Steve Zissou @SteveZissou@qoto.org

It's #FollowFriday! Here are two EU accounts you'll want to follow:

@EC_Commissioner_Breton - The first EU Commissioner to post on Mastodon. Covers topics related to EU single market. A must-follow if you're curious about the evolution of "Twitter 2.0" and how EU law works online.

@EC_REA (European Research Executive Agency) - Follow for funding opportunities under #HorizonEU and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, among other programmes.

Stay tuned for more EU accounts coming to Mastodon soon! 👀

I welcome Elon Musk’s statements of intent to get Twitter 2.0 ready for the DSA.

I am pleased to hear that he has read it carefully and considers it as a sensible approach to implement on a worldwide basis.

But let’s also be clear that there is still huge work ahead, as Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising.

One thing I’ve learned in life is that every time I said “no, having one central provider of that service/software will lead to faster development and better UX than investing in many providers”, I was right for a while — and then I was suddenly very wrong.

I'm an Antarctic explorer + creative director, embarking on my next expedition to Antarctica in a few days.

I'll be in Antarctica for 2 months as a researcher + filmmaker making a docu-series supported by National Geographic. Follow along on my newsletter:
💌 https://buttondown.email/arielwaldman

For the last several years I've been an advisor to NASA on advanced tech, human spaceflight and astrobiology.

But my educational background is art school & graphic design!

#introduction
https://www.ted.com/talks/ariel_waldman_the_invisible_life_hidden_beneath_antarctica_s_ice

Let me tell you about the wonders of the #GDPR #BlackFriday, child!

Years ago, in the land of the EU, millions of happy people minded their business.

Suddenly they started receiving so many sales emails that the @EU_Commission decided to protect its disturbed citizens.

So, they regulated the pushy marketers who bought their ✉️ & wrote them unprovoked and in automated sequences.

And now on the holly Black Friday, their inboxes are (mostly) clean & shiny.

And they lived unspammed ever after!

Mooncharmer

#gamedev #indiedev #lowpoly #gameart #CreativeToots #MastoArt

I couldn't find anything about this in English.

But summarizing it, the article says that during the pandemic lockdowns in Santiago de Compostela, there was a chance to study pavement temperature. It was discovered that in places where the grass and moss was not removed, the temperature was up to 20 degrees lower than in places where it was.

More moss and grass make our physical spaces more liveable in these times of #ClimateCrisis.

#SaveTheMossSaveTheWorld #Mosstodon

Here is my thesis on Security:

The diligent and reliable existence of locks, matters a lot more than their strength.

In trying to find how often lockpicking is a factor in burglaries, a huge number/majority of thefts were from behind no locks at all. Lockpicking is almost nonexistent.
Thieves simply try doors for being left open. Or just break a window.

This matched with my experience in Enterprise Security.
Penetrators got in through poking for trivial misconfiguration and lack of protection, not novel trespass.
They had millions of targets with a small % of success and won.

So I ask, why aren't we focusing on high assurance?

Because assurance is hard. It is not fun. It is not flashy. It fails silently. It supposes diligent attention.
Remediation is by definition beyond self-correction. The percentage of failures meets 85% SLA, even though it fails every month for three years.
Catastrophe is demure.

The modern Enterprise endpoint is almost always a massive distribution of responsibility. And in that denial of culpability, nobody is responsible for success.
The completeness of maintenance. The completeness of security configuration. The completeness of the agents that assure it.
It is the perfect failure.

Nobody owns actual success, just blame.

HOT OLDER MEN in YOUR AREA want to know if YOU have been TOUCHING the THERMOSTAT.

"The Night Sprinter network would be a European grid of night trains that would consist of 40 international long-distance lines. By 2030, it would connect more than 200 cities from #Lisbon to #Helsinki."
Part of the "flight-free movement" growing across Europe.

Aspirational map put together by Greens in#Germany. Still lots of challenges remain crossing borders!

This is De Meern 1, the most complete #Roman river #craft (in this case, a #barge) found in Northern Europe. It sank suddenly & accidentally in about 190 AD, just to the west of Utrecht - the captain may have made a mistake in taking it into a winding tributary of the #Rhine (then the Empire's northern frontier) where he was, it seems, unable to avoid some lethal obstacle. He & the crew seem to have escaped leaving personal belongings which survived with the #boat.

Here is a lazy version of the #30DayMapchallenge 2022 Days
21: @KonturInc population.
24: Fantasy: I air brushed in #Wakanda (just watched #BlackPanther). Can you find it?
25: Two colors. I remember this redish sand tint from my last trip to #Accra, Ghana.

Made w #Aerialod

Got the new Tesla phone you guys!

One week until I will be speaking at @rstatsdc on "Building an Entire City in R: Interactive 3D Data Visualization with #Rayrender"

I'll show how to build a digital replica of a city entirely in R and an example of telling a data-driven story within it!

#RStats #rayshader

One of the things I keep hearing here, over and over, is that "new" people on this platform shouldn't complain about things they find confusing or that don't meet their needs.

That's exactly wrong. New uses, who've not yet adapted themselves to possibly unworkable or inscrutable interfaces and limitations, are often in a unique position to have insights that old hands can no longer see.

Perhaps you're tired of hearing the same complaints over and over. But think about why people make them.