Grape growers want to rezone land for housing to exit industry in crisis
The wine grape industry in South Australia’s Riverland continues to face unprecedented levels of uncertainty, as growers look to exit the industry and turn their land into residential housing. ⌘ Read more

There was an endless coming and going of sun, clouds and rain. Not to forget about the wind. I called it quits a bit earlier and went into the woods.

Towards the end I was completeley surrounded by rain curtains in all directions. This looked super cool. I thought I might make it home just in time without having to use my umbrella, but the rain clouds were way quicker than I anticipated. Just after the rain hit me, I met an acquaintance who just started his walk. The wind picked up hard and rain hammered down, mixed with snow. Holding the umbrella was a workout. Shortly after I returned, the rain stopped again.

I didn’t notice the kestrel sitting on the tree when I took the last photo. That was a nice surprise when I sorted through the nearly 300 pics.

https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2026-02-17/

Space startup firm claims it can convert water into usable rocket fuel
Turning water into fuel would be revolutionary and could make it possible to produce fuel on the Moon or Mars. On the face of it, turning water into r… ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de There are always some folks who would appreciate that. But I fear they are the minority. The rest just doesn’t give a shit.

The selfcontradiction is that those who proudly use and promote AI also claim to be sustainable and green and so on. I’ve no clue how this is not considered fraud, but there we are.

Ill-fated scientist tested ‘Havana Syndrome’ energy weapon on himself
A Norwegian researcher had set out to prove that directed-energy weapons could not have caused the condition. Back in January, we reported that the Pe… ⌘ Read more

‘Snowball Earth’ wasn’t entirely frozen over, new research finds
Millions of years ago, Earth went through an extended deep freeze that saw it covered in snow and ice. Chloe Griffin and Thomas Gernon: To an astronau… ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nice talk indeed.

Interesting to see that his ideal job ad talks more about the company than the required qualifications of the candidates. That alone is what 99% of companies get wrong. They just have a long list of “you must know these 500 things”, yeah, great, goodbye then. 🤷‍♀️

Just checked our job ads, some of them actually do list the salary. I’m surprised. 🤔

TIL: If you’re trans in Germany and you want to start hormone therapy, you still need to be officially declared “trans” first (Indikationsschreiben, page 18: https://www.transinterqueer.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Hormontherapie_DE_barrierearm.pdf) and then you can try to find an actual doctor to get the meds. All with super long waiting lists. This takes forever. 😩

Changing your legal name is surprisingly easy in comparison, at least since 2024: https://www.bmbfsfj.bund.de/bmbfsfj/aktuelles/alle-meldungen/anmeldung-zur-aenderung-des-geschlechtseintrages-jetzt-moeglich-243056 (From my perspective, that’s the less relevant part, though, because there’s a good chunk of people that you can just ask to call you differently (friends, cowokers, …) and then do that legal stuff later. But you want your body to change, like, now.)

Consciousness may be able to persist after death, new study claims
An Arizona State University researcher has compiled compelling evidence concerning death and consciousness. Exactly what happens to us when we die is… ⌘ Read more

** Snakes snakes snakes, a week note **
I’ve been working on an ill advised project. This project will have to be done in many parts. Part one of many is done, and I’m debating if I should share it, or if I should wait to get the whole thing done. But now, a smash cut…I started this post off as a normal post, but now that it is an RSS sickos only post…

Check this shit out! I recently read about the $1 unistroke recognizer, and predictably, had to try to [implement my … ⌘ Read more

WA hop growers gear up for harvest as craft beer tastes evolve
Local brewers are experimenting with new flavours, while some farms invest in US-made machinery to modernise and streamline the harvest process. ⌘ Read more

Musk outlines plan for lunar ‘mass driver’ and possibility of meeting aliens
Elon Musk recently outlined his latest optimistic vision of the future during a speech about xAI and SpaceX. It would be fair to say that Musk has mad… ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net he didn’t. The embedded video show the speaker he was referencing to, on the German video.

@prologic@twtxt.net Sorry if I raised the wrong hope. Only the German talk is about the “why good people don’t want to work at your company” subject. Among the key points are the absolutely terrible job adverts, team leads not themselves looking for people to hire but letting other dudes do that, company cultures and communication.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I just watched this. And whilst it’s very good and insightful, good history of MySQL and how Martin helped built a good solid Open Source + Commercial model, I’m not seeing the “why people don’t wanna work at your company” bit? What am I missing? 🤔 In any case, he does talk to great length on the importance of Culture and the insane notion of “centrlaised office working”, which I 100% agree with.

Flower industry fights for clearer labelling amid $220m Valentine’s spend
Millions of red roses will fly off shelves at florists this weekend, but the flower industry says there is not much to tell customers where the flowers are from. ⌘ Read more

Fancy a 15% discount on my #Domestika #Python + #CreativeCoding course?

A_B_A_VILLARES-2026
Valid up to March 13th

https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/4307-designing-with-python-programming-for-a-visual-context/a_b_a_villares

(Beware Domestika also uses dark patterns like a very low priced offering that will trigger a “yearly subscription” after a month if you don’t read the small print and cancel… not nice)

New Wine making facility opened in Northern Tasmania
A shortage of contract wine making facilities has led to a new venture in the states north, opening just in time for vintage. ⌘ Read more

When I have no choice but to work with an old poorly formatted JSON file ⌘ Read more

Cheers to all #Python #CreativeCoding people here using #Linux…

Would you like to test a script by our friend and co-maintainer of thonny-py5mode GoToLoop that installs #ThonnyIDE and #py5 on your machine to see how it goes and help improve it?

https://Gist.GitHubUserContent.com/GoToLoop/246a31d437aaa8c6eadb7f7186544e0f/raw/thonny-installer.bash

I wonder if it would be bad form to ask students to run something like this:

curl -fsSL https://Gist.GitHubUserContent.com/GoToLoop/246a31d437aaa8c6eadb7f7186544e0f/raw/thonny-installer.bash -o thonny-installer.bash && chmod +x thonny-installer.bash && ./thonny-installer.bash

(because, you know, it trains them to run potentially dangerous stuff in other occasions)

When I have to take over CSS filled with !important ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I also had to laugh. :-D And that’s what crossed my mind for a splitsecond, too. Two decades ago or so, that would have worked. But these days are long over. Wasn’t it even an INI file or something like that?

We just wanted to play one or the other quick round of Rummikub after quitting time and suddenly it’s now three hours later. :-)

What really happened to NASA’s original Moon landing tapes ?
Tape recordings made during the Apollo program were reportedly wiped due to a tape shortage… or were they ? You would think that something of such m… ⌘ Read more

Okay, so the funniest thing that has happened at work in the realm of AI so far is this:

So this guy (that holds a certain position of power) wants people to use more AI, meaning people are expected to install a set of AI tools on their laptops. But, of course, he doesn’t want to write proper documentation for this, because that would be silly monkey work, right? So he conjures up some AI prompts that are intended to make the AI agent install all this stuff by itself.

Do you see where this is going? Can you see the punchline?

That’s right! Since none of this AI stuff is deterministic, every setup is different. 🤦‍♀️ Like, 10, 20 systems, all set up a little different and people wonder why this or that doesn’t work as expected.

Okay, it’s not funny.

Image

Well it’s ~2am and I finally defeated the AI player in a game of Frontier Crown 👑 – On that note I’m now going to bed, I’ve made so many improvements to the aesthetics (UX) of the game, the mechanics, and it’s now quite nicely playable 👌 G’night! 😴

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org … at least this story was entertaining to read. 😅 If only Firefox’s storage format wasn’t so convoluted, you could have just shut it down and removed all the unwanted tabs. 🫤

When I have to deal with multiple time zones ⌘ Read more

Scientist develops drinkable vaccine in the form of a glass of beer
Imagine if instead of getting an injection, you could take a vaccine simply by downing an alcoholic drink. Those adverse to the thought of needles mig… ⌘ Read more

When I have to merge a branch full of conflicts ⌘ Read more

Mystery as 6 people are found dead in the mountains of Bulgaria
Two baffling triple deaths in a remote part of the country have left investigators scratching their heads. According to reports, the strangeness began… ⌘ Read more

Fuck me dead! I accidentally confused an HTML file for a YAML file and manually opened it in my browser. Unfortunately, I clicked on the OK button of the popped up dialog a bit too fast, it just caught me off guard. It asked which program to open the YAML file in. Of course Firefox thought that it could handle that and suggested itself by default. Conveniently, the “don’t prompt me again and always use this selection from now on” checkbox was enabled.

And then the endless loop of death started. Turns out, this fucking browser can’t do shit with YAML files and delegated to what had been just configured. Oh, would you look at that!? Firefox! Empty tabs after empty tabs appeared. Killing and restarting Firefox just loaded the last session with all the tabs and the loop continued.

Some bloody snakeoil on my work machine slows down link openening requests by two, three seconds. It’s always absolutely anoying, but luckily, it actually limited the rate of new tabs popping up. I still could not close the many tabs fast enough that had accumulated before I noticed what was going on in the background.

Going to the settings to change them was always interrupted with a new tab opening in the foreground.

Finally, killing Firefox and renaming the file on disk before restarting Firefox did the trick and broke the loop. I was still holding down Ctrl+W for a minute or so to get rid of the useless tabs. I didn’t want to loose the important tabs, so just ditching the session wasn’t an option.

So I decided that after having two of my three MiniDisc recorders fail on my over the weekend, to prepare myself to say goodbye of most of the discs… and invest in a DAP. More to come on this soon for sure.

Mars organics point at presence of possible biological processes
According to new research, organics found on Mars cannot be explained by any known geological process. The search for life on Mars - and in particular… ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I will give it a try when it works flawlessly. ☺️ Then I will need people to interact with, otherwise it’s a “mute” case. 🤭

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Ah, great!

I have to analyze what is taking yt-dlp so long start up. Two and a half, three seconds just to determine that a video is in the download archive and then abort is nuts. I’m wondering what this program does before that.

When I switch from Python to JavaScript and forget semicolons ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Whwn do i see you start to use Salty IM more? 😅

UFO disclosure advocate granted access to secretive US bases
President Trump has reportedly given permission for US Congressman Eric Burlison to access the facilities. Burlison, who has long called for more tran… ⌘ Read more

Is it really possible to deflect an asteroid using nuclear weapons ?
Scientists have used a new computer simulation to find out if nuking an asteroid could actually save us from catastrophe. Nuclear weapons have the pot… ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

I can’t remember if the hex viewer back then had these options. Don’t even recall what software that was. :-)

The one that I used during my Windows 95 days was “Hex Workshop”. It had similar features, just not as promimently displayed. It shows them down there in the statusline as “Value”:

Image

Newer versions can probably do more, haven’t checked. 😅 (Assuming this program still exists.)

Apart from selecting text to copy into the clipboard. But that probably has the potential for trouble and interference with button clicks, etc.

Yeah, that’s a big problem: Once you activate mouse mode in the terminal, the terminal loses the ability to select text. 😞 You’d either have to emulate that in the program itself (like Vim does) or give the user an easy way to turn mouse support on/off during runtime.

How did the startup times develop?

They’re pretty stable at around 230 ms on my old NUC. It’s just fast enough so that it doesn’t annoy me.

Some pretty pics to illustrate the much improved reference Salty.im client, salty-chat.

** Constraint propagation for fun **
I’ve been playing the very good Squeakross this weekend. It is adorable and the aesthetics are absolutely immaculate, but I’ve found the actual picross puzzles to be a point of frustrating friction in the game when compared to the picross-style puzzles in my bicross game.

Picross puzzles, aka nonograms, can relatively easily have ambiguous solutions. Because the hints only tell you how many co … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org some people just own enough to fit in a backpack. 💭

@dce@hashnix.club Wow! Moving without a vehicle, that seems impressive to me. Was it just down the street or how did you accomplish this? I hope you didn’t loose all your belongings due to a fire or similar catastrophe.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Nice, it’s coming together! Despite it being ages ago that I used a hex editor or viewer, these different representations of information appear very handy to me. If I had to mess around on binary formats, I’d definitely appreciate them. I can’t remember if the hex viewer back then had these options. Don’t even recall what software that was. :-)

I, too, only very, very rarely use the mouse in the terminal. Apart from selecting text to copy into the clipboard. But that probably has the potential for trouble and interference with button clicks, etc. If one isn’t careful.

How did the startup times develop?

Chaos as AI sends tourists to attraction that doesn’t actually exist
A travel booking website ended up in a pickle recently when one of its articles sent people to a non-existent attraction. According to reports, an Aus… ⌘ Read more

#py5 #Processing #Python #CreativeCoding

Image

Hmmm, that’s a pity. I never realized that before. The following Go code

var b bool
…
b |= otherBool

results in a compilation error:

invalid operation: operator | not defined on b (variable of type bool)

I cannot use || for assignments as in ||= according to https://go.dev/ref/spec#Assignment_statements. Instead, I have to write b = b || otherBool like a barbarian. Oh well, probably doesn’t happen all that often, given that I only now run into this after all those many years.

I’m inclined to remove all mouse support, except for moving windows. 🤔 I originally wanted this to emulate the behavior of DOS programs, but a) mouse support is a lot of code, b) using the mouse is cumbersome anyway and I would rarely do it.

Does ‘de-extinction’ make people more comfortable with extinction ?
If science can simply resurrect an extinct species, will humanity be more inclined to allow more species to go extinct ? Christopher Lean, Andrew Jame… ⌘ Read more

What’s going on here?

https://imgur.com/gallery/dude-back-trying-to-keep-together-ilY5Ltu

Is that real? Did I just watch a politician genuinely chuckle? That’s unheard of. Is that even legal?

OpenAI when someone pushes their API credentials to a public repo ⌘ Read more

It was so great going to the sauna again, we were looking forward to that the whole week. :-) It’s been over a year, holy cow, time flies. We definitely have to pick up on that tradition again, that’s for sure.

We attended two Aufguss sessions, the first and last one in our four hour visit. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the other two, because the crazy people already occupied the entire sauna 15 minutes before the start. Yeah, no.

Now, the bellies are stuffed with kebabs. Yum! Let’s see how often I wake up tonight to rehydrate.

Also transfering interesting radio recordings I found on the used MiniDiscs to FLAC.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de You’re right, that’s neat. I also saw Pask’s take on that which he referenced. I don’t know if I will ever attempt anything like that. Can’t imagine to succeed in that mission.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I see. Yeah, if you gotta have to tediously plow through, it feels deeper. And sometimes it actually is.

We had super thick fog this morning. It rolled in extremely quickly, maybe 15 minutes at most. Visibility was below 50 meters. Looked cool from inside.

New leaked US military footage shows fast-moving UFO over Syria
The intriguing new footage was recently revealed by investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp. According to Corbell, the clip - which … ⌘ Read more

Next-gen ‘magnetoplasma’ rocket could get humans to Mars in 30 days
The development of a whole new type of rocket engine could help to open up the solar system for exploration. Boasting greater efficiency and speed tha… ⌘ Read more

Also the short documentary ‘John Was Trying to Contact Aliens’ was really heartfelt and great. Didn’t know the story of John Shepherd yet. Discovered some great music thanks to this short film. Inkl. Harmonia

Recording audio to MiniDiscs like it’s 2001.

When I manage to reproduce the bug that was reported to me ⌘ Read more

NT avocado farm getting closer to reality
A Top End horticulturalist is working on tropical variates of avocado and has agreed to supply a grower with hundreds of trees. ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Found some numbers now, they’re saying it was around 10cm in 3-4 hours. I don’t know, felt like more. 😂 The forecast wasn’t really good either, now that I think about it. They said there’s going to be some snow, okay, fine, but then, boom.

Haha, that old ad is lovely. Those days are over. 🤣

Haven’t watched it to the end yet, but @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org might like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EarBm4tfMXs

TIL that #Processing 4 on Windows now has an installer!

I is not just a zipped folder anymore, I wonder if it will make it harder for people to use it on restricted school labs…

TIL that #Processing4 on Windows now has an installer!

https://processing.org/download

I is not just a zipped folder anymore, I wonder if it will make it harder for people to use it on restricted school labs…

#Processing #CreativeCoding

TIL that #Processing4 on Windows now has an installer!

https://processing.org/download

It is not just a zipped folder anymore, I wonder if it will make it harder for people to use it on restricted school labs…

#Processing #CreativeCoding

When I have to debug code with zero comments written by someone who already left the company ⌘ Read more

** Bicross **
I made a game. I’ve written about it in passing a few times, but here is an honest to goodness intro to it!

Bicross is 3 versions of the same basic game,

• Bicross, is a zen-mode version of the game.
  
• Bicross RPG, is an RPG version of the game where you can earn power ups, and build up hearts and stuff.
  
• Bicross Daily, is very similar to the RPG version, but everyone who plays on a given … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh, so just half a millimeter then! :-D That’s plenty these days for everything to shut down, I’m afraid. If only the same élan was still in action as back then:

Image

And here I am watching Mattias Björnström’s gas pedal freezing at full throttle around -40°C. Well, falls apart and gets stuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLgmV15XeSY

I’m not an expert on this subject at all, but I reckon an automatic in addition with all its sensors is much worse than a manual one. All wheel drive, studded tires and diff locked is what one wants in icy situations. :-D

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I don’t know a number (wait, why can’t I google a Wetterbericht but only a Wettervorhersage?!), but it was enough for public transportation to shut down. 😅 I think I saw around five trucks on the side of the road who couldn’t continue, too icy. Some cars stranded.

My car has an automatic gearbox and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad in such conditions. 😂 Pretty hard to accelerate without spinning wheels …

Would you drink wine from a bottle made from seaweed instead of glass?
The federal government provides $2 million towards developing low-emissions alternatives to glass wine bottles using materials like seaweed and plant sugar. ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net (While browsing through that, I noticed that https://mu-lang.dev/ itself doesn’t really mention the source code repo, does it? 🤔 Like, the quickstart guide begins with “Build the host: go build ./cmd/mu”, but where’s the git clone … command? 😅)

I’m not really sure what the goal is. 🤔 Do you want to get pull requests for the docs? Or bug reports for mu itself? 🤔

Well that was a lot of snow. Barely made it home. (Because, of course, today was the day where I went to the office. 🤣)

Trying an experiment. Created a Github repo for mu over at https://github.com/prologic/mu as a social experiment to see if we can maintain a tailored Github docs-only repo of a project, see if it gets any interest 🤔

NASA provides major update on Artemis II manned Moon mission
The launch of the Space Launch System (SLS) had been tentatively scheduled for as soon as next week. Those hoping to see the first crew fly around the… ⌘ Read more

I built Audiofern to make it simple to turn PDFs into audiobooks. Upload a document, get clean, chapterized narration with natural voices, and share it via a hosted player—or download M4A/M4B and keep it forever. Files are private by default, and pricing is transparent: pay once by audio hour or subscribe to build a listening library.

https://audiofern.com

#audiobooks #accessibility #builders

SpaceX proposes orbital data center made up of 1 million satellites
Elon Musk’s space firm is seeking regularity approval to develop a satellite constellation of unprecedented scale. If you thought the current array of… ⌘ Read more

Trump rumored to be making alien disclosure speech on July 8th
Whispers of a disclosure speech on the anniversary of the Roswell incident have been doing the rounds online. According to reports, the rumor comes co… ⌘ Read more

When I have to explain for the umpteenth time why we can’t “just add a button” ⌘ Read more

Out-of-control Chinese rocket almost causes UK national emergency
A rocket that had been plummeting to Earth had a chance of falling on the UK and Northern Europe this week. According to reports, the UK government ha… ⌘ Read more

Row in Australia as teachers told to tell kids about dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark
Concerns have been raised in Queensland over instructions to teach Christian school children to doubt science. The teaching of Creationism in schools … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Man I listened to aht first one, what good shit™ 💩 Haha 🤣 Loved it! 😍

Some people are literally allergic to the cold… and it can prove deadly
For an unfortunate few, being cold isn’t simply uncomfortable, it can be a matter of life or death. Adam Taylor: For most people, cold weather is an i… ⌘ Read more

Planet ‘remarkably similar to Earth’ found 146 light-years away
Another potentially habitable world has been discovered thanks to data collected by the Kepler Space Telescope. The discovery of extraterrestrial life… ⌘ Read more

Growers turn to netting to save crops from heatwave sunburn
Sales of netting to protect fruit crops from extreme weather have increased in the past five years as researchers warn heatwaves will continue to impact agriculture. ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I don’t have any statistics, just observe what is around me, so it’s very subjective. I know a bunch of kids with names I’ve never heard before. Sometimes, I first thought other kids were making fun of their friends by calling them by made-up nonsense. But no. Without question, I live under a rock. I just looked up some of them that came to mind immediately and they seem to be of Greek, Swedish and Latin origin, etc.

Aww man, I need to pick up learning Finnish again. I just love the sound of that language.

Surprisingly, I still understand quite a bit of what she’s saying here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfnt5-7QBvQ

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

I reckon up until then you had to have another first name that clearly differentiated.

Yes, apparently so. (I’m glad we stopped doing that. I don’t get this obsession with the contents of other people’s pants. 🤢)

Now I’m wondering, was that also the beginning when parents started giving their kids really weird names?

Did this ever happen or was this an urban myth? Would have to dig up some statistics, I guess. (Anecdotal evidence: None of the people I know gave their kids crazy names. 😆)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I reckon up until then you had to have another first name that clearly differentiated. Didn’t read through the court decision, though.

Interesting, I always thought that Kiran was a male first name. But I only know one person with that name. As last name, though.

Now I’m wondering, was that also the beginning when parents started giving their kids really weird names?

NASA’s Juno probe has measured the thickness of Europa’s icy crust
The icy Jovian moon has long been a place of interest for scientists due to its subterranean ocean of liquid water. When it comes to finding places wi… ⌘ Read more

When I finally understand what a library function does thanks to my pair ⌘ Read more

When the director walks past me and I pretend to be thinking very seriously ⌘ Read more

Are Australians ready for genetically modified tomatoes? The proof will be in the eating
The purple tomato was altered to make it taste better and boost nutrition. ⌘ Read more

Fell into a bit of a rabbit hole and learned that it took German law until 2008 to actually allow unisex/gender-neutral first names: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rk20081205_1bvr057607.html 🤦

I wonder if my elderly German neighbors have learned enough English by now to understand what I’m swearing about all day long. 🤔

@prologic@twtxt.net cool! Will test later today. I recommend to keep up with the changes, and make them non-technical user “friendly”.

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Nope, not IONOS, but we use them a lot at work. To be honest, I consider them one of the better providers (at least regarding the IaaS stuff that we do). 😅

When the sales rep suddenly comes to grab us for a client meeting ⌘ Read more