Gomez @gomez@toot.wales

Welcome friends! If you're new to mastodon in general I recommend you follow these accounts:
@feditips
@FediFollows
@FediVideos

Here's a short video explaining some of the ways that Mastodon is different from other social media you may be familiar with:
https://youtu.be/IPSbNdBmWKE

Here's a blog post I wrote talking about what alternative social media looks like:
https://threeraccoons.com/article/welcome-to-the-fediverse/

Some twitter v. Mastodon tips for all of the lovely new tooters:

When you like a tweet on twitter, a swarm of AIs spin into action, analysing every aspect of the tweet and trying so desperately to find the matching tweet to show you next that will keep you scrolling, lest their masters decommission them in favor of a new version.

When you fave a toot on Mastodon, there aren't any AIs; you just made another human being across the world feel nice.

Do you know someone who has recently claimed #UniversalCredit (UK welfare benefit) or helped someone else to claim it?

I'm leading an 11-week project to try and make it easier for the 25% of people who currently fail to register for UC remotely.

We're just into the prototyping phase and so are looking for (remunerated) user testers.

DM me if you've got leads. Boosts appreciated.

More info about the project here: https://medium.com/sector-challenge-9-claiming-universal-credit/introduction-to-the-project-5d402bbd55f

If you're curious about installing #renewables at your home or place of work in #Wales....why not use this amazing tool to find out about your resource?

https://nuable.co.uk

#renewableenergy

Rob Beschizza over on BoingBoing described Facebook as "…a nearly-trillion dollar corporation that graphs minds, relationships and societies so that it may split them like atoms and sell the energy released."

Not sure I can do better than that.

Well... This gal took Social Distancing to the extreme.

She's 21 and just became the youngest female to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean

21-year-old Jasmine Harrison became the youngest female to row solo across any ocean Saturday, according to Atlantic Campaigns, the organizer of the 2020 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, which takes racers more than 3,000 miles from Spain to Antigua & Barbuda.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/02/20/europe/jasmine-harrison-ocean-row-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

The only planet in the solar system that is entirely inhabited by Robots now has a helicopter.

As we watch events in Texas unfold, bear in mind that Texas "seceded" from the US national electrical grid in order to avoid federal regulation. They privatized their grid into the hands of a few wealthy people. As a result there are only two limited interconnects making it impossible for surrounding states to share power to keep Texas afloat in terms of electric power.

All this suffering in Texas should not be happening. The grid in Texas is intact, they just don't have generation capacity. If Texas had remained part of the US grid, power from as far away as California, Washington, West Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, could be routed to Texas. Looking at the real-time data here, the US grid is running at more than 200 GW below capacity. There's enough power to hold up two states of Texas even if Texas had no generation at all. But we can't send them power.

Keep this in mind when rich people trick the public and politicians about privatization, and spout garbage like "going it alone, in keeping with the pioneering spirit of the USA". No. Organized cooperation is power. Going it alone is weakness.

Don't believe in cooperation? Study how the Roman army was organized. It was all about very tightly organized cooperation, starting with an individual soldier and those to his immediate left and right. This is how 8,000 Romans could take on 80,000 and methodically slaughter the 80,000 with zero losses.

I suggest Bitwarden for those ready to migrate

LastPass’ free tier will become a lot less useful next month

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/16/22285531/lastpass-free-tier-mobile-computer-device-premium-family

Well, this is both fascinating and terrifying: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.07805

This is honestly like turning the crank on a meat grinder backwards and having that work so well that that cows just mosey out of it under their own power. It is astounding.

I am looking for a mentor willing to advise me in adopting an orphaned Debian package. I have the basic code/build skills. My difficulty is in convincing the Debian packaging tools to work, navigating Debian project process, workflow on managing changes upstream vs in the Debian package. I've read some guides, but am having trouble turning that into a simple set of steps for me to follow through to success. Thank you!

Just in case you were thinking you had privacy under control:

Browser ‘Favicons’ Can Be Used as Undeletable ‘Supercookies’ to Track You Online

"According to a researcher, though, these icons can also be a security vulnerability that could let websites track your movement and bypass VPNs, incognito browsing status, and other traditional methods of cloaking your movement online."

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7v5y7/browser-favicons-can-be-used-as-undeletable-supercookies-to-track-you-online