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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Handing the Chagos islands to Mauritius means the sun will set on the British Empire (on the 21st of March 2025, when British Antarctic Territory passes equinox, assuming the treaty is signed by then): reddit.com/r/geography/comment…

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Well that's terrifying. Facebook has decided I'm the target market for COBOL courses.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


colonialism in scare quotes and calling protestors "tech bros" is an incredibly contemptuous way to describe a successful movement for independence. vanity TLDs associated with country codes are one of my least favorite fashion statements mendeddrum.org/@fanf/113244393…


domainincite.com/30395-future-… — Future of .io domains uncertain as UK hands over Chagos islands

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.io domains might be destined to be toast, but .ai (Anguilla) is probably safe, judging by this frankly bizarre story. thenational.scot/news/17509999…

Ben Evans reshared this.



An interesting question arising from today’s deal to hand the Chagos islands back to Mauritius is: what happens to the .io ccTLD with the dissolution of the British Indian Ocean Territory? Presumably it passes to Mauritius, but do they keep it or scrap it, or change how the registry works?
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

The only instance of an in-use ccTLD being withdrawn that I found in IANAs reports was .TP:

iana.org/reports/2015/tp-repor…

In that case, Portuguese Timor stopped existing in 2002, new registrations were stopped in 2005, and the domain was finally withdrawn in 2015.

in reply to Ben Harris

@Ben Harris Their current procedure seems to be documented at iana.org/help/cctld-retirement and is pretty clear cut that if BIOT dies so does .io “Any preferences to retain the domain, or otherwise delay transition to the maximum extent possible, will not be considered a factor in any analysis”

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Shout out to everyone on here who feels total dismay about the state of the world this morning. I can’t stand having to hear again and again that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “has our full support”. I hope one day the havoc that this stance alone has wreaked will be fully recognised.

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in reply to Pauline von Hellermann

It's all a colossal DARVO on the part of Israel and the tame media are regurgitating the propaganda.
PM Starmer says "We stand with Israel and we recognise her right to self-defence in the face of this aggression".
No, no we don't. The aggression has been disproportionately that of Israel and could be curtailed by cutting Israel's supply of arms and military support, not least that of the UK.

theguardian.com/world/2024/oct…



When politicians say they stand behind Israel's right to self-defence I wonder whether Lebanon or Gaza also have that right.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


"We've tried everything we can do to try to bring Peace to the Middle East, except stopping the supply of weapons....please dont be mean to us" -Western Governments

#Israel #Iran #Lebanon

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.



Netanyahu should be headed to Milosevic's old cell in the Hague.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


"Nasrallah was a combatant & a legitimate target. But the massive bombing of the densely populated Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut.. was a major war crime.

Those who argue otherwise must then explain why it would not be acceptable for Israel’s enemies to destroy IDF headquarters, which is situated in the middle of Tel Aviv near residences & popular attractions, and the surrounding area"
@MitchellPlitnick on the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah

#Israel #Hezbollah #Beirut
substack.com/profile/3514449-m…

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Someone mentioned Ikea which reminded me of a strange dream I had the other day. Sweden had changed their flag and anthem for some reason and there were riots about it. (Inexplicably riots you had to queue at the post office to enter)

Mike reshared this.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Who could possibly have forseen etc (this is the CUPS vuln guy) x.com/evilsocket/status/101609…

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in reply to Matthew Garrett

if you have a man in infosec who is giving out jobs for sexual favours, you don't have infosec. That individual would be so compromised on so many fronts.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Nerds! My friend James needs your help to rescue #Teletext data from lots of old #VHS tapes.

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/my-…

If you can assist - please contact him directly.

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From Ambrose Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary” of 1911:

Respirator, n. An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its passage to the lungs.

Plus ça change…



If you know French, I think it can help disambiguate some prepositions in Portuguese:

Por is par and para is pour.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


One of those days when you look at a newspaper and think “how much news have I missed?”.

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The railway south of Cambridge splits just south of the city, with one line heading to Liverpool Street and one, the faster shorter route, to Kings Cross or St Pancras. Ever since I learned the point where they split is called “Shepreth Branch Junction” I’ve taken delight in saying “we’re taking the Shepreth branch” as if this is some forgotten branch line bywater of the network rather than the main route to London. Conjuring the romantic from the mundane just from a bit of railway geekery. Adlestrop, or the slow train.

Shepreth itself is a bit of a bywater. Express trains, like this one, skip it and its neighbours Foxton and Meldreth, so if you want to partake of their delights — a safari park! A path through a field! Tech startups that couldn’t afford Cambridge! — you’ll need to take the actual slow train.



Oh, Google.

You wanted:

Commission Regulation (EU) No 330/2010 of 20 April 2010 on the application of Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

You got:

0.16417910447

Patrick Hadfield reshared this.



If I see some text I don’t immediately recognise as a word in English I’ll try reading it backwards to see if it makes more sense that way. Does anyone else do this?
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@pseudomonas

Yeah, that's definitely what you said, so I'm now a little confused about how I came to be confused.

Or at least surprised; I knew my working memory was totally borked, but I hadn't realised it was that bad.

Though I suppose, given the nature of the problem, maybe I HAD realised, but then forgot about it?

@Adam

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


And here's news of a huge treat for the 40th anniversary of Elite!

Ian Bell, co-author of the original Elite, has just released a bunch of never-seen-before original source discs for Elite on the Apple II, Commodore 64, NES, SNES (unfinished), Atari ST... and, amazingly, a prototype of Elite 2, which has never been released before.

Get stuck in on Ian's site: elitehomepage.org/fourty/index…

#retrocomputing #retrogaming #BBCMicro #C64 #NES #SNES #AtariST #Elite

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in reply to geolaw

@geolaw No, it is not open source. Ian Bell has released the source on his website, but there is no licence attached at all. It is still copyright code… but it is out there in the public domain, so who knows what that means!

It’s complicated, in other words.

This is how I interpret it: github.com/markmoxon/elite-sou…

in reply to geolaw

@geolaw Yup, exactly. I’ve no idea whose copyright it is, but it certainly isn’t mine, and it isn’t public domain either. I’m guessing it’s still the original authors’ copyright, but I don’t actually know…
in reply to geolaw

I guess it will be public domain 70 years after the death of the author

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


So there's the answer: the radios and batteries were discontinued in 2014, Hezbollah tried to keep using them, the batteries gradually died, so they began buying cheap third-party batteries made by someone unspecified … which gave the Israeli sigint people the perfect way to put bombs in them.

It's not just your electronics supply chain you need to secure; it's all the consumables.
mastodon.social/@thejapantimes…


Japanese firm Icom said Thursday that it was investigating after media reported that two-way radio devices bearing its logo exploded in Lebanon. japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/09/… #worldnews #middleeast #israel #lebanon #hezbollah

in reply to Colman Reilly

Better yet, the current draw is a side channel that could be detected by the battery. So arrange for it to blow when a particular audio signal is played on the speaker, which will be mirrored in the current draw.
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Nobilis Reed

@acb @m @GossiTheDog

There has GOT to be a way to do it.

Maybe break it up into parts...




Just realised that RADIUS is "more of a comment than a question" turned into protocol design.


Slightly embarrassing moment at work yesterday. There's been a bit of a bug going round various people in the office, so when a coworker walked in saying "ooh, I'm feeling a bit grotty today" I moved to jokingly make the sign of the cross to ward off the plague before stopping myself because I remembered he's Muslim.

I'm atheist, but societal Christian defaultism can always rear its head!


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


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Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Major Denis Bloodnok
I'm a little confused - how can the class 91 provide grunt when the OLE is not live?

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


discovered to my great dismay that in many serif typefaces the alignment of “f” and “y” together is in fact deeply unsatisfying
This entry was edited (7 months ago)

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


So I'm at LibDem Conference

There's been a tiny group of TERFs here, being horrid.

In response several hundred pro-trans rights LibDems made this happen:

#TransRights #LibDems

in reply to Alisdair Calder McGregor

I'm not *always* proud of my party (nor should you be, of course) but when I am, I really am. 🏳️‍⚧️

Unknown parent

@Sarah Brown @Miguel Arroz I have unexpectedly managed to sunburn my face on an overcast day in the UK in September. This is most unreasonable.
Unknown parent

@Sarah Brown @Miguel Arroz Also the wind was in our faces on Stanage which would have made it feel less sunny.


If @Vagina Museum had a cafe it would _obviously_ have to get baristas to draw vulvas in the cappuccinos.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Oh what a beautifully written rant

"The fantasy—and it is a fantasy—isn't one of space travel and exploration and some bright Star Trek future for humanity, but one of winnowing and eugenics, of cold actuarial lifeboat logic, of ever greater reallocation from the dwindling many to the thriving few. That's the world as Elon Musk and his cohort want it; Mars colonization is just a pretext."

defector.com/neither-elon-musk…

in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler

I'm having mixed feelings about this article.

On one hand it has very good points, about radiation and all the other issues with Mars.

But on the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about that one article stating that humans will never fly, published a year before the Wright brothers proved otherwise.

And on the third hand, I'm thinking of how Kim Stanley Robinson described the terraforming of Mars in his books.

in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler

Unfortunately, the "beautifully written rant" thing is exactly what's wrong with it imo: It's not a balanced assessment of the upsides and downsides of Mars colonization (which it mixes up with Mars terraforming), but an emotional rant written by someone who obviously doesn't know much about the science behind these projects. It doesn't mention any non-strawman pros (like scientific research or mineral resources on Mars), exaggerates problems that are easily solvable (for instance, the radiation on Mars can be solved with radiation shielding or by digging into Martian soil), and, funnily enough, leaves out some actually pretty grave problems Martian colonization would face - most prominently the high perchlorate concentration in Martian soil which makes it highly toxic to humans and would probably require us to genetically re-engineer ourselves.
This entry was edited (7 months ago)

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


When Scots come to England, they stuff the cats and the dogs and the other pets with spicy oats and roast them. That's what they do! They call it Karmala Haggis.

I'm going to England today, but I'm Irish, so I chop pets up and boil them with spuds.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Conor Mc Bride
@dysfun get some Bulgarians in
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Conor Mc Bride
@dysfun We call it "och aye", short for "expectorated intelligence".

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


I'd missed this astonishing Tory leadership rule.

The ability to extract huge sums from party benefactors tells us nothing about the candidates' ability to be prime minister or leader of the opposition.

But it ensures they'll begin their leadership in thrall to wealthy donors.

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Why the ever-living zombienuggets does my DNS server have libtiff installed?!

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

- T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets, 1943

After 20 years, I am back in Washington, DC to work on science policy in the U.S. Senate. In the very same building, on the very same floor where my journey began.

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Weird phrasing on the radio just now. “The winds will be into the forties of miles an hour”
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

It's not a number, it's a metaphor. Later the outlook is for the winds to be into the Cromarty of miles an hour.

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


I'm going to just leave this here for no particular reason. inhousepharmacy.vu/p-1120-prog…

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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


I read this just now. R.I.P #JamesDarren, one of the coolest #StarTrek characters ever. His singing and laid-back cool cat demeanor made #DS9 even better than it was already
gizmodo.com/james-darren-star-…
This entry was edited (7 months ago)

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