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In-reply-to » There are no really good GUI toolkits for Linux, are there?

FTR, I see one (two) issues with PyQt6, sadly:

  1. The PyQt6 docs appear to be mostly auto-generated from the C++ docs. And they contain many errors or broken examples (due to the auto-conversion). I found this relatively unpleasent to work with.
  2. (Until Python finally gets rid of the Global Interpreter Lock properly, it’s not really suited for GUI programs anyway – in my opinion. You can’t offload anything to a second thread, because the whole program is still single-threaded. This would have made my fractal rendering program impossible, for example.)

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For those curious, the new Twtxt <-> ActivityPub bridge I’m building (bidirectional) simply requires three things:

  1. You register your Twtxt feed to the bridge: https://bridge.twtxt.net
  2. You verify that you in fact own/control the feed by putting the verification code somewhere on/in your feed (doesn’t matter where or how)
  3. You proxy/forward requests for /.well-known/webfinger to the Bridge bridge.twtxt.net.

I’m still testing through and ironing out bugs 🐛 Please be patient! 🙏

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My goodness, a new level of stupidity.

The bots are now doing things like this:

GET http://uninformativ.de/projects/lariza/feednotify/datenstrahler/slinp/countty HTTP/1.1
  1. That URL does not exist.
  2. By including http://uninformativ.de in that request, this instructs the webserver to do an HTTP proxy request. Of course, this isn’t allowed on my webserver (and shouldn’t by allowed on any normal webserver), resulting in HTTP 400. And even if it were, the target would be the exact same server, making a proxy request unnecessary.

And of course, it’s not just 50 hits like this or 100 or 1’000 or 10’000. No, it’s over 150’000 in the last 2 days. All from vastly different IP ranges of different cloud hosters.

This almost looks like a DDoS attack, but it’s just completely stupid. This feels more like some idiot vibe coded a crawler.

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ProcessOne: On Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets

Image

Signal improved its protocol to prepare encrypted messaging for the quantum era.

They call the improvement “Triple Ratchet” (or SPQR = Signal Post-Quantum Ratchet).

[Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets\
\
We are excited to announce a significant advancement in the security … ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » @bender Thanks for this illustration, it completely “misunderstood” everything I wrote and confidently spat out garbage. 👌

@prologic@twtxt.net Let’s go through it one by one. Here’s a wall of text that took me over 1.5 hours to write.

The criticism of AI as untrustworthy is a problem of misapplication, not capability.

This section says AI should not be treated as an authority. This is actually just what I said, except the AI phrased/framed it like it was a counter-argument.

The AI also said that users must develop “AI literacy”, again phrasing/framing it like a counter-argument. Well, that is also just what I said. I said you should treat AI output like a random blog and you should verify the sources, yadda yadda. That is “AI literacy”, isn’t it?

My text went one step further, though: I said that when you take this requirement of “AI literacy” into account, you basically end up with a fancy search engine, with extra overhead that costs time. The AI missed/ignored this in its reply.

Okay, so, the AI also said that you should use AI tools just for drafting and brainstorming. Granted, a very rough draft of something will probably be doable. But then you have to diligently verify every little detail of this draft – okay, fine, a draft is a draft, it’s fine if it contains errors. The thing is, though, that you really must do this verification. And I claim that many people will not do it, because AI outputs look sooooo convincing, they don’t feel like a draft that needs editing.

Can you, as an expert, still use an AI draft as a basis/foundation? Yeah, probably. But here’s the kicker: You did not create that draft. You were not involved in the “thought process” behind it. When you, a human being, make a draft, you often think something like: “Okay, I want to draw a picture of a landscape and there’s going to be a little house, but for now, I’ll just put in a rough sketch of the house and add the details later.” You are aware of what you left out. When the AI did the draft, you are not aware of what’s missing – even more so when every AI output already looks like a final product. For me, personally, this makes it much harder and slower to verify such a draft, and I mentioned this in my text.

Skill Erosion vs. Skill Evolution

You, @prologic@twtxt.net, also mentioned this in your car tyre example.

In my text, I gave two analogies: The gym analogy and the Google Translate analogy. Your car tyre example falls in the same category, but Gemini’s calculator example is different (and, again, gaslight-y, see below).

What I meant in my text: A person wants to be a programmer. To me, a programmer is a person who writes code, understands code, maintains code, writes documentation, and so on. In your example, a person who changes a car tyre would be a mechanic. Now, if you use AI to write the code and documentation for you, are you still a programmer? If you have no understanding of said code, are you a programmer? A person who does not know how to change a car tyre, is that still a mechanic?

No, you’re something else. You should not be hired as a programmer or a mechanic.

Yes, that is “skill evolution” – which is pretty much my point! But the AI framed it like a counter-argument. It didn’t understand my text.

(But what if that’s our future? What if all programming will look like that in some years? I claim: It’s not possible. If you don’t know how to program, then you don’t know how to read/understand code written by an AI. You are something else, but you’re not a programmer. It might be valid to be something else – but that wasn’t my point, my point was that you’re not a bloody programmer.)

Gemini’s calculator example is garbage, I think. Crunching numbers and doing mathematics (i.e., “complex problem-solving”) are two different things. Just because you now have a calculator, doesn’t mean it’ll free you up to do mathematical proofs or whatever.

What would have worked is this: Let’s say you’re an accountant and you sum up spendings. Without a calculator, this takes a lot of time and is error prone. But when you have one, you can work faster. But once again, there’s a little gaslight-y detail: A calculator is correct. Yes, it could have “bugs” (hello Intel FDIV), but its design actually properly calculates numbers. AI, on the other hand, does not understand a thing (our current AI, that is), it’s just a statistical model. So, this modified example (“accountant with a calculator”) would actually have to be phrased like this: Suppose there’s an accountant and you give her a magic box that spits out the correct result in, what, I don’t know, 70-90% of the time. The accountant couldn’t rely on this box now, could she? She’d either have to double-check everything or accept possibly wrong results. And that is how I feel like when I work with AI tools.

Gemini has no idea that its calculator example doesn’t make sense. It just spits out some generic “argument” that it picked up on some website.

3. The Technical and Legal Perspective (Scraping and Copyright)

The AI makes two points here. The first one, I might actually agree with (“bad bot behavior is not the fault of AI itself”).

The second point is, once again, gaslighting, because it is phrased/framed like a counter-argument. It implies that I said something which I didn’t. Like the AI, I said that you would have to adjust the copyright law! At the same time, the AI answer didn’t even question whether it’s okay to break the current law or not. It just said “lol yeah, change the laws”. (I wonder in what way the laws would have to be changed in the AI’s “opinion”, because some of these changes could kill some business opportunities – or the laws would have to have special AI clauses that only benefit the AI techbros. But I digress, that wasn’t part of Gemini’s answer.)

tl;dr

Except for one point, I don’t accept any of Gemini’s “criticism”. It didn’t pick up on lots of details, ignored arguments, and I can just instinctively tell that this thing does not understand anything it wrote (which is correct, it’s just a statistical model).

And it framed everything like a counter-argument, while actually repeating what I said. That’s gaslighting: When Alice says “the sky is blue” and Bob replies with “why do you say the sky is purple?!”

But it sure looks convincing, doesn’t it?

Never again

This took so much of my time. I won’t do this again. 😂

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In-reply-to » @bender Thanks for this illustration, it completely “misunderstood” everything I wrote and confidently spat out garbage. 👌

@movq@www.uninformativ.de this I find more worrisome, and saw no mention of it on your text: Right-Wing Chatbots Turbocharge America’s Political and Cultural Wars (gift article).

Enoch, one of the newer chatbots powered by artificial intelligence, promises “to ‘mind wipe’ the pro-pharma bias” from its answers. Another, Arya, produces content based on instructions that tell it to be an “unapologetic right-wing nationalist Christian A.I. model.”

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In-reply-to » For the innocent bystanders (because I know that I won’t change @bender’s opinion):

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Gemini liked your opinion very much. Here is how it countered:

1. The User Perspective (Untrustworthiness)

The criticism of AI as untrustworthy is a problem of misapplication, not capability.

  • AI as a Force Multiplier: AI should be treated as a high-speed drafting and brainstorming tool, not an authority. For experts, it offers an immense speed gain, shifting the work from slow manual creation to fast critical editing and verification.
  • The Rise of AI Literacy: Users must develop a new skill—AI literacy—to critically evaluate and verify AI’s probabilistic output. This skill, along with improving citation features in AI tools, mitigates the “gaslighting” effect.
2. The Moral/Political Perspective (Skill Erosion)

The fear of skill loss is based on a misunderstanding of how technology changes the nature of work; it’s skill evolution, not erosion.

  • Shifting Focus to High-Level Skills: Just as the calculator shifted focus from manual math to complex problem-solving, AI shifts the focus from writing boilerplate code to architectural design and prompt engineering. It handles repetitive tasks, freeing humans for creative and complex challenges.
  • Accessibility and Empowerment: AI serves as a powerful democratizing tool, offering personalized tutoring and automation to people who lack deep expertise. While dependency is a risk, this accessibility empowers a wider segment of the population previously limited by skill barriers.
3. The Technical and Legal Perspective (Scraping and Copyright)

The legal and technical flaws are issues of governance and ethical practice, not reasons to reject the core technology.

  • Need for Better Bot Governance: Destructive scraping is a failure of ethical web behavior and can be solved with better bot identification, rate limits, and protocols (like enhanced robots.txt). The solution is to demand digital citizenship from AI companies, not to stop AI development.

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I’m building a service that lets you:

create and manage disposable, brandable email aliases so you can track leaks, forward important messages, and keep your real inbox clean.

I’ve just finishing building it for the most part, and have cut a v0.1.0 release. It’s currently closed source (to be decided later) and now open to beta testers. cc @bender@twtxt.net 🙏 I fully intend to monetize and offer this as a paid service in teh coming weeks/months, but beta/invite-only testers and early adopters/users first 🤟

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In-reply-to » @lyse They’re seriously telling us at work: “Can it be AI’d? Do it, don’t waste time!” Shit like that is the result. (What’s this weird gray triangle in the bottom right corner?)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de It’s way more expensive and time-consuming in the end. If only somebody had warned us!!1

The triangle reminds me of zalgo text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalgo_text

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In-reply-to » The most infuriating 3 seconds of using this Mac every day are the first time I run man and it calls home to see if I'm allowed to do that.

Because OP twtxt seems to be a cross-post from the Fediverse, I am bringing some context here. It refers to this GitHub issue. This comment explains why the issue described is happening:

This is usually due to notarization checks. E.g. the binaries are checked by the notarization service (‘XProtect’) which phones home to Apple. Depending on your network environment, this can take a long time. Once the executable has been run the results are usually cached, so any subsequent startup should be fast.

OP network must be running on 1,200 Baud modem, or less. 🤭 I have never, ever, experienced any distinguishable delays.

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Advent of Code will be different this year:

https://old.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1ocwh04/changes_to_advent_of_code_starting_this_december/

There will only be 12 puzzles, i.e. only December 1 to December 12. This might make it more interesting for some people, because it’s (probably) less work and a lower chance of people getting burned out. 🤔

Personally, I’ll probably stretch it out over 24 days. Giving myself more time to solve each puzzle and I really want this event to last the entire month. 😅

Maybe this makes it more interesting for some people around here as well?

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@movq@www.uninformativ.de streamlining jenny.vim?

index adc0db9..cb54abc 100644
--- a/vim/ftdetect/jenny.vim
+++ b/vim/ftdetect/jenny.vim
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 au BufNewFile,BufRead jenny-posting.eml setl completefunc=jenny#CompleteMentions fo-=t wrap
+au BufRead,BufNewFile jenny-posting.eml normal $

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Mathieu Pasquet: slixmpp v1.12
This version is out mostly to provide a stable version with compatibility with the newly released Python 3.14, there are nonetheless a few new things on top.

Thanks to all contributors for this release!

Fixes
  • Bug in MUC self-ping ( XEP-0410) that would create a traceback in some uses
  • Bug in SIMS ( XEP-0447) where all media would be marked as inline
  • Python 3.14 breakage
Features

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@madcap duas perguntas:

1 você anda vendo um aviso de “demasiados pedidos” ou algo assim? Tenho visto isso no cliente Moshidon. Uma amiga minha na instância pynews.com.br também teve esse problema um tempo atrás…

2 de tempos em tempos eu esqueço como põe na interface aquela opção de posts só para a nossa instância… como faz mesmo?

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Sam Whited: Coffeeneuring 2025
This year I haven’t blogged much at all, but it’s time for the 15th annual
Coffeeneuring and who-knows-how-many-annual Biketober challenges so here we go!
This post will be updated with each of my Coffeeneuring rides as the month goes
on, and may (or may not) contain a few fun C+1 rides that count towards
Biketober, but not for Coffeeneuring.
… ⌘ Read more

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Sam Whited: 2025-09-30 Trolley Barn Contra Post Mortem
The first time I DJed for a Contra Dance1 was at Inman Park’s
famous Trolley Barn.
At the time I was DJing in the way other social dances are normally DJed: I had
a laptop, I played a song, everyone danced.
No fancy mixing, or effects: the most technical thing I did was loop 32 bar
sections of music to stretch it out until the caller was ready to end the dance.

This time around, returning to … ⌘ Read more

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DebDroid - Debian on Android (v1.1)
Hello guys! I’m happy to share DebDroid, a free and open-source project that aims to bring a real Debian environment to Android devices. It is not Termux-based, nor a simple proot-based wrapper, but a real, near-native chroot environment running on top of the Android kernel.

The project is built around a heavily modified version of the Kali Nethunter’s script I’ve developed 3 years ago. This new version (DebDroid) brings greatly improved security, isolation and additional compatibility patch … ⌘ Read more

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DL40N Fanless 1.3L Mini PC with Intel Twin Lake Processors
The DL40N is a fanless 1.3-liter mini PC powered by Intel Twin Lake processors and up to 16GB DDR5 memory. It supports triple 4K display output, dual 2.5G Ethernet, and multiple USB and COM ports for reliable 24/7 operation in applications such as factory automation, digital signage, kiosks, and more. Built on Intel’s Twin Lake […] ⌘ Read more

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Virtium Embedded Artists Expands SoM Lineup with Renesas RZ/G3E Platform
Virtium Embedded Artists has introduced the RZ/G3E SoM, a system-on-module based on the Renesas RZ/G3E processor for industrial and medical human-machine interface applications. The module incorporates a quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor running at 1.8 GHz, paired with a Cortex-M33 core at 200 MHz for real-time control. Graphics capabilities include support for dual Full HD displays […] ⌘ Read more

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Deals: $200 Off M4 MacBook Air, AirPods from $89, & More
Amazon is cutting $200 off the price of all M4 MacBook Air models, starting at $799 for the 13″ Air, and $999 for the 15″ Air. 13″ M4 MacBook Air ($200 off) 13″ M4 MacBook Air 16GB / 256GB for $799 (MSRP: $999) 13″ M4 MacBook Air 16GB / 512GB for $999 (MSRP: $1,199) 13″ … Read More ⌘ Read more

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Ubuntu 25.10 released
Ubuntu\
25.10, “Questing Quokka”, has been released. This release includes
Linux 6.17, GNOME 49, GCC 15, Python 3.13.7,
Rust 1.85, and more. This release also features Rust-based
implementations of sudo and coreutils; LWN covered the switch to the
Rust-based tools in March. The 25.10 version of Ubuntu flavors
Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu
Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubun … ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » @lyse Great job!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org In my case it was a silver necklace, a hummingbird with a wing connected with the cold welding I mentioned using thin brass wires.

It made it in a goldsmithing class (I went to a private craftmanship high-school) so no phones allowed (no photos of it) and no “take home” of the works.

Here’s a rough sketch of it drawn by memory, the dots in the wing is where it connects to the body.

Image

The technique is basically the same as i described, but the scale is much smaller, the whole piece was about 5-6 cm on the largest side.

The rivet was made by drilling a hole through the parts, than with a short and thicker drill you widen the hole on the surface to let the rivet settle flatter on the piece, then with a rubber hammer you hit it to flatten the head until it’s snug on the hole, lock them together by doing the same on the other side.

Note that widening the hole with a thicker drill head won’t make a difference with bigger holes, mine had holes of about 1-2 mm of diameter maximum.

Here’s a sketch of what is going on for clarity.

Image

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[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 9, 2025
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:

  • Front: Kernel Rust features; systemd v258, part 2; Cauldron kernel hackers; BPF for GNU tools; 6.18 merge window, part 1; Lifetime-end pointer zapping; Robot Operating System.

  • Briefs: OpenSSH 10.1; Firefox profiles; Python 3.14; U-Boot v2025.10; FSF presidency; Quotes; …

  • Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security upda … ⌘ Read more

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Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (apptainer, civetweb, mod_http2, openssl, pandoc, and pandoc-cli), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, iputils, kernel, open-vm-tools, and podman), SUSE (cairo, firefox, ghostscript, gimp, gstreamer-plugins-rs, libxslt, logback, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, python-xmltodict, and rubygem-puma), and Ubuntu (gst-plugins-base1.0, linux-aws-6.8, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-nvidia, linux-gke, linux-nvidia-tegra- … ⌘ Read more

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Why outback life is the best thing for these kids with cystic fibrosis
Two mums in rural Queensland have spoken about why they choose to live more than 1,000 kilometres from the Queensland Children’s Hospital. ⌘ Read more

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Beamtengehälter steigen um 1,5 Prozent
Die Bundesregierung hat sich Montagabend mit der Gewerkschaft auf den Beamtengehaltsabschluss geeinigt. Man habe sich auf einen Dreijahresabschluss festgelegt, im Schnitt steigen die Gehälter um 1,5 Prozent. ⌘ Read more

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