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well, I finished _Blindsight_ by Peter Watts, and while I liked it very much at the start, this effect faded as I moved through the book. I guess "not as annoying as Alastair Reynolds, but in the same way" is about the best I can do here.

anyhow, imo VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy in unchallenged as the best first contact novel of the 21st century. this is a genre that I generally enjoy, and would appreciate suggestions if people know of more books along these lines

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food 

late summer vacation near Niantic, CT checking out skate spots, local apples from Stop and Shop, and Connecticut style lobster roll

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Do you live near Amsterdam and have an old laptop or computer you no longer want? I'm looking to rebuild my home lab after moving across the Atlantic with three suitcases.

If you have old but working laptops, SBCs, small desktops, Android phones, and similar small form-factor computers, DM me and see if we can work out buy/trade/donation. Battery life not a factor

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We sold a few geese. 8 geese is still Quite a Lot of Geese.

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Hey, la Mastonie, jai besoin de toi.
Est-ce que tu saurais me donner le nom d'institutions , syndicats, ong , universités, journalistes...qui ont officiellement désactivé ou supprimé leur compte #twitter #X
Le repouet adoucit la rentrée :blobcatheart:
Ca maiderait à renforcer mon argumentaire car demain je propose la suppression du compte de mon syndicat :-)
#help
#aide

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@ami_angelwings 🎶... she caught the ethernet frame streaming eeevry-where 🎶

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People Wanted

There's an apocryphal story about Ernest Shackleton putting an ad in the newspaper that read: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. If you've read the book Endurance by Alfred Lansing, you know how that went. Pretty legendary. One of my most treasured possessions is actually a copy of…

ma.tt/2024/08/people-wanted/

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The easiest way to discover an app for a niche use case is to start building it yourself. As soon as you tell people about a little project you're working in, they instantly have recommendations of apps that already do it.

But if you just ask people about a problem you have, they can't think of anything. (Or worse, they start recommending things that they like that aren't actually what you asked for.)

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Do you ever use LLM tools like Claude or ChatGPT to help code up exploratory prototypes?

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@Gargron @polotek Some info to be helpful perhaps...

You can't communicate with users on platforms running protocols your platform does not support (limiting your reach and visibility to AP protocol support is your choice). Unlike microblog Mastodon, Misskey and others which only support AP, Friendica and Hubzilla both are federated macroblogs that support the greatest number of protocols and therefore have the greatest reach and visibility.

The number supporting diaspora is far more than other protocols besides AP so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them. Users I know on at least one diaspora platform prefer not to be federated with Mastodon. From Friendica or Hubzilla I can communicate with them and with Mastodon users but you cannot from Mastodon servers.

You can get/host accounts on other federated platforms if you choose - many do. I choose to be on Friendica so I don't need many accounts on many platforms to increase reach or visibility - makes using the open source global social network far less confusing and time consuming. My reach from a single account is organic and far more information than I can consume each day!

But the definition of the Fediverse is inclusive of any platform supporting at least one of 17 federated social protocols.
the-federation.info/#protocols
AT is listed by at least this source as federated protocol even if not functional yet in terms of federation support akin to Friendica and Hubzilla.

In a nutshell, the Fediverse is a collective term for all users on servers supporting social web protocols
w3.org/TR/social-web-protocols…
not just Activity Pub. Dismissing projects in the Fediverse using other protocols can be taken as insulting users who choose to not be on AP only platforms. IMO Mastodon, Misskey and others should improve the reach for their users by supporting all protocols.

Perhaps you are not aware of the number of Fediverse projects and servers.

Here is one unbiased list (voluntary listings): the-federation.info/#projects

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@kellogh I went back to copilot for some project (not allowed to use other ones) and the chat isn't bad, you can now also add context by file /symbol.

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"My strong suspicion is that many people who join Telegram for its social media features also end up using it to communicate privately. And I think Telegram knows this, and tends to advertise itself as a “secure messenger” and talk about the platform’s encryption features precisely because they know it makes people feel more comfortable. But in practice, I also suspect that very few of those users are actually using Telegram’s encryption. "

ioc.exchange/@matthew_d_green/

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In defence of posting this. On my Mastodon account I;

- post Bloomberg solar research that is normally behind a $$$ paywall, which I no longer post to X
- post about getting drunk and taking a live goose to a party (he was a bit sulky but he's a retired exhibition goose, he wasn't hugely stressed and he was back with his family 15 minutes later).

I mean, that's the deal.

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(me) hey you should play Bombe¹, it seems up your alley
(her) Yeah, I have it. It ships with libz3, and in NixOS, that's the only way I can get a libz3...
(me) --what the fuck--
(her) ... so I now use its copy of libz3 whenever I need Z3.

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@whitequark I'm not familiar with either piece of software. Looking at the Bombe page on steam, I imagine the gameplay is similar to installing software on NixOS. So the reply makes perfect sense?

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@vwbusguy Locate, and drink, Apfelschorle.

There's a really good burger place named Burgermeister at Kottbusser Tor. They have a good veggie burger also if you don't eat meat. (This is the same roundabout where SchneidersLaden is, which is the synth store with the strangest nerdiest gear in like, probably the country. But that probably has more limited appeal than Burger.)

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Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
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All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.