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Zagorath on the alien site.

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Olympics sh.itjust.works

6mo ago

'What a great way to kill your community': Discord users are furious about its new age verification checks — and are now hunting for alternatives
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Zagorath @aussie.zone 6mo ago
It's definitely nowhere near as polished as Discord, but it does a good enough job for my small gaming group to have moved over.
The equivalent of a Discord server is a Space, which is made up of Rooms (channels). Unfortunately Rooms are displayed in order of recent activity; admins can't define a set order to group things by function.
The two weirdest things: there are no audio calls, you have to do a video call and turn off the webcam. And the process of logging in on your phone requires scanning a QR code from your desktop (a technically-minded person will understand this is necessary for E2EE, but to an average user it's just strange).

6mo ago

Aged care workers charged over alleged dementia patient fight club [2019]

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 6mo ago

Yes, I explained as much in both the title and the comments.

6mo ago

Aged care workers charged over alleged dementia patient fight club [2019]

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 6mo ago

Old story, but I just heard about it now.

6mo ago

Day Pass — Day Pass — Official Trailer

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 6mo ago

I can't say that the trailer is particularly inspiring to me. It doesn't seem like it will have the proper gamification of Jet Lag, or the educational value of Jason's regular videos. Maybe if you're a fan of just watching people travel this might be good for you?

I'll watch the first episode or two, because Jason has absolutely earnt that with the quality of his regular videos. But I don't expect to be sticking around for too long.

7mo ago

Calibre 9.0 Open-Source Ebook Manager Released

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

Apart from the notification that there's a new version with AI, I can't say that I've noticed AI in Firefox at all. And I haven't even bothered (as far as I remember) going anywhere to try and turn it off.

That certainly doesn't feel remotely comparable to Chrome and Chredge.

Their blog post about it seems pretty clear, and it sounds good to me.

First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
Second: our business model must align with trust. We will grow through transparent monetization that people recognize and value.
Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.

And considering they're a non-profit, I don't see any particular reason to doubt their honesty.

7mo ago

What are your favorite German girl names?

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

Oh, that was for real? I saw your comment, but since psychOdelic didn't acknowledge it in any way I assumed it was a joke.

Well, congrats on the transition then! I hope it goes well! 🥰

7mo ago

What are your favorite German girl names?

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

That did occur to me, but the phrasing of "future girlfriend" seemed a little off for that in the context of someone accepting and understanding. It would have the same vibes as when I hear boomers who are trying to be accepting but are just a little outdated when they say things like "back when [person] used to be a boy". Which it is my understanding is not generally the preferred way of speaking about it.

But I'm neither trans no currently close friends with anyone who is, so I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong.

So yeah, I was thinking mainly the AI thing, which doesn't seem super healthy.

7mo ago

What are your favorite German girl names?

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

Naming your future girlfriend? What does that mean?

7mo ago

What are your favorite German girl names?

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

Brunhilde.

7mo ago

Calibre 9.0 Open-Source Ebook Manager Released

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

I recently heard a great interview with the President of Mozilla where he basically says exactly this. It's all about options. Yes, Firefox now incorporates AI, but it makes it super easy to turn it off if you want. Which is a major contrast from Microsoft and Google which shove it down your throat.

Link to interview with timecode.

That's the nuance you need. Give people the option to do what they want. Make it easy either way.

7mo ago

Jet Lag: The Game — Finale — Worst Case Scenario

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

I was certainly not surprised that Ben lost. Once they worked out that they'd have over two hours in the town it seemed inevitable. It was still a really impressive run, especially considering the actual hiding time (ignoring time bonuses) ended up being considerably longer.

7mo ago

Halloween preparations

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

Castle-confused.gif

7mo ago

Gonna be here a while

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

It's really an astrophysics joke disguised as a computer science joke. Hawking radiation is the term for radiation that escapes a black hole. /dev/null is kinda analogous to—at least the pop culture conception of—a black hole.

7mo ago

Tips for picking it back up after injury

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

I'd say avoid high intensity runs for a while, keep a relatively low pace and don't be afraid to walk at times. Running down hills is particularly hard on the knees, so try to avoid that.

At times I've been coming back into running post-injury, I have found making sure I have new running shoes is a big help, as well as trying to run with a very high cadence. My normal cadence when running slow is about 165, but when recovering I try to run close to 180 steps per minute. Doing after-run exercises like calf raises also helps.

7mo ago

I made my home lab immutable with Terraform | XDA

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

Oh good tip!

7mo ago

TLDR News Global — Why are the Populist Right Surging in Australia?

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

Yeah, we have a pretty great electoral system. The House of Representatives uses Instant Runoff Voting, and the Senate uses Single Transferable Vote, which is a somewhat-proportional form of preferential voting. Not as good as Mixed-Member Proportional like they use in New Zealand and Germany, but still a hell of a lot better than First Past the Post like the US, UK, and Canada.

We also have a pretty unique advantage over all those countries: voting in compulsory. So you can never win an election just by radicalising your base and discouraging those who might like your opponents from bothering. Your policy and style has to appeal to the average person. And the strength of that for keeping out extremists cannot be understated.

7mo ago

I made my home lab immutable with Terraform | XDA

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

That's a pretty righteous set up OP.

Lol not me. I'm not the author. Just saw the article and thought it was an interesting conversation starter.

7mo ago

I made my home lab immutable with Terraform | XDA

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

or a recipe for an insecure mess that could become difficult to maintain

The concept, or the specific setup the author of that article has? If you mean the latter, I'm not going to argue. But the concept? It shouldn't have any effect either way on security, but the whole advantage of it is that it's less of a mess. The same way that running a whole bunch of services on bare metal can quickly become a mess compared to VMs or Docker/LX containers, declared state helps give a single source of truth for what all the services you might be running are. It lets you make changes in repeatable and clearly documented ways, so you can never be left wondering "how did I do that before?" if you need to do it again.

If everything you run is a Docker container, there's a good chance Terraform is overkill; a Kubernetes config will probably do the job. But depending on your setup there are a whole bunch of different tools that might be useful.

7mo ago

I made my home lab immutable with Terraform | XDA

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

What's your preferred approach to defined state in your home servers?

7mo ago

TLDR News Global — Why are the Populist Right Surging in Australia?

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Zagorath @aussie.zone 7mo ago

He's worth taking with a grain of salt, because he's a strong pro-Labor partisan, who has in the past deliberately spread misinformation with the goal of promoting Labor interests. (Namely: that voting Greens is bad if you'd prefer Labor over LNP. Ignoring the fact that we have a preferential voting system which makes this untrue.)

But yeah in my opinion this time, the truth does align with Labor, so it makes sense he'd have a good take. And he does also have some very good stuff detailing precisely why the LNP are so terrible, among some other less directly partisan stuff.