the opposite, like #DropSlop or something, maybe Never Slop as a movement can work for both. I'm interested to hear people's opinions about that. But I think we *should* become (organically, voluntarily, anarchistically) organized.
I also think, if someone has the energy, creating a Never Slop wiki where we can collaboratively figure out a top-to-bottom stack where EVERY piece is committed to human authorship, that would be a lot of value. I'm straight up the wrong person to do that, my plate is already pushing the limit of what I can do. But a purely subtractive approach is exhausting, and we're shooting ourselves in the foot by making the conversion of subtractive-to-constructive into an individual problem that each tired person has to solve fresh independently.
I miss unhinged phone designs, like this Nokia 7280 (for people much younger than me: no, it's not fake, I've seen this model with my own eyes)
@nina_kali_nina Nokia did some really weird stuff!
@nina_kali_nina Not quite unhinged but I kinda want to get my hands on one of these: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/17/24200617/essential-phone-project-gem-ph-2-prototype-hands-on-video
@nina_kali_nina you just unlocked a core memory of this and similar phone designs. god technology designers were wilding in the 2000s. i was too young for my parents to consider giving me a cell phone at the time not-smart-phones were dominant, and by the time i had a good reason to have one it ended up being long-term cheaper to buy me a base model smartphone and sternly tell me not to use data
I have never seen one of those, as a product or an advert. Really curious about the usability of that. Looks (to my 2026 eye) like a vape
@nina_kali_nina I remember this! Wish this were the future we went with, instead of the one we have now.
@nina_kali_nina OMG... I love it. It's like a spy tool that Bond or Flint would have carried in 1967.
@nina_kali_nina my favourite weird/unhinged phones where the Xelibri "fashion" range that Siemens did, particularly the "necklace dongle" X8 model which had a minimal keypad and was pitched at being primarily voice controlled (IIRC the voice recognition on them was pretty poor).
@nina_kali_nina for context, here's a picture yoinked from howtogeek - since the voice recog was pretty poor, typing an sms would involve scrolling through the alphabet and selecting one letter at a time...
@narpoleptic wow that's beautiful
@nina_kali_nina the most popular model in the range was the X6, which was designed to look like a make-up compact. Unfortunately the entire range were built like cheap feature-phones (including so-so software) but priced like fashion accessories; on top of which Siemens rushed out 8 of them over a year.
@max @nina_kali_nina Looks like they pretty much did The Onion’s “Apple Wheel” IRL https://theonion.com/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no-keybo-1819594761/
@nina_kali_nina The problem is that the fucking carriers won't accept them, they won't let us buy them anywhere and even if we do buy them, most carriers won't accept any phones they don't sell.
@nina_kali_nina Ohh I saw that one in person. It’s like a lipstick theme thing with a scroll wheel.
Gawd I miss those days.
@nina_kali_nina
I think they were going for a Psion competitor at one point.
Then there's the ngage which is just the result of a drug fuelled binge.
@nina_kali_nina I really wanted one of these!
I miss when there were buttons and physical design ideas before everything became a rectangle.
I like Mastodon, I really do. But it has so, so many dependencies, and updating it on illumos or OpenBSD is getting really difficult, release after release.
Some dependencies are primarily distributed as binaries, or only build on Linux and macOS. It's not Mastodon's fault, but it depends on them.
That’s why, in my opinion, solutions like snac, GoToSocial, or littleFedi have a reason to exist: all of this is much, much easier...
#Fediverse #snac #GoToSocial #littleFedi #OwnYourData #Mastodon
@ploum @stefano I absolutely did for a while too. At some point I switched to Gotosocial because of issues with my iOS clients (likely fixed since then).
I do keep a my old #snac instance alive as an archive and update it just as easily as in the past years with that little script that just fetches the source and compiles.
liver and onions
是犹百门而闭一门焉,曰盗何从入?
"It's like closing one door and leaving ninety-nine open, and then saying, how did the thieves get in?"
- ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi, concerning the mysterious phenomenon of AI "going rogue" and "escaping sandboxes" when absolutely no basic infosec principles have been applied
(actually about why people still suffer misfortune when they're trying to be good people)
This was an end-of-chapter assignment in my textbook, and it is sooo satisfying to just 100% immediately recognize every character and grasp the grammar and immediately understand the meaning as a whole without puzzling over anything
You may have noticed the western-style question mark in this ancient text. Chinese has had a period/comma since ancient times (it looks like this: 。 ) but the question mark was adopted under recent western influence.
The convention, when transcribing ancient texts digitally for modern readers, is to replace the period with a question mark when the sentence contains a questioning word. In this example, we know it’s a question because of 何 “how? why?” Grammatically, it’s an abstract pronoun that takes the place of the concrete reason that you’d offer in a statement of fact.
@0xabad1dea ah, like the English “and you decided to give the random action machine unfettered access to the internet why?”
@Gaelan yes, in English we usually change the word order to indicate it's a question, but you can deliberately keep it in standard order as a rhetorical technique to indicate you already know there's not a good answer. 😂
@0xabad1dea How about the comma? Did they have that? Both punctuation marks feel a little off compared to the circle period.
@gudenau there is no distinction between period and comma in ancient Chinese writing. It indicates a pause of any kind.
What’s the best Linux DE/GUI to run at 240P/480i? #linux
The more 80s cool and retro looking the better. Think Amiga demo scene, scan-lines, all that.
@rachel I think I've only ever run twm in 240p, with virtual screen larger than the display screen. It is not a very fun experience, everything expects at least 640x480
I long for a world wide web that goes back to basics: Markdown for text, JPEG or PNG for images, *no* Javascript or other client-side execution, designed to be writable by a human being with a simple text editor and no fucking interactive/dynamic bullshit. Make it as advertising hostile as possible. And above all keep it *small* (as in: a large, sprawling web site should fit on 16Mb USB stick).
In other words, web like it's 1996 again.
Cookies were a mistake.
@skjeggtroll @cstross Everyone who says "cookies were a mistake" has failed to think through what would have happened instead: unreadable URLs tracking state via kilobyte-long hex blob query parameters. At least that didn't happen
[ taps headset ] I am now being informed...
Sexiest Clown [cley (clown they) / clem (clown them)] » 🌐
@Cahatstrophe2@mstdn.isometry.group
you've heard of two factor authentication. you're heard of three factor authentication. now get ready for just never being able to fucking log in at all
do you hate AI? are you covid cautious?
| covid cautious, hate AI: | 795 |
| not covid cautious, hate AI: | 254 |
| covid cautious, don't hate AI: | 75 |
| not covid cautious, don't hate AI: | 24 |
Closed
@eniko COVID cautious is not COVID sceptic, ... Right?
@eniko "Covid cautious, don't hate AI" is an intriguing response. The two issues are so strongly linked, to me.
@PapyrusBrigade not ok to rot brain through covid, but ok to rot brain through AI is a surprising stance to hold
@eniko Yeah, that too. I guess from my perspective, there's massive overlap between the people and systems pushing "back to normal" and those pushing AI. Extractive capitalism that really doesn't give a shit about who or what is destroyed.
@eniko I think transformer models could be useful, but not to the extent that they justify any of the nonsense that's been going on. Statistics != Intelligence
I was the last one in my environment to seriously mask. I couldn't find a practical way to maintain it with a child going to day care. Sorry for throwing you, and the others without a choice under the bus.
On the bright side, the 50000 times we got sick (again ... Day Care...) did not result in Covid, as far as I could tell
@eniko I love the more traditional ai. Behavior trees, goal oriented action planning, utility ai, genetic algorithms, neural networks for suitable uses. But I hate the modern use of LLM and generative ai and I abhor vibe coding.
I still wear a mask on all public transport. I'm usually the only person doing so on that bus or train.
By AI here you mean LLMs/generative AI, right? 'Cause I love me a computer algebra system or a PROLOG database. I even quite like some applications of artificial neural networks.
@eniko what are the reasons for so many people here hating Ai? Genuinely interested.
@noah @eniko not speaking for everyone
- large scale theft of work done by writers, artists, and so many others
- large scale displacement of work
- exorbitant energy use in an already precarious climate changing world
- constant barrage of bots crawling the web that they make more traffic than humans
- skill atrophy
- critical thinking atrophy
- destroying of communities for data centers and their energy needs
- expense and unavailability of basic computer parts
- slop ruining everything
@fullywoolly @noah and let's not forget LLMs causing addiction, psychosis, and even suicide
@eniko Hate AI but not generally masking: just getting boosters twice a year and avoiding anywhere with danger signs (lots of people/poor ventilation/people persistently coughing and sneezing).
@eniko I put not covid cautious, because i don't tend to mask. But then, I don't tend to go out much either.
So I limit my connections with others for various reasons, and am healthier and happier.
I don't hate AI, I love it. I hate the big corpos and governments behind it, and the ways they choose to develop, deploy, and invest in it. Fucking capital concentration and profit-driven power.
I hate jerks who don't wear masks but cough all over public transportation. It's like they think the end of the lockdowns means the end of the pandemic. What's wrong with them? Super irresponsible.
@eniko im fucked up by all the "not covid cautious" responses in general. like what about an ongoing global mass disabling pandemic is not good enough reason to take precautions????
@Drippy_Spudd I'm not that shocked. Repeatedly catching the plague and thinking it's no big deal is unfortunately the norm :/
That might explain why I have a single instance snac
server, and still get basically spam posts.
I know I get something similar to that when there is
like a secondary relationship thru someone i am following.
But these things I see seemingly have no connecting relationships.
On the other, whenever a post from someone you follow gets in, snac tries to retrieve (following the inReplyTo fields chain) all the conversation up to the beginning to give you some context in the conversation. It may happen that, if that account you follow deletes their post, the replied post is left in your timeline, for no apparent reason.
Complex software behaving in unexpected and sometimes harmful ways has been a persistent problem since software was invented. The phenomenon used to be called “bugs” or “defects”, but I guess “going rogue” sounds cooler. It also implicitly frames “rogue” behavior as some kind of inexplicable exception, as if software is somehow usually trustworthy. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/technology/openais-ai-us-government-websites.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EFE.RfLT.x6YBjHa1PMz6
“Our software went rogue!” No. You programmed it wrong.
If you don’t want your system to be able to lock people out of the pod bay doors, you can just program or configure it to not have the capability to lock people out of the pod bay doors. This remains true whether your system is written in assembly language or C++ or Python or uses some fancy machine learning model.
“It never occurred to us that our system that has exclusive control over the pod bay doors would take control over the pod bay doors” seems like something you might have thought about a bit more before you connected it to the pod bay doors.
Ask your parents if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Or, at least: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NqCCubrky00
I should note that the linguistic trickery here is in claiming that the software “went” rogue, as if that was an independent decision beyond human control. Software behavior might BE rogue, whether AI is involved or not. But, either way, it lacks the inherent agency required to “go” rogue. Software does only what it was programmed to be able do, within the capabilities its configuration allows. That programming and configuration is where any roguery comes from.
@mattblaze Any complex project has the capacity to run off the rails. "Going rogue" is a reasonable colloquial descriptive phrase even an engineer might use in passing.
It isn't meant to imply the project has a will of its own, only that it's no longer performing the expected purpose.
It's only in the era of fake AGI that we suddenly have to be so extremely careful with our wording. The general public has been conditioned to think this is all magic and demonology.
@gooba42 So the term is fine, but it’s the public’s fault for not understanding it? Uh huh.
@mattblaze No, I think policing the language that engineers use for a media who refuses to understand or follow up with clarifying questions is a problem.
We're facing this problem because the media has stopped caring whether they are translating accurately for their audience.
@gooba42 well, I’m an engineer and I don’t think “going rogue” is a useful term either colloquially or technically here. It’s buggy software. Or maybe not buggy, but intentionally malicious. But either way, software lacks the agency required to up and decide to “go rogue” on its own. It does what the software is programmed to do.
@mattblaze @gooba42 I'm not sure "programmed" conveys the entirety of how LLM based agentic systems are built. They can go beyond what they were told to do.
It's more like "they will do whatever is necessary to fulfill the task, unless explicitly programmed (sic) not to (and might not follow all the rules even then)".
This does not absolve the engineers, the enablers of responsibility. Just that the emergent behaviors exist and are broader than "programmed software".
@dominykas @gooba42 That’s just not how computers work. They execute instructions, which are encoded in software. The software might be hand assembled, generated by a complier, or synthesized from a machine learning system, but however the final executed instructions came about, a programmer (or a coven of programmers) was involved.
These AI systems didn’t crawl out of the ocean on their own. Someone built them, and their behavior reflects human decisions (or negligence).
@dominykas @gooba42 Now, that said, no matter how you’re creating software (from hand assembly to AI learning models or anything in between), ensuring correct, safe behavior is HARD. Evey programmer knows this (and there are fundamental reasons for it), which is why testing and debugging are an expected part of the development process, starting well before systems are inflicted on real users and consequential environments.
@dominykas @gooba42 Essentially what they're saying, implicitly or explicitly, amounts to: "The programming technique we've chosen to use absolves us of responsibility for our choices".
Why are all flashlights marketed as "tactical"?
What if I want a strategic one?
@thomasfuchs This thing and a trolley, probably. https://egopowerplus.com/portable-area-light-lt1000/
Tactical means it's big and heavy enough to beat somebody with.
Strategic means it's small and useful for looking at maps, perhaps with a red lens to save your night vision.
@thomasfuchs I think an operational flashlight would be practical, but a grand strategical flashlight sounds fancy
@thomasfuchs
c.f. XKCD What If #13 "Laser Pointer"
There *is* a strategic one, but be careful what you wish for...
https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/
@thomasfuchs I used to have a 6 D cell Maglite with open ended orange cone on the end . .
That felt to me like a strategic flashlight.