Notices by jwz (jwz@mastodon.social)

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein our long SVOG audit nightmare is finally over
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2026/03/25.html?utm_source=sp_ma

Oil collapse (no not that kind)

BLDGBLOG: "The U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve is a series of vast, subterranean salt caverns in four different sites in Louisiana and Texas. Many are enormous -- the average cavern holds about 10mn barrels [...] This...
https://jwz.org/b/yk48

@timbray I am shocked, shocked to learn that the not-actually-federated, locked-in social network started by a bunch of cryptocurrency people is all in on cryptocurrency, VC and ads.

I cannot comprehend why you keep giving them the benefit of the doubt. They have told you who they are, repeatedly.

@davidho Painting my roof white resulted in an interior temperature drop of 12°
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2024/07/27.html

And then QR code https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/09/23.html

@Infoseepage WAFFLE BOATS https://jwz.org/b/yjAD

BREAKING, I hav learned that a large number of my readers have "lost time" at a Waffle House. [ "Red Right Hand" plays ]

Top FEMA Official Claims He Teleported to Waffle House.

FEMA's Gregg Phillips says he has experienced multiple "scary" episodes of sudden teleportation: Phillips spoke "on multiple podcasts" about being teleported against his will, which he has...
https://jwz.org/b/yk4x

@skinnylatte I love me some open air markets! For drugs! https://jwz.org/b/ykAR

The best privacy money can buy.

North Oaks, Minnesota is the only city in the United States that is not on Google Maps Street View. YouTube documentarian Chris Parr, who grew up not too far from North Oaks, set out to change that earlier this year....
https://jwz.org/b/yk4s

@inthehands Seriously, what were they thinking? The only way to have any kind of useful Dock muscle memory is to always have enough icons in it that there's no space left on the ends.

A slopfondler walks into a bar.

They: Hey. I found a good use of AI!
Me: No you didn't.
They: Wait let me tell you about it.
Me: Please don't. I'm begging you. Stop talking.
They: No, you'll like this.
Me: I assure you, I will not...
https://jwz.org/b/yk4i

"It's like having a reference librarian!"

My Brother in Taxonomy, it is the farthest thing from that.

A reference librarian is a person with feelings, motivations and ethics, who has a goal of helping you find the answer to your question.

The chatbot is a clockwork mechanism that extrudes text optimized to make you *think* your question has been answered.

It is also a machine built by fascists with the goal of creating a dependent, de-skilled, submissive populace and ending Democracy. HTH.

Globes.

People used to have to assemble screen savers by hand!
https://jwz.org/b/yk4k

This is some boss-level forensic accounting demonstrating that Facebook secretly wrote and is shepherding the various "age verification" bills.

Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture: How corporate lobbying, think tank infrastructure, competing model legislation, and obscured funding networks are shaping age verification policy across 45 states and Congress...
https://jwz.org/b/yk4c

Chiptunes artists are consistently bad at finishing sound check before doors, so I think we need to tell them that sound check is a speedrun and there is a leaderboard.

@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.