Richard Price

@artisanrick
55 Followers
241 Following
93 Posts
Interested in tech (99% Apple), Astronomy/Astrophotography, live in cloudy Mid Wales.
A rare event in mid Wales-the sun shone!
#caturday
No more sexual abuse images of women and children: ban X and Grok AI

X's AI chatbot Grok appears to be making sex abuse images of women and children - and Elon Musk thinks he can get away with letting it! I’m calling for a full ban on X here in the UK and you should too - add your name to the petition now:

Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) in the morning sky, just before twilight starts.

The camera was on a fixed tripod, no tracking, short telephoto lenses. 30 images were taken, then stacked with software.

This comet is faint to the naked eye, pretty in binoculars, and it's only seen in the northern hemisphere.

Note that in the first photo, if you zoom in close, some of the stars are elliptical smudges. Those are galaxies, tens of millions of light years away.

If you don't want to get up at 5:30 am, wait a day or two and it'll be visible low in the northwest in the evening sky, getting higher and moving south day by day.

If you can get away from bright city lights, this comet is bright enough that even a cell phone (especially propped on a stationary object) can get decent photos.

Please boost and share widely, especially the finder charts.

#Comet #NewMexico #Photography #Astrophotography #Astronomy #Galaxy

Blue guarding the homestead. #caturday

To the Apple fans fixated on defending Tim Cook, who have been clogging my replies on Mastodon and Bluesky over the past few days following my story on @macstories (https://www.macstories.net/stories/are-pride-wallpapers-and-a-watch-band-enough-in-2025/). Here is my response to you:

In 2014, Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript language and now CEO of Brave Software, was appointed as CEO of Mozilla. I will quote his Wikipedia page for you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CEO_and_resignation), and you will very quickly understand why:

> The appointment triggered widespread criticism due to Eich's past political donations – specifically, a 2008 donation of $1,000 to California Proposition 8, which called for the banning of same-sex marriage in California, and donations in the amount of $2,100 to Proposition 8 supporter Tom McClintock between 2008 and 2010.

The news of Eich's donations led to major protests inside the company and among Mozilla's supporters, volunteers, and users. Most notably, half of Mozilla's board stepped down. Which ultimately led to him resigning, just 11 days later:

> After 11 days as CEO, Eich resigned on April 3, 2014, and left Mozilla after public outrage. In his personal blog, he posted, "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader".

I would argue that Tim Cook's donation is an even worse offense than Eich's. Cook made his $1M donation to President Trump's inauguration fund while it had already been public knowledge for years that he would immediately start his mandate by rolling back LGBT rights in devastating ways.

I think it would be more than fair to call for his resignation for the same reason that it was fair to call for Eich's resignation back in 2014. And yet, it seems that a majority of people are choosing to dismiss Cook's donation and subsequent stance regarding Trump's administration as either necessary, pardonable, or irrelevant.

Are Pride Wallpapers and a Watch Band Enough in 2025?

Today, Apple introduced their 2025 Pride Collection, with a set of new LGBTQ+-themed wallpapers for iOS and iPadOS that will be available as part of iOS and iPadOS 18.5. The collection also includes an Apple Watch Pride Edition Sports band, which matches a new Pride Harmony watch face in watchOS 11.5. Despite being just another

UPDATE: A massive thanks to everyone who helped out with this ☺️

As a result, my little single-user instance has made contact with 11,274 other instances across the Fedi 😲

So no further boosts needed, really appreciate everyone who helped out 😁

ORIGINAL POST: I've got a quick favour to ask. If you're reading this post on Mastodon (or the Fediverse), please click boost.

How come?

I recently moved across to my own self-hosted single-user server (using GoToSocial.org). For a bunch of reasons, including visibility across the Fedi, it would really help out.

#Fediverse #FediHelp #gotosocial #mastohelp
Here are a couple of my partial solar eclipse shots, taken with a fair amount of cloud cover. I’m pretty happy with the results, considering that I only used a relatively cheap Baader solar filter on my telescope and the weather conditions. The equipment I used is in the alt text.
#partialeclipse #partialsolareclipse #solareclipse #astrophotography #midwales #wales
Just a hand held iPhone shot of tonight’s crescent moon and Venus over Presteigne on St David’s day. Looks like the long exposure has captured some Earthshine too.
#moon #venus #earthshine
Another one of my rare photos of something bright in the night sky. The beautiful crescent Moon and Venus. A single frame at 1/200 of a second (iso 400) to bring out the detail of the Moon, much brighter viewed with the naked eye. #moon #venus #astronomy
Boost this toot if you're planning on sticking around Mastodon & the Fediverse whether or not it's more popular than Bluesky.