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It's weird to me that in all the reporting about how a gender reveal party kicked off the CA wildfires, no one mentions what the gender of the baby was.

Generated using Ye Olde Yorker: yeoldeyorker.hashbase.io/

It's pretty fun to generate New Yorker cartoons.

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Google removed @k9mail from the Play Store without prior notice because they objected to the following text in the app description (that has been the same for more than a year):

(People sometimes call K-9: K9, K9 Mail, K-9 Email, K9 Email, K9 E-Mail, k9mail or k9email.)

Oops., time to stop using pep517.build!
github.com/pypa/pep517/pull/83

Instead, you should start using a brand new library that doesn't have a release yet!

Sorry if you took me seriously when I recommended this tool for the past few years because there was nothing else...

"Now, I see your birth plan involves Mike standing guard at the door with a spear because of... prowling sorcerers?"
"Yes, they can be very tricky."

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Do you hate the feeling of being a useless spectator while your mate is laboring to bring your child into the world? Consider hiring "prowling sorcerers" who you can fend off with a spear!

(Note: This will likely not be covered by insurance.)

For those wondering All the services on QOTO that we run costs us about 1,800$ a year (used to be twice that before i bought reserved instances).

Holy crap, google is apparently taking down all/most fediverse apps from google play on the grounds that that some servers in the fediverse engage in hate speech. At least three apps I know of anyway and I'd imagine the others will follow soon under the exact same reasoning.} Seems to be the case with Husky, Fedilab, and "subway" tooter.

this is a scary precedent if google play is going to ban any apps that can in any way be used to access content with hate speech. So what about a forum client, do they take that down just because there is a forum somewhere on the internet posting hate speech?

This is particularly worrisome because for most people Google Play is the only way they understand to install apps at all.

Picture attached of one of the notices received by fedilab.

toot.fedilab.app/@fedilab/1047

mastodon.social/@Gargron/10476

@fedilab @tateisu

Apparently the OSI approved the Unlicense as a "Special Purpose" license a few months ago, but I do not see what the special purpose is anywhere on their main site. There's some more background in this mailing list post:

lists.opensource.org/pipermail

I'm still not clear what the "special purpose" is that they're suggesting, though. Seems like they don't want to be seen recommending it because it's somewhat weirdly drafted and is partially a public domain dedication.

Maybe it came out of a conversation with a frustrated just-arrived time traveler:

"What's today?"
"Thursday"
"No, the date!"
"August 27th."
"Be more specific!"
"Uh... 12:34:56? AM? Central standard time?"
"THE YEAR, MAN!"
"Oh, 2020."

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Also, who picked that as the default date format? Was it someone trying to make American MM-DD-YY formats look sane?

Day of week, then month, then day of month, then time, then time zone indicator *then* year.

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For me "CST" maps to "Central Standard Time" (UTC-5) rather than Cuba (UTC-6) or China (UTC+8):

$ TZ=UTC date --date="Thu Aug 27 12:34:56 AM CST 2020" --iso=min
2020-08-27T06:34+00:00

Interestingly, that time doesn't exist in America/Chicago, but it still applies UTC-5!

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Interesting, `date` seems to support dates with ambiguous three-letter offsets, though it's unclear how it decides to disambiguate them. Looks like "IST" defaults to "India Standard Time":

$ TZ=UTC date --iso=m --date="Thu Aug 27 12:34:56 AM IST 2020"
2020-08-26T19:04+00:00

Oh man, I just found out that many TVs have a built-in setting (called CEC) for controlling devices and that you can control your OSMC Raspberry Pi with your TV remote by just enabling it. I could have had a single unified remote for YEARS!

instructables.com/id/Raspberry

Warning from @try_osmc@twitter.com, though:

"On paper, it's great, but due to different implementations by AV equipment manufacturers, it can also cause a lot of problems."

I had been delaying getting back into electronics and wearables until after the boy is a bit older (he's 2.5 now), but I think for the right project he might be ready to take some pride in helping me build something already.

Very disappointed that my workbench didn't come when they said it would (Friday). My son was excited to put it together with me.

Anyone have recommendations for a TV where it's relatively easy to physically disable the wifi (and where doing so won't degrade the user experience for a normal user who doesn't care about the "smart" features)?

We need a new TV and apparently you can't just get normal TVs anymore.

Interesting question from here: kenta.blogspot.com/2020/08/kpm

"What would baseball bats look like if rules regarding their shape, weight, and composition were lifted?"

(I find this blog mildly frustrating in that it poses many interesting questions but with little discussion.)

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Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.