We had 11°C and a lot of wind today. I left the house at beautiful sunshine to go into the woods. I had to shelter from the rain under a coniferous tree right away for 10-15 minutes or so.

Many puddles had plenty of spawn in them. Some of the super tiny tadpoles already hatched. Unfortunately, none of them will probably make it, because all those puddles will all dry up in the next one or two months I reckon. Let’s hope for the best, though.

Image

A bird landed in the trees about 30 meters away from me and it appeared to be a larger one, like a buzzard. Only at home at the screen I then saw that it was just a pidgeon. :-)

A bit later, there was a chaffinch happily singing and picking on the forest road. I could close in to about five meters before it flew half a meter further and continued. So I made a few steps, too. That game continued for over five minutes, before it then decided to relocate four meters higher onto a branch to let me pass by beneath. Pretty cool!

⤋ Read More

Rainy day.

I was toying with OS/2 when I noticed that my hard disk was getting a bit full. I’m not aware that something like ncdu or just du exists in OS/2 Warp 4’s base system (I’m sure there’s software like that already available, but I was too lazy to search), so I quickly cobbled a little program together that sums up directory sizes. And there you have it, an installation of Carmageddon was lurking on the disk, weighing in at 200 MB. 🥴

Image

Being able to cross-compile this from Linux still blows my mind.

Anyway, here’s my tool: https://uninformativ.de/git/dusage

Let’s see, this might be a good opportunity to make an OS/2 GUI version of this. 🤔 I’ve never done that and this might be doable (unlike other stuff I’ve recently tried).

⤋ Read More

More basement:

I completely forgot that DVD-RAM was a thing once. Found my old disks and they still work. 🤯 The data on them is from 2008, so they’re not that old. Still impressive.

The disks are two-sided. On the photo, that particular side of the disk on the left appears to be completely unused. 🤔

And then I read on Wikipedia that DVD-RAMs aren’t produced anymore at all today. Huh.

(I refuse to tag this as “retrocomputing”. Read/write DVDs that you can use just like a harddisk, thanks to UDF, are still “new and fancy” in my book. 😂)

Image

⤋ Read More

I’ll have to disappoint you, not properly joining the Christmas profile picture thing, for the second year in the row.

This year in fact countering it, with a profile picture wearing sunglasses. Hopefully at least the Australian users, have my back with this one.

Image

⤋ Read More

Omg! I’m always playing on those pixel placing canvases, where it’s usually an endless war of factions or just things being attacked for no reason, but now someone did the most wholesome thing imaginable and drew another inugami facing mine and drew them shaking paws.

Image

⤋ Read More

Exactly 10 years ago Kokori’s first release on vinyl was out - and we celebrated with a release party in one of the afternoons of the Entremuralhas festival.
Ten years later, we’re back attending the festival, and this time we see one of the stands selling our latest release, rootkit, on CD! ♡

Image


Image

⤋ Read More

I hate reading translations. Here’s an example why: the same passage of the English and the Portuguese translation of the same (French) book. Not just the length of the passage shows one of the translations wasn’t faithful, the behavior of the character in one version is the opposite than how he behaves on the other version…

Image


Image

⤋ Read More

An official FBI document dated January 2021, obtained by the American association “Property of People” through the Freedom of Information Act.

Image

This document summarizes the possibilities for legal access to data from nine instant messaging services: iMessage, Line, Signal, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WeChat, WhatsApp and Wickr. For each software, different judicial methods are explored, such as subpoena, search warrant, active collection of communications metadata (“Pen Register”) or connection data retention law (“18 USC§2703”). Here, in essence, is the information the FBI says it can retrieve:

  • Apple iMessage: basic subscriber data; in the case of an iPhone user, investigators may be able to get their hands on message content if the user uses iCloud to synchronize iMessage messages or to back up data on their phone.

  • Line: account data (image, username, e-mail address, phone number, Line ID, creation date, usage data, etc.); if the user has not activated end-to-end encryption, investigators can retrieve the texts of exchanges over a seven-day period, but not other data (audio, video, images, location).

  • Signal: date and time of account creation and date of last connection.

  • Telegram: IP address and phone number for investigations into confirmed terrorists, otherwise nothing.

  • Threema: cryptographic fingerprint of phone number and e-mail address, push service tokens if used, public key, account creation date, last connection date.

  • Viber: account data and IP address used to create the account; investigators can also access message history (date, time, source, destination).

  • WeChat: basic data such as name, phone number, e-mail and IP address, but only for non-Chinese users.

  • WhatsApp: the targeted person’s basic data, address book and contacts who have the targeted person in their address book; it is possible to collect message metadata in real time (“Pen Register”); message content can be retrieved via iCloud backups.

  • Wickr: Date and time of account creation, types of terminal on which the application is installed, date of last connection, number of messages exchanged, external identifiers associated with the account (e-mail addresses, telephone numbers), avatar image, data linked to adding or deleting.

TL;DR Signal is the messaging system that provides the least information to investigators.

⤋ Read More

On my way home I went for an enormous detour through the forest to visit the tadpoles pond. There was a dead mole on the middle of the forest road, so I moved this poor little feller to the side.

Image

Later, after a bend I ran across two very beautiful and large deer on the forest path. I immediately stopped and they stood around for 5-10 seconds looking at me before they slowly walked into the forest. Unfortunately, my camera was in the backpack. No chance, lighting would have been brilliant, though.

⤋ Read More

I just checked on my little mates. It was already too dark for my shitty camera, so please excuse the crappy shots. One slough dried out, so those tadpoles didn’t make it. :-( What a bummer! Especially considering one puddle on the forest path 30 meters further is still going strong. There were very tiny frogs or toads (not sure which) around the big tadpole pond, though. That was super cool to see. I have to come back the next days when the sun is still up.

Image

⤋ Read More

Opera browser: my final disavowal

While the Internet is being flooded by a record amount of Opera ads, affiliate program members and new hardcore defenders, while I - as someone, who has been using it without a break, for more than 10 years, have had enough and I’ve finally decided to uninstall it.

Part of the reason for this decision, was the new Opera One UI update, that I not only found incredibly ugly and uninspired, but also worsening the already abysmal performance of the browser, as well as adding to the already gigantic pile of bugs within.

All of this, came after a few very frustrating weeks, where the browser constantly crashed, under the weight of its own AI bloat. Every time any text was selected, it was trying to load some ridiculous AI integrations on top, but always crashing and loosing all the opened tabs.
After the UI update, the whole browser somehow felt even more wonky and laggy.

Even for those, who might be fans of the new UI and all the added “features”, that now include a built in generic anime girl game and stupid cartoon noises, upon clicking almost anything, in the “gaming version” of this browser, the growing concerns about this browsers spyware-like connections, to all kinds of mysterious servers, should at least be considered and looked into further. Not to mention the extra problems, that come with them being a Chinese-ran company, storing this data in China.
Quick summary: https://youtu.be/NV8akIgfDqQ

Int the interest of brevity, I won’t go further into the pointless social media arguments they engage in, their past promoting predatory loans, them inserting affiliate links (to the sites you visit through tiles), running a very questionable free VPN service, hidden extensions, that cannot be removed and god knows what else.

Either way Opera, you were an alright browser - many, many years ago. Sadly all I can say now, is “rest in piss, you won’t ever be missed!”.

Image

⤋ Read More
In-reply-to » Hope you all are doing well! we're enjoying the heatwave that has hit us. :)

@prologic@twtxt.net thank you! I got started on some 3D stuff this morning, we then went to the candy store to get some candy, tonight well have that, and nachos + a movie. and the rest of the day we have been outside :)

here is what I got started on this morning :

Image


just testing some ocean stuff.

⤋ Read More