Mazie

My copies of the new Laundry Files TTRPG arrived, and I love the bindings.
The GMs book cover of bureaucratic grieving is fantastic and very true feeling as a statement.
I need to find some players somewhere, so for now they'll sit on the shelf after being read next to my old edition.

(The laundry files are works by @cstross@wandering.shop and I would recommend them far and wide)

New job onboarding had lots of AI image crap and talk of how they have an AI and stuff.
All sounded optional.

Just did my targets/goals with my manager and have to "present internally at least four items a year made using AI".

When I asked "but why? What if I don't want to" I was given a resigned "IDK it's just what they want us to do. You can use it as a springboard for ideas, give you some prompts for what to do."

So, you want me to prompt an LLM, to prompt me ...

Nor can you actually explain /why/ I *must* use it, what I should use it for specifically, and you pin my performance will be against it. How do you even fucking prove I used AI?
Do *I* have to have used the AI to make it? Can I recycle one of the companies pre-existing AI images or someone else's slop?

Never have all the "if AI is so good, why are companies having to mandate it's use" posts felt so true.

I don't need to automate my stupidity thank you I'm Authentically Incompetent myself!

Furries of fedi,

Some of you probably can answer.

Is there any meets in London that aren't the one London meet everyone knows of which is big.

I don't really know where to look , as idk if UKFur still exists, and I don't have socials beyond here.

I could use some help,
I've been looking to self host bits and bobs for /years/ but never did for various reasons immaterial.
As with every other time, it's overwhelming.
Hardware, OS host etc.
I know I want docker on it, as that's where a number of apps I want to run are.

So I'm curious, what do people here who home lab media servers and other docker bits use for hardware and host OS?

The zima board looks good, especially the NAS bundle. Raspberry Pi is a popular one with guides. A few I know use intel NUC or similar. Someone suggested an iX Systems TrueNAS once a long time ago. But if there's others that would be cool.

It needs to be quite and power efficient. I live in a one room flat in London, so something that sounds like a PC running all the time and puts cost of living much higher than already is would not be good.

Every so often I'll be walking though a city and find myself following what I can only assume to be a group of furries or cosplayers (or both).

Today it was what I believe to a pack of wild furries in Birmingham.

Big therian symbol on a battle jacket, a few collars I think I caught a glimpse of, at least one tail, and ears hoodie.

The problem when with encountering furries in the wild is how does one make oneself known.

Approach carefully, hand out to let them sniff you like a dog? Set some energy drinks on the floor to draw them near like birds and seed? Confidently stride up and proclaim "greetings fellow furries"?

I genuinely don't know how to encounter fellow furries anymore since leaving UKF forums and Facebook.
(Does UKF still exist even?)

Will no one rid me of this troublesome LLM brain wormed boss*?

*(And several already incompetent senior staff who also have been infected with LLM)

Despite all the cash being dumped into it AI is still not as good as a particularly annoying toaster from TV.

It seems now, that to connect a phone to a windows 11 PC you have to use windows "phone connect" app.

Every article is either "but this is brilliant just use it", out dated and only has information for how it should be and was, or "use this other shitty app"

How can one connect a phone to windows anymore without using some shit app.

Any help appreciated.

#askfedi #tech

Going onto a real estate listing site, sorting "price high to low", finding a couple of McMansions, downloading the floor plans.

And by just putting one abutting the other I now have my antagonists lair map for a TTRPG complete with exterior photos and some internal references.

Keep your AI or procedurally generated villain lair maps. I draw from the lairs of real villains.

AI can't make nonsense houses like multimillionaires. But I'm certain they're trying.

What's a good tool to learn/relearn a language?
I used Duolingo for a bit, but it seems to have gone down hill since the move to LLM slop became it's main function?

There's lots of write ups for various ones, but a top ten doesn't really give a good impression relative to someone using for months or years.

Spanish by preference, but German would be a nice to have too.

One of the best things about an old phone many years ago was it had a change mode which would have it charged by your alarm.

I don't know what logic drove it, but it was a battery protect feature which if I set an alarm for 0700, and went to bed, it would say "charging to full by 0700" and be charged by then.

Now, to have what seems to be the same feature, I have to enable some AI customisation rubbish.

I have set an alarm for 0700. Have my phone charged for then, that'sall I want. You have nothing to "learn" its very simple, you could even just make it a little toggle of "charged by this alarm".

No need for me to turn on a service I don't want any other function from. Just a simple toggle that's probably much simpler than any AI.

Every so often I'm reminded of the "dead TV channel" debate and people saying it's blue.
But, to me, CRT showing blue was aux inputs or smarter digital sets doing it sometimes. My family's old Sony Trinitron when put to something it couldn't read showed snow: if I tried to tune to 5-9 there was no channel it could detect, decode or tune to, it was just whatever rubbish was the background of the radio frequency all scrambled up.
If I went to AUX or SCART when something wasn't plugged in or turned on it showed the grey/black of nothing.
It was only the newer bigger school TVs that would do the blue, and that was on the tape player or similar external when it was on but empty.
To me, it's just dull grey/black, no data being input, that's a dead channel. Not snow, not blue which were "something is there but not processing".

A project I've wanted to do for ages, but never had the time and energy to sit down and figure it out is to put a raspberry Pi or similar with WiFi, GPS and cell/mobile into a collar and use it as war walking rig: log down WiFi and cell/mobile masts, their broadcast data points and inferred location.

Maybe put RFIDs into the tags.

I don't know what I'd put on the collars tags, as it should be whenever ones owner is, but I'm a stray.
I guess just a link to the project page or something.

Maybe it's something I've just missed seeing, but I'm surprised there's not a means to track trains like there is aircraft and boats.
Doesn't even need to be as granular tbh. I just want to know what the hell that steam train that went the other way was, or what that weird looking old thing was going to. Or where my still delayed train is that is reportedly anywhere in a twenty mile strip between halts, because if it's nearer the first stop then it's going to be ages because it's stuck the other side of a big junction, if it's the other stop then it may be a quick run...
Also I'm sure train spotters and such would find it interesting.

Oh. And yeah it could be security problem, but valuable tankers are visible, and cargo aircraft, and there's a lot of sidings and yards and stuff for trains... Plus freight trains sometimes just stop at random stations. I could probably have climbed onto a lot which half at Nuneaton...

"if you don't like it, fork it"
Oh fork off

I'm certain someone smarter than me can answer, when I looked at a position just off the cost of Oman on marine traffic there's a dozen or more ships occupying the same space. I don't know what's going on, a couple of friends have confirmed they see the same so it's not a bug for me as best I can tell. Or have I missed some news? (#osint I guess? #askfedi ?) https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:56.550/centery:25.814/zoom:15

Do none smart just USB only printers still exist? I don't want wireless, I print maybe five documents every two years or so.
I just want a box that plugs into my PC.

Hell, I know a lot of people who print maybe one or two things a year if that. Mostly they just use a work one. But occasionally they can't for whatever reason.

There is probably a market for sign printers and photo printing places to also just do document printing.
Need to run off this one from that for some stupid reason must be done physically? Sure, £2 wait there it'll be two minutes. Just forward it, or stick it on a USB or air drop or whatever.

Do macro parents do the "nyoom here comes the aeroplane" to their offspring but with literal aeroplanes?

I've always wondered, if I take the pope and an antipope (there's more than one person claiming the current pope isn't legitimate and they should be) and magnetically levitate and accelerate them to relativistic speeds what happens?

Do they annihilate?

Or is this how you make exotic Christianity?

Is this how we got the CofE? Did Henry 8, John Calvin, Martin Luther, George Fox, Joseph Smith and all the others come out of pope colliders which where making exotic Christianity?

(Yes, I know there's more exotic Christianity, but I assume if you collide a Fox and Luther you get more and different exotic Christianity...)

Why is it so purple? Its kind of adorable. But, the rest I've seen from the company are generally the correct colours as far as I am aware. So why is my platypus purple?
I'm not complaining as it's still cute and fun little knick-knack or bric-à-brac (delete as you prefer your accumulation of pretty but not very practical objects to be named)

I think its called "platypus" as the otter is "otter", though my thylacine is called "lil chompy".

Hey, fedi people, help a gal out.

I used to shop with Wild Mode (now rebranded to Designed By Debz) for under things as I wanted to support a small, local (ish) business that focused on gender and body inclusion/diversity etc.

I was wondering if what people recommend? (For gender neutral/inclusive/affirming etc under things)

UK/EU suggestions only please, due shipping and taxes etc.

People keep talking about urban foxes in London.

I have seen no foxes in London the entire time I've lived here.

Not when I got locked in regents park (it was busy at the time, my companion and I didn't know they closed the parks they must have locked hundreds in!), not when I've been anywhere else during the day or night.

I kind of feel like I'm missing out on a key London experience.

Ok I grew up with country foxes under or the thick hedge rows and copses so haven't missed out much but those are Midlands foxes of home.
Not the exotic and legendary urban foxes of London.

I've been wanting to get off Goodreads for a while, but failed to find something that really works for me.

The StoryGraph failed for me, I was put off by it's AI features to start with (which utterly failed to provide any actual novel suggestions to me relative to Goodreads already poor suggestions), it just didn't "click" otherwise.

Oku could be interesting but I know so little about it. I'd be curious if anyone has used it and what they think.

I'm very curious about BookWyrm, not having an app (that I can find) is a bit of a negative, and I don't know any instances (and don't feel like I'd fit in the ones on the site that are open), and I don't know anyone who uses it to tell me more about it.

Mainly, I really want these features:
> Four shelves: TBR, Reading, Read, "wishlist",
> When I read a book (from X to Y)
> A yearly goal or similar function
> How "done" I am on a book if possible (e.g. pg x of y)
> An app, the ability to add to "wishlist" or update progress easily would be great (otherwise I may as well have a spreadsheet)
> I'd love to be able to share my "wishlist" shelf (because fuck Amazon wishlists and there's few other options relative to those)

I don't object to paying if I like it (I pay for mastodon)

#bookstodon #askfedi

I suspect someone has, but it would be cool to see a keyboard using a Ouija board planchette, you move it around, hover over the character and it types.
Kind of like swipe typing.