← Feed

Posts

• View post

  Since today's Bandcamp Friday, I was wondering... how much #music people tend to buy each year? Do you buy music, or only stream? How many albums* do you buy** each year? If you feel inclined to boost for reach, I would be grateful. * Album format can be digital downloads, CDs, vinyl, cassettes, or whatever. Important thing is buying the music in some format to keep/collect vs. just paying a streaming service and relying on it to preserve your music collection. Feel free to comment i...

• View post

  Today is Bandcamp Friday for all who celebrate. Bandcamp now has playlists, though apparently they can only be managed via the mobile app (lame), so I've put together a recommendations playlist with a few of the albums I'd point people to if they're looking to buy something new today. Includes: Delvon Lamarr Trio, Hermanos Gutiérrez, Gurf Morlix, Kris Delmhorst, Cochema, The Olympians, Bernie Worrell + Bill Laswell, Robyn Hitchcock, and Asian Dub Foundation. Hit me up with sugge...

• View post

  Sam following the election results. #CatsofMastodon

• View post

  Fellow U.S. folks, if you haven’t voted, please do so today. Fingers crossed. #vote

• View post

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@warandpeas/117525421104562623 Death: "Whoops, sorry. I'll return you to the living..." Me: "Let's not be too hasty... I haven't had a chance to see if this is better or not."

• View post

  Don't mind me, I'm just over here being anxious about next week's election results. I've mostly compartmentalized things well enough that I don't think about it much, but every once in a while my brain lands on the topic of the midterms and goes off the rails a bit... All signs should point to a "blue wave", but I expect it won't be so simple or pleasant.

• View post

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@hollywoodreporter/117525912574212924 Ah, hell. He was a truly class act. He'll always be my favorite Trek captain, despite some stiff competition.

• View post

  We watched “First Contact” tonight, seemed like a good way to remember Sir Patrick. He truly raised the bar for acting in a sci-fi franchise, and his portrayal of Jean-Luc was really inspiring. Captain Picard wasn’t infallible or fearless: he just fought through fear and tried to do better. I hope that, somehow, somewhere Stewart is aware how much he is missed and how much people loved him.

• View post

  A little blast from the past: Sir Wobbles in front of the Halloween tree. #CatsofMastodon #Halloween

• View post

  We’re celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary this week. We decided to have a Halloween-themed wedding, and told everyone to come in costume rather than boring wedding attire. Meg made her dress and my outfit, including the hat. (Loosely based on Laszlo from “What We Do in The Shadows“.) It’s been a great five years, looking forward to the next five!

• View post

  RE: https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3gxyh4elwykcdnpci7gmqrvh/post/3mz4zzl2fnc2b The competition for “worst human” is pretty fierce, but Altman is really showing competitive spirit here. He’s still gonna lose-it’s a 4-way tie between Trump, Musk, Putin, and Netanyahu, but he’s really giving it his all.

• View post

  Thought I’d read a bit before bed… finish two, maybe three, chapters, get to sleep after 30 minutes. Instead I reading for two hours and ended up finishing the book. Oops.

• View post

  It’s getting chillier, but Sam still gets a few hours of quality time on the Catio every day. He’s quite insistent on being let out every day. I’m curious how he’s going to react when it gets really cold. #CatsofMastodon #caturday

• View post

  Anybody have a cat owner’s manual? I think mine may need repairs. #Catsofmastodon #Caturday

• View post

  Weather has gotten a little bit chilly, so Sam decided that he’s going to huddle with Sir Wobbles for warmth. Whether Sir Wobbles likes it or not. #catsofmastodon #caturday

• View post

  This weather is making Cupcake and Sir Wobbles sleepy. #CatsOfMastodon

• View post

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody/117388721160448007 "Some of you will suffer, but that is a sacrifice that I am willing to make." It would be funny how tone-deaf and asinine Altman is if it weren't for all of the damage he's causing. He'd be an absolutely fantastic movie villain. Lousy real-life human being, though.

• View post

  Just bought for Bandcamp Friday, "Eghass Malan" by Les Filles de Illighadad. Described as "Tuareg guitar mixed with traditional rural folk". Great stuff. Give it a listen! #BandcampFriday https://lesfillesdeillighadad.bandcamp.com/album/eghass-malan

• View post

  In addition to the steady stream of LLM-generated pitches we're seeing at LWN, I'm also seeing an uptick in pitches for LLM-generated projects and distributions. While we do write about projects, like the Linux kernel, that are using LLMs somewhere in the process, I'm not going to be writing about any of these flash-in-the-pan projects anytime soon. - Generally, I don't write a review of a project that I wouldn't use myself. - I also am wary of writing about a project un...

• View post

  RE: https://social.ginny.today/@ginny/117312913530116961 "You fucking capitalist perverts" is going to be a new go-to phrase for me, so thanks for that.

• View post

  RE: https://toot.cat/@zeenix/117326398656330874 I'm sure this will be dismissed by some folks as "tone policing" but I'll once again try to make this case: the overheated, straight-to-rage reactions are so detrimental to the cause of keeping LLMs/AIs out of FOSS projects. I am not saying that people aren't justified in their feelings. I am saying that every person is responsible for what they do with their feelings, and I have less than zero sympathy for the argument tha...

• View post

  A user asked in a project forum, reasonably, "does the widely reported X security vulnerability that affects the project that this was forked from affect this project as well?" They were told, basically, that they should report such an issue in private. Um, no. Sorry - thats dumb. It's public knowledge that Project B is a fork of Project A from a specific version. If X security flaw affects A, then it's not exactly a big stretch for anybody to conclude that B may also be a...

• View post

  A thought on considering AI policies for FOSS projects: who will you attract , and who will you repel with the policy? If you reverse the polarity later, will the “damage” on either side be repairable if the policy turned out to be bad? e.g. if you say “no LLMs for now, maybe never” what’s the downside, and the upside? And vice versa: what’s the one-year, two-year risk of accepting LLM content? ISTM that a no-LLM policy, for code, content, communications, is lower risk than a pro- or toleran...

• View post

  RE: https://zirk.us/@CindyWeinstein/117311695606112636 Perhaps a “allow hunting of billionaires for sport” proposition would be better. You can obtain a hunting license for $50. If you bag a billionaire you receive 1% of their assets, the other 99% is absorbed by the state. You’re not allowed to taxidermy them. We’re not monsters. For people who don’t want to kill, they can “catch and release” the billionaire. Same rules otherwise apply: a successful capture nets the hunter 1% of the bill...

• View post

  RE: https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117312373576583428 “Listen, meth is supposed to make you more productive. I have no idea why the quality of your work is so shit and everybody is so hostile lately.”

• View post

  Continuing to see a steady trickle of LLM-assisted or LLM-created pitches for LWN, some of which don't even seem to have a meat proxy at the wheel; just somebody turning loose an AI agent with instructions to try to scam a publication for a few bucks. I don't like the adoption of LLM tools by FOSS maintainers and contributors, but I can understand the appeal (kind of) and that doesn't feel malicious or scammy to me. (I understand some people disagree there. That's fine. No need...

• View post

  There's a lot of folks complaining (rightfully) about the money being thrown toward Omarchy while other FOSS projects are struggling for funds. I'm not a tech billionaire or millionaire (thousandaire, maybe?) but all this reminds me I could do better at donating to things I use myself. So I'm going to throw some money at two projects I use, and try to remember to keep doing that more regularly. I humbly suggest other folks do the same. It'd be great to see a few FOSS projects r...

• View post

  By default any application capable of showing / emitting notifications should have them all turned off by default. All of them. Do not make users wonder, "Where did that sound come from?" "What was that pop-up that just appeared and disappeared in the corner of my monitor?" I'm sure some folks want, for example, their terminal's "visual bell" to emit a sound or pop up a dialog. They can open the preferences and enable it if so. It's not something tha...

• View post

  I've usually relied on K3b for burning data and music CDs, but it's been a few years since I looked for any alternatives. This is probably not a task that's receiving a lot of attention these days, though maybe discontent with streaming services has encouraged people to think more about it lately. I haven't been doing much of it myself, but my daughter asked me recently to show her how to burn music CDs* and I've been poking at it again. Does anybody have a better sugge...

• View post

  “Are you awake? Good. There’s an emergency. I can see the bottom of my food bowl.” - Willow #catsofmastodon