Mark Stosberg

Interests include #TranspoEquity, #UltraRunning, #BloomingtonIN, #DevOps, #UrbanPlanning, #Mapping, #Linux

Boosting questions and helpful or actionable posts. Let’s build better together.

Blog: Bikes, Mapping, Linux, Keyboards: https://mark.stosberg.com
Walk Potential: https://gitlab.com/markstos/walk-potential
Sidewalk Priority Mapping: https://gitlab.com/markstos/sidewalk-priority-map
Newsletters: Mapping, Tech, Plant-powered adventures

Last Notes

2025-04-10 01:07:33 UTC

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There’s no perfect browser, and it’s good to hold Firefox to a high standard along with all the others, but context matters.
It seems like there are two primary options: either a browser based on Chromium or one based on Firefox.
And the Chromium family already has more than 70% market share, creating a kind monoculture.
Maybe one day there will be a strong third option based on LadyBird or something else, but that’s not today

2025-04-09 14:11:12 UTC

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So what browser do you recommend?

2025-03-29 21:54:54 UTC

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Once you get through the dangerous slightly-out-date era, there are years of calm waters when you are so out of date even the exploits quit supporting your OS.

2025-03-07 00:29:23 UTC

355 small and mid-sized towns in the US now have AI-generated newsletter sites that appear to local. They make money by summarizing local news and adding ads.
Here’s the story of how investigating one such site led to discovering a whole network of doppelgängers with questionable practices.
https://limestonepostmagazine.com/today-in-bloomington-not-local-newsletter/
#ai #journalism

2025-02-28 14:46:21 UTC

Context: Google, the world’s largest advertising company and dominant browser made changes claimed to be on technical merits to block the most popular ad-blocking extension.
The change is now making its way into other popular browsers based on Chrome, like Edge.
In related news, Zen browser based on Firefox is great.
https://zen-browser.app/ https://mastodon.social/@vascorsd/114081326102526021

2025-01-11 20:39:14 UTC

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Is there an alternative to democracy you recommend?

2024-11-20 20:15:28 UTC

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Let’s do the recounts, but if you are going to do widespread election fraud, why use a pattern so easy to spot?

2024-11-19 18:32:39 UTC

#EV folks: I'm in the market for a new-to-me car, perhaps $20k. The idea of going all-electric for our next car is appealing, but at the same it seems like EV tech is evolving rapidly and we may see for example new battery chemistries in the market in just a few short years. Cameras, sensors and on-board processing seem very much in flux as well.
Also, I'm likely more interested in the price point of a used car, but am concerned about buying an #EV with a used battery.
Sell me on an EV.

2024-11-17 16:17:53 UTC

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The Tuba UI is nice, but the fonts are too small on my HiDPI screen.
I tried using Flatseal to set QT_SCALE_FACTOR=2 for the app, but it seemed to have no effect.

2024-11-17 16:00:26 UTC

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Thanks. Trying Tuba now.

2024-11-17 15:29:34 UTC

Anyone on #Linux using a desktop app with a custom UI to access #Mastodon instead of the web view?

2024-10-28 18:16:05 UTC

Time to fork httpie?
If you are a #webdev or do #coding for the web, `httpie` is great CLI tool for HTTP requests.
https://httpie.io
There's a mega-patch opened against it which solves about 2 dozen issues, including supporting newer HTTP and DNS features. But it's considered "not ready" as it's slightly slower, like 200 ms per request slower due to new protocol complexities.
Forking it may be the best way forward to get these bug fixes and features released.
https://github.com/httpie/cli/pull/1531

2024-08-31 10:36:17 UTC

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And it's not like it's a binary choice either, like pointing the finger at the single worst cause of climate change and ignoring all others.
There are a lot of developers in the world. Enough to work on Rust-in-Linux and a Rust-only kernel as well.
A small, Rust-only kernel could try out some ideas that might actually spend up Rust-in-Linux development.

2024-08-27 16:57:52 UTC

One open source #Linux project I cheer for is Regolith Desktop, which just had a new release.
https://regolith-desktop.com
Regolith is a polished take on the #sway tiling window manager, using Ubuntu (and soon Debian) as a base.
I hope to see more of what they've done-- like the new Ilia launcher-- make into the #Fedora Sway Atomic and #ArchLInux as well