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   Mark T. Tomczak (mark@mastodon.fixermark.com)'s status on Friday, 20-Mar-2026 10:36:56 JST Mark T. Tomczak

   One of the more interesting aspects of the Ukraine war was the revelation of how badly compromised Russia's defense assets were. It was, honestly, a little startling to the public to learn that the feared Former Soviet State still had size on its side, but not a modern military; their tech was either out-dated or had been pillaged by corruption so badly that it couldn't be deployed as intelligence analysts had assumed it could be.

   It is extremely fair to argue that Russia's greatest state-defense asset was perception and that the war in Ukraine damaged that and, in so doing, materially threatened the country's safety---that if they had simply never started a war, everyone would still perceive them as unassailable and incredibly dangerous to engage in combat and nobody would even think to try stochastic attacks, asymmetric drone warfare, or any other modern tactics under the assumption that such a grand superpower had a solution for all of that.

   In short, all they had to do to keep everyone's perception of their strength was literally not start a war to test it.
   Just a thing I'm thinking of right now for some reason.

   https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/18/politics/us-ford-carrier-fire-iran-war

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   Adrian Chadd <verified.png> (erikarn@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 29-Dec-2025 06:52:40 JST Adrian Chadd <verified.png>

   in reply to

   @whitequark @hailey oh yeah i forgot to mention how utterly bonkers the timing can be.

   It's not always the controller either. Like, you can submit a buffer for completion to the controller and context switch / copy it - this is what userland libusb + ugen devices do! - if you can do it to a process then you can do it to a VM! - but the devices themselves are also very latency sensitive and in a lot of cases shit the bed if your transfers aren't setup fast enough!

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   Chicken :cqlgusu: (lookitmychicken@blorbo.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Nov-2025 06:43:37 JST Chicken :cqlgusu:

   For most of the projects where I knit without a pattern, I tend to make stuff up as I go, with lots of frogging and/or ripping back until I get something I'm happy with.

   This is usually fine cos I tend to me more of a process knitter than a product knitter. I enjoy the process of experimenting, reworking, and tweaking.

   It's rare that I get a project completely finished, ends sewn in, and blocked before realising that it doesn't work, though.

   I thought I had knit a sufficiently big swatch and measured it accurately but. Um. This lengthwise old shale scarf has turned out about twice as long as I intended it to be.

   It's over 3 metres long.

   Even though there's a *lot* of knitting in this scarf ... I'm seriously tempted to frog the whole thing and start it again with a much lower stitch count.

   If I frogged it and started again:
   - the garter stitch border could be wider
   - the borders could be the same width (for the cast-on edge, I ripped back and knitted it after the fact, but ran out of yarn earlier than I wanted)
   - it would curl less on the edges (it doesn't curl much, but I still want it to curl less)
   - the scarf as a whole could be wider
   - I'd be far more likely to wear the finished product

   Okay I think I've talked myself into it. It's frogging time!

   But first: gonna figure out how many pattern repeats I actually need for the length that I want. And how wide the garter stitch border should be, too.

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   Futurist Jim Carroll (jimcarroll@mastodon.futurist.info)'s status on Thursday, 18-Sep-2025 19:25:21 JST Futurist Jim Carroll

   "The future is not about what you know but what you can create!" - Futurist Jim Carroll

   I've become quite the Python programmer.

   I know nothing about Python

   This is both the conundrum and the wonderful possibility of the AI age.

   As I type this out on the deck at 526am, there's a large jet lumbering overhead, a few thousand feet above. I know at this moment that it's a big old MD11 for UPS, flying a load of cargo from Louisville to Toronto. It's exactly 7,200 feet overhead, moving southeast. It is precisely this type of concise but useless information that I share with my wife that she finds crazy. She is unimpressed.

   But this is one of the promises of the AI age. Yesterday, I wrote about how I was using AI to manage all the technical support around this complicated home office and home. Today, a short overview of how I can master a complex computer programming language without ever knowing much about the program.

   Some cards on the table first - I do have some pretty intense coding skills. Enter AI. If you spend any time online, you will be hearing about the idea of 'vibe coding' - that's the idea where you are using it to help you write, structure. fix and test code. I've certainly been doing a lot of that - and this little project is a great example.

   For a long time, in my home, I've been running an ADS-B receiver on a Raspberry PI - that's a little $35 computer that can be used for a wide number of small projects. The little antennae on the device pull in all the details on the various flights that pass over or around my home; each plane sends out an ADS-B signal with height, speed, callsign, tail number and more. 

   But the folks at FlightAware, FlightRadar, Planespotters, and other apps you might use to track flights or find arrival and departure information have developed programs that let you turn this raw data into magical maps. My Raspberry Pi, for example, takes the data above and turns it into this image, accessible via my Web browser. The same data is uploaded continuously to all those flight services - with tens of thousands of people participating in this hobby, that's how this live flight tracking app you might use on your iPhone or iPad came to be.

   It's a fun little hobby that tens of thousands of people around the world participate in - having their own 'feeder' stations grab this ADS-B information, feeding it to tracking services.

   Onwards. One day, I saw someone post about the FlightWall - a display that someone could place over a window in their apartment or home, to know exactly what plane was just outside the window.

   I decided to build my own. 

   Here's the story, and why it matters.

   **#Creation** **#AI** **#Programming** **#Python** **#Learning** **#Skills** **#Aviation** **#Technology** **#Innovation** **#Augmentation**

   Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2025/09/select-decoding-tomorrow-your-daily-future-inspiration-knowledge-skills-the-future-is-not-about-what-you-know-but-what-you-can-create/

5. Embed this notice
   End Of 10 Campaign (endof10@floss.social)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Aug-2025 17:45:12 JST End Of 10 Campaign

   Reason 8 To Choose Linux 😍

   No online account required!

   With #Linux you don't need to create an online account to set up or enjoy your new operating system.

   As it should be.

   It's that simple.

   /8

   #EndOf10 #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS #GNULinux #Microsoft #Windows #Windows10 #Windows11

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   Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 11-Jul-2025 01:55:01 JST Rich Felker

   in reply to

   @futurebird @CatDragon @arclight @Okanogen @FeralRobots In the world we live in, it's horrifying that teachers would even consider taking a child's phone away from them.

   No matter how much of a distraction it may be.

   It's less bad than the alternative of being trapped in what's developing into a hostage situation with no way to communicate information to the outside or stranded without medical care during a natural disaster or trapped under rubble.

   Not to mention the much more mundane needs of documenting abuses by other kids or authorities.