⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

It is 2028.

Practical Wireless magazine only consists now of the letters page. It's still just people arguing about FT8. A subscription costs £7,200 a year. It's the same 5 people arguing every month. One is just an AI bot. It can only be delivered by post as TJ Jones ceased to exist in 2026 after the financial scandal following the buyout of WH Smiths.

In October the person printing it on his old Epson dot matrix printer suffers from a medical problem that no-one on 80m had heard of but he follows their advice and dies, because apparently drinking Jif isn't good for you. Cif would have been fine but he never liked that foreign muck.

His beacon on 40m still transmits at a distressingly greater time after the hour because no-one knows where it is and how to deactivate it and he never trusted GPS for timing.

Somewhere KHR buys another radio on what was left of Ebay.

JMO is in a care home attempting to DJ some Jungle with his little finger, the only remaining movement he has left after a terrible accident at EMF2026 involving gin, a deer and a deep fat fryer. The only people left to hear are his robot caregivers that repeat "that's lovely dear".

Hams around what's left of the world lament the lack of band activity after some fat American president sat on the big red button, scorched the skies and obliterated the Isle of Wight due to an AI algorithm confused enemy countries with nice places to go on holiday simply based on Google reviews of local kebabs.

The rest of the world is under water due to another AI algorithm deleting the internet and replacing it all with photos of cats so cute that everyone cried all the water out of their bodies.

CGG lies in an unknown grave only marked by a badly 3D printed bit of ABS with the inscription "fucking told you so".

Keir Starmer still thinks it's everyone else's fault.

A hologram of Farage is being interviewed by a hologram of Kussenberg. It is the only broadcast television available and is syndicated worldwide across the seven remaining countries. It remains broadcast on repeat because it's the only way the world can tell the time after someone in Bungay found a valve in his shed to keep the Droitwich transmitter going.

@briankrebs I'm curious if companies like https://adversarialapparel.com/ actually work and are going to become more mainstream as we move closer and closer to Minority Report.

"You just point and click and drag everyone knows that" you spent hundreds of hours training to "just" point and click and drag, but you didn't call it training, you called it solitaire and minesweeper.

You practised.

Today, if we want a better user interface for any computing - and I think we do, and it's possible - we have two choices. Entirely 100% new - clean-break, fresh-start new - tech or to acknowledge and own that we're going to spend some time fighting reflexes honed over decades.

Okay I'm a teacher so let me break the math down for you.

- The SNAP program costs about $100B a year.
- That seems like a lot.
- But the federal budget is $6.75T per year.
- That's less than 1.5% of the federal budget.
- SNAP has 40 million recipients.
- That means at maximum, each recipient receives $2,500 a year for food, assuming zero dollars spent on administration costs.
- Or, $208 per month for food.
- $208/month can stretch pretty far, but
- The average grocery cost per month in America is $504.
- Or about double the maximum amount ever even hypothetically paid by SNAP.

Nobody is getting rich off SNAP benefits. They exist so people who need food don't die.

70 years ago, on November 5, 1955, Doc Brown accidentally invents time travel by slipping, hitting his head on the sink, and getting a vision for the flux capacitor.

#OTD #BackToTheFuture #Movies #CineMastodon #FilmMastodon #80s #OnThisDay #BTTF #Entertainment #PopCulture

@alice I honestly don't get why anyone in Mastodon scale of things would allow open registrations in the first place. It's just a recipe for a shit storm after another. Sure, it won't completely remove the problem, but greatly limits it, plus seeing 100 account requests from the same IP will probably make the admin go "hmmmm..."

Commodore Industries Is Trying To Prevent The Revived Commodore International From Using The Iconic Name.

Commodore Industries Is Trying...

"They see everything not only from the air but from the side and rear.
To help you stay invisible these tips have been compiled.
There are no secrets to staying completely invisible so they are not included here."

#TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry
On Being Watched from Above by Carolyn Forche (2025 The @NewYorker) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/10/on-being-watched-from-above-carolyn-forche-poem

Looney Toons presenta...

ffs. Every time I buy a USB device I somehow manage to find a way to get administrator privileges via the interactive installer, I've had prior threads for this.

Well... it's happened again. You can just use this device to go from non-admin to admin in Windows.

🚨 Reject plans for a mandatory digital ID

#Britain has a long & proud history of rejecting proposals for mandatory# ID - we should reject this one too.

#No2DigitalID

Sign the petition ⤵️
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/reject-plans-for-a-mandatory-britcard-digital-id

#DiigitalID #UK #privacy #PoliceState #ToxicLabour #ToxicStarmer #Starmer #Orwell

Godsdamnit, I've found a new itch to scratch: OpenStreetMap, something I've used a lot in GEOINT.

It started with using the StreetComplete app whilst walking the dog to fill in details. Now I've started marking all houses in the village I live in and realising how random old English village houses can be.

I would recommend trying to help improve your area on OSM, as no other bugger will.

#TheExpanse set a new benchmark for sci-fi TV that's still not been matched - though there are still some shows out there trying. https://screenrant.com/sci-fi-tv-shows-peaked-expanse/

Time for a rerun watch of The Expanse. SciFi for the win. Season 1, Episode 1. Here we go.

#SciFi #TheExpanse

Hello!

Do you have access to an x-ray system, CT, Radiography, or a few seconds on the LHC main beam with a homebrew pixel detector?

Do you want to take part in #XrayMyAdvent this year?

You know you do.