timorl @timorl@qoto.org

.hg I love tooltips. It's like I'm just pointing to a UI control and asking /the software itself/ “what's this?” and /it just tells us/, and if we do that enough times with enough different controls we Learn How To Use The Thing

Important word thing

"Human" is a species
"Person" is a moral label
Not all people are necessarily humans
Stop treating these words as synonyms

Sci-Hub Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary By Uploading 2.3m New Articles - https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-celebrates-10-year-anniversary-by-uploading-2-3m-new-articles-210905/ "today offers a staggering 87.97m research papers and serves up hundreds of thousands of them to visitors every day."

@moonbolt @timorl

I believe GIF is in the same situation: it used to be patented, with some not-very-clear general licenses, and patents have expired.

I understand the wish not to use things that weren't intended to be publicly usable by their original inventors' company, but do realise that this class of things contains many more things than one might think and that the limited lifetime of patents is designed precisely to allow such usage regardless of those wishes after some time.

.hg Okay, let's talk about blockcodes!

I have a usecase for blockcodes.

They will be displayed on screens (printed much less commonly if at all) and scanned by phones (or other form factors of computers). They will usually encode ~192 bytes of binary data (but should be fairly scalable, just in case that grows significantly in the future).

I care about:
1. Sparsity (they'll frequently be rendered in one phone and scanned by another, so they should be able to encode those ~192 bytes without becoming too dense)
2. Resilience (an important part of any bitcode)
3. Free standards (everything about the encoding should be public, not behind a paywall or encumbered by a patent)
bonus 4. Ease of decoding by paw (see https://mst3k.interlinked.me/@moonbolt/106860351935131196 )

I don't care about:
* Conformity (the overall system design can be altered to accommodate; implementors will be told they should support whatever encoding I choose; compatibility with other systems is not a requirement)

Suggestions?

- Click "Download PDF"
- IEEE: Pay $30 first!
- Open the paper via Sci-Hub
- "This paper is U.S. Government work, not protected by U.S. copyright."

#TIL Fun fact: some papers on Sci-Hub is 100% legal.

also looking for CP437 fonts reminded me that i made a 16-seg-like font for dwarf fortress once
it's beautifully ugly

Great article just hit talking about SafePKT, an EU funded research project with myself, @sh4l and our excellent colleagues, advancing the art of automatic software verification for Rust code in the PKT ecosystem! 🎉

https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2021/08/179147-caleb-james-delisle-co-founder-at-pkt-explains-how-theyve-used-blockchain-tech-to-pay-users-for-contributing-unused-internet-bandwidth/

Problem: The actual receptors in the retina are on the back so light has to pass through the blood vessels and other support infrastructure to reach them.
Smart solution: Move receptors to front side.
Evolution solution: Fix it in software.

While I knew about Dunbar's number before, the smaller and larger social groups he postulates are interesting:
https://youtu.be/-wC8oOyiDhk

They are:
Inner Circle 5
Sympathy 15
Overnight/Affinity Band 50
Active Network 150 (Dunbar's number)
Acquaintances 500
Human capacity to recognize 1500

I think we need to agree collectively to consider soundbites and political memes impolite.

it’s a complete domination of style over substance, and we can’t debate anything meaningful this way, the tribal dadaism of what goes on on all major social networks is just awful.

Considering it good form to at least put together a couple of paragraphs worth of arguments for a position should be the minimum that we do.

all of my linux installs

Again I'll write my question in English as hopefully more people will notice this post (besides everyone of my followers know English even if they are Polish so whatever xD).

I know only two languages: Polish as my mother tongue and English. A few months ago I decided to learn Esperanto. This language is simple, pleasant to learn and sometimes even more logical than English.

However when I speak to my friends and family they are always like "why do you learn that language? No one actually speaks it!" which actually pisses me off just a little (don't worry @teetotaller - I'm not talking about you - you just kindly asked :D).

As an English teacher I personally think that there is no such thing as "wasting your time learning language". If there is at least one person in the world that speaks certain language it's fine (in terms of Esperanto there are around 1,000 "native speakers" and less than 200,000 speakers who know Esperanto as their second language).

Personally what do you think about the idea of learning Esperanto? Do you have any personal experience with this language? Or did you meet any Esperantists?