Don Thompson @guardeddon@qoto.org

Just been checking some of my fave webcams in the Alps for the aurora. Some highlights:

Konkordia (Jungfraujoch/Aletsch glacier):
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/konkordiahuette/2024/05/11/0030

Zugspitze (w/ Höllental):
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/zugspitze-ost/2024/05/11/0030

Zugspitze summit:
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/bzb-gipfel/2024/05/11/0030

Nebelhorn:
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/nebelhorn/2024/05/10/2230

All images by https://www.foto-webcam.eu

#Aurora #Photography #Webcam #Alps #Mountains

Very sad to realise this morning that my fish will have to down soon. I made them (all hand-cut and acrylic-painted) in the early part of the first lockdown, and rushed them on to the wall for Sea Shambles - which we did online instead of at the Royal Albert Hall (so weirdly, it still exists):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBQmdbVeoKw

We've seen an uptake in accounts using the term OSINT, in some cases to boost poor analysis. This can be confusing for those looking for considered and objective research in their feed. So we wrote a guide on the warning signs of bad open source research https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2024/04/25/oshit-seven-deadly-sins-of-bad-open-source-research/?utm_source=mastodon

I discovered hydrothermal vents, but I’m only known for finding the Titanic
https://buff.ly/3Wysu87
The discovery of these underwater hot springs in 1977 solved the mystery of how life first began on Earth, but it was locating the world’s most famous shipwreck that made me a celebrity

Phew! It’s been quite a few days, Bridgy Fed is up to almost 2500 bridged accounts total. Thanks again for all of your interest! I’ve been in a constant state of whiplash, back and forth between hearing “this is so cool!” and “it’s broken in these 10 different ways.”

I love that you all are enjoying it! And it absolutely is broken in all of those ways, and more. I’m sorry. I’d planned on a bit more time to iron out bugs first, but c’est la vie. Testing in production! 🤷

I’m seeing most of the problems break down into four broad buckets, which I’m tackling in this order:

Bridging stuff from Bluesky to the fediverse is flaky and unreliable. True. This is largely because it’s currently based on polling. I’m in the middle of switching it to the Bluesky firehose; that should hopefully be complete within a day or two.
Bridging stuff from the fediverse to Bluesky sometimes stops working. True. Bridgy Fed isn’t as rigorous about validating Bluesky records as it needs to be, so when we emit an invalid record in one user’s repo, I suspect the Bluesky relay gets stuck and won’t accept any more for that user. Fixing some parts of this may be tricky, but it’s still very fixable.
Lots of things don’t translate right, or at all. True. This is annoying, but seems lower priority than the unreliability buckets, and most of these bugs are straightforward to fix, so I’m focusing on reliability first.
Scaling is inefficient and expensive. True. OK, I’m the only one seeing this, but it’s still true. 😎 Fortunately I’m not too worried, since I’m confident I’ll be able to optimize it. Make it work, then make it right, then make it fast (and cheap), in that order.

I’ll continue to post updates here now and then. You can also follow the now label on Bridgy Fed’s GitHub issues to see what I’m focusing on at any given moment. Thanks again for all of the interest, and for your patience. It’ll get better, one step at a time.

Not asking for rec's right now, but man... there are like 13 different decent open source SDR GUIs/web UIs out there. Only used Gqrx and CubicSDR but will probably be testing a bunch soon.

My Dad uses SDR# I think, I have a list now to try :P

No one's going to respond more effectively than @Mer__edith, so if you want to learn more, just read Meredith's post: https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1787958712595784166

@NPR
And ‘Yosser Hughes’ in Boys from the Blackstuff.

New project from Direction of Travel. Polar Radar is a airplane radar site that monitors flights across the Arctic Circle and Antarctica. People onboard who get within 100km of the North Pole can generate their own certificates.

https://polarradar.com

In the next version, you'll have compose a status, which opens the compose within the app. You can still prefill a text and a photo. The new shortcut will be "Send a text status," this can be done all within Shortcuts/Siri without opening the app!

England, where politics and commentary is completely normal:

Reform got exactly zero seats, and the pundits can't stop talking about them.

the Greens got 159 seats, and no-one from the Greens is interviewed, and no-one on tv is talking about them or to them.

RClone may be my new favourite piece of open source software.

It lets you sync and/or mount a variety of cloud file storage providers (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) without having to install their proprietary apps that are increasingly being sagged down with surveillance, pointless redesigns and AI BS.

On macOS, for mounting, you can use MacFUSE, or FUSE-T if you want a userspace FUSE implementation without having to install a kext.

https://rclone.org/

💯 Accurate.

Heat Death of the Internet
https://www.takahe.org.nz/heat-death-of-the-internet/

Spectacular timelapse capturing an entire night from sunset to sunrise over the ALMA Observatory on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Atacama Desert.

Video Credit: ESO/C. Malin (christophmalin.com)

A number of people asked about the mini 10" rack I used in my last video, so here's a quick 3rd channel video where I go through it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-cdA50bpU (thanks to DeskPi for sending it!)

On what would have been the late Sir Terry Pratchett's 76th birthday, a favourite quote of his:

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys & there is empirical evidence that they exist. – Terry Pratchett (b. 1948)