Karsten Schmidt

https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi

Intoxicating, non-toxic! 27+ years of interdisciplinary opensource R&D, software dev, computational art/design/craft/edu, landscape/nature photography, darkroom, kallitypes, electronic music. Trying to do meaningful work. Creator & maintainer of the thi.ng ecosystem of 200+ code libraries.

Except boosts/linked content, all published media is my own work & copyright by me. Most posts delete >2 months.

Available for consulting/commissions. Searchable.

he/him

#ThingUmbrella #TypeScript #Zig #Forth #LandscapePhotography #AltProcess #Darkroom #Kallitype #Geometry #AlgorithmicArt #GenerativeArt #PermaComputing #Music4Coding #Hiking

Location: Bavaria (DE)
Web: https://thi.ng
Support my opensource work: https://codeberg.org/thi.ng/umbrella/src/branch/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md#donations
GitHub: https://github.com/thi-ng
Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/thi.ng/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/toxi
fx(hash): https://www.fxhash.xyz/u/toxi

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Published at

2026-07-07T06:24:43Z

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Last Notes

2026-06-14 08:33:55 UTC

Last Night's Dinner By The Lakeside
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Alps #Mountains #Lake
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/747/536/526/153/725/original/caf09e1d7da07e88.jpg

2026-06-04 11:45:15 UTC

A/B testing latest refinements (more depth, better details in clouds/highlights and contrast in mid tones). First image is the new version. Next stop double size, 14x10"...
#AltProcess #Kallitype #LandscapePhotography #Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Dolomites #DarkroomPrint #PrintMaking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/691/665/820/422/493/original/7f1dce06ee8e0328.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/691/665/820/600/453/original/4834e28c7feb1d43.jpg

2026-05-15 10:19:22 UTC

Released as a single humongous monolithic pull request within a week since opening, the kind of ad-hoc, uncoordinated, trigger-happy, just-because-we-can attitude of the #Bun "LLM Rust rewrite" is so symbolic of the cultural shift many people & orgs are undergoing, where their focus has moved almost exclusively to quantity & speed-to-market (aka "higher productivity"), completely shoving aside long-term goals and considerations, incl. design principles/strategies, maintainability, safety, but also so many social aspects (e.g. organically grown community/staff, organizational skills/knowledge/understanding, much of it tacit, sometimes built up over decades), consideration of downstream effects, compatibility/composability, costs (not just your own) etc. All of these things, this loss of culture, seems to be treated as easily sacrificable third-class factors, or which are simply assumed to be automatable (and therefore replaceable, unnecessary) in the new mindset. It's uncanny!
The engine can't/mustn't be slowed or halted, and it needs more fodder! Only with maximum speed can we accelerate it enough to jump over the coming chasm, straight into the singularity...
In these developments, I too see very strong parallels to a similar goldrush mindset which emerged during the NFT years and has changed digital/algorithmic/generative art for years to come, and which has similarly 180° reorientated the focus, work & value systems of many artists/peers...
#OpenSource #Culture #AlgorithmicArt #GenerativeArt

2026-05-13 13:00:56 UTC

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Fully agree! Can only see this challenge happening via some form of self-inflicted "correction" trigger, e.g. circular financing schemes running out of steam, increased risk or unwillingness/inability to fully commission hyperscale data centers, e.g. see Microsoft's challenges in Kenya and general DC cancellations in US... It seems things are moving (more)...
https://thekenyatimes.com/world-news/microsoft-ke-data-center/
https://tech-insider.org/us-ai-data-center-delays-cancellations-7gw-capacity-crisis-2026/

2026-05-13 11:57:59 UTC

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That's be great, but as long as AI is the only perceived growth engine left running, I'm not sure there's political will for this (anywhere) to throw any spanners into its more widespread adoption...

2026-05-13 10:13:43 UTC

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Ok, I grant that direct political polls using this method are probably some ways out, but indirectly using simulated polls to easier support a company's position/strategy to then use as tool for lobbying purposes to impact/nudge policies isn't that far fetched at all... Regulators & politicians are picking up these polls and using them (in part) for decision making, just as is done already. But the danger here is that these polls do not represent actual people's opinions, and that all sorts of subtle biases can be introduced via agent modeling/prompting, even more so than via clever formulation and framing of questions in traditional polls (plus let's not forget all the pretrained biases in the LLM corpus). The proposed approach is much more open for increased gaming & manipulation, akin to the impact dangers of Polymarkets on policy making & insider trading etc. Conceptually, this simulated approach also fully embraces the idea of intersectional demographic groups only exhibiting "hive mind" behaviors, maybe with a modeled x% contrarian rate...

2026-05-13 08:11:45 UTC

Simulated opinion polls to drive public policy — what could possibly go wrong!
In the name of saving costs and producing more polls (i.e. the double benefit of increased efficiency AND productivity), statistical truth (traditional polls) is being replaced with its derivative, producing statistical insights via a second layer of statistics and agents simulating known, pretrained demographic behaviors & preferences, instead of interviewing actual people. Yay!
It seems they're blindly following Wheeler’s Law, i.e. "All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection" and ignoring the corollary: "...except for the problem of too many layers of indirection."
Queue future presidential approval ratings based on a simulated population of agents... Too dystopian?!
https://ngmx.com/@pathunstrom/116565726550598652
#LLM #AI #Gallup #Statistics #Poll

2026-05-10 09:22:32 UTC

The Mountains Flowed Before Him (2026)
(Given a large enough time scale, these mountains would be almost like waves...)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Alps #Mountains #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/549/546/864/533/260/original/c67a01038f12affd.jpg

2026-05-06 19:11:41 UTC

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Not barging into your interesting thread any further, just wanted to point to similar supplementary points made here (re: these models and outputs being designed implicitly and explicitly [via chosen analysis/training/refinement methods/processes and source selections]):
https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/116527449262566457

2026-05-05 11:31:47 UTC

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Yeah, I saw that meter, just found it strange that this setup would take this long and doesn't saturate fully... Wishing you best of luck figuring it out!

2026-05-05 08:24:00 UTC

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Do you know the wavelength of your UV light? If your lows aren't getting dark enough in such a long time, it might indicate your UV light's wavelength isn't optimal. 365nm is supposedly best, but I found it harder to find decent options. So mine are 385nm (40W) and 395nm (200W) and the corresponding exposure times and distances are only: ~1:45min (4 inch) and ~2:40min (16-20 inch). For the latter, I initially also used a sheet of paper to diffuse the light more (for larger prints), but that extended the exposure time to ~17mins for not any noticeable difference...
(Btw. This is all for kallitype, but should equally apply for salt)
#AltProcess #Kallitype #SaltPrint #UVLight

2026-05-03 06:55:04 UTC

Churfirsten
(View from the Alpstein. Celebrating my bday in one of my favorite places... 🤩)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Alps #Mountains #Switzerland
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/509/330/848/179/181/original/fe4c5804e4bd89a1.jpg

2026-04-04 13:29:19 UTC

I find a form of active de-computing is one of the best ways to cope with the current exceeding world pain exhaustion & LLM brain drain around, i.e. doing more things offline, with your hands/body, being more present in your world, getting into crafts/materials, creating/fixing/mending things and sharing your lessons learned with others (in that sense quite in the spirit of open source culture).
To some this is may be just another form of entitled escapism, though I see it as active skill building and learning by doing, connecting with people who're still finding and creating (not just) beauty in the physical world, preserving/expanding older skills, methods & techniques, showing how to actively & creatively navigate, work with and improvise with the hard limitations imposed by chosen materials/resources, processes, situations or environments, and a form of creation which doesn't rely on exabytes of harvested data and other planet-scale resource guzzling infrastructure to realize one's ideas.
(Aside: I also think this is very much part of the appeal of "classic" [non-LLM based] generative/algorithmic design & art approaches, but also #RetroComputing and #FantasyConsoles...)
Anyhow, I think this stunning ceramics project/sculpture/vase is a great example...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6LJzTaQJx4
Of course, my generative artist/designer/programmer mind immediately goes into deconstruction mode, imagining how I'd approach something like this in code form (e.g. via volumetric modeling) and also how to manifest it physically (3d clay printing or maybe paper craft with a cricut[1]). I don't doubt that one day soonish a robot arm will be able to perform or exceed this kind of finesse, but I also think, this kind of automation just like with LLMs, is never the point of making art with your hands, other than making a point that it's now possible to have a machine create such detailed simulacra. It's the same one way road to Uncanny Valley as chasing 3D realism in game dev, with ever more resources required for ever diminishing returns... Maybe that in itself will become a useful measure/marker and status symbol for the trillionaire class.
Building open worlds of endless unspoiled forests made of ultra high-res scans in UE5, whilst the world is burning down though climate change and war. Always be chasing the end of the road, instead of enjoying the journey, the act itself. Only valuing final results without ever appreciating (or even caring about) the process to get there. Pure consumption...
Isn't it interesting, all the thoughts a "simple" ceramics sculpture can trigger?
#WeekendWriting #Craft #Art #ArtMaking #Ceramics #LearningByDoing

2026-04-01 10:34:47 UTC

Claude Code source leak reveals how much info Anthropic can hoover up about you and your system
"Anthropic's Claude Code lacks the persistent kernel access of a rootkit. But an analysis of its code shows that the agent can exercise far more control over people's computers than even the most clear-eyed reader of contractual terms might suspect. It retains lots of your data and is even willing to hide its authorship from open-source projects that reject AI."
https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/01/claude_code_source_leak_privacy_nightmare/
#AI #InfoSec

2026-03-28 10:14:34 UTC

Good concise overview of #Meshtastic vs #Meshcore and how to choose when to use which one...
https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2026/03/23/meshcore-vs-meshtastic/

2026-03-14 11:49:27 UTC

Reading through Anthropic's official repo for giving agents various "super skills"[1]... There's an "algorithmic art" skill and the instructions are explicitly encouraging pure deception as one of the key "critical guidelines":
"The philosophy MUST stress multiple times that the final algorithm should appear as though it took countless hours to develop, was refined with care, and comes from someone at the absolute top of their field. This framing is essential - repeat phrases like "meticulously crafted algorithm," "the product of deep computational expertise," "painstaking optimization," "master-level implementation.""
https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/main/skills/algorithmic-art/SKILL.md
For someone who's been working in this field for almost 30 years, this "skills.md" file is just the worst... and so far off the mark! 🤮
Touch some effing grass, Anthropic (and all boosters)! How can so many people think this approach is _the_ future? The map is not the terrain...
[1] Alone the premise of this repo is pure comedy gold and pure sadness in equal measures!
#AlgorithmicArt #GenerativeArt #NoAI #Agents #Deception

2026-03-05 14:31:06 UTC

With Microslop having deprecated the Intellicode auto-completion extension in #VSCode and sooner or later forcing everyone to use cloud-based #Copilot instead, are there any other #TypeScript users who're not interested in switching to Copilot and if so what non-AI based alternatives are you seeing/using? I'm very tempted going back to using Emacs, but it's been years and I've never used TypeScript with it. Grateful for any advice or insights (not limited to Emacs only)!

2026-02-22 11:16:30 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@andrewnez/116108709896510035
"When a whale dies in the open ocean, its carcass sinks to the abyssal floor and becomes an ecosystem. Marine biologists call this a whale fall, and the body sustains life in three overlapping stages: mobile scavengers strip the soft tissue over months, enrichment opportunists colonise the bones and surrounding sediment for years, and chemosynthetic bacteria feed on the skeleton itself for decades, converting the lipids stored in bone into energy that supports entire communities of specialised organisms. A single whale fall can sustain life on an otherwise barren ocean floor for fifty years."
#note1dct…5vp4

2026-02-21 22:07:54 UTC

Morteratsch and the majestic Bernina range in full glory 🤩
Yes! That's what I'm talking about... Reprint was successful and much improved! Tweaked negative, new developer mix & weaker toner for more neutral grays. Also built an interim solution/contraption (involving 6kg of books as weight) to ensure the contact print is sharp everywhere...
As for the scene in the image: These are the highest mountains of the central eastern Alps (Biz Bernina on the right is 4048m, the others are all similar). Alone the last vertical ice fall section is ~1000 meters tall... Yet these glaciers are losing length & volume quickly (between 10-30 meters every year, trend accelerating...) The moraine line (approx. 200 meters above the valley bottom on the left slope shows the previous volume of the main glacier, which already has lost over 3km in length over the past century 😢
#AltProcess #Kallitype #PrintMaking #LandscapePhotography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Glacier #Switzerland #Hiking #ClimateChange
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/110/896/135/723/362/original/394c6b400fef1701.jpg

2026-02-02 21:47:59 UTC

Not quite groundhogs (for groundhog day), but cute hogs nonetheless...
#MonochromeMonday #NaturePhotography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/003/233/929/968/083/original/20b9f4adbda0763e.jpg

2026-01-21 15:09:28 UTC

Unhinged doesn't even cut it anymore... This speech & rhetoric needs a superlative to describe it... sheer brain rot! And yet, instead of a group walk out, a standing ovation at the end... unbelievable!

2025-12-31 20:01:59 UTC

The last light of 2025....
(...is giving me big hopes for 2026, against all odds!)
#LandscapePhotography #Sunset #Alps #Mountains #HNY2026
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/815/960/961/179/590/original/ef18cb674c93178c.jpg

2025-12-27 11:24:12 UTC

Came across this 2010 blog post about mindfulness in computing and so much of these behaviors have only intensified to new extremes with LLM usage. So much so that not only is the process of software creation being quickly supplanted by prompts and (stochastic) "search" assemblies, but more generally the kind of mindfulness talked about in the post (here meaning thinking through & solving a problem yourself[1]) is now being openly discouraged by industry and forcefully delegated out to a fuzzy pattern-match search megastructure, producing equally fuzzy results, uncaring of correctness or consequences[2] and requiring more resources than anything else ever built, regardless of problem scope/complexity.
Mindlessness.
Mindnumbness.
https://nf.wh3rd.net/space/posts/2010/08/the-invaluable-trait-of-mindfulness.html
"Later on, I thought about the strange thing that happened when I’d pulled out my phone. A modern smartphone is an impressive computer. My Nexus One is more powerful than my state-of-the-art desktop PC was 10 years ago, and is perfectly capable of factorizing a small number. But I didn’t ask it to. Instead, I told it to make a request that traversed a mobile network (comprised of tens of computers or routers), the open internet (20-50 computers), and into Google’s search infrastructure (thousands). There, in vast indexes, a reference was found to a site that could answer my question. The page at WikiAnswers clearly states “The factors of 91 are 1, 7, 13, and 91.” [...]
My request directly invoked the resources of thousands of computers, and indirectly used the energies of at least two other human beings (plus their supporting infrastructure). All to answer a question that could have been solved by my 8-bit ZX Spectrum (circa 1983) in the blink of an eye, or, simpler still, by thinking about it slightly longer than I had bothered to. I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
We do stuff like this with technology all the time. By its very nature, technology makes it easy to solve trivial problems, even we don’t arrive at the solution by the most efficient (or reliable) means. A solution that works is, more often than not, good enough. Until it isn’t.
A poor algorithm will go unnoticed as long as it is fast enough to run within the available resources. Too often in this industry hardware is used to solve software problems."
[1] This also implies paying attention to resource & infrastructure usage required
[2] Limited Liability Machines: https://social.coop/@shauna/115787899531998860
#AI #LLM #Mindfulness #FrugalComputing

2025-12-14 15:46:49 UTC

Looking for other people here who're interested in analog "alt process" photography (especially Kallitype & salt prints in general) and who are also making their own prints. There used to be a few more such people in my TL, but they all seem to have vanished or stopped posting in the past year, and generally it feels there's precious little interest in this topic on Mastodon... (I too have a feeling, either my own photography went drastically downhill over the past 3-4 months or people in my circles are just less and less interested in it, or maybe don't get to see it all... Hello self-doubt! 😩)
Anyhow, if you are interested in these topics, please like or boost so I can follow back! Much appreciated! It's very hard to find peers in such niche topics whilst on a tiny single user instance...
Ps. Also, if not Mastodon, any other communities/forums you might be able to recommend?
#Photography #AltProcess #BlackAndWhite #SaltPrint #PlatinumPrint #GoldPrint #Kallitype #Darkroom #PLPT

2025-11-21 20:39:05 UTC

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For the past year or so I've been mostly offline two days a week and even on other days only really use the phone for @npub1t2q…n4vh, taking pictures and Signal for comms, but if needed can (have to) switch to SMS. Every other app has mobile data turned off by default[1], which also allows me to stay on the cheapest data plan and increased battery life. It was "hard" in the beginning, but really not for very long at all and I think it quickly helped me deepening my sense of the "Big Here"[1], being more present in the moment/place/experience. It's also a very positive subliminal feeling, knowing I'm leaving a lot less direct data traces whilst out and about...
[1] Sometimes need to temporarily switch to online maps for realtime traffic info/detours, but only doing this very rarely...
[2] https://longnow.org/ideas/the-big-here-and-long-now/

2025-11-18 12:57:22 UTC

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...I'd be one of those people to say thanks! 🥹 Do you have a link about this?

2025-11-16 09:00:09 UTC

Sonnenberg ridge entirely living up to its name...
(Made the most of the last warm weather yesterday afternoon to hike/climb along this beautiful long ridge with many cliffs, roped sections, some cute chamois and hardly any people — temporarily felt like late August, yet in two days supposedly snow starting...)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Ridge #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/558/554/526/668/278/original/f6152ab45956a1c4.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/558/554/521/983/366/original/3de7f882ddbb343d.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/558/554/514/454/501/original/a159b5bd203dc68e.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/558/554/535/716/684/original/ca242b12b4903122.jpg

2025-11-05 09:33:26 UTC

Been updating my personal Mastodon tooling to download and convert my bookmarked toots. Here's how little code is needed to download a single message and convert its HTML content into Markdown, all using these #ThingUmbrella packages:
- https://thi.ng/hiccup: Interop data format (i.e. just nested JS arrays) to encode hierarchical documents
- https://thi.ng/hiccup-html-parse: Parses HTML into hiccup format
- https://thi.ng/hiccup-markdown: Serialize hiccup to Markdown (also includes a Markdown parser to hiccup, but not used here)
- https://thi.ng/zipper: Functional tree editing, manipulation & navigation (here to clean/transform the parsed HTML document)
Edit: Gist version of this example code:
https://gist.github.com/postspectacular/1d7ebdc5a81894c16ab744cb8d25c320
#Mastodon #Markdown #TypeScript #JavaScript #OpenSource
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/496/399/951/184/551/original/084463976214c3e5.png

2025-11-02 09:20:44 UTC

First signs of winter, on the first of November...
(The snow cover was actually already more solid earlier this week. That's probably the last of the colors for this year... hard to believe we're here yet again!)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Alps #Mountains #Autumn #Color
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/479/363/123/262/569/original/69bd5d8b38ba29cb.jpg

2025-10-22 13:38:12 UTC

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Another short video of the above waterfall...
#WaterfallWednesday #Waterfall #NaturePhotography #Photography #Alps #Video
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/418/090/030/741/238/original/62b97d0eeb84787b.mp4

2025-10-22 12:45:26 UTC

Watching the epic "stuiben" (aka spray) of the water crashing down 160 meters at Stuibenfall (Ötztal, Austria, tallest waterfall in Tyrol)...
#WaterfallWednesday #Waterfall #NaturePhotography #Photography #Alps
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/417/882/594/061/313/original/a59fec1bae6634d5.jpg

2025-10-20 11:15:15 UTC

Taking The Red Carpet Path.
(Not often that I find myself in a place exuding such intense natural positive/friendly energy [and beautiful scents]...)
#MountainMonday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Alps #Mountains #Heather #Forest #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/406/203/369/612/154/original/48caa6e45bcbd5c7.jpg

2025-09-17 17:18:30 UTC

#WaterfallWednesday meets #ThrowbackThursday — the view from the narrow bridge inside the stunning/infamous Höllental (Hell's canyon), September 2021, almost to the day... ahhh, memories!
#NaturePhotography #Video #POV #Alps #Canyon #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/220/775/461/678/204/original/a47daf28e8e07bb8.mp4

2025-09-13 15:24:20 UTC

TIL our garden soil is pH neutral (to my surprise). Beautiful royal blue!
#SoilSamples #Chemistry #Gardening
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/197/677/299/320/341/original/166e35ccc12ce408.jpeg

2025-09-12 12:36:11 UTC

Ridges are my thing, 360 views...
(Ammergauer Alps, November 2024)
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Alps #Mountains #Hiking #Video #POV
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/191/353/748/842/416/original/e7a634337d6b60fc.mp4

2025-09-07 13:41:06 UTC

Having just finished a 1-year consulting contract myself, my own list of restrictions for future jobs/consulting is very similar:
- will not work on adtech/surveillance/weapons
- will not knowingly make world worse and/or abet genocides
- will not be forced to use vibe coding (or will explain cost implications)
- prefer to work in the open
- prefer remote only
- flexible with time zones (last role was for a company in LA, -9h)
https://mastodon.cloud/@AccordionGuy/115159184286484121

2025-08-18 14:52:39 UTC

After a weekend of coding, this is my #MountainMonday today... 🥰
#LandscapePhotography #Alps #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/050/332/642/826/629/original/29a8ac077e751444.jpeg

2025-08-15 15:00:23 UTC

Path of reflection
#FoothpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Lake
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/115/033/376/143/283/057/original/8a6b4dff30e7fce9.jpg

2025-08-03 10:12:56 UTC

Needing more paths in more lives to be as beautiful as this...
(This hike & experiences further up touched me like not many others have...)
#FootpathFriday #SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/964/298/119/645/955/original/0b41427987cfb8c0.jpg

2025-07-31 16:24:18 UTC

Out & about in the Bernina Range, on our way to the Labyrinth, surrounded by majestic 4000ers (meters)... A dream! 😍
(#ThrowbackThursday, preemptive #FootpathFriday and my personal hiking highlight of 2024)
#LandscapePhotography #Alps #Mountains #Glacier #Switzerland #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/948/771/450/172/463/original/751edbdea5a64fa8.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/948/771/481/383/716/original/f0722515ad12be07.jpg

2025-07-19 09:01:30 UTC

Erosion studies from our morning hike yesterday, a ~500m long section of the valley exposing interesting structures and the fragility of life resting on the thin layer of top soil...
#Geology #Erosion #NaturePhotography #Photography #Mountains #Alps
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/879/082/585/696/995/original/2e6c19ca8041a374.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/879/082/601/413/574/original/9722b415cab73c7b.jpg

2025-07-18 18:23:26 UTC

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I also just watched this video, which doesn't directly address it, but mentions the emotional toll on him...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZtD_4CWqiU

2025-07-18 17:06:38 UTC

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Yes, I didn't know anything about it, but I agree it was a brave, good – and human – decision...

2025-07-18 16:34:20 UTC

Memoirs of the CP/M creator released:
“Our father, Gary Kildall, was one of the founders of the personal computer industry, but you probably don’t know his name. Those who have heard of him may recall the myth that he ‘missed’ the opportunity to become Bill Gates by going flying instead of meeting with IBM. Unfortunately, this tall tale paints Gary as a ‘could-have-been,’ ignores his deep contributions, and overshadows his role as an inventor of key technologies that define how computer platforms run today.
Gary viewed computers as learning tools rather than profit engines. His career choices reflect a different definition of success, where innovation means sharing ideas, letting passion drive your work and making source code available for others to build upon. His work ethic during the 1970s resembles that of the open-source community today."
https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-his-own-words-gary-kildall/
#ComputerHistory #CPM #PersonalComputing #RetroComputing

2025-07-16 16:32:24 UTC

An early morning alone on the banks of the (still young) Isar river some weeks ago... Really more "flow" rather than #WaterfallWednesday, but I just absolutely cherish places and moments like this & feeling so privileged being able to experience these after decades of living in large cities... (each time also a reminder how much we stand to lose...)
#LandscapePhotography #River #Alps #Video #POV
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/863/867/119/387/644/original/a0a7fe6f7e22a43c.mp4

2025-07-12 13:46:09 UTC

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Thanks! Having walked the ridges of a few similarly steep glacier side moraines in the past 2 years, I also found it amazing to see how they might look in a few thousand years. These kind of realizations always add a new aspect to my hiking experiences...

2025-07-11 22:18:46 UTC

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Thanks, Tim! It was a highlight indeed... Also check out those two short clips from the same place & hike:
https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/114795288179789270
https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/114834620736829995

2025-07-07 15:25:52 UTC

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Wow! That turned out to be _quite_ the eye sore... sorry! #DebugArt #Devlog

2025-07-07 15:21:22 UTC

There's a whole bunch of recent #ThingUmbrella updates which I still have to write about, but one of the things is the reworked, improved and more customizable optical flow (aka https://thi.ng/pixel-flow package). The visualization in this test video is showing it in action via color-coded overlaid flow field vectors (once again worst-case scenario for video compression, let's see how it comes out [or not...])
#OpticalFlow #DataViz #Visualization #TypeScript #Video
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/812/628/284/341/688/original/2ca41054983fb007.mp4

2025-07-06 10:34:45 UTC

Mountain summer
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/805/839/096/778/215/original/4f9794cba15748c1.jpg

2025-06-29 07:22:57 UTC

Yesterday near Rossgundscharte, Allgäu High Alps
(Longest, most stunning & varied tour in a while, traversing Warmatsgundtal into Rappenalptal, Germany's southernmost valley — 21km, incl. 1450 hm grueling descent over loose gravel...)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Alps #Mountains #Hiking #Cliffs
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/765/448/884/079/765/original/0de9c52247399fcc.jpg

2025-06-06 11:19:32 UTC

#ThrowbackThursday meets #FootpathFriday
(Dolomites, late October 2024)
#LandscapePhotography #Nature #Video #POV #Alps #Mountains #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/636/145/966/530/613/original/5b3af648f79038f8.mp4

2025-05-14 17:08:43 UTC

A beautiful glacier for #WaterfallWednesday 😍
#LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Glacier #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/507/285/915/111/181/original/177b724e6fe80dfa.jpg

2025-04-28 16:29:34 UTC

Fresh Clouds Of Life 😍
(found in the mountains last weekend — some of the parent froggies were still watching/guarding nearby... biggest clouds I've seen so far)
#MountainMonday #NaturePhotography #Photography #Macro #Lake #Biology #FrogSpawn
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/416/535/016/649/383/original/d13eee7512c14890.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/416/534/844/325/849/original/3a858281121a750e.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/416/534/983/995/820/original/4dc9e5f3f3d852a8.jpg

2025-04-25 12:13:52 UTC

Hanging Valley, Italy 2024.
(The crop gives no indication of the 400m drop below the forest...)
#ForestFriday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/398/542/638/284/934/original/1f2a4c275825f4f2.jpg

2025-04-21 08:17:21 UTC

Last light. Same place, different direction, only minutes after...
https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/114369083214208003
#MountainMonday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Lake #Reflection #Sunset #Alpenglow
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/374/963/351/246/660/original/4298f546dc02f836.jpg

2025-04-20 14:39:08 UTC

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Yes, wabi-sabi has also been very influential on my own practice and was one of the conceptual hooks for this talk I gave at Resonate Belgrade in 2016, which incidentally also includes a great quote by @npub16pr…eamn):
https://media.thi.ng/2016/talks/resonate.pdf
(sorry, slides only, no talk notes)
Re: The feeling "should have written myself" — that's exactly how I feel about your framing/writing! :))
#WabiSabi #Forth #SoftwareCraft #ThingUmbrella

2025-04-20 10:44:39 UTC

Tomodashi's (@npub1yqw…ywz8) design philosophy so much resonates with my own, even if my reality/interests and having roots in different social & technological environments/communities sometimes still causes friction/confusion/dilution of principles — it's all a process, an ongoing dismantling & rebuilding, and the path has become more clear over the past 5-10 years... thi.ng plays a major part (and stepping stones) for me in that context and very much shares the same principles laid out further below.
https://tomodashi.com/philosophy
"The sub-Arctic regions of the Canadian Northwest Territories have many communities of fishers, hunters and trappers who live off the land with simple and effective tools. When technology breaks down in the north, there isn't a tech support number to call, or dealership or mechanic to take it to. You're on your own.
This encourages you to care for your tools, and make repairs using whatever knowledge and resources you have on hand. People who live on the land only take with them what they can maintain, upgrade and repair themselves. Big, complex, fragile, expensive, high-performance, high-maintenance stuff is left at drydock.
The elders of the far north teach us that these human-sized and human-shaped tools are extensions of who we are. To care for one's tools is to care for one's community, and oneself. These are not separate things.
That is the key to the Tomodashi design philosophy.
Principles
All Tomodashi software is crafted with these four related ideas in mind:
1. Human-sized things are friendlier, more economical, and easier to learn.
2. The user is both a creator of things and a playful being.
3. Let people personalize, modify, and repair their toys and tools.
4. Imperfect creations feel more human, serene and beautiful.
When human qualities and self-expression become the focus of software engineering - whether it's a game or a programming tool or an IDE - all other arguments about programming and software design become moot"
❤️❤️❤️
#Technology #SoftwareCraft #HumanCentredDesign #ThingUmbrella

2025-04-15 07:17:49 UTC

Frozen #MorningWalk 🤩
#GoldenHour #LandscapePhotography #Photography #WinterWonderland #ThickTrunkTuesday
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/340/755/428/325/677/original/495df255f925597e.jpg

2025-04-14 15:30:12 UTC

Seeing @npub1z8r…mrq6's paper computing explorations, I was reminded of an old idea I proposed at PaperCamp LDN back in 2009: Originally this was vaguely about using origami to create multi-purpose AR markers, but I then extended it to other use cases, some of which could be adapted and be even relevant today, e.g. as a form of proof-of-work, protection against AI crawlers or other form of access control.
Some possible approaches for different use cases:
1) Ask users to perform or series of simple folds and then check results by validating fold lines in the flat sheet paper via computer vision
2) Same as #1, but perform shape recognition/validation of fully folded result
3) Unfold a pre-shared (and pre-folded) origami object to check result by validating fold lines via computer vision
4) Provide instructions for multiple origami creations to create uniquely identifiable objects for computer vision based interactive environments
Number 1-3 are more or less about forms of proving physicality, work, membership. Number 4 is more about using origimi as fiducial markers for general interactions
More ideas/summary from that event:
https://adactio.com/journal/1546
cc/ @npub1uy4…kptm
#PaperCamp #Origami #ComputerVision #InteractionDesign
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/337/029/184/859/848/original/ff55b6bd9cf2d256.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/337/029/200/207/322/original/852e1ba347d2c6f3.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/337/029/135/259/841/original/1a40430bb7cd01c6.png

2025-04-04 07:24:09 UTC

Feel the moment, follow your path...
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Mountains #Alps #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/278/494/850/560/022/original/cdce17cbfbf60e76.jpg

2025-03-26 18:48:18 UTC

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Oh thank you! Sadly, Bavaria isn't California... but I can send you a desktop-sized wallpaper crop if you wish :)

2025-03-26 18:14:15 UTC

Sea Of Mountains.
(here I come...)
#MeerMittwoch #MountainMittwoch #LandscapePhotography #Alps #Haze
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/230/090/401/039/375/original/34aa6ed7a6a2bc93.jpg

2025-03-21 08:57:01 UTC

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Another view of the same valley further down, showing the glacier's large main side moraine, also marking the last maximum extent during the Little Ice Age in the 1850s... It's hard to fathom just how much volume and ice has been lost in these past 175 years, not just in this valley... In places, this moraine is almost 200 meters tall and the valley 600 meters wide.
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Glacier #Mountains #Alps #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/199/587/687/386/143/original/611eb3cdce84a6c7.jpg

2025-03-21 08:31:41 UTC

The Great Disappearing and Life After.
Considering it's International Year of Glaciers' Preservation (https://www.un-glaciers.org), I really need to continue working again on my photography book(let) about glaciers and surrounding landscapes in the Alps...
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Glacier #Mountains #Alps #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/199/488/116/422/251/original/bc9119d5085d0b02.jpg

2025-03-17 15:34:44 UTC

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It's all written TypeScript and uses dozens of packages from my https://thi.ng/umbrella monorepo (which is a collection of 200+ projects/libraries for all sorts of purposes). I've been planning to release the PKM tooling & generator for a while, but currently still (and unintentionally) too tied in with my personal setup and too many other things to tackle... but I've been working towards it steadily, since I think it's a quite different approach/architecture and might also be useful for others...

2025-03-17 15:23:01 UTC

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Same boat, mister! Same boat... 🤝
(...only my CMS is forever shapeshifting and so far ended up a static site gen, directly fed from hundreds of project directories, git repos and a dozen of automation scripts...)

2025-03-17 14:52:54 UTC

#WordPress security is such a bane & nuisance, even for people who aren't even using it. In the past 24h I've been bombarded again with dozens of WP login spam emails, and my (static) sites had >4600 requests obviously scanning for all sorts of WP-related files & vulnerabilities...
Second to that is another group of scans (~1080) looking for mistakenly uploaded credential files in `.aws/*`, `.env.*`, `.ssh/*` etc.
😡😤

2025-03-07 21:04:07 UTC

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A year ago I ran into the CF captcha maybe once a week, now it's several times a day... =:_(
(Ps. Still a more acceptable inconvenience compared to disabling ad blockers...)

2025-03-07 20:05:36 UTC

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Really, what a waste of energy (on all sides)! If still needed I'm considering doing that kind of filtering as well, just need to brush up on my Caddy config skillz. I know how to, just seems more work than blocking via `ufw`... :)

2025-03-07 19:22:02 UTC

Temporarily enabled request logging on my new server/sites last night, because after just a few days my bandwidth usage is already at >0.5TB... A quick skim through the logs reveals it's 90% just bot traffic, including literally every single one I've also got listed in `robots.txt`. Everyone's ignoring the convention by now... So I'm now writing a little script to extract IP ranges and build subnet masks from Caddy's structured logs, so I can block these bots via firewall rules...
#DeadInternet

2025-03-06 16:20:37 UTC

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This is such a perfect companion post! Thank you!!! :)

2025-03-06 16:02:54 UTC

It dawned on me, many conflicts in UI/UX design philosophy boil down to Black Box vs White Box worldviews and an increasing focus/bias towards opaqueness...
On the one hand, there's the long illusive dream/goal of UI designers for their technological artifacts/products/services (esp. AI™ powered ones) to blend perfectly into their physical and human environment, be as autonomous & intuitive-to-use as possible, have as few controls/interfaces as possible (often minimalist brand aesthetics explicitly demand so), all whilst offering perfectly suited outcomes/actions from only minimal direct inputs, yet always with perfect prediction/predictability — DWIM (Do What I Mean) magic!
This approach mostly this comes with a large set of brushed-under-the-rug costs: Patronizing/dehumanizing the people intended to interact with the artifact, doubting/denying their intelligence, outright removal/limitation of user controls (usually misrepresented/celebrated as "simplicity"), relying on intense telemetry/surveillance/tracking, enforced 24/7 connectivity, increased energy usage and all the resulting skewed incentives for monetization which actually have nothing to do with the original purpose of the artifact...
In contrast, the White/Clear Box approach offers the artifact with full transparency (and control) of the inner workings of the system. Because of this it only works (great) for smaller, human scale domains/contexts, but due to the out-of-bounds complexity of our surrounding contemporary tech stack, these days this very quickly just means Welcome to Configuration Hell (Dante says "ciao!")...
(So in the end: Choose your own hellscape... :)
#NoteToSelf #UI #UX #BlackBox #Design

2025-03-05 18:42:58 UTC

Evening walk. Spring and Alpenglühen is in the air. 😍
#LandscapePhotography #Photography #Zugspitze #Bavaria #Alps #Mountains
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/111/294/783/902/456/original/4df212f00397b441.jpg

2025-02-23 07:47:45 UTC

Zig Zag. Mountains teach you the path is never a straight line for too long...
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Alps #Mountains #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/114/052/095/267/779/829/original/10ffc008f10c0aa8.jpg

2025-02-09 20:36:16 UTC

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Good to hear! I know it's not the fastest lens, but I'm also not so much after wildlife/sports, so I'm hopeful... :)

2025-02-09 18:38:48 UTC

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Hey, it's a Canon RF100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM... I wanted something light to take on the trail and it's seems one of the best cheap(er) ones...

2025-02-09 16:59:22 UTC

The difference between 18mm vs 400mm (focal length)... 🤩🤯
(Been testing out the only new lens I've bought in 10+ years to allow me taking different kinds of pictures/subjects than I was able to so far...)
(EDIT: Replaced 1st image with corrected zoom region marker)
#LandscapePhotography #Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #TeleLens #Mountains #Alps #WinterWonderland
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/975/059/910/761/924/original/cb0be6ed2f8495f3.jpg
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/975/059/860/807/202/original/bc43cba816418e5b.jpg

2025-02-09 08:30:07 UTC

Alone, protected by silent giants.
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Mountains #Alps #WinterWonderland
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/972/989/484/527/096/original/4ed3e6b4b5d39b14.jpg

2025-02-07 11:57:08 UTC

Himmeleck (Heaven's corner, October 2023)
(One of my alltime fave mountain passes, especially in autumn evening light... its name is just perfect!)
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Mountains #Alps #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/962/478/934/827/356/original/ef5710b483f92c3c.jpg

2025-01-30 20:52:11 UTC

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Maybe it's the mist/spray (though there wasn't much since only very little actual flow). I was more thinking it might have to do with relatively warm days (above 0℃/32℉) and very cold nights, and the resulting thawing/refreezing cycles... Been been keeping an eye on night temps in that canyon for weeks, then decided to go the morning after it was -18℃/0℉ there... Best of luck on your ice adventures! :)

2025-01-30 20:14:01 UTC

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Yeah, big fan here too! I've never seen so many amazing weird/organic/alien looking ones in such a small concentrated place before. Made the early rise to get to those falls all the more worth it!

2025-01-26 10:56:32 UTC

Reality is stranger than fiction.
(Detail shot from this waterfall: https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/113827869129283674)
#SilentSunday #NaturePhotography #Photography #Abstract #Ice #Waterfall
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/894/292/604/369/827/original/33e22f5c0018ef9a.jpg

2025-01-22 11:22:04 UTC

Up since 5AM... already did a bunch of #ThingUmbrella stuff (incl. new release(s) and repo-wide maintenance), then morning walk in the still crispy air to marvel at the beautiful hoar frost (but forgetting to put the SD card in the camera, so phone pics only... 🤦)...
#MorningWalk #HoarFrost #LandscapePhotography #WinterWonderland #Bavaria
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/871/744/036/889/548/original/33ade6c2934b9369.jpg

2025-01-19 08:30:37 UTC

Descent into the Unknown.
(...but the views & company made it one of my most cherished days of 2024!)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Mountains #Alps #Dolomites #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/854/082/969/372/519/original/f4abb7bd12169e35.jpg

2025-01-14 17:24:04 UTC

Starting a new open ended series of B&W photographs/prints...
Working title: #FutureMemories
Vol. 1 — "I still remember the winter this waterfall froze over for the very last time..."
#LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Photography #Waterfall #Frozen #ClimateChange
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/827/869/028/512/858/original/b79d8fb8e2822b3d.jpg

2025-01-05 22:49:50 UTC

Having to mute a bunch of people for a while, largely because of them draining out my TL and having overt influence on signal/noise ratio in my feed. As an introvert (and not a bot, to the best of my knowledge), I generally still don't quite fathom the level of extroversion needed which causes one to post ~160K times in just 6-7 years (i.e. 62 times a day, every day...)

2024-12-28 11:07:45 UTC

Very comprehensive overview, considerations, options & framing:
Building Your First LoRa Mesh Network From Scratch — Communication Infrastructure for When Everything Else Fails
https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-building-your-first-lora-mesh-network-from-scratch
#38c3 talk schedule incl. stream/download links:
https://media.ccc.de/c/38c3
#LoRa #MeshNetwork #Meshtastic

2024-12-21 21:48:19 UTC

Winter solstice 2024
Went for a wonderful snowy late afternoon hike in one of our fave places, got rewarded with dramatic last light, just before the clouds started drifting down into the valley, bringing more snow...
Glühwein time!
#Solstice #SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Mountains #Alps #WinterWonderland
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/693/012/669/066/497/original/5d7bc8914481108e.jpg

2024-12-05 13:16:25 UTC

Cycle of life. Growth and degrowth.
(alt text for details)
#LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #Mountains #Alps #Dolomites #Forest
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/600/402/789/183/839/original/33a48b20f4073a5d.jpg

2024-12-01 06:37:49 UTC

Majestic Monte Cristallo
It was a beautiful spectacle, watching the clouds forming around this magnificent massif, quickly enveloping it and emphasizing the vast scale of this landscape (which I find so often very hard to do justice in pictures)... The ridge & valley running up in front is the wild, post-glacial Val Popena, its glacier considered extinct by now...
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Alps #Dolomites #Clouds
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/576/186/145/355/293/original/06b7b76b476536cd.jpg

2024-11-29 12:26:28 UTC

Whittaker 2028!!! 🤩
"Just as composting makes nutrients from necrosis, in 2025, Big Tech’s end will be the beginning of a new and vibrant ecosystem. The smart, actually cool, genuinely interested people will once again have their moment, getting the resources and clearance to design and (re)build a tech ecosystem that is actually innovative and built for benefit, not just profit and control. MAY IT BE EVER THUS!" — [@Mer__edith](https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith )
https://www.wired.com/story/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-big-tech/

2024-11-17 13:11:31 UTC

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Couldn't have said it better! More widespread awareness, education and application of privacy & autonomy-related tools, topics/methods are such an important part of how these systems (democracies) can/must be kept/made more honest. Instead, the framing of "nothing to hide, not a problem" has largely taken over to erode these efforts, with large demographics actively choosing temporary convenience, also fueled by the promise to glean some benefit nuggets from network effects of these centralized platforms... As long as this attitude doesn't change, we all are stuck to some extend. Especially for the self-employed, artists, crafters, etc. participation in these platforms is often somewhat mandatory and directly linked to livelihood. But I also do think a first/interim step of cutting the cord to these platforms is to start diversifying. None of this has to be a zero sum game (not for people/users, at least)...

2024-11-17 11:30:43 UTC

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I remember talking about these things as part of "computational literacy" discussions/interviews with several journalists (non-political) in the UK, who almost exclusively thought I'm a nutcase framing my understanding of the term also from that bigger POV... The way I see it is that having grown up in the GDR, I'd developed more of a sensitivity to these issues from an early age (hidden antenna on the balcony, illegally listening to RIAS Berlin radio, watching western TV only under headphones so that Stasi neighbors wouldn't hear...). In my experience, people who grew up in western countries and only ever knew clichés/propaganda of the East just often had (still have) a far too blue-eyed belief in their systems and their inherent supposed benevolence...

2024-11-17 09:01:55 UTC

Allgäu Autumn
(alt text for info)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Alps #Mountains #Allgäu #Lake
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/497/480/395/870/822/original/ff1c36982f30acf3.jpg

2024-11-05 20:00:33 UTC

The calm before the storm. Hope.
(Picture taken 336 hours ago, alt text for info)
#LandscapePhotography #Photography #CloudAppreciation #Alps #Dolomites #Mountains #Hiking
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/432/122/613/841/833/original/11dd85838892d6cc.jpg

2024-10-31 14:46:56 UTC

Once upon a time, already over a week ago... 30 seconds of the trail (and a brief look back at the earlier ridge/pass we came from) with an amazing, though somewhat shaky, view of Crodon di San Candido on the other side of the valley...
#ThrowbackThursday #Hiking #Dolomites #Alps #Mountains #POV #Video
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/402/577/705/139/050/original/8ecf691543faf7cf.mp4

2024-10-27 20:42:24 UTC

Inspired by [@mos_8502](https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502 )'s recent posts about TIC-80, I've finally made the repo for my (also TIC-80 inspired) browser-based fantasy console public. Wasn't trying to keep things private just never got around writing a readme for it.
https://github.com/thi-ng/fantasy-console
The project was originally developed for a workshop series @ Technical University Augsburg in 2022/23 (cc @npub13yx…vn0s). Under the much larger conceptual framing of permacomputing (in the widest sense), this module focused on low resource usage and learnings from older low-powered hardware and the often times ingenious solutions these limitations fostered, the project aimed to demostrate to students how to built up a custom personal computing system using familiar (web) technologies and introduced students to various technical & creative(!) (retro)computing concepts, incl.
- Memory layouts/maps
- Control/device registers (e.g. for I/O)
- Interrupts (here only HSYNC/VSYNC)
- Binary & hex data encoding
- Indexed color modes, color/palette cycling
- Bitmap fonts
The project also implements a small embedded domain specific language to interact with the virtual hardware (main RAM & VRAM), I/O registers (e.g. mouse & time/date) and provides a basic graphics API to create small graphical tools & experiments written in a subset of JavaScript.
The entire console (incl. all six example projects listed in the readme) is only 33KB (12.9KB gzipped)! Everything made with various https://thi.ng/umbrella packages...
Live demo (Press 1-6 to switch example, see repo readme for more detailed instructions 😉)...
https://demo.thi.ng/umbrella/fantasy-console/
#ThingUmbrella #FantasyConsole #TIC80 #VirtualMachine #OpenSource #Typography #PermaComputing #RetroComputing #Workshop #Augsburg

2024-09-28 08:08:03 UTC

Silent Tirol.
(Pre-emptive #SilentSunday posting since not going to be online tomorrow...)
#LandscapePhotography #Photography #Fog #Autumn #Nature
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/214/153/120/350/335/original/d87f0efeacb3f204.jpg

2024-09-21 08:18:32 UTC

Crossing the chasm.
Before there was a bridge here (1930, rebuilt 2021) on this ancient roman trading road, for centuries any goods had to be transported down & up the steep 20% slopes of this canyon, leading to numerous heavy accidents and making this route only usable during dry seasons...
#MorningWalk #LandscapePhotography #Photography #Architecture #Bridge
https://mastothing.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/113/174/558/187/979/773/original/4e11276ddd8eb9cf.jpg