manxu

@manxu@piefed.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's shocking developer decree struggles to justify the urgent threat to F-Droid⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I never wanted him to be wrong more than right now. Except for tomorrow, it’s probably going to bé worse, tomorrow

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google says adblockers caused YouTube views count to drop - this is what adblockers told us really happened⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They do not produce content, but they share 70% of revenue with the creators. You can argue that’s not enough, but it’s definitely more than Netflix et al pay their content creators.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon faces US trial over alleged Prime subscription tricks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The first step in cancelling Prime must always be switching to monthly charges. The dark arts demand their sacrifice!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Looking for a simple personal homepage⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I suggest one of the many wonderful one-page templates available on GitHub, Codeberg, et. al. GitHub has a whole topic on them at https://github.com/topics/single-page-site. You pick one that matches your requirements and that looks good to you, change the text, and serve.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3138: Dimensional Lumber Tape Measure⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And that's what men the world over use to measure their appendage!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for Everyone | Innocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The DMCA is what you get when you get greedy media and Internet companies to write legislation for lawmakers that have no idea what any of that means, while in the background the people have not had a chance to use any of it. It should have come with an expiration date 10 years from signing and should have been redone now that we are actually using the stuff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MAGA Puts Wikipedia in Its Crosshairs⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Happiness is not shared as a goal. For some people, happiness is so distant, the only thing achievable is to make everyone else equally misérable. Think Fundie Christians talking about the Valley of Tears.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Scientific proof that we are in the dumbest timeline.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reeves considering tax on high-value homes to help plug hole in finances⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, finally something out of the Labour government that doesn't sound like they copied their notes from conservatives the world over.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, a lot of modern copyright law is very shady. You can get in major trouble for ripping a CD or DVD? That sounds insane. And what about not being allowed to repair your own tractor? Do you remember the baby dancing to some music, that was then DMCA-ed away?

  My favorite is still the absolutely bonkers almost 100 years on copyrights. That has absolutely nothing to do with "the Progress of Science and useful Arts," everything with lining the pockets of copyright holders.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I speak German legalese (don't ask) so I went to the actual source and read up on the decision.

  The higher court simply stated that the Appeals court didn't consider the impact of source code to byte code transformation in their ruling, meaning they had not provided references justifying the fact they had ignored the transformation. Their contention is that there might be protected software in the byte code, and if the ad blocker modified the byte code (either directly or by modifying the source), then that would constitute a modification of code and hence run afoul of copyright protections as derivative work.

  Sounds more like, "Appeals court has to do their homework" than "ad blockers illegal."

  The ruling is a little painful to read, because as usual the courts are not particularly good at technical issues or controversies, so don't quote me on the exact details. In particular, they use the word Vervielfältigung a lot, which means (mass) copy, which is definitely not happening here. The way it reads, Springer simply made the case that a particular section of the ruling didn't have any reasoning or citations attached and demanded them, which I guess is fair. More billable hours for the lawyers!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Judge blocks FTC probe into Media Matters, calls it government "retaliation" that should alarm Americans | FTC probe blocked in escalating X dispute⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The Americans that care have LONG been alarmed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This CEO laid off nearly 80% of his staff because they refused to adopt AI fast enough. 2 years later, he says he’d do it again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What happened next will SHOCK you!!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Europe’s power grids under pressure amid record-breaking heatwaves⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Very, very true. Although at the rate French households are installing cooling capacity, that might change before long.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AOL to discontinue dial-up internet service after 34 years⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Man, AOL is so anachronistic, I thought for sure they had just misspelled AOC and was wondering why she had offered dial-up internet service in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Neanderthals Spread Across Asia With Surprising Speed—and Now We Know How⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I'll save you the read: they invented the Segway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, why would a guy that started a car rental company know anything about radio waves?

  Gotcha!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Facial recognition error sees woman accused of theft⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  "No one should find themselves in this situation."

  No one would if the corporations making the mistakes actually faced consequences beyond, "Oopsie!"

  Fine companies real money if they make an "honest mistake." They will make dramatically fewer of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Majority of Australians think China will be world’s most powerful country by 2035, poll finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't think they really cared if China took advantage of it. America's CEOs are only invested in the next few quarters, at best. Something that might take a decade or two is entirely not relevant to their planning and actions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Simple Blog options?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Did you look at Pelican? I share the frustration with much of Hugo's infrastructure: the template language is buggy and inscrutable, and the plugin architecture wanting.

  I ended up with Hugo, but I considered Pelican. It uses standard Jinja templates, which I find much more rational (but it might just be me) and I recall there were plugins for a lot of things, including different source formats. The code is written in Python, so that even if there isn't a plugin for a format you need, there probably is a Python library for it and it should be relatively easy to make it a plugin.

  Crap, now I want to switch to Pelican...

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Simple Blog options?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hugo watch mode (both server and build) does not produce accurate sites on change and is really meant for development. I find after a developing for a while, I have to kill the process and restart it and then things are "fresh"

  From reading the documentation, I strongly have the impression that hugo focuses on being fast on re-render and that the idea is to build and deploy to public site each time there is a change. The big difference is probably whether to render locally and push the generated content, or to push the source markdown and render remotely (which I chose).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Simple Blog options?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I ended up with Hugo, a git repository, and a cron job for the build. I write an article, check it in, the server picks up the git change and rebuilds the site. What I like about the setup is that the server only has the binaries hugo and git, and a shell script for the rebuild. Also, I write in Markdown, add media to the git repository, and articles are published soon after I check in without any remoting on my part.

  I did look at WriteFreely after the setup, though. I find the minimalist design very beautiful. Didn't switch to it, but may look at it again for another project. https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Italian citizenship referendum polarises country⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, yes: your vote is probably not a conservative vote, so absolutely any reason is good enough to deny you a vote!

  I think it's very telling that the conservatives went for ignoring the vote in this case, to use the voting threshold to sink the change. They know their usual arguments are self-contradicting here, so that counting on laziness is their only (and probably successful) hope.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Restricts Android Sideloading—What It Means for User Autonomy and the Future of Mobile Freedom – Purism⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I completely agree. Unless Google is forced to install more than one app store by default, or forced to have multiple app stores downloadable on Play Store, three is no realistic way to install a third party app store on a phone. In both cases, Google's cooperation is required.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gemini will now automatically summarize your long emails unless you opt out⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It's so weird that we have to go through hoops and loops to get rid of this stuff! I was sick of my Android responding to a long press of the power button, meant to shut it down, with a Gemini prompt. Took me an hour to figure out I can't get rid of the function, but I can switch back (for now) to old style Google Assistant.

  If you have to force functionality down your users' throat despite them not wanting it, you already lost. Gemini is Google's Clippy, just less iconic and more also-ran.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Debian Stable] Which Static Blog Generator: blag, Jekyll, Hugo, Lektor, Pelican, staticsite?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There must have been a gallery component, since I only looked at generators that had one available.

  Honestly, in hindsight the templates were really not a big deal. Just for fun, I tried converting the Hugo template I used to Pelican, and it was easy for me.

  Pelican is solid and mature and I would use it, in hindsight. The only major flaws are that it's much slower (but makes up for it with incremental builds) and that the community is much, much smaller. On the plus side, Jinja2 is much, much, much better than Go templating (Hugo borrows from Go).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Debian Stable] Which Static Blog Generator: blag, Jekyll, Hugo, Lektor, Pelican, staticsite?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I went the same direction, from WordPress to static site generation. I did the same evaluation as you are trying to do and ended up with Hugo, mostly because there is a lot of support available for it. My runner up was Pelican, because I was fluent in Jinja2, but I didn't want to mess around with the templates and Hugo's were prettier. Sue me, I am shallow.

  The one regret I have about Hugo is that the templating language is challenging. I am trying to be as neutral as possible, but it seemed like even simple things were complicated to achieve. If someone would come up with a Hugo that speaks Jinja2, I'd be really delighted.

  Other than that, conversion from WordPress to Hugo was relatively straightforward, despite needing to find a gallery component and converting menus. Hugo is indeed very fast in processing, which become important when your blog has thousands of articles.

  I set up the blog as a private git repository. The server pulls from it, then runs Hugo and a full text search engine, and the content is visible and searchable within five minutes on update.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Italy changes law on right to claim citizenship through great-grandparents⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Smart move for a country with one of the lowest birth rates in the world! /s

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An EXTREMELY Simple Guide to Mastodon⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it's the "basically" part in basically right back where we started that makes the difference. Even if 100% of Fediverse users were on a single instance, once that instance starts pulling Musk moves, the users can move somewhere else.

  Only if that instance defederates from everyone else do we get the Twitter situation again. Or, since that's actually what happened, Truth Social, which I think is just a slightly modified Mastodon instance with federation disabled/deactivated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Canada’s conservative leader Pierre Poilievre loses his own seat in election collapse⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Help out this Yank-adjacent thing: Why was JT so incredibly unpopular?