⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

The last Global Newton Users Meetup (GNUM) of 2025 is coming up!

Global Newton Users Meetup #18
Saturday, December 27th, 2025 @ 17:00 UTC

Join us on Zoom for a casual, online get-together for fans, aficionados, developers, and collectors of the #AppleNewton platform.

Details on the NewtonTalk mailing list:

http://lists.newtontalk.net/pipermail/newtontalk/2025-December/003548.html

Hope to see you there!

Meet the young creatives VCARB is getting into the F1
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/69119/1/vcarb-creator-platform-young-creatives?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Life and Culture @life-and-culture-DazedMagazine

This really highlights how incredibly dependent we are on Starlink's continued perfect collision avoidance maneuvers. So far they've done it, but they keep adding more satellites and making it harder.

Other megaconstellations are now launching as well, and they all need to communicate PERFECTLY in order to not crash. Will China talk to Starlink? Will the US gov't secret satellites talk to OneWeb? This is all incredibly important so that we don't destroy LEO.

The CRASH Clock uses the current density in altitude bins (averaged over eccentric orbits) of satellites, rocket bodies, and tracked debris, assuming typical cross sections for each type and orbital speeds. This calculation tells us how long to a collision if all orbital maneuvers were to suddenly stop.

The CRASH Clock is currently* at 2.8 days.

In 2018 it was 121 days.

*This is actually for June 2025 because that's when we ran it. Will update soon!

Thought I had an off-by-one bug but it's actual off by two, so even my off-by-ones are off by one

God this dart_eval stuff is exhausting. The compiler and runtime are works of art, but with so many holes due to almost non-existent usage. Looks like Every Door will be the first Flutter app ever to have proper programmable plugins.

4 packages wrapped, 7 to go. 100500 lines of code to be generated and reviewed. Hoping to have something by next week ugh.

Thanks for @NGIZero for supporting this, but I have absolutely miscalculated the effort lol.

ESTA: USA wants to check social media accounts of European travelers as well

For a vacation in the USA, people from Europe have so far not had to reveal too much. This could soon change if it's up to US border control.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/ESTA-USA-wants-to-check-social-media-accounts-of-European-travelers-as-well-11109526.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Datenschutz #Netzpolitik #Recht #TechnikfürdenUrlaub #news

Today I discovered that the only way to get an immediate tax refund from HMRC in the UK is to go through an "open banking" service that gives a random third party company the right to see all your account details, including transaction histories.

Apparently this is better for people than a couple of text boxes to grab an account no and sort code.

The other option is a cheque, which can take up to a month to deliver.

And this is the government that wants us to trust it to build a Digital ID system.

#Privacy #Security #UKPol

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC29) is in "pending state," meaning the contest is open for you to register:

https://www.ioccc.org/next/register.html

Feel free to register today, even if you are not sure if you want to enter, instead of waiting until the last minute near the contest deadline.

On 2025 December 14th at 23:00 UTC, there will be an IOCCC Discord hangout to discuss IOCCC29. To join the IOCCC Discord server:

https://discord.gg/Wa42Qujwnw

#ioccc #ioccc29 #ioccc2025

Current level of yak shaving: need to use the old Apple Scanner to scan the bottom of a keyboard so I can create the proper standoffs in Fusion because the new scanner makes things blurry if they’re not flat on the glass but the scanner isn’t working now for some reason and now the drivers have locked up my old Mac that I’d use to scan with and what else will go wrong.

#RetroComputing

These stories are less than 6 weeks apart:
•Paramount lays off 2000 workers
•Paramount magically finds $100B cash to hostile takeover a rival

Billionaires don’t care about working people. They care about power. Stop defending billionaires. Start taxing them out of existence.

Subscribe to support my human rights advocacy: https://lets-address-this-with-qasim-rashid.ghost.io/

"Why don't you just Amazon it?" asks my mum.

Because I walked up to the local shopping centre and I bought Christmas cards and actual gifts from a little gift shop. I get to handwrite the cards and wrap the gifts myself and it feels personal. I touched these soft toys and wrapped them and wrote the little card.

Then I went to the post office and bought the box and packaging I'd need to post them tomorrow. There was an old lady with a frame delivering mince pies to the staff. At the checkout counter I saw some gift label stickers and I'd just run out, so I bought them too.

Then I went via the local cafe for a takeaway tea and laughed at a small boy (2ish) determined to pay for his ice cream by himself, thereby holding up the whole queue in an adorable way.

As I walked home I smiled at the random guy walking past me and he smiled back.

Sure, this way of gift-giving is much longer and takes much more effort. But I've given my friend the gift of time and energy and that makes it much more special.

And I got to feel like part of a community for a moment.

#WordWeavers day 8: Does your world have any weird laws, practices, or beliefs?

A ridiculous number of them, ranging from the idea that women are inferior to men in various ways to the casual acceptance of ridiculous amounts of inequality (in wealth and other things). At least the city where my story takes place doesn't participate in the larger society's legal ban on women, but not men, showing their nipples in public.

It's our world, BTW.

New #ebook @gutenberg_org: The analysis of matter by Bertrand Russell https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77427

we were re-watching Stranger Things and my kid commented on the poor quality of the flashlights as maybe a way to ramp up the drama and i had to point out that no, serious, flashlights were **fucking terrible** in the 1980s, if anything the show **overstates** the effectiveness of flashlights back then, they **fucking sucked** kids who grew up in an LED world have **no** idea how bad we used to have it for flashlights.

Colour of buses across Great Britain

@0xabad1dea
I read a post recently that outlined a likely reason: Facebook needs to stay a growth company unless they want to lose most of their value. It's the same reason NFTs moved into AI and why AI is simultaneously a god that will change everything and a poor word guesser.

Once a company transitions from "growth" to "stable" they lose the ability to print stock that will be accepted like money and their valuation tanks fast. That's why they keep making up bullshit that will never do anything -- to keep from maturing.