StarkRG

@HennaVirkkunen@ec.social-network.europa.eu What an absolutely horrendous thing to be pleased about. "AI" is worse than CFCs, tetraethyl lead, and thalidomide combined. The pro-AI crowd all sound like drug addicts and cultists when they aren't obvious grifters, racists, and fascists. It's awful for the environment, causes what amounts to brain damage in its users, it relies on stolen works, and is extraordinarily damaging to society as a whole. Why in the hell would you want to invest in such an insane venture?

Lords, ladies, and multiforms of the Fediverse, may I present sisters Lina (grey) and Ivy (w/g). #Caturday #CatsOfMastodom

@dev@discuss.systems It's obviously force perspective. Do I need to pull out the "small/far away" Father Ted gif?

@ramsey@phpc.social @paninid@mastodon.world @ashwin@defcon.social I think Data was spot on with his assessment of Picard being like Q's pet.

@MelissaBearTrix@gives.hugz.online @fuzzface@epsilon-ix.masto.host @crowbriarhexe@tech.lgbt @courtcan@mastodon.social @farah@beige.party @Axolotl1@gaygeek.social It has to be dark/deep purple/violet for me to consider it among my favourites. Like, take navy blue and push it halfway towards violet. *That's* the best purple. A similarly dark green, though, is my favourite, like the colour of pine needles. The combination of the two is unfortunately difficult to make work, it can be done, but it's not something you want to do a lot.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.

@ramsey@phpc.social @ashwin@defcon.social @paninid@mastodon.world Wouldn't matter, even if there was some way to be absolutely sure it's not a recording, or otherwise electronically generated (which there isn't but for the sake of argument), it wouldn't actually be all that difficult to recreate the vocal chords and resonances of someone's head to reproduce their voice in exactly the same way they do. We could do that with current technology. And then you have to factor in that people's voice changes over time and just from day to day.

@ramsey@phpc.social @ashwin@defcon.social @paninid@mastodon.world It is, but that's a *terrible* method of security (breaking something like that with a tape recorder was a key element of 1992's Sneakers, the tech isn't that much better now). And Data's super-mega-unbreakable passcode in Brothers was case insensitive and 52 alphanumeric characters long, most of which were numbers.

@nudlan@mastodon.social @BenRiceM@mastodon.social "Death of the artist" only applies when the artist is actually dead, otherwise you're still supporting a horrible person and then lying to yourself about it. Of course people who still enjoy HP aren't doing it because they *want* to be hateful, but they are still contributing to giving a hateful person the platform she uses to hurt others. You'd have to be pretty oblivious or willfully ignorant to not know who she is and what she does. There is no excuse.

@ramsey@phpc.social @ashwin@defcon.social @paninid@mastodon.world You either make it too easy to break, or you make it impossible to actually use. Biometrics are rarely good security, they're just really convenient, so they're often used as part of a multi-factor authentication scheme or for something you only want to keep kinda secure. Like using a Master lock, you know it's garbage, but it's good enough to keep the kids out of the shed.

@paninid@mastodon.world @ramsey@phpc.social @ashwin@defcon.social Q was never an antagonist, he was an annoyance. To the crew, not to me, I love me some Q. That said, TNG's premier, Encounter at Farpoint, was worse for the rushed addition of his storyline.

@paninid@mastodon.world Actually, this is starting to explain why the computer security is so horrendous on Star Trek.

@dcoderlt@ohai.social Ok, so, uh, why? What possible good does anyone imagine this could do? And the only solution to the problem they created with their bullshit machine is to use their bullshit machine? Google sickens me, and it sickens me that I ever worked there.

@deirdrebeth@mas.to @grrrr_shark@supervolcano.angryshark.eu I think that's why they went with such a simple song with words that should be recognisable to almost anyone.

I find it hard sometime not to pronounce the word "Magician" as "Magic Ian." They're all named Ian, even though most of them will lie, it's all part of the illusion.

@paninid@mastodon.world Oh, you must get her a physical copy of Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1866446M/Isaac_Asimov's_treasury_of_humor

@May@lgbtqia.space That's a new animal to me. Thanks! 😍

If only Harley knew that the only thing she needs to win their trust is to keep wagging her tail and let them pounce without pouncing back. When she gets their attention, though, she gets nervous and stops wagging.

I think I've solved the problem with the kittens drinking out of my bedside table water: sparkling water. They took a sniff and then looked at it like it called their mother a dog. Then they retreated and sat staring at it for several minutes as if it might attack them if they looked away. 🤣🤣🤣

@May@lgbtqia.space Based on its feet, I thought it might have been some kind of deer, not a rodent. 😂

@paninid@mastodon.world It really is a singularly fantastic collection of jokes and funny anecdotes, presented by possibly the single best storyteller of the 20th century.

@RobotDiver@starlite.rodeo @alice@lgbtqia.space So, you're saying I have to return your birthday present?

How is it that they just keep getting cuter? 🥺 #CatsOfMastodon

@5ciFiGirl@starbase80.wtf The whole "Section 31 is a vital branch of Starfleet Security" really put me off the whole thing, add to that Alex Kurtzman's apparent infatuation with that organisation kinda soured Trek for me in general. I still haven't finished Prodigy, SNW, *or* Discovery yet (though I plan to), and I'm probably not going to watch the S31 movie, even though I love Michelle Yeoh and would have absolutely watched a show about her prime universe character.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Poppy extract is known to calm people down. If you're not into the whole naturalism, though, there is a refined version originally manufactured by Bayer.

@RobotDiver@starlite.rodeo @alice@lgbtqia.space Is this more your style, then? No facing each other here.

@ashwin@defcon.social @paninid@mastodon.world If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the Universe!

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social It's called a "farm party," dude, get with the lingo!

Project I'm working on right this moment: Being a mattress for a cat.

@May@lgbtqia.space Indeed. Also looks like she's been a mother at some point, if not currently. She looks fluffy, like a sheep or alpaca, but I'm guessing it's wiry hair.

@5ciFiGirl@starbase80.wtf Section 31 is the antithesis of everything that makes the Federation good and desirable. It's what you get if you take "the ends justifies the means" to it's ultimate conclusion. It's evil.

@MelissaBearTrix@gives.hugz.online Oh, too much gold? How about these, just a little bit of gold: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008496953322.html

@5ciFiGirl@starbase80.wtf He could also have shown up in Picard, the final season of which would have been around his 30th birthday.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social You think they'll still honor that "send for samples" thing?

@5ciFiGirl@starbase80.wtf I was gonna say "maybe he could have made it better" but then I remembered what they did to Icheb. Tangentially, have you seen Angela Collier's 3¾-hour takedown of Picard? I never did finish season 2 and was planning on only watching the video until that point, but I ended up watching the whole thing through and I think I'm ok not watching the rest of the show. https://youtu.be/MdLHKdn0JTY

@grrrr_shark@supervolcano.angryshark.eu Reminds me of this ancient Dutch ad for learning English (includes the f-word, a lot): https://youtu.be/mUqccmOzGDE Of course, in that case, it was on purpose.

I'm not sure that dexamphetamine is the right ADHD medication for me. It does let me focus my attention but I'm finding it *really* hard to aim it properly. It's like trying to aim a 600x telescope without a viewfinder. More often than not I end up hyperfocused on procrastinating. Like what I'm doing right now. Maybe it would be good in a business setting where the direction is given from an external source and there are other people to keep you on task. #ADHD #AuDHD

@jpaskaruk@growers.social I've dipped my toe into python. I wrote a script to plot a bunch of data points (I ended up learning R to do all the heavy lifting and just used python to generate the visual). My experience was less than stellar. I know there's no accounting for taste and all, but it just really didn't feel all that friendly to me. I kept thinking that I should be learning something else instead. Like maybe Rust.

@paninid@mastodon.world No doubt, it's hard not to be. Like, people talk about how prolific Stephen King is while maintaining decent quality, and that's definitely true, but in addition to his inordinate number of fiction books, he also wrote at least one non-fiction book in every whole Dewey decimal number. Which means that if you randomly chose an aisle in a decently-appointed library and then chose a random shelf, and then chose a random book, there's a reasonably significant chance it'll be Asimov's.

@jpaskaruk@growers.social I guess that's valid. Still, doesn't C++ have at least as big a community? It's not a centralised community, granted, but then centralisation is generally a bad thing. My "shortcut" is going to be using Arduino libraries, at least for the mock-up. I suspect that it'll be good enough to get the low power operation I want. (It's a thermostat so I'm gonna try running it off a super capacitor that'll be trickle charged off the thermostat wires coming from the heater)

@infobeautiful@vis.social Yeah, nah, it's nowhere near that big. Blow the chart up a few trillion times and shrink the "human experience" box to a single pixel and you'd still be over estimating it.

Scratch my belly. Oh yeah, that feels great. I'm gonna nom your hand a bit. No, don't stop! Yeah, like that! Let me grab you with my knife fingers. Why are you stopping again? #CatsOfMastodon

Hmm, I was gonna use C++, but should I code my low-power embedded project with micropython? No. No, I should not. Good lord, Python sucks. "It's good for learning." No, *BASIC* is good for learning, Python is good for... um... things that are slightly too complex for a shell script? Math? No, use R or Octave. Can anyone explain what Python is good for that something else isn't *significantly* better for? Maybe it could be good as a replacement for Javascript? #Programming #Python

@MelissaBearTrix@gives.hugz.online Not embarrassing enough, try out these strappy gold heels: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003480289154.html

I wonder whatever happened to Deanna Troi's younger half-brother. #StarTrek

@nova@lunar.place "Oh no, I have been caught. Play it cool, look cute and purr, that'll distract them."

@5ciFiGirl@starbase80.wtf I looked it up, he was born in 2372 and Prodigy took place between 2383 and 2385. So, you're right, a perfect age for that show.

Is it psychologically possible to walk past a friendly cat and not boop it?

@jpaskaruk@growers.social Yeah, it's an ESP-32, I'm just using the Arduino IDE and libraries. I was gonna go for the full espressif IDE (based on Eclipse), but the Arduino libraries have good documentation and it wouldn't take much to rewrite it without the Arduino hand-holding. Apparently the C3 version has the lowest power draw in sleep of all the hobbyist-oriented MCUs as well as the best compute-per-watt, but I don't have any of those so it'll be an S2 for now. Again, should be easy to adapt if I change it