Notices by jwz (jwz@mastodon.social)

@nafmo Oh, bullshit

Linux Xft Unicode fonts.

Dear Lazyweb, can someone show me a straightforward example of an X11 program calling XftDrawStringUtf8 that succeeds in displaying Japanese characters? On Debian 13 with "fonts-noto" installed, "lxterminal" can do it but XScreenSaver still can't seem to display anything more complicated than Cyrillic.

E.g. "unicrud --block Katakana".
https://jwz.org/b/yk39

[ taps headset ]

I am now being informed that in this -- The Year of our Linux Desktop 2026 -- it is impossible to take an arbitrary UTF-8 string and render all of the characters in it.

You just can't get there from here.

Good to know.

@Infoseepage @sil The swans are needy, so needy

@Infoseepage @sil Everyone thinks they're a woodworker crafting for the ages until they realize they're carving ice swans.

That one XKCD thing, now interactive.

This is so much fun... Craig S. Kaplan: In my online undergraduate P5.js course, students are about to begin the module on motion and physics, including a bit of physics simulation using Matter.js. It suddenly...
https://jwz.org/b/yk4B

@sil Right??

@steter @blogdiva I assume the cartels are about to start another lime shortage, too... https://jwz.org/b/yh2M

@blogdiva It is wild that sometimes my bar simply can't stock it because the monks decided to take a break.

Let Friction Ring.

Dear Lazyweb, I have this pulley wheel, 50mm inside diameter, 4mm groove. I need a rubber traction ring to go inside it. I cannot find anyone who will sell this to me. The ring must be flat or concave, not round like a typical...
https://jwz.org/b/yk33

@dansup Please let me know when I can get my Hoffman lenses, thx https://jwz.org/b/ykxj

How to get out of jury duty.

Judge forced to slash SF jury pool over hate for Elon Musk: One candidate said, "In a criminal trial, I would feel morally obligated to convict, however, in a civil trial I could set those views aside," adding, "I believe it would be to the benefit of the human race for Mr. Musk to be sent to prison." ...
https://jwz.org/b/yk3p

One of the things that is amazing about AI derangement syndrome is that when you call someone out for buying into that shit -- someone you've previously been on quite good terms with for decades -- their response to you saying, "hey, you should stop doing that, there is no ethical use of this tech" is a level of offense as if you have just fucked their cat.

Some of you probably know who I'm talking about. If not, you probably have examples yourselves.

25 years ago today, Bad_CRC posted the primordial meme video "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" on Newgrounds.

In honor of this important anniversary, I downloaded the original Flash SWF file from Internet Archive, played it using Ruffle in a full-screen window, and replaced the audio with the original MP3 of "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" by The Laziest Men on Mars. So this is probably the highest fidelity encoding possible, without going back to the original forum GIFs.
https://jwz.org/b/yk3i

@unlambda The first rule of cocaine club is always talk about cocaine club.

Everything written by AI boosters tracks much more clearly if you simply replace "AI" with "cocaine".

I shall demonstrate!

(Not linking to OP, because it's trash.)

"Let’s pretend you’re the only person at your company using cocaine.

You decide you’re going to impress your employer, and work for 8 hours a day at 10x productivity. You knock it out of the park and make everyone else look terrible by comparison. [...]

In this scenario, you capture 100% of the value from your adopting cocaine."

Having a Plurality of Actuators.

US20200310367A1: A booth having a housing enclosing a viewing station opposite an entertainment station; a robotic entertainer disposed within the entertainment station, the robotic entertainer having a humanoid...
https://jwz.org/b/yk3d

"Door ajar" versus $100 billion valuation.

Today I learned that you can DoS a Waymo by opening its door.

"The More You Know..."

Waymo, Google's autonomous vehicle company, and DoorDash, the delivery and gig work platform, have launched a pilot program that pays Dashers, at least in one case, around $10 to travel to a parked Waymo and close its door that the previous passenger left open.
https://jwz.org/b/yk3Z

@skinnylatte I made a supercut of all the non-AI billboards in SF. It is zero seconds long.

@cstross @inthehands I know *so* many people whose backup strategy is: I have never taken a photo in my life with something other than an iPhone, so if I ever lose access to my iCloud, everything I've taken since I was a teenager is gone forever.