| Verification | https://nickselby.com |
| Website | https://epsd.io |
| Podcast | https://techdebtburndown.com |
| Articles | https://authory.com/NickSelby/ |
| Signal | fuzztech.01 |
Dan Hodges once famously said that "In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."
It's difficult to believe anything will be different about climate change. Why would it?
If salvation is in the words, not the works, and demanding change is demanding ostracism and excommunication... what other path it there but embracing death, and through inaction the promised rewards of heaven?
I love that the Deutsche Bahn app, which houses all my PII including date of birth and the fact that I have a discount card, asks me every time I book a ticket to tell it a) my age on the date of travel and b) whether I have a discount card and which type it is.
My basic impression after living here for four years is that Germans are the absolute worst at making websites or apps that are beautiful, simple, and easy to use. They are ranked at number 1020 on the list of the Top 100 Countries (where 1 is the best and 100 is the worst) at making human-usable digital content.
They may look like travel shampoo bottles and smell like bubblegum, but after a few hundred puffs, some disposable, electronic cigarettes and vape pods release higher amounts of toxic metals than older e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. For example, one of the disposable e-cigarettes studied released more lead during a day’s use than nearly 20 packs of traditional cigarettes.
Golly that New York Times is channelling Yogi Berra - nobody likes superhero movies, but they make more money than other films.
Nobody goes there, it’s too crowded.
Also channeling my recently deceased friend John, who told the old joke about the restaurant where “the food is so bad, and the portions are so small.”
@cjust @USBTypeSteve if someone sends me tiktok or youtube shorts, I will ignore them
Sincirely, GenZ.
@ity @cjust @USBTypeSteve youtubes used to top out at 10 mins so to me feature-length youtubes are asking a lot
youtube shorts want to be vines
@KaraLG84 it's essentially like a pic
@USBTypeSteve @cjust seems like a lot of people still misjudge the age of millennials. We're getting pretty old now :) I grew up right through the switchover from flip-phones to smartphones (and started using a smartphone before mobile data was cheap enough to watch videos on the go).
But you also have to consider other factors - even though many millennials and older generations were the right age to have grown up using desktop computers, a lot of people simply didn't need one at home or couldn't justify paying for one, so they don't have the same experiences as more affluent members of their age group. For many millennials and folks from earlier generations, the modern smartphone was their introduction to computing and the internet.
@kepstin @USBTypeSteve @cjust True.
But some of the (us) older people grew up in nerdy families. Mom worked on computers that took punch cards. My only formal training was on a large programmable calculator with punch cards, in high school. The first home computer we had ran CP/M and took 5" floppies.
I have termux and a Debian Linux distro running on a Lenovo tablet.
As always, YMMV.
@pussreboots It also depends on Geography. In the 1990s, I lived in Eastern Europe and could only buy hardware thanks to a new US-Japanese shop in the capital. Impossible in rural regions.
Computers during WWII ... in Europe, there was Mr Turing against the Nazis ... computer photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#/media/File:Bombe-rebuild.jpg
As an elder millenial (or xennial, whichever you prefer), I approve this message.
@ArtHarg This! Please, provide transscripts!
@giggls @wonka @cjust @USBTypeSteve I prefer to either give my full attention to what I’m doing or let my thoughts wander. Paying attention to a podcast while doing something else feels like I’m giving neither the podcast nor the task the attention they deserve.
When my mind wanders while doing a routine task, my brain is still in control of the switch when the task needs my attention. I barely notice the interruption. Not so when I’m concentrating on a podcast.
@giggls I can't. If I try, I accomplish neither of the two things I try to do in parallel.
Also, transscripts can be read by the deaf. And they can be searched more easily.
@giggls Those are not a good fit for me somehow.
Transcripts can be useful even for people who listen to podcasts during chores - "I heard something about that in a podcast once" is much easier to resolve with a search over the transcripts than listening to all of them all over again.
@ArtHarg @cjust @USBTypeSteve
If I were a wordsmith, that's exactly how I would put it.
They just go together so well from the 'how much attention I have to give to each task' point of view. In addition, it's fantastic from the 'move, or you'll die young' point. I have an equivalent of a desk job (actually, an armchair job), so I really need that.
I'm an older millennial and perpetually embarrassed "slow reader." The fact that I read faster than GenZ should terrify everyone.
Can I add, stop breaking up your post into a dozen posts when Mastodon supports a wall of text. We can read longer text and should be doing so.
@guamwatt
yeah Mastodon can be patched to support that (see e.g. https://fouquet.me/2024/10/10/mastodon-4-3-char-limit)
It's baffling that Mastodon doesn't seem to provide a proper setting for this
@Doomed_Daniel @guamwatt A 500 characters limit is fine. It allows you to like or boost the parts you want in a thread in a way that is not possible with a single wall of text.
And a single 10000+ chars message is too big in a system that doesn't manage headings to split it reasonably.
@aeva @Doomed_Daniel @guamwatt @cjust @USBTypeSteve
How does one switch to expert mode?
@nyrath @aeva @Doomed_Daniel @cjust @USBTypeSteve
Tap the BIG GEAR for settings, tapped on Other, maybe this setting for Default Format for Toots is the control?
@guamwatt @nyrath @aeva @cjust @USBTypeSteve
the different "font" is using weird unicode chars instead of actual formatting
that "default format" thing is not a regular Mastodon feature, but one of the "glitch-soc" fork: https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/features/rich-text/
@guamwatt @cjust @USBTypeSteve
This one I don't mind, because when given the opportunity to make a Wall o' Text, a lot of people forget what *paragraphs* are.
I'm fine if they're forced to break things up for readability sometimes.
@cjust Elder Millennial here, agreeing. And if it *has* to be a video, at least let me watch on 2x speed. 😅
Totally relate, hate watching a 5 minute video where the actual content could have easily been boiled down to a sentence.
Yes, DIY type information needs to be seen for the technique or something, but most of the time the straight information would be much better in text.
mhoye
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USB Type-Steve 
ity [unit X-69]
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MylesRyden