bookwormstory.social

Opening up a can of tuna yesterday I was wondering 'where has the rest of this tuna ended up? How long will it be before the whole fish is eaten, and how much will be wasted'?

Please, put the pitchforks and torches down. Hear me out.

You (yes, you!) are a front-runner. You are a first-mover. You came to the fediverse while most people don't even know it's a thing.

In the last couple of weeks/months, there's been an increasing sentiment to boycott the established social media (Facebook, Xitter, Reddit, etc.), due to their rollback of fact-checking and hate speech protection. This has resulted in a lot of new users for a lot of instances lately.

Feddit.dk has gotten over 50 new users in the past few weeks, which is about a +50% increase of the monthly active users, a big deal for a small instance like ours.

This is a great opportunity to teach others about the fediverse and get more people to move to a more democratic, sustainable internet. But all these potential users are still on the corporate social media - we can't reach them unless we are there!

You, the first-mover, is exactly the kind of person we need to stay on Facebook, just for a while, to guide people over to the fediverse. Feddit.dk was actually posted in a Facebook group a few weeks back and we got a few users that way! We've also gotten a lot of users via Reddit recently, as people on /r/Denmark have been mentioning Feddit.dk. Guiding people from corporate social media to the fediverse has been the most successful way to get more users so far.

We can't get second-movers if the first-movers leave everyone behind. So maybe, consider not deleting your Facebook or Reddit account just yet, and if you don't, try to look out for people that are looking for alternatives. You can be their guide.

(and if you want to delete Facebook regardless, I totally respect that choice btw)

Throwaway account cause I'm embarrassed. Basically a few days ago I randomly woke up with a hemorrhoid after a couple of days of sudden itching in that area. I thought it'll pass on its own but it hasn't. I tried some home remedies I found online like sitz baths but nothing has worked. It's very uncomfortable and I'm fairly sure I need to see a doctor / get some proper medicine. But I can't bring myself to tell my parents cause it's so embarrassing I cringe just thinking about it.

On Sunday, White House adviser Elon Musk claimed his “Department of Government Efficiency” found that more than 20 million Americans over the age of 100 have been receiving checks from the Social Security Administration. He alleged the figure included people who were born in 1875. The billionaire shared a screenshot of a spreadsheet he said was from the SSA’s database.

Speaking at a conference of investors in Miami on Wednesday, the president reiterated Musk’s baseless claims about Social Security and appeared to add some embellishments of his own.

“But listen to this – 3.6 million people are on Social Security rolls from the age of 110 years old to 119,” he said. “Do you think there are really that many? Those people are seriously old. But it gets worse – 3.4 7 million people are on Social Security from the age of 120 years old to 129 years old, 3.9 million people are on Social Security from 130 years old to 139 years old.”

Trump later added that there are “3.5 million people from the age 140 to 149 years old” on Social Security, and that “1.3 million people are on Social Security from age 150-159. And over 130,000 people are on Social Security over the age of 160 years old, ok? Including 1,039 people. Think of it. Over 1000 people, between the ages of 220-229. And one person of 240 years old and 249. And the record topper, there is one person on Social Security who is 360 years old, which is approximately 110 years older than our country.”

Also, the 1337 hackers at DOGE don't know anything about COBOL, apparently.

The challenge with COBOL is that it doesn’t have a standardized way to store and work with dates — unlike most modern programming languages. Instead, many dates in COBOL must be coded to a reference number, often using an international standard, Rege explained.

The most common reference date number is May 20, 1875, under an international standard known as ISO 8601. That means if someone applies for Social Security without a birth date, they may be recorded as 150 years old in the database depending on how a programmer troubleshoots the issue.

Programmers can overcome these limitations in COBOL’s functionality, but they may also opt to use 1875 as a placeholder for unknown dates if it aligns with the database’s purpose… For example, when the federal government began issuing regular monthly Social Security payments in January 1940, recipients needed to be at least 65 to qualify, meaning they needed to be born in 1875 or before.

Those who crafted the Social Security database may have, therefore, set 1875 as the default birth year for anyone who lacked that information at the time.

You'd think at least Big Balls would know some COBOL.

But for new code / drivers, writing them in rust where these types of bugs just can't happen (or happen much much less) is a win for all of us, why wouldn't we do this? C++ isn't going to give us any of that any decade soon, and the C++ language committee issues seem to be pointing out that everyone better be abandoning that language as soon as possible if they wish to have any codebase that can be maintained for any length of time.

Rust also gives us the ability to define our in-kernel apis in ways that make them almost impossible to get wrong when using them. We have way too many difficult/tricky apis that require way too much maintainer review just to "ensure that you got this right" that is a combination of both how our apis have evolved over the years (how many different ways can you use a 'struct cdev' in a safe way?) and how C doesn't allow us to express apis in a way that makes them easier/safer to use. Forcing us maintainers of these apis to rethink them is a GOOD thing, as it is causing us to clean them up for EVERYONE, C users included already, making Linux better overall.

And yes, the Rust bindings look like magic to me in places, someone with very little Rust experience, but I'm willing to learn and work with the developers who have stepped up to help out here. To not want to learn and change based on new evidence (see my point about reading every kernel bug we have.)

Rust isn't a "silver bullet" that will solve all of our problems, but it sure will help in a huge number of places, so for new stuff going forward, why wouldn't we want that?

I enjoy Will Quinn's daily bunnies, but it's pretty much the only thing I go onto Bluesky for.

So... I created an unofficial mirror here:

!dailybunnies@lemmings.world

dailybunnies@lemmings.world

If you're on Bluesky give them a follow there as well please, and have a look at my Daily Bunnies custom feed

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it is trying to reverse the firing of staffers who worked on the government's response to bird flu, amidst growing concerns about its spread.

Tens of thousands of workers across the federal government have been told they are losing their jobs, and more layoffs and firings are in the works. The USDA is among multiple health agencies that have faced mass firings.

On Friday, the USDA publicly touted what it called "the first tranche in a series of bold reforms," including "an aggressive plan to optimize its workforce by eliminating positions that are no longer necessary," in line with the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Within days, however, the agency sought to reverse some of those firings — particularly those related to its handling of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).

But lets see the Positive side: Now the Nazis wont have to burn thousands of books, saving tons of co2 in their Plan to take over the world with propaganda. So, yay for the envoirment I guess

Voll gut gemacht vom ZDF.

halterlose Strümpfe, ich meine hold ups oder thigh highs, deutlich über das Knie.

Ich bin 181 cm Groß und schlank, 68 kilo.

Mein Problem ist, dass die größte Größe bekannter Marken wie Falke oder Wolford immer noch zu kurz sind.

Ich möchte keine billige online Ware kaufen aber bei den Läden meiner Stadt finde ich nichts. Manche Marken bieten XXL-Größen, aber die sind nicht länger, nur breiter für dickere Frauen und die sehen lächerlich aus.

Was für Marken bieten Strümpfe und Strumpfhose für schlanke, lange Frauen wie ich?

Swapping QR codes in group invites and artillery targeting are latest ploys.

Unfortunately, KM3NeT led to the discovery of the Pauli anglerfish, which emits Cherenkov radiation to prey on neutrino researchers.

https://explainxkcd.com/3053/