derrickoswald

joined 2 years ago
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6
The Terapixel Panorama - of the Battle of Murten (terapixelpanorama.ch)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works to c/internetisawesome@sh.itjust.works
0 comments fedilink
 

On 22 June 2025, the anniversary of the Battle of Murten fought in 1476, the EPFL releases an immersive experience terra-pixel digital twin of a 10m x 100m oil on canvas panorama, painted in 1893 ... https://terapixelpanorama.ch/

2
Tails is now shit. (sh.itjust.works)
 

I just tried to install tails on a thumb drive - which I've done before - and I have to say the experience has degraded substantially. As background, I'm not a novice. Getting an image onto a thumb drive is not the issue. Booting into tails though is seriously crippled. The boot sequence is seriously broken, and I''d be surprised if any journalists can make tails work. The blue screen of nothing: Activities, Applications, Places is non-responsive with any keyboard, or any mouse (wired, bluetooth, or radio), or keyboard I tried. WTF is wrong with the latest Tails releases?

9
What's the likelihood that Elon Musk is defenestrated, like Russian oligarchs, in the next few months? (sh.itjust.works)
 

The U.S. slide into dictatorship, with close ties to Russia, implies a learning curve that should align with events there. When some oligarch falls out of favor with Putin, they somehow commit suicide (see for example the fairly long list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_Russia-related_deaths_since_2022), including some who shot themselves five times in the chest. Trump taking advice from Putin is likely to lead to even stranger deaths than Jeffrey Epstein's.

Any thoughts or predictions?

Manitoba repatriating 500MW of baseload power — not renewing export contract to Minnesota expiring next month in c/news@lemmy.world
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My concern is that this will prolong the life of fossil fuel generation in Minnesota (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Minnesota) which is twice as much as all other generation sources combined (8662MW vs. 4453.3MW). So, it's hurting the environment to assert sovereignty - which is probably not what the average Canadian wants.

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Manitoba repatriating 500MW of baseload power — not renewing export contract to Minnesota expiring next month (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works to c/news@lemmy.world
4 comments fedilink
 

Power will be used within Canada instead, with first 50MW to Nunavut, and opening negotiations for an east-west power corridor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5xxi-MqWFA

35
Google Photos does OCR on handwriting (sh.itjust.works)
 

Just so you know. Maybe I'm late to the party.

I take pictures of letters that I write in longhand (yeah, I do that, I'm old, and weird) just so I don't repeat myself in subsequent letters.

Yesterday, I searched in Google Photos on a word in the text of a letter, and it worked!.

So, I surmise that Google is using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to index pictures of handwritten text and using that in it's search algorithm(s). I assume it has been going on a while since it found something I wrote months ago.

Don't assume that using an image protects your content from our tech overlords.

Image credit https://unsplash.com/@jbcalligraphy52.

Texas porn site age verification law goes before the Supreme Court. Here’s what’s at stake in c/politics@sh.itjust.works
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ha, ha, ha.

The shit hits the fan when identity needs to be tied to internet access.

Actually, who does keep the data that Joe Smith (birthday 4.4.2004, social insurance #677-63663-6663, currently residing at 24 Melgrath Court, Austin, Texas) accessed Pornhub on January 15, 2025 for three hours?

How is it possible that teenagers with lots of time on their hands won't find a way to bypass this censorship?

Is it not a possibility that people seeking a VPN to bypass this porn-wall will download a sketchy .EXE and compromise their whole system and give up their bank account details to some schmuck in China?

Who never thought this through (Ken Paxton)?

SEC sues Elon Musk, alleging failure to properly disclose Twitter ownership in c/politics@sh.itjust.works
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago

These disclosure rules are pretty much iron-clad. If Musk didn't disclose a 5% stake in Twitter for more than 10 days after the reporting period threshold, that's illegal. Again, it seems one law applies to the billionaires and another law applies to everyone else. If he gets out of jail free, like Trump did with the felony convictions, the US legal system will be the laughing stock of the free world and nobody will take US law seriously.

GNU Radio LoRa PHY level receiver & transmitter in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Here is a relatively short presentation: https://www.youtube.com/live/3us83qvzopM and the slides.

46
GNU Radio LoRa PHY level receiver & transmitter (sh.itjust.works)
 

Research results on reverse engineering of the LoRa protocol and an implementation in GNU Radio. An open source LoRa PHY layer project provides access to the LoRa protocol for researchers and hobbyists.

What do you secretly judge people for? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Disheveled hair. If you have long(ish) hair and you're going out in public, at least drag a comb through it so you don't look like a bed-head.

19
snap rant (snapcraft.io)
 

Is it just me, or are most snap packages broken?

A lot of problems have to do with developers using some command to start or run a process, for example:

  • dropbox “Launch Dropbox Website” fails badly for Firefox as a snap
  • gimp as a snap, preferences-folders--Show file location in the file manager, doesn’t work

Another type of problem is the location for local files, e.g.:

  • a snap zoom upgrade uses the same location for recordings as the prior version, which doesn’t work because the old snap version directory is inaccessible

Another type of problem is the integration with Ubuntu (ostensibly the owner of the snap format), for example:

  • superkey (Windows logo) search for a snap and click or double-click on the icon just shows a wait cursor and finally times out (you have to right click and choose New Window)
  • update fails to update snaps - you need to manually sudo snap refresh, and even then the Software Updater thinks it need to update something until you reboot
  • snap-store has no search function - but if you start typing it will search (what kind of sadistic user experience designer thought that one up?)
  • snap-store Updates - Update All can fail and display a failure message from weeks ago
  • don’t even get me on about disk usage, like /var/lib/snapd/snaps or your ~/snap directory, that likely have more gigabytes than you’ve needed in a long time

Should I just give up on snaps and use Flatpack or Appimage?

Caption this. in c/science_memes@mander.xyz
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

By the time Sergei had assembled a plywood board and a broom with a wooden handle, Dmitriy was turned into a human Melba Toast.

Global sales of polluting SUVs hit record high in 2023, data shows in c/news@lemmy.world
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

This is 100% a China and US problem - nowhere else in the world would these Wankpanzers be a status symbol. What's required is a re-education of the Nouveau Riche to make a better choice.

1
I'm curious how many collectors-item level baseball cards were wrapped around bicycle forks with clothes-pegs in childhood to make a flappity-flap motor sound in the spokes. (sh.itjust.works)
Do you think/feel that you are living well? Happily? Embodying your values and dreams? If so, how did this happen? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, living well. Happy mostly. Embodying values and dreams - as much as possible since some dreams would have needed to be started years ago to be realized - like my vineyard and my orchard. Mostly it was reinventing myself every five or seven years to follow the lucre (in software development world look for the bright and shiny new thing).

I was self employed for most of the time, and I can recommend that for those who have a pretty good work ethic. Having a goal in high school was also a key factor, since it led to a useful degree. I was also doing constant internal evaluation - like the feeling where you're going over your desired job description for a job interview - via a journal or a self help program like "The Red Bucket Strategy". So, in answer to how did this happen question: it was pretty methodical in using the steering gear you have to make course corrections all the time.

Chinese schools testing 10,000 locally made RISC-V-ish PCs in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

There's this back story about the "LoongArch instruction system, a RISC ISA that blends ideas from MIPS and RISC-V". The article says it is MIPS-compatible and even runs the same Linux code [Loongson's] old MIPS-based CPUs did. Why not just use RISC-V? MIPS is licensed from the USA. I guess they have a lot of legacy people at Loongson.

[Weekly thread] How is your week going? 11-03-2024 in c/casualconversation@lemmy.world
[–] derrickoswald@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A little saddened because I sold Bitcoin way too early. I wanted to get out, but if I had set the bar a little higher... Of course, if you had a crystal ball you could make a lot of money.