Even though I really do like the shell, I always use Dolphin to mount my digicam SD card and copy the photos onto my computer. I finally added a context menu item in Dolphin to create a forest stroll directory with the current date in order to save some typing:

The following goes in ~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/galmkdir.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin,inode/directory
Actions=Waldspaziergang;

[Desktop Action Waldspaziergang]
Name=Heutigen Waldspaziergang anlegen…
Icon=folder-green
Exec=~/src/gelbariab/galmkdir "%f"

In order to update the KDE desktop cache and make this action menu item available in Dolphin, I ran:

kbuildsycoca5

The referenced galmkdir script looks like that:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

current_dir="$1"
if [ -z "$current_dir" ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 DIRECTORY" >&2
    exit 1
fi

dir="$(kdialog \
    --geometry 350x50 \
    --title "Heutigen Waldspaziergang anlegen" \
    --inputbox "Neues Verzeichnis in „$current_dir“ anlegen:" \
    "waldspaziergang-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)")"
mkdir "$current_dir/$dir"
dolphin "$current_dir/$dir"

This solution is far from perfect, though. Ideally, I’d love to have it in the “Create New” menu instead of the “Actions” menu. But that doesn’t really work. I cannot define a default directory name, not to mention even a dynamic one with the current date. (I would have to update the .desktop file every day or so.) I also failed to create an empty directory. I somehow managed to create a directory with some other templates in it for some reason I do not really understand.

Let’s see how that works out in the next days. If I like it, I might define a few more default directory names.

How Long Can SSD Store Data Unpowered? Year 2 Update (2024) [video]
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Generate videos in Gemini and Whisk with Veo 2
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OpenAI Is a Systemic Risk to the Tech Industry
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AI problems, top to bottom:

1: Open AI nerds, believe fine tuning a language model algorithm, will eventually produce an AGI god.

2: Subpar artists and techbros who can’t code, convinced AI image bashing and vibe coding, will help convince the dumber parts of Internet, they are a real deal.

3: Parasites, using AI to scam people, because they just want passive income, selling crap, made by an automated process.

Side: Adobe&co, killing Flash/old web, pricing new artists and developers out, to face learning curves of free tools, or use AI, peddled as solution.

Mosaic (YC W25) is building a general purpose agent for video editing
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@anth@a.9srv.net Hahaha, for a second I thought that you implemented word splitting according to Swiss (.ch) rules. :-D

Btw, both manpage links string(2) and getields(2) (it’s missing an f) point into nothingness: http://a.9srv.net/src/wordwrap.2.html

I can’t help but notice line 9: http://a.9srv.net/src/wordwrap.c

And I reckon your finger slipped one key to the right for quore: http://a.9srv.net/src/litclock.1.html

Cool stuff! :-)

@prologic@twtxt.net in this case it isn’t vendor lock-in. I believe they do it because the carrier “eats” the costs (the interest part of the instalments). The phones are fully unlocked.

I will return the two we got for parents, and re-buy them again, this time on an instalment plan. Why pay $2,000 up front when you can split the cost in convenient monthly payments, all interest free, right?

Amiga OS 3.2 Update 3 released
I’ve long lost the ability to keep track of whatever’s happening in the Amiga community, and personally I tend to just focus on tracking MorphOS and AROS as best I can. The remnants of the real AmigaOS, and especially who owns, maintains, and develops which version, are mired in legal battles and ownership limbo, and since I can think of about a trillion things I’d rather do than keep track of the interpersonal drama by reading various Amiga forums, I honestly didn’t ev … ⌘ Read more

I updated wordwrap.[ch] to more closely match the interface for string(2); it’s now just that plus a margin. I also updated litclock and marquee to match. http://a.9srv.net/src/index.html

Scientists map part of mouse brain with unprecedented detail + 2 more stories
Scientists map great ape genomes, revealing human links; experts achieve unprecedented mouse brain mapping detail; Trump cuts most tariffs but raises China’s steeply. ⌘ Read more

IBM unveils z17 mainframe, z/OS 3.2
IBM today announced the IBM z17, the next generation of the company’s iconic mainframe, fully engineered with AI capabilities across hardware, software, and systems operations. Powered by the new IBM Telum II processor, IBM z17 expands the system’s capabilities beyond transactional AI capabilities to enable new workloads. ↫ IBM z17 press release Alongside this brand new behemoth of a computer, IBM also announced z/OS 3.2, the next version of its mainframe opera … ⌘ Read more

FreeDOS 1.4 released
With FreeDOS being, well, DOS, you’d think there wasn’t much point in putting out major releases and making big changes, and you’d mostly be right. However, being a DOS clone doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement within the confines of the various parts and tools that make up DOS, and that’s exactly where FreeDOS focuses its attention. FreeDOS 1.4 comes about three years after 1.2. This version includes an updated FreeCOM, Install program, and HTML Help system. This also includes i … ⌘ Read more

hello friends i spent a couple hours today using a random string generator by charm CLI called hotdiva2000 to make a script that 1) generates a static index.html page 2) the page is a prompt generator where all the prompts are from hotdiva2000!!!!!

this makes more sense if you look at it check it out

https://prompts.4-walls.net/hotdiva2004/

IBM Announces the Z17 Mainframe Powered by Telum II Processors
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@prologic@twtxt.net, from IRC:

1. Saving preferences is failing. Specifically trying to save “Open Links” on the same window. For sure it isn’t happening. Check errors on browser’s console.
   
2. Search results pagination is broken. Search for “twtxt.net” and see it. Also, picking oldest/newest makes no difference on that search query.

So I re-write this shell alias that I used all the time alias dkv="docker rm" to be a much safer shell function:

dkv() {
  if [[ "$1" == "rm" && -n "$2" ]]; then
    read -r -p "Are you sure you want to delete volume '$2'? [Y/n] " confirm
    confirm=${confirm:-Y}
    if [[ "$confirm" =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]; then
      # Disable history
      set +o history

      # Delete the volume
      docker volume rm "$2"

      # Re-enable history
      set -o history
    else
      echo "Aborted."
    fi
  else
    docker volume "$@"
  fi
}

@prologic@twtxt.net Spring cleanup! That’s one way to encourage people to self-host their feeds. :-D

Since I’m only interested in the url metadata field for hashing, I do not keep any comments or metadata for that matter, just the messages themselves. The last time I fetched was probably some time yesterday evening (UTC+2). I cannot tell exactly, because the recorded last fetch timestamp has been overridden with today’s by now.

I dumped my new SQLite cache into: https://lyse.isobeef.org/tmp/backup.tar.gz This time maybe even correctly, if you’re lucky. I’m not entirely sure. It took me a few attempts (date and time were separated by space instead of T at first, I normalized offsets +00:00 to Z as yarnd does and converted newlines back to U+2028). At least now the simple cross check with the Twtxt Feed Validator does not yield any problems.

I’ve just ordered a new toy! A ProDesk 600 G4 Mini with a Core i5-8500T, 32Go of DDR4 RAM and 256Go SSD storage. A cheaper alternative to an 8GB RPi5 + Argon one v3 m.2 RPi case kit (NVME not included) 🤷. It should be here by Friday 🤞

Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax
Honestly, this would still be easier today than some of the bug reporting systems I’ve seen. ⌘ Read more

Trump announces tariffs on all imports + 2 more stories
U.S. faces global import tariffs; CERN unveils plans for 91km collider; Russia seeks to legalize Taliban. ⌘ Read more

Web Server for AoE 1, 2 and 3 DE supporting LAN multiplayer 100% offline
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Gemini 2.5 gets 24.4% on MathArena USAMO beating previous top score of 4.7%
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Nintendo unveils Switch 2 ahead of June 5 launch
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I’m playing with ratterplatter again: It’s a toy that watches disk I/O and emulates the noise of a real hard disk. (Linux only.) It uses sound samples from one of my older disks.

I tried a different approach at estimating the disk activity and I think I finally got it right (after almost 10 years … 🤦).

Demo, booting a Windows 2000 VM: https://movq.de/v/1400544cc6/2kboot-ratterplatter-2.mp4

(For this purpose alone, I put a couple of mini speakers into my PC case, so that the noise comes from the right place: https://movq.de/v/a3b2dc0932/speakers.jpg)

The results aren’t too bad, but this thing can’t be super accurate due to the huge I/O caches that we have these days. For the video, I dropped the caches before booting Windows, otherwise you would have heard almost nothing.

FWIW, if you don’t know it yet, this is the equivalent for proper keyboard sound: https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring

Hello, i want to present my new revolution twtxt v3 format - twjson
That’s why you should use it:

1. It’s easy to to parse
   
2. It’s easy to read (in formatted mode :D)
   
3. It used actually \n for newlines, you don’t need unprintable symbols
   
4. Forget about hash collisions because using full hash
   Here is my twjson feed: https://doesnm.p.psf.lt/twjson.json
   And twtxt2json converter: https://doesnm.p.psf.lt/twjson.js

Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax
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Project update + 2 significant news stories
Unmanned rocket explodes 40 seconds after launch in Norway during private space mission; Hamas agrees to Gaza ceasefire; Israel counters with own terms. ⌘ Read more

Twitter (X) Hit by Data Leak of 2.8B Users – Allegedly an Insider Job
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Bolt Graphics Zeus a New GPU Architecture with Up to 2.25TB of Memory and 800GbE
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A cretaceous fly trap? remarkable abdominal modification in a fossil wasp
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2,200-year-old pyramid filled with coins and weapons found near Dead Sea
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The Biology of B-Movie Monsters (2003)
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A decompilation and port of Sonic Advance 2-a GameBoy Advance game written in C
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B-2 Spirit Stealth Bombers Begin Unannounced Deployment to Diego Garcia
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2 is a great idea, you should suggest it in that blog post.

About 1, well, I think anyone has an email address and only about 5% use a Feed, so it makes sense to offer what most people use 🤔

@eapl.me@eapl.me Interesting! Two points stood right out to me:

1. Why the hell are e-mail newsletters considered a valid option in the first place? Just offer an Atom feed and be done with it! Especially for a blog of this very type. This doesn’t even involve a third party service. Although, in addition he also links to Feedburner, what the fuck!? No e-mail address or the like is needed and subject to being disclosed.

2. When these spam mailers want to prevent resubscribing, then for fuck’s sake, why don’t they use a hash of the e-mail address (I saw that in yarnd) for that purpose? Storing the e-mail address in clear text after unsubscribing is illegal in my book.

2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies
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@eapl.me@eapl.me I think the benefits do not outweigh the disadvantages. Clients would have to read and merge the information from 2 txt and a new metadata would have to be added with the address of this file.
Also, it is very easy to filter or ignore it.

@eapl.me@eapl.me Cool!

Proposal 3 (https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/twtxt.dev/issues/18#issuecomment-19215) has the “advantage”, that you do not have to “mention” the original author if the thread slightly diverges. It seems to be a thing here that conversations are typically very flat instead of trees. Hence, and despite being a tree hugger, I voted for 3 being my favorite one, then 2, 1 and finally 4.

All proposals still need more work to clarify the details and edge cases in my opinion before they can be implemented.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Using full-blown Cloud services is good for old people like me who don’t want to do on-call duty when a disk fails. 😂 I like sleep! 😂

Jokes aside, I like IaaS as a middle ground. There are IaaS hosters who allow you to spin up VMs as you wish and connect them in a network as you wish. You get direct access to all those Linux boxes and to a layer 2 network, so you can do all the fun networking stuff like BGP, VRRP, IPSec/Wireguard, whatever. And you never have to worry about failing disks, server racks getting full, cable management, all that. 😅

I’m confident that we will always need people who do bare-bones or “low-level” stuff instead of just click some Cloud service. I guess that smaller companies don’t use Cloud services very often (because it’s way too expensive for them).

@eapl.me@eapl.me Good job! I have added these comments:

1. It is only long for humans. Clients can only leave a hyperlink.
   
2. The nickname is just a decoration, only the date that acts as the id and the URL matter. The nick is used for humans reading the feed.
   
3. It can be migrated with a script, if the feed exists.

Pebble unveils new devices, and strongly suggests you dump iOS for Android
It’s barely been two months after the announcement that Pebble would return with new watches, and they’re already here – well, sort of. Pebble has announced two new watches for preorder, the Core 2 Duo and the Core Time 2. The former is effectively a Pebble 2, upgraded with new internals, while the Core Time 2 is very similar, but comes with a colour e-ink display and a metal case. Th … ⌘ Read more

Chapter 2:
Chapter 4: Chapter 5:

ah crap. chapters 2, 4 and 5 are being cropped by yarn on upload. they should be more like 2-3 hours long

Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:

if you want a different voice let me know which to use: https://rhasspy.github.io/piper-samples/

Archaeologists found Europe’s oldest human ancestor’s face fossil + 2 more stories
Syria signs temporary constitution for transition; archaeologists find oldest human fossil in Europe; Sudan faces world’s worst humanitarian crisis. ⌘ Read more

China launches Manus, world’s first autonomous AI agent + 2 more stories
China unveils Manus, a fully autonomous AI agent; China imposes 15% tariffs on key U.S. farm goods; Global warming raises space debris threats. ⌘ Read more

One of the biggest gripes of the community with the way the threading model currently works with Twtxt v1.2 (https://twtxt.dev) is this notion of:

What is this hash?
What does it refer to?

Idea: Why can’t we all agree to implement a simple URI scheme where we host our Twtxt feeds?

That is, if you host your feed at https://example.com/twtxt.txt – Why can’t or could you not also host various JSON files (let’s agree on the spec of course) at https://example.com/twt/<hash> ? 🤔

That way we solve this problem in a truly decentralised way, rather than every relying on yarnd pods alone.

Google, DuckDuckGo massively expand “AI” search results
Clearly, online search isn’t bad enough yet, so Google is intensifying its efforts to continue speedrunning the downfall of Google Search. They’ve announced they’re going to show even more “AI”-generated answers in Search results, to more people. Today, we’re sharing that we’ve launched Gemini 2.0 for AI Overviews in the U.S. to help with harder questions, starting with coding, advanced math and multimodal queries, with mor … ⌘ Read more