Mastodawn

Google has partially walked back their decision to remove Android's ability to install independently published software. Their new stance is that it will still be possible, but it will be more difficult. I assume their plans are still subject to change.

I don't like the FUD that Google is pushing, and I still have a lot of unanswered questions, but I figured that it would be best to link the original source:

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html

Android developer verification: Balancing openness and choice with safety

News and insights on the Android platform, developer tools, and events.

Android Developers Blog

abstractsun 3d ago

Nicole Sharp 3d ago

Thunderstorms Make Trees Glow

Scientists have long hypothesized that the high electrical charge of thunderstorms could produce an opposite charge in the ground that would discharge from the forest canopy. But this phenomenon, known as a corona, had never been observed on actual trees. A new study, however, has observed this ghostly ultraviolet (UV) glow from the tips of sweetgum leaves and loblolly pine needles during thunderstorms.

Catching these coronae in action required a new kind of UV detector that was ultra-sensitive to the particular band of UV-light emitted by coronas, hot fires, or mercury lamps. Since the latter two weren’t present during the team’s field observations, they were able to conclude that the light they detected came from coronae.

The group observed that corona discharges were transient, jumping from leaf to leaf and branch to branch across the forest canopy. For any creature capable of detecting that glow by eye, it must be incredible to watch the treetops lit by their own ever-shifting auroras during every thunderstorm. (Image credit: W. Brune; research credit: P. McFarland et al.; via SciAm)

#biology #corona #electrohydrodynamics #flowVisualization #fluidDynamics #physics #plasma #science #thunderstorms

abstractsun Mar 13

Alice: "The barista think you're a hacker."

Bob: "Impossible! I was using light theme!"

abstractsun Mar 5

eclexic Mar 4

#Heliboard is gathering gesture typing data, so that we can implement a #FOSS alternative to the closed gesture typing library Heliboard currently relies on. The data we collect will be released under the CC BY-SA 4.0

I also made a video including details & instructions.

Boosts Please! The greater the diversity of people & languages in the data, the better we can test for correctness.

PT: https://makertube.net/w/cQECfDkuLGR9eUQquUEo4K

YT: https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA

Text (instructions only):
https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-Contribute-Gesture-Data

Help Make Gesture Typing Better

PeerTube

abstractsun Feb 19

"Continvoucly morged" is a good one; I am saving that for later.

But how does one pronounce, "contivoucly"? Perhaps it is French?

https://nvie.com/posts/15-years-later/

15+ years later, Microsoft morged my diagram

How Microsoft continvoucly morged my Git branching diagram.

nvie.com

abstractsun Feb 6

Jeremy Feb 5

Here's a link to the bash reference manual in case anyone is trying to learn it better.

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00315849.pdf

Age Verification | United States Department of Justice

abstractsun Feb 6

Sylvia Ritter Feb 5

Meet ✨️ Questing Quokka ✨️ the pen and paper roleplaying game master (& friends)! Inspired by the #ubuntu release name 25.10! Created with #Krita and #Blender within 93 days.

#art #mastoart #fediart #RPG #fantasy #quokka #wallpaper #digitalart #linux #magic #nature #adventure #books #games #gaming #cute #animals #travel

abstractsun Jan 12

Did you know?: In the #terminal program less, you can use "&" to perform search-based filtering on all lines. This can be done multiple times (i.e. recursively), or alternatively you can search "&" without an argument to clear the search filtering. It's not the most performant on very large buffers, but can come in handy from time to time, especially when searching through logs. I often enter "-I" first (dash + capital i) to make my searches case-insensitive.

abstractsun Dec 26