Abhijit Menon-Sen@alice I wish Mastodon wouldn't stop at two levels, but keep adding smaller Alices per boost to create an infinity-mirror effect. 
Ramnarayan Kalyanaraman
@ramkay
- 42 Followers
- 93 Following
- 997 Posts
Want to chase the light fantastic (holder bio - more details coming soon)
RE: https://flipping.rocks/@catsalad@infosec.exchange/116243632647894470
Seeing the :fox_tail_wag: emoji made me realise that I've never wondered if foxes wag their tails like dogs.
(I've only ever seen wild foxes at night, and their tails wave when they run away, but I've never seen one in a situation where it might wag its tail.)
Apparently they do, but it's more common in domesticated foxes.
Delta ChatFun funding fact: If we had 10 times more money to develop #deltachat , the #chatmail relay network and the #webxdc secure mini app ecosystem, we would still have ten times less than what signal has (let alone Whatsapp or telegram). But we don't want to increase nudging people for donations, as we have many users who don't even have a legal way to send us money, let alone the means. It is a special kind of reward that delta works where most if not all other messengers fail to work for users.
Dan GillmorGoogle has become everything it once pretended to disdain -- an arrogant, sleazy, control-freak monopolist.
Its latest anti-user, anti-competition move will shut down the alternative app marketplaces that Google used to show off as "we're not like Apple" evidence. https://thenewstack.io/f-droid-says-googles-android-developer-verification-plan-is-an-existential-threat-to-alternative-app-stores/
Stephen CollinsMastodon is 100% the early days of social media all over. Some of you will already be familiar with this story.
My weather station (a very nice Netatmo that has served very well) crapped out after nearly 10 years of excellent service. I asked for recommendations here for a new station that would play nicely with #HomeAssistant, and hopefully, also HomeKit. I received *many* recommendations, with Ecowitt (and the brands it manufactures for) taking the lead.
A connection on here offered me their *unopened* Ecowitt weather station for a very generous price. It arrived yesterday, and I set it up, and it's already doing a great job. Works offline, talks to Home Assistant without any problems. I just need to do a couple of bits of configuration jiggery-pokery and it will pass data to HomeKit.
This is very much how things were when I first joined Twitter in 2007. In spite of attempts at #enshittification of everything, the #fediverse is putting up a good fight.
May your day online be as satisfying as mine was yesterday.
LATER EDIT: I’ve been thinking, and I do realise this good experience isn’t necessarily what happens for everyone. It’s still the case that too many good people don’t find a welcoming place here, especially if they are queer or of color. If this is you, know that I see you, and that I will always try to be welcoming and listening, even if you have things to say that bring me discomfort.
@amenonsen see, no gecko just this awesome mushroom
We came scouting for bent-toed geckos & huntsmen spiders, & to write a paper in the solitude of the Himalayas — the real reward was this beauty, the hygroscopic or barometer earthstar (Astraeus hygrometricus)! Almost perfect conditions needed: slightly fired, moist, sandy & shady substrate & rain to expose the spore sack. My friend spotted not one but 15-16 of them!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astraeus_hygrometricus
#AstraeusHygrometricus #fungi #mushroom #nature #IndiasNature #AmazingNature #barometricEarthstar #himal
mccGoogle Mail / "GMail" has no fewer than nine settings for "Smart Features and Personalization", e.g., Gemini. I have these all turned off in order to prevent Gemini ingesting my emails. To do this, you now have to opt out of benign machine-learning or even pattern-matching-based features, like sorting promotional emails from regular ones or spellcheck.
Despite this, as of today, Google is offering a Gemini smart compose feature on all my emails, despite me having turned off smart compose.
keithamusFor those who want to test their perception of colour, I made a little game called "What's My JND"
A Red Pierrot (Talicada nyseus) butterfly. Dehradun India.
As per Sanjay Sondhi of Titli Trust, the Red Pierrot was not seen in this region till some years ago. The theory being that this butterfly may have arrived with the boom in Kalanchoe, the host plant, of the Red Pierrot.
Whatever reason this is a beautiful butterfly, both closed wings, or open wings.
#entomology #IndiasNature #butterfly #lepidoptera #TalicudaNyseus #RedPierrot #Himalayas #Dehradun #nature
