Since you are already on Mastodon, I would start by checking out the instances of people you have interacted with. Many topic-instances are still pretty general-purpose. Decentralize yourself! Join two or three instances. Subscribe to different topics on each. See what sticks.

On a small instance, the local feed is much more important. Local users have a larger influence on what you discover. So, check the local feed first. It may be a bit boring but should be free of spam. Check the external feed. It should not be too tacky, and have a CW where you want one. Check the moderation policy. If you want to commit to only one small instance, find out who pays the hosting and maybe donate.

I love how you can pick almost any number between 1 and 100 and there will be instances in FediDB with exactly that many accounts. Long tail indeed.

In other news, “AI could consume more power than Bitcoin by the end of 2025” (digiconomist.net).

I mean yes, look at AI energy consumption. But wasting electricity by mining Bitcoin is so infinitely more stupid. Because you could do the same nonsense with money systems without wasting energy.

Not the person you asked, but my critique would be: It moves the focus away from decarbonization towards solving very obvious local short-term problems. A move to gain credibility/popularity in the public eye, instead of pushing for long-time measures that have a globally distributed effect. Aka “there is no glory in prevention”.

That said, I know it’s easy to critique like I did without being directly involved. Perhaps the idea is to then use this new political capital to push for those measures again. It may be a smart move, and it will certainly be a good thing to push for adaptation measures locally anyway, before everyone can finally agree that they are needed. But it does feel like giving up on the cost-effective but unpopular decarbonization.

This year my highlight was “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang.

It is a collection of (not so) short stories. I didn’t like every one, but those I liked were absolutely brilliant. The title story, “Exhalation”, was one of those. I wanted to read something by Ted Chiang specifically because I adore the movie “Arrival” (2016), and found out it was based on one of his stories (not in “Exhalation”).

Btw. I liked “Project Hail Mary” too, read it last year.

Regarding students cheating with ChatGPT, I liked this article from a professor, quote:

“Students are afraid to fail, and AI presents itself as a savior. But what we learn from history is that progress requires failure. It requires reflection.”

But when failing anything in class, students usually end up having fewer options, need to get better marks elsewhere to compensate, or get forced to repeat a year. So they use any tool or technique that might help them pass.

Do you remember the <blink> tag, or pages that wouldn’t work without a Java applet or Flash plugin? Good times ;-)

The article presents a few HTML features. (From the title I didn’t know what to expect.) Summary:

• There are new HTML attributes (popover) that help with modals/popups/menus.
• You can toggle (show/hide) content with HTML. (The summary/details elements have been around for a long time.)
• For text input, you can provide a datalist of entries to auto-complete. It isn’t supported by Firefox yet.

Ironically, the article showed a blank space where a graphic would go before I bothered to enable Javascript. On the plus side, it was readable regardless.

I’ve only crossed the “slight overweight” line now. But in the past 15 years I have monitored my weight while trying gentle changes: eat healthier, no added sugar, more exercise, build a small amount of muscle. Nothing has made a difference. I was gaining weight slowly, year by year.

Now I’m finally doing what I wanted to avoid for 15 years: stop eating while still slightly hungry. It was a psychological exercise: To focus on the feeling of hunger so I stay aware of it, so I don’t automatically walk into the kitchen. To convince myself that I’m okay with it, this is how it has feel, no need to panic. There was some resistance, but in the end it was easier than expected. I mostly do this towards the evening, and not every day, and when I’m more than just a bit hungry I still eat.

The effect on my weight was almost a shock after the non-effect of all my previous attempts. I feel like I can keep this up easily. In fact I had to dial it back, losing weight faster than I intended. And I did keep my healthy habits from earlier: especially I try to be active one hour each day, and if I wasn’t I usually go for a late walk.

Nice. But you are preaching to the converted. Now excuse me while I check if there is anything new on Gemini. (I’m back. There isn’t.)

They are a non-profit in France. I’ve been donating there for years, still very small but working well. The main difference to Patreon is that “creators” cannot message you or send you updates, so you won’t hear back until it’s time for the next payment. And you usually pay for many months in advance.

(They used to do micropayments, but that didn’t work because of fraud detection. I find it interesting how they can still distribute payouts over a team despite this.)

Yes, IIRC Undertale it will only taunt you a bit at first, you have to play almost to the end before you really notice. But then it masterfully beats you against the 4th wall, hard, several times. (Speaking about eating the wrong cookies, yes it does feel like that.)

And then, when you start a second play-through, the 4th wall stays broken. (Personally I didn’t care enough for the game for a second play-through, but if you read it up it’s a whole thing, the game will not simply reset.)

Are we hardwired to want social status?

Yes. Like many animals, we primates have a psychology of dominance. It helps to prevent constant daily fights over everything, so a group can function. You defer to the strong leader, or else. And you try to become the leader to get the benefits.

Unlike other primates, we have a second social status called “prestige” which is used for cultural learning. So you should upvote this post, like and subscribe, give me some virtual prestige. I may not be able to beat up your leader, but I can write eloquent posts such as this one, get more back from the hunt than others (see all those feathers and bones I’m wearing?), and everyone knows that I weave those useful baskets you use daily. Do what I do, and maybe you’ll become just as capable and healthy as I am. Defer to me to get access to me, to watch and learn from me, to copy everything I do. Which books to read. Whom to to vote for. Eating one carrot a day. You never know which of those is the secret ingredient. Better just copy everything this healthy-looking human does and believes.

I don’t know the details, but there is this beautiful Great Britain grid status page, and you can see the transfers to Ireland for the past year. If I’m reading this right they installed an absurd amount of wind (not enough, but getting close) and Ireland is currently importing.

I was comparing the numbers with France, Paris. Yes they get less sun, but it’s not a factor of two… still a lot of free energy, once the panels are installed. And given how cheap they have become… (Edit: I guess it’s more a question of whether they have the space to install panels in places where electricity infrastructure is already present.)

“closer to realistic” - technically, but 1 kW is just so much power, I find it hard to imagine.

Say I was streaming from my own home server instead (about 20W, which could serve more then just one user), and over a gigabit Ethernet switch (also about 20W) which could serve a 4k streams to 50 users, but let’s say it’s just me). Then I would use 0.04 kW of electricity for streaming? Maybe I’m streaming from my gaming PC (0.1 kW idle) and have a large inefficient monitor (another 0.1kW). Then it sums up to 0.24 kW. We’re still not close to 1 kW and I’m out of ideas.

Granted, you’ll have many more switches because this is the internet. But those won’t serve just a single user so the power per user is much smaller too. And netflix servers will use more power, but they are also much better optimized for streaming than my home server, and not 90% idle, shared by many users.

And what would you do if you weren’t streaming? Would you turn off your gaming PC and monitor? If not, we can’t really fully count their consumption. Maybe… ah, I’ve got it! You’re boiling water for coffee at the same time. Yes, that would be 1kW. All the time, while streaming, one cup of water after the other non-stop.

I ca̴n’̸t rea̵d wha̴͌t ̸̈́y̶o̵u̷͆’r̴̚e̸ ̷s̴à̴y̵i̵͛n̴̓g̴͑ ̵f̶ró̵m̸̜̎ ̴̊ơ̴v̵e̴͂r ̵͎̽h̷̛̺̀͑̃er̵̆e̴…̴. But not sure what thé solutïon would be. Forbiddíng non-english text would be even worse UI.

Yes. Tech-savvy users should not run a script like the one below from extensions like open-with or similar. Be it on youtube or other music sites.

#!/bin/sh
yt-dlp --extract-audio --embed-metadata --no-playlist \
    --exec 'notify-send "download finished."' \
    -o ~/music/new/"%(album_artist)s - %(artist)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" \
    -f"bestaudio[ext!=flac][ext!=wav]"\
    -- "$1"

You could play nethack, I guess? Don’t wait until the new moon, or you’ll get a luck penalty!

Lifting waste disposal of windmill blades to the same level as atmospheric CO2 does seem like a bad-faith distraction.

The article talks about real problems, but problems that can be fixed within a generation. Atmospheric CO2, on the other hand, will screw up humanity (food production, etc.) for thousands of years, as far as we know without a way to undo.