Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

For me, right to to repair isn't just about ewaste, and preventing corporate gouging.

It's about mental health. Being able to fix your gadgets is therapeutic. Empowering. Good for the soul.

In a world full of complex technology it's easy to feel small and helpless. And maybe I'm too much of an idealist, but I think that if everyone could experience the joy of fixing or modifying a gadget now and then we'd all be a little more open minded, a little more daring. A little harder to push around.

My latest hack ‘CyberDeckChair’ is a solar-powered contraption with two modes - cyberdeck and deckchair 😉

In cyberdeck mode, use it as a Pomodoro timer to aid your work productivity. When you’ve exhausted yourself, activate the deckchair mode and recharge in the sun.

Let the CyberDeckChair be a practical reminder to take regular breaks. If devices can lay back to recharge, so can you!!! ✨✨✨

Originally conceived to be fully 3d printed, but why 3d print when you can crochet in 3D 🧶

Is there a scientific illustrator on here who could do a reasonably easy piece of work quite quickly (within the next 2 weeks or so say) for an article I'm writing?
Or can anyone recommend somebody? Ideally Denmark based (for financial simplicity), but elsewhere not impossible...

#ScienceIllustrator #ScientificIllustration #SciCom

"Actually, we will read your thesis" by Neel Krishnaswami https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2023/09/actually-we-will-read-your-thesis.html

"whenever I find a paper I don't understand, I start looking for the PhD thesis based on it. Nine times out of ten, the thesis is vastly more understandable: "obvious" lemmas will have explicit proofs, algorithms will have detailed pseudocode, and the right intuitions and perspectives to take about the topic will be spelled out."

Can relate. A colleague of mine, Stefan Pulver, once mentioned to me the "strategic reserve of Michael Bate's lab PhD student theses" as something of wonder – he was a postdoc in that lab. Huge amounts of data not deemed splashy enough for publication but full of details and caveats and protocols for studies of #Drosophila larvae #neuroscience.

#SciArtSeptember Day 22: Nocturnal

Owls have large, oddly shaped eyes in order to see in low light. (Ok, this is based off a crepuscular owl, not a nocturnal one, but close enough.)

This is the first 3d printed #SciComm model I made! Available in my Etsy store: https://blueappaloosastudio.etsy.com

#SciArt

Congratulations to the #OSIRISREx team!!! Totally nominal landing! 🪂

OSIRIS-REx is about to come down!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdwyqctp908

Turns out the digital token grift didn’t work out as a novel way to finally get artists paid for their work! Maybe the soulless automated plagiarism tool will be different

The "net" in "Net Zero" is a distraction. We need to aim for "zero carbon".

Here's yet another reminder that carbon offsets mostly aren't worth the paper they're written on: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases

We cannot use offsets to excuse further fossil fuel burning. The aim has to be zero carbon emissions. Even if we try hard, we'll miss by a bit, and by then there might be techniques to take in carbon to reach net zero. But decarbonisation must be as complete as possible

#NetZero #climate #offsets

Never in my life would I expected a cybersecurity issue (at least not a non-food safety issue) to result in a food recall

Add this to your risk assessments

Airbus open sourced their new cockpit font. Make it the default for all your embedded projects, because it's REALLY good and has real testing in difficult environments!

https://b612-font.com/

#BBCNews - Major #UK #methane #greenhouse gas #leak spotted from space
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66811312
'over a three-month period at a gas main operated by Wales and West Utilities. The amount leaked could have powered 7,500 homes for a year.'
#Climate #ClimateChange

This wasn't only happening in the low-price chain-brand segment. It also happened in the mid-range segment of self-branded goods.

And it all started happening when inflation went through the roof.

Clearly, something was up. My guess was: tacit collusion, meaning, oligopolic price coordination without explicit coordination.

Meanwhile, others have build platforms like I did as well. And they too saw these patterns.

There were more.

I scrambled to integrate his data into my platform. I added analytics tools. And then I ran my first few analyses. And my jaw dropped.

"Well, that's a bit to much of a price increase even given higher energy prices."

So I started to dig. And boy did I find a lot of things...

Today was ... interesting. If you followed me for the past months over on the shitbird site, you might have seen a bunch of angry German words, lots of graphs, and the occassional news paper, radio, or TV snippet with yours truely. Let me explain.

In Austria, inflation is way above the EU average. There's no end in sight. This is especially true for basic needs like energy and food.

Our government stated in May that they'd build a food price database together with the big grocery chains. But..

Dear Fedi hivemind:

I am trying to organise a group of academics that are working on #openhardware and affiliated with #uk institutions. If you are one, or if you know one, could you send me a message (or ask them to send me a message?)

The reason for the group is finding ways to work together and advocate for #openscience #hardware!

Please boost for reach?!

Thanks!

"Daddy, when I grow up I want to be a Data Broker just like you, so I can help people be more effectiving targeted by advertising and political persuasion."

Said no kid ever.

#DataPrivacy

Infosec friends are unanimous: if you're using Chrome, you want to visit chrome://settings/adPrivacy and turn off Ad Topics, Site-Suggested Ads, and Ad Measurement.

IMPORTANT: you must do this for each of your Chrome profiles, since it's not a global setting.

#chrome #privacy #enshittification

Google’s widely-opposed ad platform, the “Privacy Sandbox,” has launched in Chrome, directly tracking users based on their browsing habits to sell to advertisers. *It is turned ON by default, and you have to explicitly opt out.*

If you still use Chrome, to disable Google's "advanced" ad tracking, go to Settings>Privacy and Security>Ad Privacy, then disable all three options there (Ad Topics, Site-suggested Ads, and Ad Measurement). See images or the animated GIF here: https://mastodon.social/@docpop/111020685168276797

Since I've seen a lot of chatter about people switching to #Firefox as Google ramps up the enshitification of #Chrome, let me tell you about a killer feature for people who (a) need multiple accounts on the same websites (eg. devs) or specifically (b) have to use multiple Google accounts.

Firefox has an official addon called Multi Account Containers that lets you trivially set up color coded tabs that have separate sets of cookies. Log into your dev account in one, and your test account in another. Log into your personal #gmail in one and have another tab next to it with your work Gmail. I'm actually not signed in to any Google accounts in most my tabs, I just have containers for the specific tasks I do on Google products.

It'll take you 30 seconds to set up.

Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/

Mozilla's explanation: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers