When I keep chaining fixes to solve the same bug ⌘ Read more

Discovery on beach reveals that orcas may be eating each other
A disturbing find on a beach in Russia has raised the possibility that orcas may be resorting to cannibalism. When Sergey Fomin, a researcher at the P… ⌘ Read more

When I go back to a project I haven’t touched since last year ⌘ Read more

When the app behavior is weird but it does what it’s supposed to do ⌘ Read more

When I tell the boss I’d need a bit more time to “optimize” my code ⌘ Read more

World’s biggest astronomy camera begins to reveal its discoveries
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will catalog millions of supernovae and asteroids as well as billions of stars. Joshua Weston: The Vera C. Rubin Observa… ⌘ Read more

Fresh calls for release of UK’s files on Rendlesham Forest UFO incident
There are still many unreleased documents pertaining to the UK’s most hotly debated and enduring UFO case. Often referred to as “Britain’s Roswell”, t… ⌘ Read more

Coastal growers take on Sturt’s desert pea as demand for natives soars
Sturt’s desert pea may be native to dry, arid conditions but that hasn’t stopped growers on the NSW coast from giving it a crack as demand grows for unique Australian flowers. ⌘ Read more

Scientists launch ‘Humanity’s Last Exam’ to test the intelligence of AI
The complex and extensive test is designed to measure how close AI is to exceeding human-level intelligence. All the way back in 1950, mathematician a… ⌘ Read more

UFO spotters once thwarted a secret Soviet nuclear program
During the Cold War, a spate of mysterious sightings ended up exposing a plot to hide nukes from the US. Back in 1967, eagle-eyed skywatchers in the w… ⌘ Read more

When I list the technologies we use on our new project to the marketing manager ⌘ Read more

When the client asks me for the 6th time to change the text on their homepage ⌘ Read more

Nevada ‘triangle’ on Google Earth sparks rumors and conspiracies
Eagle-eyed anomaly hunters have discovered a strange triangular feature situated in the middle of nowhere. Google Earth can be a great way to plan out… ⌘ Read more

The UK’s first geothermal power plant has begun producing electricity
The facility, which is located in Cornwall, utilizes wells that have been drilled down to a depth of three miles. Mark Ireland: More than half of the … ⌘ Read more

Svalbard’s ‘Doomsday Vault’ still going strong with 7,800 new additions
The iconic seed depository continues to provide a hedge against an apocalyptic doomsday scenario. Built in 2008 around 810 miles from the North Pole, … ⌘ Read more

When I hear the lead dev say they’re going to run a git blame ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net well, it isn’t rocket science, is it? 😅 Yet, without using the hashes and starting to follow people, it is very, very rudimentary. I know, I know, there were a couple of years during which people lived just fine without those. Yet, once you get used to certain things, there is no going back.

PEP 827: Type Manipulation
We propose to add powerful type-level introspection and construction facilities to the type system, inspired in large part by TypeScript’s conditional and mapped types, but adapted to the quite different conditions of Python typing. ⌘ Read more

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me You need to use the RFC3339 format. I would recommend you read the specs at https://twtxt.dev – This is what is used by many moden clients these days 😅

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me But I am gad you at least have figured out how to have a feed description and avatar, that’s always nice 👍

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me You also minimally need to be calculate message hases at some point, if you want to form threads that is (copying existing ones is easy) 😅

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me writing it by hand is good, but without checking your server logs to see if someone is following your feed, and interacting with them, you are simply tossing bottles into the sea. That, of course, isn’t a bad thing per se, if it is the intent. :-)

Animals perceive time at different rates, new study claims
Different species perceive time differently to us - and each other - depending on the pace of their life. Kevin Healy: As you read this, the screen is… ⌘ Read more

When I’m asked for my opinion in a meeting even though I haven’t listened to anything for over half an hour ⌘ Read more

SPC scales back plans for Shepparton juice production move
SPC Global is moving juice production away from Melbourne in a bid to save $8 million a year. ⌘ Read more

National vineyard register welcomed by struggling wine industry
Grape growers have endured a tough few years and there are hopes that a national database will help to improve the industry’s fortunes. ⌘ Read more

Ancient Martian organisms may be trapped in ice, study finds
Evidence of ancient life on Mars might be found in a place where NASA’s rovers have yet to explore. For many years now, exploratory rovers such as Per… ⌘ Read more

When the intern messages me during my vacation to say they pushed something to prod ⌘ Read more

‘X-Files’ reboot is still in the works, new female lead is cast
The return of the iconic 90s TV series will feature two new leads and looks set to carry on where the old show left off. When The X-Files debuted back… ⌘ Read more

When I’m working remotely and get back to my computer after a short nap ⌘ Read more

Declassified files detail CIA’s little known behavioral control program
During the 1950s, the CIA had been working on a program designed to find ways to manipulate people’s behavior. Known as Project Artichoke, the endeavo… ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net I am trying to read our Information Security Office “mind” to grasp what they want. So far they seem to want to get logs from our BIG-IP F5 load balancers into Azure Sentinel, but the Telemetry Streaming plugin normally used for it is on maintenance mode, with deprecations happening on the F5 and Microsoft side soonish. So, yeah… “fun”. Oh, and they want it on production by tomorrow. LOLz!

@prologic@twtxt.net so…

An isomorphic TypeScript library is a codebase, written in TypeScript, that can run in multiple JavaScript environments, most commonly both the web browser (client-side) and a server (like Node.js). The core idea is to share the exact same code across the frontend and backend, avoiding duplication and improving efficiency.

When the boss comes to my desk after a prod incident ⌘ Read more

When I have to debug minified JS ⌘ Read more

Trump orders release of the US government’s files on UFOs
In a surprising move, President Trump has suddenly decided to release previously classified UFO documents. Trump seems to have become rather enamored … ⌘ Read more

Britain warned to brace for peculiar downpours of ‘blood rain’
An intriguing atmospheric phenomenon could give rise to strangely colored rainstorms in the near future. With some parts of the UK having been subject… ⌘ Read more

When the sales rep comes to see me after their week of client meetings ⌘ Read more

Scientists propose audacious mission to catch up to 3I/ATLAS
It may still be possible to intercept the enigmatic interstellar visitor… but it might take a while. One of last year’s biggest ongoing stories on t… ⌘ Read more

Entire swarm of black holes discovered moving through our galaxy
A cluster of 100 stellar mass black holes is thought to be making its way through the Milky Way. As if one black hole wasn’t enough of a concern - ima… ⌘ Read more

👋 Looking for other interested folks to continue to evolve the development of Salty.im 🙏 I’ve been hard™ at work on the v2 branch and @doesnm.p.psf.lt@doesnm.p.psf.lt has been incredibly helpful so far. Be great ot have a few more folks to join us, some of the v2 highlights include:

• Double Ratchet by default.
  
• Group Chat (sender/client fan-out for now)
  
• Much better TUI with background agent.
  
• Mobile App coming soon™ (iOS in progress, Android next, same codebase)

@bender@twtxt.net Sweet! So glad that Twtxt still lives, and that everyone’s been keeping busy. My main computer is broken, It’ll take me some time to setup jenny on the R-pi and try to catch-up.

Have a blessed week-end everyone!

Growers warn ‘watered down’ lavender oil widespread in surging imports
Despite an Australian lavender industry dating back to the 1850s, you’re more than likely using an imported and “watered-down” product, local growers say. ⌘ Read more

‘Scarecrow of the sky’ in full flight to protect Australian fruit and almond crops
A new falcon drone wards off peckish birds that have been destroying valuable fruit crops. ⌘ Read more

Quantum operations in the brain may give rise to consciousness, study finds
New research into the mechanics of consciousness have revealed fascinating new insights into how it might arise. The study, which was carried out at W… ⌘ Read more

When a former coworker reaches out to ask me very specific questions about one of my old projects ⌘ Read more

Long-lost Soviet Moon lander rediscovered more than 60 years on
Scientists have identified what they believe to be the landing site of the short-lived Soviet spacecraft. Back in the 1960s, before Apollo 11 saw huma… ⌘ Read more

When I read the summary of all the features I have to deliver next week ⌘ Read more

When someone comes to ask me a question while I’m deep into debugging ⌘ Read more

Oh, and @thecanine@twtxt.net has new pixel drawings! If there is something you can say about them is that they stay faithful to their pixelated, digital companion. They have a good friendship!

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com hey, hey! I saw you tinkering with ActivityPub, so I know you were well.

Glad to have you back here! No much has happened on twtxt.net-world. @prologic@twtxt.net is quite busy with large language models, and seeking further independence through capitalistic ways. @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org continues dazzling us with his clicks, @movq@www.uninformativ.de brings us interesting music, videos to see, and a sprinkle of home made computing here and there, and me… well, I continue bending (or trying to) things! 😂

Gift shop in west Victorian small town targeted in late night fire
The small west Victorian town of Dimboola is the latest regional centre to be affected by the state’s illicit cigarette trade and tobacco wars. ⌘ Read more

New study of historical letter unravels Shakespeare family mystery
New research has offered up a new interpretation of a letter found in the 18th century thought to be from Shakespeare’s father. There is perhaps no pl… ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Thanks. Unfortunately, the weather stations are quite far away.

I have to operate my own one. :-D

Today I have a day off but I’m adding this to the list of things I want to read:

Love, Learning, and Computing Education by Amy Ko

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3770762.3771760

#ComputingEducation

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Ah, oh, this page has historical data:

https://kachelmannwetter.com/de/messwerte/baden-wuerttemberg/temperatur/20260217-1400z.html

I would have been too lazy to take photos when my fingers were freezing off. 😅

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I’ve got the same problem that you had the other day: finding past temperature data. But yeah, it looked much warmer than it actually was. Maybe 5°C? Possibly less when I found myself in the snow- and rainstorm in the end.

With the wind, my fingers were frozen. I should have worn gloves. Without them, I could only put my hands in the pockets of my jacket. That didn’t help much, though, because I frequently stopped to take yet another photo, so they cooled off again right away. :-D

Balancing the big/long, closed umbrella under my arm while I had my hands burried was also a little tricky.

First world problems. :-)

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci coined the term “failscene”:

https://buc.ci/abucci/p/1771250567.039684

I wonder about using “failscene” to describe the current slate of AI tools and demos. In contrast with the demoscene, which is about getting very low powered computers to do cool things you wouldn’t expect them to be able to do, the failscene is about getting very high powered computers to fail at doing boring things we already know how to do without them. Plus you can stylize it fAIlscene if you’re inclined to.

I love it.

When I have to debug asynchronous code with nested callbacks ⌘ Read more

When we deploy fixes to prod without having tested them ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net doing great. It’s new year! Happy new Year of the Horse to you, and everyone!

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