Cathal Garvey (Moving soon!) @cathal@octodon.social

Some #introductions :)

== I am ==
* Irish, Husband, Dad to 3
* Highly driven to learn, adapt, and improve.
* Possessed of an atypical neurology.
* Buried in nearly-finished projects and neglected hobbies

== I Believe ==
* People will do their best if given the conditions to thrive.
* Individuals need communities to thrive.
* Good Individuals owe something to good communities.
* Money and Power self-accumulate. Unchecked, they kill communities.
* The Natural Environment gives abiding wealth to communities.
* It is possible to have a fair, technologically advanced world that is ecologically sound.

== I am Interested In ==
* Programming, Data, #MachineLearning
* #ArtificialLife, Computational Neuroscience
* Genetics, Cell Biology, Metabolics, Nutrition
* Permaculture, #Bioremediation, Composting
* Forests, Fungi, Evidence-Based Herbalism
* #PostScarcity, #Solarpunk, Resilience
* #DIYbio, Amateur Biotech
* Decentralisation, Mesh Networks, Sneakernets, Rogue Archives
* #Privacy, Reflection, Creativity
* Celtic Languages - #Gaeilge!
* Music, Singing, #SeanNós

you heard much about donald trump's thoughts since he was banned from social media?

no?

that's because deplatforming works.

I see a lot of fediverse mentions in the bird zone. Typically chuds who are getting snowflakey and wondering where to go next.

Not all exoduses are good ones. If you're running a public instance, keep an eye on who is joining.

FF7 Remake: I've reached the sewer bit. Sooner or later most videogames make you spend some time splashing around in a sewer. The sewers are always boring and go on forever, so you might well ask:

"Why? What the hell is it with videogames and sewers?"

And that's a reasonable question to -

"WHY. Jesus, WHY would they do this? It's AWFUL and it's EVERYWHERE and there's just no NEED for it"

And I'm here to tell you that it's because -

"CHRIST, WHY?! WHYYYYYY?!"

Khronos: "Contributions welcome!"

Also Khronos: "Ah, just sign this CLA before."

Also Khronos: "By the way, new extensions MUST have a test added to our test suite. Please send a patch for our private test suite repository you can't access because you're not a member."

Also Khronos: "By the way, the membership is $18,000."

Fucking Khronos.

HALT AND CATCH FIRE SYLLABUS 🔥

This has been on my mind for a long time, and now it's a real thing!

https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/

The #MagneticField of the #WhirlpoolGalaxy
#Astronomy #Picture of the Day

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210120.html

#APOD

people say that free software is too hard to use, but what about what they picture as the alternative??

whatsapp will not send PNG images, and neither will it let you record video on, say, whatsapp web. it also won’t let you start video conversations without a facebook account. it will also not let you record video to send as a message on whatsapp web. also, you need to have your phone on in order to use whatsapp web.

on top of these lack of features, it also hocks your metadata to private corporations for money. it is also owned by the psychotic mark zuckerberg and the silicon valley corporation facebook.

i have sometimes been accused of ‘punching downwards’, ie. abusing the people i claim to want to help, by being anti-silicon valley, but doesn’t this judge too quickly? i am constantly installing free software on my community’s computers, and giving free tech support and guidance.

wouldn’t you rather trust a community of volunteers, like the BSD and GNU crowd, than a silicon valley IT corporation boss?

Malwarebytes hacked by the SolarWinds guys.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/malwarebytes-said-it-was-hacked-by-the-same-group-who-breached-solarwinds/

>"After an extensive investigation, we determined the attacker only gained access to a limited subset of internal company emails," said today Marcin Kleczynski, Malwarebytes co-founder and current CEO.
>"Our internal systems showed no evidence of unauthorized access or compromise in any on-premises and production environments.
"Our software remains safe to use," Kleczynski added.

@cathal i had Occupy in mind when I wrote all that because I was involved in it, and no joke the group I was in spent *months* deliberating over whether or not to eject a bad actor who was abusing people directly. no one even disputed he was abusive, but when it came to acting there was always someone who objected.

when it was all said and done, it turned out he was an informant for the city police. so besides the abuse, he was exactly the kind of bad actor who should have been ejected.

Mica powders on polymer clay cane slice covered by glass cabochon = my best iris yet.

'“A five-minute charging lithium-ion battery was considered to be impossible,” he said. “But we are not releasing a lab prototype, we are releasing engineering samples from a mass production line. This demonstrates it is feasible and it’s commercially ready.”'

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric-car-batteries-race-ahead-with-five-minute-charging-times

Sabotage Can Be Done Softly: On Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” - Los Angeles Review of Books

A review of Malm's book in which he argues that the climate movement needs to escalate tactics and adopt strategic property destruction

#books #environment #directaction #protest #climatechange #reading

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/sabotage-can-be-done-softly-on-andreas-malms-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline/

@wilkie Also worth noting that some of us in that very W3C SocialWG where ActivityPub was standardized protested W3C's adoption of EME http://dustycloud.org/blog/memories-of-a-march-against-drm/