Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

@rsf92 @pluralistic I spent 15 years, from 2005 to 2020, working with my neighbors to build a fiber network in our rural town (Plainfield, Mass. pop. 600) in western Massachusetts. Most of that time was dealing with funding and regulatory issues, but by the time everyone stayed home to avoid the pandemic in 2020, working with the local municipal gas/electric/fiber department in the city of Westfield we had the network in place and most of the homes installed. 1 Gbps for $85, symmetrical, uncapped. It meant that while families in other towns were driving to library parking lots so their kids could use the WiFi to do their schoolwork, in our town they had faster broadband in their homes.

4 years later and we have not had to change prices. We are now interconnected with 5 neighboring towns in a mesh to share diverse backhaul paths and get increased economies of scale. We are building a stabilization fund to cover insurance deductibles, equipment replacement, and upgrades, and we are keeping more dollars in the regional economy instead of having it siphoned off to Verizon shareholders.

#MuniBroadband #FFTW

As always, domestic abuse is _the_ flagship infosec threat model, the one where the victim has the least resources, the least recourse, where they're closest to immediate physical harm.

That this industry has failed at and mostly abandoned the idea of even pretending to try dealing with a threat model that's difficult and unprofitable and mostly hurts women is not news, but this new Windows Recall feature is next-level professional negligence.

CompilerFax: Sending C source code via telefax to a compiler-as-a-service which then faxes you the output of your program; demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ-25-pRhpY git: https://github.com/lexbailey/compilerfax intended for #emfcamp #retronetworking #whatagreathack

Someone needs to make a version of doom that works like those 1960s flight simulators that NASA used, where it's a physical model and the controls are just driving a video camera around it

"At least tens of millions of dollars flow to the paper mill industry each year, estimates Matt Hodgkinson of the independent charity UK Research Integrity Office. (...)
Hodgkinson recalls hearing one publisher say it “had to sack 300 editors for manipulative behavior.” He adds, “These are organized crime rings that are committing large-scale fraud.”"
https://www.science.org/content/article/paper-mills-bribing-editors-scholarly-journals-science-investigation-finds

Sometimes I think about how I am expected to be in dozens of different discord servers. This is just the normal use case for Discord.

See something interesting? You are supposed to join their discord. Need information about a project? Better join their discord. It's inhumane.

This project was such a success Ghibli Studio asked for the production of a new one based on My Neighbor Totoro, even bigger than the previous tapestries produced. This one is from Howl's Moving Castle.

#design #craftmanship #ghibli #miyazaki

Yesterday I went to The Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie d'Aubusson in France. Aubusson tapestry is a six centuries old luxury product, a craftsmanship of excellence and local tradition, permanently renewed through contemporary creation.
Since 2020, the museum has produced five tapestries from Hayao Miyazaki's movies, with his approval. You have to see it to understand the beauty of the achievement.

#design #ghibli #miyazaki #craftmanship

"it's hard to get excited about these new electric vehicles...." @tomgauld

One year ago, we converted a small piece of boring grass in front of our institute into a wildflower meadow. Now it's blooming for the second time, attracting many insects, and improving the biodiversity and the micro climate around our institute.

#Bloomscrolling #biodiversity

The same day I read about Google's expanded enthusiasm for AI with everything, here is their featured snippet at top of search for "gravity vs altitude".

Bring on the Idiocracy!

Same, Benny, same. 🤩 😆
Get your own 1" (25.4mm) Fibonacci128 here: https://www.tindie.com/products/31672/

@NanoRaptor
In some ways the only true offsite backups ever created are the golden discs on the Voyager probes

In Europe, flying is cheaper than taking the train.

It's an embarrassment, and a major problem: we have to stop flying for silly short distances. Realise that the overheads of flying (reaching the airport, awaiting 2 hours, the flight, the unloading, reaching the destination) largely cancel out any time gains of flying. And the carbon costs are utterly untenable. Not to speak of the modern, dire conditions of the whole flying "experience".

Another embarrassment is that train connections can't be guaranteed when across countries or companies. They aren't even coordinated. As if those who commission and set the schedules didn't travel by train themselves, at least not internationally. In considering how tiny most European countries are, it's frankly bizarre.

There are so many destinations one could travel by train to, yet in practice, it's not sensible. A disgrace.

The upside is that it can be fixed.

#trains #EuroRail

Imagine living 98 years.

Imagine seeing the bounty and diversity of this planet disappear catastrophically at the same time from a front row seat...

https://mastodonapp.uk/@RSPB/112404626877816493
@RSPB - To a man who has dedicated his life to conserving and understanding our natural world: Happy 98th Birthday! 🎉

Sir David Attenborough, thank you for your decades of devotion to our planet's wonders and wildlife.

Here's a brilliant neologism: "slop", for text generated entirely by LLMs and published, unwanted, on the Internet

> Watching in real time as "slop" becomes a term of art. the way that "spam" became the term for unwanted emails, "slop" is going in the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI generated content

Source: https://twitter.com/deepfates/status/1787472784106639418

Ah

Integrated public transport, don’t you just love it

I need to take a train at 06:03 from La Ciotat to Toulon tomorrow

First bus from town to the station: arrives 06:27, which also misses the train to Marseille as well *by 2 minutes* 👏

Look, when computer science departments have some of the worst learning outcomes of any department on campus maybe they SHOULDN'T be elevated as the experts on how students should "learn with AI" with the only reason being "computers"??? Just saying. I will gladly listen to the absolute heroes in CS who HAVE centered teaching and ARE incredible teachers but I guarantee their colleagues aren't.