Karl Austin @[email protected]

Anyone else get slightly annoyed at couriers charging the recipient an admin fee for customs/duty.

It is just one of many bits of admin getting a parcel from sender to recipient under a contract with the sender. But they charge the recipient, with whom they have no contract.

I doubt it has a legal basis at all. One reason for this doubt is legislation allowing Royal Mail to make such a charge. If there was a legal basis for such, RM would not need a special law for it.

I’ll see what DHL say.

Y'all, America desperately needs to embrace the metric system.

Fer reals.

The amount of effort which goes into making our home computers work is absolutely incredible!

We mine the purist silicon sand we can find & extensively purify it further. We grow massive crystals from it's molten form, then slice it like deli ham using special saws.

In our cleanest & most tectonically-stable buildings we use complex expensive equipment to etch absolutely microscopic runes (mostly for memory) shaping how electricity flows through this otherwise non-conductive crystal.

1/2?

If the #OnlineSafetyBill comes in in the UK and requires us to seek age verification, thus increasing the likelihood that we would need to store personal records for users, then we will be shutting down our site and absolutely not participating in that process. This is a recipe for a privacy disaster. We take great pride in storing as little as possible of your personal information and don't want to store more just because a fascist government wants even more control then they already do.

£500 open source human-skin printer made from Lego

https://www.inkl.com/a/waopnXhqZXq

#lego #MindStorms #3DBioPrinting

"I want," the man said to the art robot, and then described an image in some detail.
"Certainly," said the art robot. A printout came out of its chest.
"Thank y- Hey! What's this?"
"A list of artists who make images of the kind you describe, and who are accepting commissions."
#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories

Resetting everything...

I found a bot which was hammering my site. So I asked the author if they could make it opt-in.

Apparently consent doesn't matter if it's for the greater good.

The #AI brainworms are strong!

https://github.com/rom1504/img2dataset/issues/293

Heh. So, you know how as a kid you once accidentally called your teacher "mum" and it was mortifyingly embarrassing?

Heard of a friend's kid who last week mistakenly called their teacher... "Alexa"!

I'm seeing several posts of FOSS supporters who go like "all of the software I use must be FOSS, and if I don't have a valid FOSS alternative for something then I'm part of a discriminated minority whose needs are ignored".

I've been a FOSS enthusiast myself for more than 20 years, but such arguments really miss the point.

First, I don't consider myself part of a "discriminated minority" just because I want to use only FOSS software and the industry doesn't go in that direction. I'd leave the "discriminated minority" label for people who really need it. I'm someone who has made a conscious voluntary decision, and who's well-aware that being 100% coherent with it is impossible - it'd require me to inspect every single file distributed by each single technology product I use, and it'd require me to reinvent seven decades of tools to make sure that the C compiler I use to build the software and all the toolchain around it doesn't have its roots in closed-source software built at the Bell labs.

Second, I shouldn't have the expectation that somebody must spend their (mostly unpaid) time to build something FOSS that I can use for free, and complain that I'm being discriminated if nobody does. Nor that an admin/provider of services only uses 100% FOSS products. That's a first-world expectation for a first-world problem. We are actually entitled to expect the government to adopt this approach in public services, because public money should only go in public code, but not from private individuals. If I have a problem with a piece of proprietary software, I just roll up my sleeves, reverse engineer it or code an alternative. If a hardcore vegan has a problem with most of the food available at malls and restaurants, then they should grow their own food instead of expecting the whole world to accommodate all of their needs.

Third, we shouldn't expect proprietary software to disappear. That's a utopia that even Stallman has given up to. In some industries this is just not doable. We should instead accommodate for pragmatism. 10% of the people using 90% FOSS software have a much greater impact than a 0.1% using 100% FOSS.

Fourth, like in all things that expect to raise awareness on a topic, playing the victimism card and advocating for purism is very unlikely to bring many new friends. Ascetism and purism are the greatest enemies of adoption.

Tennessee speeding right along, as expected -

“The Tennessee House of Representatives today voted to allow government discrimination against interracial and same sex marriages. Republican assurances that cases like Loving v. Virginia and Lawrence v. Texas were safe after the Dobbs decision were just shot to Hell.”

Reminder for anyone who hasn’t followed me for a while, what the Republicans are trying to do is establish a White Supremacist ChristoFascist state.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/12/2163618/-Tennessee-House-Votes-To-Allow-State-Discrimination-Against-Interracial-And-Same-Sex-Marriages

Seeing some stuff about Bluesky and folks, if you hook up w *another* platform built and owned by Jack fuckin Dorsey, all i have to say is LMFAO

‘Youtube-dl Hosting Ban Paves the Way to Privatized Censorship’ - https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-dl-hosting-ban-paves-the-way-to-privatized-censorship-230411/ indeed, terrible, stupid decision by german court... #copyright

Tiny Serious Security Tip:

Sometimes, when you encrypt all the things with long passwords, and forget to save your password somewhere, and do not to login for a while, it is easy to lock yourself out your own stuff!

Be careful with this!

- a cautionary tale offered to you by my own personal experience this week 🙃