Historically, FOSS has been stubborn like a weed. It slowly wins over time, because all it has to do is make itself better at a sustainable pace, and be a viable alternative each time a competitor self-immolates. This is easy to underestimate in the short term, but we've seen how it eventually becomes too powerful to ignore. And the less corporate influence, the more steadily resilient it can be. The best parts - call them MOSS or Convivial Software or NeverSlop - are the furthest on this axis. That's my tribe, which has weathered a lot of storms lately with remarkable flexibility and persistence.

It can also survive shedding moral dead weight. Benefit from that, even.

I am not worried I'll be left behind. I know where my home is and will be. It's the people following fads right now who have to worry about that, they just don't know it yet.

> Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute

Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

> Programming is the art of abstraction, of understanding how to compose smaller indeas into bigger ones, of how to understand the automation of a larger system by understanding the rules that automate smaller ones and understanding how to combine them.

https://blog.glyph.im/2026/10/programming-isnt-special.html

4/9

I love ants.

Here's a documentary about them by David Attenborough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_LYmhP65iM

#Ants #Nature

RE: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117390225782096263

Short answer: lol, no
Long answer: lol, no, but in Latin

There's a form of grief about the state of the climate, the species we killed with our actions, the damage we've done to the ecosystem. Grief about not what we "lost" but what we destroyed (often through negligence).

I do feel a very similar kind of grief when I think about "AI" and what its usage does to our cultural expression and our collaborative infrastructures.

Reminder: forced password rotation is a bad thing and must be avoided.

Because all the characters will slide towards one side, the resulting distribution will not be random, but very skewed.

@cmconseils

Original art by @eclectech from https://things.uk/@eclectech/117343501889290398

One of my favourite things about trains in wales:
The ticket machines have a dedicated "LLAN" button on the destination input

Winnie the Pooh (the book) was first published 100 years ago today on 14th October 1926. Some of the characters had appeared in earlier publications.
My copy is from 1953. It was the first book I ever owned; I was given it for Christmas in that year.
I was 4 years old.
I love the original illustrations by E H Shepherd; I much prefer them to the over-sentimental Disney versions.
Lots more in alt text....
#books #illustration #oldbooks #writing #reading #Winnie-the-Pooh #AAMilne #EHShepherd

Vivaldi continues to grow steadily, as more people get to know us and the values we stand for. Our users are fed up with AI being shoved down their throat on every product, and they're fed up with the way the big corporations have been (mis)treating us all for decades.

We love building an alternative for all of you, because we truly believe you deserve better. But we wouldn't be here without your support, so if you're using Vivaldi: thank you!

We're now officially 4.5 million people. 🎉 Wouldn't it be amazing if we could make it to 5M before 2026 is over? 🙏

#Browser #NoAI #BigTech #European

https://mastodon.art/@RussSharek/117441833838533758

Had not heard of https://www.pkgsrc.org but it sounds very appealing

- Native platform is NetBSD— exactly the OS I'll probably have to wind up using after the AIpocalypse

- "Code exists in pkgsrc to support 20+ Unix-like operating systems and 15+ CPU architectures." Curious what those 20 are! Nix? Guix? dpkg?

EDIT: Not what I thought it was, pkgsrc is a package manager that can be installed on 20+ operating systems, similar to homebrew. Alas

🦭💙 URGENT APPEAL! The largest seal hospital in Europe, Zeehondencentrum, needs our help. The futures of 70 seals in their care hang in the balance.

Join my donation drive today, get a free Silly Seal Postcard in the mail!

How it works:
🔗LINKS IN COMMENTS
1 - Donate directly to them
2 - DM/email me a screenshot
3 - Get your reward 📬

Please sign the free petition as well!

These animals need their care to get a second chance.

Thanks for your support 💙

#Urgent #Donation #Wildlife #Support

Authority is not the same thing as competence. A crown does not make you clever. A uniform does not make you right. A title does not make you worth listening to.

Rep Omar has been a citizen for longer than Melania, and she did it without the shady Einstein visa.

It is imperative that our survival be disconnected from employment and connected instead to citizenship, or even better, a basic human right to existence. The arrangement we have of dependence on finding an employer to sponsor our survival cannot and should not be considered by anyone as being just.

#breaking: Reporting live from Bloor and Islington where a small crowd of cyclists, passersby, cops, construction workers and reporters are all at a standoff. Will update in thread.

#bikeTO #BikeTooter #Toronto

More websites need a "just let me use the password that I already have saved in my password manager" option. None of this annoying interruptions with "we've sent you a code to your email" 🙄

A unit circle (blue curve) satisfies the equation \[ x^2 + y^2 = 1\] but if instead of the Euclidean norm you use the p-norm, you have the equation \[ {|x|}^p + {|y|}^p = 1.\]

When p=1 you get what's called the "Manhattan" metric, and the "circles" are diamond-shaped (red curve); as p goes to infinity the "circles" become more and more nearly square, and are called "squircles" (green and purple curves).

Today I learned that if one generalizes trigonometry to squircles, it's called "squigonometry" and the x and y coordinates of points on the squircle are given by the squine and cosquine functions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squigonometry

RE: https://mastodon.social/@PCMag/117439466376646506

I'm pretty sure that wandering around all day with an always-on microphone and blaring noise without headphones will still be considered antisocial. 😂

I'm already not looking forward to having to reassure people that I'm using an older model Apple Watch that isn't recording them. 🙄

The Christian Nationalism we're seeing today isn't new. It's a revival of Nazi fascism from a century ago. They’re telling us in their own words.