leighelse{}

I've spent half my working life as a broadcaster and half as a software developer. Along the way I've been a professional musician, and an assistant to apiarists and undertakers (although not at the same time).

I live in Whanganui, where I write and record music, write web and desktop software utilities for my own amusement, and enjoy biking, reading and travelling.

Public Key

npub1vmtjn35d7r3rlfr4elzagvd5vlxneztrqnq4qgdjsecsz6sd3f2q7sl5gq

NIP-05 Address

leighelse@mastodon-nz.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxd4efc6xlpc3l536ul3w5xx6x0nfu393sfs2syxegvugpdgxc54qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsw77yjd

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1vmtjn35d7r3rlfr4elzagvd5vlxneztrqnq4qgdjsecsz6sd3f2q7sl5gq

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-04-02 19:15:34 UTC

LinkedIn is illegally scraping your computer and sharing the resulting data with third parties.
https://browsergate.eu/
'LinkedIn scans for over 200 products that directly compete with its own sales tools, including Apollo, Lusha, and ZoomInfo. Because LinkedIn knows each user’s employer, it can map which companies use which competitor products. It is extracting the customer lists of thousands of software companies from their users’ browsers without anyone’s knowledge.
Then it uses what it finds. LinkedIn has already sent enforcement threats to users of third-party tools, using data obtained through this covert scanning to identify its targets ...
This is illegal and potentially a criminal offense in every jurisdiction we have examined.'

2026-03-29 03:56:44 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…g4xt @nprofile…xvcz Ooooh ...

2026-03-29 00:01:19 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…5w5c I considered those.
Currently I have a pair of rebranded (Ultro) no-name Chinese earbuds, which are surprisingly good apart from a weak bottom end.
Now that there's an Android app available, though, I'm thinking that a next pair might be from Apple. But that could be a long time coming, and things will have changed by then.

2026-03-28 23:58:25 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…je7u You could probably implement that for yourself, even using a ScriptMonkey/ViolentMonkey script and localstorage to cache account ratings. It would take a bit of time to determine where to set the bar, but it would be easy enough to write.

2026-03-28 19:48:28 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…w9yw That sounds about right.

2026-03-28 19:04:11 UTC

Having a variable refresh rate from 1Hz to 120Hz can dramatically improve a laptop's battery life.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3096432/lgs-new-1hz-display-is-the-secret-behind-a-new-laptops-battery-life.html
'As a component maker, LG will ship the panel to various customers: laptop makers, manufacturers of external displays, and so on. It’s the refresh rate that’s of interest, though: from 1Hz all the way to 120Hz. That will help save enormous amounts of power: up to 48 percent on a single charge, LG claims.'

2026-03-28 18:44:46 UTC

Reverse engineering an official White House Android app provides an example of just how much this US administration has gone rogue.
https://blog.thereallo.dev/blog/decompiling-the-white-house-app
'An official United States government app is injecting CSS and JavaScript into third-party websites to strip away their cookie consent dialogs, GDPR banners, login gates, and paywalls ...
Your location, your notification interactions, your in-app message clicks, your phone number if you provide it, your tags, your state changes. All going to OneSignal's servers.'

2026-03-28 03:30:51 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…yzxf I'm with you.

2026-03-28 03:12:58 UTC

“Matthews … we’re getting another one of those strange ‘aw blah es span yol’ sounds.”
https://www.thefarside.com/2026/03/27/3
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/304/603/119/983/228/original/5d879d36db58cddc.png

2026-03-27 18:53:37 UTC

European intelligence agencies have for decades provided Mossad with the information needed to assassinate key targets.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/andrew-cockburn/beware-the-mattress
'Israel’s assassination programme would increasingly be treated as a model to be followed. Asked in 2005 if he had a problem with a state becoming an executioner, Avi Dichter, the retiring head of Israel’s internal security service, replied: ‘No. I’m telling you, foreign delegations come here on a weekly basis to learn from us, not just the Americans ... the state of Israel has turned targeted prevention’ – a favoured Israeli euphemism for assassination – ‘into an art form.’'

2026-03-27 03:39:13 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…w9yw Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

2026-03-26 23:52:37 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…je7u We must be twins. I also have no time for the Olympics or indeed the Football World Cup.

2026-03-26 23:44:56 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…yzzr Unseen University had a football team called "Unseen Academicals".

2026-03-26 23:41:40 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…je7u Yes, it's a good thing ...
... and also a burden for those of us who think we must read every post regardless of what else we have going on in our lives. Not that I know anyone like that ...

2026-03-26 20:11:21 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…gtt6 @nprofile…xzsh Whanganui had twenty minutes of thunder and lightning, ending with a brief torrential downpour which (to me, dozing in bed) lasted about ten minutes.
We were promised more!

2026-03-26 19:44:37 UTC

This small hill town in southern France has inspired multiple conspiracy theories.
https://www.filfre.net/2026/03/the-mystery-of-rennes-le-chateau-part-1-the-priests-treasure/
'It seems to have been the imagination of Salamon rather than the equally prodigious one of Corbu which added a new twist to the story, one that would become very important in the course of time. At the very end of his third and last article, Salamon mentioned the longstanding legends about “Cathar treasure, including the famous Holy Grail” being hidden somewhere in the Languedoc. Might it actually have been this treasure rather than that of the French crown that Saunière had stumbled upon? It did seem more plausible in some ways. Corbu too would gradually adopt this theory of the case.'

2026-03-26 19:00:45 UTC

Artificial Intelligence -induced psychosis is on the rise.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/26/ai-chatbot-users-lives-wrecked-by-delusion
'“I still use AI, but very carefully,” he says. “I’ve written in some core rules that cannot be overwritten. It now monitors drift and pays attention to overexcitement. There are no more philosophical discussions. It’s just: ‘I want to make a lasagne, give me a recipe.’ The AI has actually stopped me several times from spiralling. It will say: ‘This has activated my core rule set and this conversation must stop.’
“The main effect AI psychosis had for me is that I may have lost my first ever friend,” adds Alexander. “That is sad, but it’s livable. When I see what other people have lost, I think I got off lightly.”'

2026-03-26 18:48:11 UTC

Why red means danger.
https://bethmathews.substack.com/p/why-so-many-control-rooms-were-seafoam
'Birren and DuPont created a master color safety code for the industrial plant industry, with the aim of reducing accidents and increasing efficiency within plants. These color codes were approved by the National Safety Council in 1944 and are now internationally recognized, having been mandatory practice since 1948.'

2026-03-26 07:11:52 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…v9er Nah nah. It's THC that makes you wander in an unscheduled way. CBD doesn't usually have that effect.

2026-03-26 04:11:24 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…c2c8 Three months? I was reading a very detailed piece on this yesterday which quoted oil sector analysts saying the world will have high fuel prices until 2028.

2026-03-26 03:46:42 UTC

As if.
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/032526
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/293/412/941/510/936/original/0df68949bb741d54.png

2026-03-26 00:07:36 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…je7u Especially given the persistent efforts being made by some to have a user age field forced into the core Linux code.
I have seen a statement by one distro maintainer. Gods help me, I can't remember which one, but it was a minor player. They said they would never include age verification and if your jurisdiction ever required that of an operating system, they would add it to a "Not for use in ..." warning on their download page.
And the California creator of another distro wrote that the OS was only available as code which the user could build for themselves and did not / never would contain any age verification function. But I think he'd just created this distro specifically to make this point, so it's hardly a real world case.
There's broader commentary here: https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Some-Linux-Distros-Skirt-Age-Verification-Laws
A nice idea which in my experience would be impractical: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/a-practical-architectural-solution-to-os-level-age-verification-laws/183387
And there's a looong discussion on the Mint forum: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=464675&sid=c51af28bffdb2a74ae15bba414cf40cb&start=320

2026-03-25 20:20:53 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…thu3 There as a deep dark red glow half an hour before sunrise in Whanganui. I've not seen a sky look like that before.

2026-03-25 20:15:39 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…cun7 A very affirming read. Recommended!

2026-03-25 19:55:02 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…t3ug To stop the Iranians? Hell, I'll pay triple to stop the Americans!

2026-03-25 18:55:08 UTC

A developer's observations on the increasing mess that is software generated by artificial intelligence.
https://mariozechner.at/posts/2026-03-25-thoughts-on-slowing-the-fuck-down/
'There's a much more important difference between clanker and human. A human is a bottleneck. A human cannot shit out 20,000 lines of code in a few hours. Even if the human creates such booboos at high frequency, there's only so many booboos the human can introduce in a codebase per day. The booboos will compound at a very slow rate. Usually, if the booboo pain gets too big, the human, who hates pain, will spend some time fixing up the booboos. Or the human gets fired and someone else fixes up the booboos. So the pain goes away.
With an orchestrated army of agents, there is no bottleneck, no human pain. These tiny little harmless booboos suddenly compound at a rate that's unsustainable. You have removed yourself from the loop, so you don't even know that all the innocent booboos have formed a monster of a codebase. You only feel the pain when it's too late.'

2026-03-25 18:45:31 UTC

Remains found beneath the altar of a Dutch church are expected to be those of Count D'Artagnan.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2rew2dgzzo
'"He was buried on sacred ground below where the altar was; we found the bullet that put an end to his life and we found a coin from 1660 in his grave, and it was from the bishop who attended Mass for the Roi Soleil."'

2026-03-25 08:48:14 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…v9er Solid analysis. Thank you for sharing.

2026-03-25 08:14:30 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…rzay I've done my share of that, bringing large PHP5.3 projects up to 7.1 and then 8.4. It's mostly banal, but sometimes gets tricky.

2026-03-24 23:55:55 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wj33 I have a slight uncertainty around =human= foghorn.

2026-03-24 20:01:12 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…d2tw It's certainly scary the first time.

2026-03-24 19:19:00 UTC

This long article investigates claimed data centre builds, and finds they're a house of cards. A house of cards on top of which the "inevitability of pervasive artificial intelligence" is built.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-industry-is-lying-to-you/
'Not to sound unprofessional or nothing, but what the fuck is going on? We have 241GW of “planned” capacity in America, of which only 79.5GW of which is “under active development,” but when you dig deeper, only 5GW of capacity is actually under construction?'

2026-03-24 03:25:51 UTC

https://www.thefarside.com/2026/03/23/0
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/282/007/459/746/015/original/0922ea3358b6bd07.png

2026-03-24 00:52:02 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…k9ql Uh? Only for bike-riding if you had no chain guard. At least that's my recollection.

2026-03-23 19:57:34 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…k9ql @nprofile…dr33 I've only ever tried Helius 10:10, which is what I was initially prescribed. I kept a sleep log for the first month to determine the most effective combination of timing and dose, and settled on 0.2ml two hours before bed. It works consistently without too much grogginess the next morning.
The company making Helius has recently gone belly up. Because I use such a low dose I have enough to get me into 2027. After that? We'll see what the options are.
Mind you, if the current government gets back in, I expect they will begin winding down medical cannabis. The noises they've made already are clear indicators that they doubt its efficacy and think patients are abusing it.

2026-03-23 19:50:22 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ewwn When I was growing up in Christchurch, we had not only fog on winter mornings, but thick yellow smog. Walking the one block to school we couldn't see more than a metre in any direction.
Like most of the new build homes in our south Christchurch suburb we burned wood and coal on an open fire for heating each night ...

2026-03-23 19:46:45 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ajew I hate violence, it solvess nothing. But ... won't someone shoot that man?

2026-03-23 19:44:57 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…dr33 I had that last night too. In the end I took ¼ Zopiclone around midnight. I feel unrested this morning.
My medical cannabis oil works wonders, but it has to be taken at least an hour before bed (two hours is about perfect in my case). Its effectiveness continues for a few days after I stop taking it, so my routine is 3 or 4 days on, 3 or 4 days off. This also works as a tolerance break. Last night was the fourth day off ... a day too far, apparently.

2026-03-23 19:20:12 UTC

One person's journey to move their data and services out of America's reach.
https://rz01.org/eu-migration/
'The reasons for this are the current global political situation and improved data protection. I don’t want to go into the first point any further for various reasons, but the second point should be immediately obvious, since the EU currently has the most user-friendly laws when it comes to data protection. Below, I will list both the old and new service providers; this is not an advertisement, but simply the result of my research, which was aimed at achieving the same or better quality at affordable prices.'

2026-03-23 19:16:13 UTC

The glass delusion reflected the fears of the early modern era. It seems to have afflicted only men, and only men of means.
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/fear-and-fragility-the-glass-delusion-and-its-history/
'The patients “came in a variety of forms”, writes the literary historian Gill Speak, whose 1990 study remains the most sustained account of the so-called glass delusion. “He might be a urinal, an oil lamp or other glass receptacle, or else he might himself be trapped within a glass bottle.”5 The men came from the Netherlands, from France, from Spain — documented in medical literature across four centuries, each arriving with a precise and terrible self-diagnosis. The Dutch physician Levinus Lemnius, writing in the mid-sixteenth century, treated a patient who was rational and highly functional in every respect save one: the absolute conviction that his buttocks were formed from the same stuff as windowpanes.'

2026-03-23 18:51:33 UTC

If he ever discovers honesty, Shane Jones should rename his political party.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/590394/shane-jones-labels-critics-of-fisheries-bill-as-noisy-voices
'"If you start killing fish before they've had a chance to breed, you're going to run out of fish and you don't need to be a genius to figure that out," Watson said.'

2026-03-23 09:00:24 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…65q4 Good score.

2026-03-23 03:29:05 UTC

Scene from The Crying Game II: The Rural Version.
https://www.thefarside.com/2026/03/22/1
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/276/346/563/749/806/original/2145b5e8f292d8c6.png

2026-03-22 19:13:19 UTC

Palantir has its hooks deep into the United Kingdom. Aotearoa New Zealand must avoid that happening here.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/22/palantir-extends-reach-into-british-state-as-it-gets-access-to-sensitive-fca-data
'Prof Michael Levi, an internationally recognised expert in money laundering at Cardiff University, said there was “serious under-exploitation” of data held by financial regulators, so AI is a potentially valuable technology to tackle financial crimes. But he said it was “a relevant question as to whether Palantir’s owners might tipoff their friends about methodologies”.'

2026-03-22 18:52:03 UTC

A contemporary implementation of Minesweeper set in the Strait of Hormuz.
https://hormuz.pythonic.ninja/
When you lose, you're shown a clip of Trump, winning again.

2026-03-22 08:00:43 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…0ymw Gee. Not sure whether I prefer the punchy hook in "Hold the Line" or the gentle rains in "Africa".

2026-03-22 03:26:38 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…k9ql Hopefully someone who knows will be able to help resolve this.

2026-03-22 03:23:10 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…vhwu @nprofile…7e94 @nprofile…wj33 @nprofile…vvev Yes, that's normal. The 7:30am bus to Dunedin continues to Queenstown with the same driver.

2026-03-22 03:22:06 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…7e94 @nprofile…wj33 @nprofile…vvev Speaking of which ...
Three weeks ago I was bemoaning the rising price of Intercity trips. Whanganui to Wellington was NZD48 for a long time when I was commuting regularly, and had slowly inched up to NZD58.
Well, today it's NZD68. Just like that. Bump. Diesel price, innit?

2026-03-22 01:22:04 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…je7u This is horrid.

2026-03-20 23:00:00 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…e8mx Extra points for that and, presumably, for not being called Nick.

2026-03-20 22:37:16 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…yzxf @nprofile…pp76 Amen.

2026-03-20 21:28:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…aqfx I've had that happen with domains I've acquired, not used, and not renewed. I was bombarded for years by several tiers of domain brokers offering them back to me at slowly decreasing prices.
However, https://cooper.com is going to be more popular than my assorted odds and ends. Someone may be prepared to pay over the odds for it.

2026-03-20 19:43:56 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…prsp This is not a workable solution for developers.

2026-03-20 19:43:00 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…auh0 A reasonable condemnation, as long as they also condemn the perpetrators of the conflict.

2026-03-20 19:17:25 UTC

The battle to control how things are displayed on a screen.
https://omar.yt/posts/wayland-set-the-linux-desktop-back-by-10-years
'Maybe Wayland doesn’t work for your precious use-case. More likely, it does work, and you swallowed some propaganda based on an assumption which might have been correct 7 years ago. Regardless, I simply don’t give a shit about you anymore ...
We’ve sacrificed our spare time to build this for you for free. If you turn around and harass us based on some utterly nonsensical conspiracy theories, then you’re a fucking asshole.'

2026-03-20 18:41:48 UTC

Germany kicks sand in Microsoft's face by mandating the Open Document Format for all public documents.
https://linuxiac.com/germany-mandates-odf-for-public-administration/
'Germany’s move aligns with broader European efforts to promote digital sovereignty and interoperability, including the European Interoperability Framework and the Cyber Resilience Act. These policies emphasize the importance of open standards in ensuring secure, transparent, and future-proof digital services.'

2026-03-19 22:59:09 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…rzay Yeah. Even when they go sour on you, all they can do is get the pip.

2026-03-19 20:03:29 UTC

Real solutions scale.
Government policies should still be effective under stress. Additional funding may be necessary, but backtracking on your own ideology indicates that the ideology is not a good fit for the real world.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/590138/government-looking-at-ways-to-assist-families-with-increasing-costs-due-to-middle-east-conflict
When the Ukraine conflict raised oil prices, when COVID hit, the Ardern government leaned further into the principles it had already established.
This government, however, will need to change course to effectively manage the impacts of Trump's Iran war. Unfortunately, their ideological baggage will almost certainly ensure their response is inequitable and ineffective.

2026-03-19 19:48:48 UTC

... but not, inititally, for Aotearoa New Zealand.
https://cyberinsider.com/mozilla-to-launch-free-built-in-vpn-in-upcoming-firefox-149/
'Mozilla said the free tier will initially provide 50GB of monthly data to users in the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The feature is scheduled to arrive in Firefox 149 on March 24. That limited regional rollout suggests Mozilla is taking a phased approach, likely to assess performance, demand, and support requirements before expanding availability.'

2026-03-19 19:32:03 UTC

Cory Doctorow reviews a Cornell University paper showing that those who glory in corporate bullshit are the least capable colleagues.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/19/jargon-watch/
'... workers who are taken in by bullshit are "open minded" in the sense that they are bad at analytical reasoning and thus easily convinced. These people test poorly on metrics like "logical reasoning" and "decision-making," and score high on "overconfidence in one's intellectual and analytic abilities." They are apt to make blunders that "expose organizations to financial, reputational, or legal risks."
But they're also exactly the workers who score high on "job satisfaction," "trust in one's supervisor," and "degree to which they are inspired by corporate mission statements." These people are so open minded that their brains start to leak out of their ears. Or, as Carly Page put it in The Register: "jargon sticks around not just because executives enjoy using it, but because many people respond to it as if it were genuine insight" ...'

2026-03-19 19:07:05 UTC

Retired US Airforce strategist General S. Clinton on the grim realities of securing the Straits of Hormuz.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/u-s-military-expert-on-oil-tanker-convoys-in-the-strait-of-hormuz-iran-must-only-succeed-once-to-trigger-a-catastrophe-a-1b4f4521-01dd-4711-8a5e-8da225d053b5
'If the war were to end today, the regime would draw exactly that lesson from it: We need nuclear weapons. These people have to be made to understand that they are better off without the bomb than with it. But that is not a task for our military. That is a political task. Before we get there, the government must first define clear political objectives.'

2026-03-19 06:43:50 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…k9ql Au contraire, my confusion and anger is very tightly targeted.

2026-03-19 06:41:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…cun7 Our local New World currently has the best Omega Plums I've tasted for several years. The nectarines were good too, but what's on the shelf now is coming from a cool store and past its best. Peacherines are patchy; there seems to be more than one variety, and it's hard to distinguish the good from the less good by sight alone.

2026-03-19 06:37:23 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…vhwu @nprofile…wj33 Are you speaking of the Russell Street store in Dunedin? If so I knew it well in the late seventies. We referred to the proprietor as Mr St (first name Russell).

2026-03-19 03:28:56 UTC

Inconvenience stores.
https://www.thefarside.com/2026/03/18/0
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/253/703/519/151/954/original/381e686c200cdcda.png

2026-03-18 22:08:52 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…d2tw Eek!

2026-03-18 19:38:55 UTC

Debugging spinlocks in the Linux kernel; a war story.
https://rovarma.com/articles/a-tale-about-fixing-ebpf-spinlock-issues-in-the-linux-kernel/
'we tested this fix together with all the other fixes and we’re finally in a state where we’re not seeing any freezes on the system when running our repro, and dmesg is free from timeout warnings. Yay!'

2026-03-18 18:49:22 UTC

After describing Microsoft's cloud security as "a pile of shit", the US government approved it for federal use.
https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-cloud-fedramp-cybersecurity-government
Microsoft used its weight and political connections to overrule expert findings that its systems could not be accepted as fit for purpose.

2026-03-14 20:05:41 UTC

Is anyone using Thunderbird for RSS?
https://rubenerd.com/using-thunderbird-for-rss/

2026-03-12 21:47:45 UTC

Cory Doctorow talks about why organisations choose to use artificial intelligence even though they know it doesn't work.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/11/modal-dialog-a-palooza/#autoplay-videos
'If the purpose of a customer service department is to tell people to go fuck themselves, then a chatbot is obviously the most efficient way of delivering the service. It's not just that a chatbot charges less to tell people to go fuck themselves than a human being – the chatbot itself means "go fuck yourself." A chatbot is basically a "go fuck yourself" emoji.'

2026-03-12 03:30:58 UTC

An essay on the continuing folly of America's arbitrary and unilateral warfare.
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/you-can-just-do-things/
'But events don’t end when we say they do. We do not enjoy a singular and uncontested prerogative to alter reality through magical thinking, force of arms, indignant entitlement, and sheer dippy fiat. We may think we’re playing a game that ends when we say it does, that the past only matters when we want it to, that the places we project our power will somehow always remain elsewhere, that the repressed will never return, and that repression takes no toll on all parties involved. At some point, and on some timeline you don’t get to choose, the world pushes back. You can just do things, sure, right until the game is up, and then you can’t.'

2026-03-11 05:39:04 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…44dh I love this.

2026-03-10 19:20:54 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…5974 They still have the entire internet, including access to all social media except any that require a login for access.

2026-03-10 18:51:06 UTC

How and why Windows lost user trust.
https://www.yankodesign.com/2026/03/08/microsoft-broke-the-only-thing-that-actually-mattered/
'Nadella did not invent this behavioral tendency; it recurs reliably enough across modern tech to qualify as its own CEO archetype ... The pattern is consistent enough to have a shape: a CEO builds something genuinely dominant, gets pulled toward the next big technological narrative, and hands the original product to the maintenance crew while energy and capital chase the new story. The difference with Nadella is the scale of what he handed off.'

2026-03-10 17:57:47 UTC

Two months in, what's changed? De Speigel takes a look.
https://archive.is/3ivgw
'"Why do you delete the people you're trying to protect from the danger, and not the danger itself?" Noah asks. Social media, he points out, is the space he uses for political participation. "Without it, I wouldn't know what's happening in Iran or Venezuela right now. I wouldn't even have seen that there was a shark attack at a beach here in Sydney that I was about to go to with my friends."'
Personally? I'd rather we passed a law regulating or banning algorithms on social media platforms ... for all users.

2026-03-10 04:54:38 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…xvcz Hopefully you'll not be in bed for too long.

2026-03-10 03:44:58 UTC

- reply

Thanks for sharing, @nprofile…0z4m ... but as this is built with artificial intelligence it's not something I'm comfortable using.

2026-03-10 03:29:42 UTC

From Shaun Yeo in today's ODT.
https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/editorial/cartoonist%25E2%2580%2599s-view-%25E2%2580%2594-yeo-3
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/202/751/973/903/823/original/b031e85147f6d14d.png

2026-03-09 22:12:33 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…5w5c "We had to make quick decisions to assure certainty of supply, so higher prices are now locked in for some weeks. Eventually, of course, pump prices will fall, and we welcome that."

2026-03-09 19:25:53 UTC

Meta's RayBan glasses retain and share personal footage most users would expect to remain private.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/workers-report-watching-ray-ban-meta-shot-footage-of-people-using-the-bathroom/
'The Swedish report has reignited concerns about the privacy of Meta’s smart glasses, including from the Information Commissioner’s Office, a UK data watchdog that has written to Meta about the report. The debate also comes as Meta is reportedly planning to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban and Oakley-branded smart glasses “as soon as this year,” per a February report from The New York Times citing anonymous people “involved with the plans ...”
> No reasonable consumer would understand “designed for privacy, controlled by you” and similar promises like “built for your privacy” to mean that deeply personal footage from inside their homes would be viewed and catalogued by human workers overseas. Meta chose to make privacy the centerpiece of its pervasive marketing campaign while concealing the facts that reveal those promises to be false.'

2026-03-09 18:55:44 UTC

Cory Doctorow on how the foibles of the obscenely rich scale.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/09/autocrats-of-trade/#witness-the-firepower-of-this-fully-armed-and-operational-battle-station
'every single economic cataclysm in the history of the world was the fault of rich people. Rich people gave us the 19th century's bank panics. They gave us the South Seas bubble. They gave us the Great Depression, and the S&L Crisis, and the Great Financial Crisis. They invented greedflation and created the cost of living crisis. Today, they are teeing up an AI crash that will make 2008 look like the best day of your life:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington
The old left aphorism has it that "every billionaire is a policy failure." That's true, but it's incomplete. Every billionaire is a machine for producing policy failures at scale.'

2026-03-09 18:39:25 UTC

Oh wow! Westpac can see more opportunities to move public money to the private sector (they propose using the health system as the mule).
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/589095/more-scope-for-private-sector-to-ease-public-healthcare-woes-report-says
'"The opportunities for greater collaboration between the private sector and public health don't stop there. We see scope for greater private involvement in areas such as infrastructure development in underserved communities, the upgrading of IT systems and the adoption of digital technologies," said Clark.
The report recommended using public-private partnerships to improve efficiency, lower costs and expand timely access to diagnostics, rehabilitation, and elective care through more predictable service arrangements.'

2026-03-09 06:58:48 UTC

I've just watched all six half hour episodes of n00b, an Aotearoa New Zealand television series from eighteen months ago. With the usual caveats of someone fifty years outside their target audience, I thought it was fantastic.

2026-03-09 01:35:13 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…xvcz @nprofile…5w5c @nprofile…vvev The specs haven't dated well, battery life is still appalling, and making/taking calls is not guaranteed.
But the Pinephone and Pinephone Pro remain unequivocally great ideas.

2026-03-08 19:28:56 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jc6e Widespread bicycle adoption would also reduce the load on our health system and raise employment (there would be opportunities all over the country to set up one-person bike repair businesses).

2026-03-08 13:28:23 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…0ymw I am.

2026-03-08 13:26:18 UTC

Am up. Cricketing.

2026-03-08 06:40:50 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…5t9f Thanks!

2026-03-07 23:42:49 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…k9ql I wish. I'm 200km away.

2026-03-07 23:41:48 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…agnl Yes. I'll report back.

2026-03-07 22:40:24 UTC

My tiny laptop is having network issues. Some pages are fine, some don't load until refreshed, others won't load at all.
My big laptop is unaffected; it's specific to this machine. Almost certainly it'll be one of the privacy/security plugins I'm so proud of.
Is there a better diagnostic path than turning all the plugins off, then turning them back on one by one?

2026-03-07 22:31:15 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…xj5e WIn a nutshell, we Luddites are against the use of technology to increase profits for the bosses at the expense of the workers.

2026-03-07 22:30:19 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…c2c8 I used to think Jeremy Brett was the ultimate Holmes. Lately I'm not so sure.

2026-03-07 19:03:20 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…c2c8 @nprofile…54dw I always click the headphones at the bottom left of these puzzles. The audio transcription is much easier to complete and I rarely get a second test.

2026-03-07 18:46:29 UTC

- reply

I have my laptop nicely configured with privacy-protecting and ad-blocking plugins. I've added what I can of those to my phone's Firefox browser.
I am always astonished when I click a link from within Reddit on my phone and am presented with a source I know well and find it is effectively unreadable on my small screen due to the cruft that is usually filtered out when I approach it from Firefox.

2026-03-07 18:43:11 UTC

Cory Doctorow on making the web work.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/07/reader-mode/#personal-disenshittification
'It's ridiculous that websites put so many barriers up to a pleasant reading experience. A slow-moving avalanche of enshittogenic phenomena got us here. There's corporate enshittification, like Google/Meta's monopolization of ads and Meta/Twitter's crushing of the open web. There's regulatory enshittification, like the EU's failure crack down on companies the pretend that forcing you to click an endless stream of "cookie consent" popups is the same as complying with the GDPR.
Those are real problems, but they don't have to be your problem, at least when you want to read the web.'

2026-03-07 18:41:14 UTC

Ask not what the Fediverse can do for you. Ask what you can do for the Fediverse!
https://matduggan.com/boy-i-was-wrong-about-the-fediverse/
'I never expected to find my news from strangers on a federated social network that half the internet has never heard of. I never expected a lot of things. But there's something quietly beautiful about a place where people just ... share what they know. No brand deals, no engagement metrics, no algorithm nudging you toward rage. Just someone who spent twenty years studying Arctic policy posting a thread at 2 AM because they think you should understand what's happening. It's the internet I was promised in 1996. It only took thirty years and the complete collapse of American journalism to get here.'

2026-03-07 18:26:42 UTC

Research finds a link between tinnitus and sleep.
https://www.sciencealert.com/tinnitus-is-somehow-connected-to-a-crucial-bodily-function
'"Tinnitus can make sleep worse, and poor sleep may, in turn, make tinnitus worse. It may be a kind of vicious circle, although I do not believe it is unbreakable," speculated Milinski.
"When we do not sleep well, we become more vulnerable to stress, and stress is one of the strongest factors known to worsen tinnitus. Stress can even trigger tinnitus to begin with."
Further research could not only lead to effective tinnitus treatments but also help scientists better understand the mysteries of sleep itself.'

2026-03-06 21:35:44 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…enr9 @nprofile…xzsh That would be my first pick too, followed by "any other Toyota model".
But I know very little about cars. Four wheels, go brrrm.