Hey, thanks for reading my bio. You know, you’re pretty cool. I’m glad we got to share this moment together.

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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: February 15th, 2024

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  • As much as I like DJI products and FPV drones in general, I can kinda see where the DoD is coming from on this one. DJI drones are particularly capable (which is part of what makes them so awesome) to the point where some are capable of being semi, if not entirely, autonomous.

    Their software is entirely closed source, and thanks to the FAAs own ruling, they are now all equipped with SIM cards and internet access. There’s absolutely a threat model to consider there.

    But banning them is the wrong approach. We can’t keep banning good tech just because we’re scared of it. There are entire domestic industries that benefit from DJI tech, and several that exist almost entirely because of it. The best approach would be to incentivize local competition. But since that takes a while… Why not just write custom firmware? We can’t best China in their manufacturing ability, but we’ve got tons of software talent. Write custom firmware, open source it, all domestic products get flashed before flying. Defence keeps a tighter leash on their airspace, and industry keeps their cheap drones. Win-win.






  • No matter how you look at it, Wikipedia is one of the modern wonders of the world; those who maintain and defend it are doing holy work. The availability of free, high quality, publically indexed and equitably accessible information about our modern world is such an under-appreciated gift.

    Education is a powerful tool, but when most people hear “knowledge is power” they think of personal success or political might. But its true power is on an evolutionary scale.

    No other species in the history of our (known) universe has the capability to study the world, and then share those the conclusions to the next generation with high precision, like we do. It’s absolutely fascinating. It’s what sets us apart from the rest. It defines the human experience.

    The reality is that the integrity of this mechanism (or rather, the democratization of said mechanism) is under threat. It always has been, but the nature of the threat has changed, and its scary. I’m glad it is being protected, at least for now.




  • This is so stupid. God forbid they actually police their ads for malware. No, instead let’s push the responsibility onto the individual, by adding get another “Papers, Please”-esque stamp that very few people will know about and even less will actually use.

    Hard pass. The day I saw them promoting malware above legitimate search results is the day I turned on ad blocking for my entire org, and a stupid little pay-to-verify badge isn’t going to change that.

    /end rant




  • This is a fantastic read. I wasnt around for the prime days of forums but I did experience them a bit.

    I’m becoming extremely concerned about the number of topics and projects that are migrating to Discord. My main issue is that it is not and never will be publically indexed, and among other problems, is itself a corporate walled garden we consider to be “one of the good ones”.

    I really hope we find and establish a “low executive cost” solution before the next time Discord fumbles (which is inevitable) and we can claw some of that activity back.

    But people are so used to seamless voice and video chat nowadays - and that’s a technical hurdle that AFAIK, no open-source self-hostable projects have come close to solving.




  • Everyone blames food/diet/portions for this, but personally I think the car-centric culture should also bear a large portion of the blame.

    When I stayed with friends in Europe, they easily ate as much as my American friends, but everywhere we went we were either walking or biking.

    Meanwhile, in the VAST majority of the US, if you so much as want a safe place to walk that isn’t adjacent to the pervasive pedestrian-hostile street design, you need to take a car to get there.

    American car culture essentially turns the average routine into ferrying oneself from chair to desk to chair to bed, intermixed with brief walks throgh scenic parking lots.

    We need to counter the sedentary lifestyle within the design of our actual cities, but its the american way to push societal problems onto the responsibility of the individual… so I do not see this changing within our lifetimes.