RIP Tim Curry: https://www.tmz.com/2026/08/26/tim-curry-dead/
(Died the same day as Dolly Parton, news seems to have been delayed for some reason.)
@cstross one has to wonder if news of her death hit him hard
devSJR :python: :rstats:
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New #RStats {xmpdf} 0.3.1 now allows you to read/write arbitrary pdf documentation info dictionary (DOCINFO) entries beyond the eight standard entries (although certain non-standard keys may be discarded with a warning depending on backend limitations).
https://cran.r-project.org/package=xmpdf
https://trevorldavis.com/R/xmpdf/dev/reference/edit_docinfo.html#known-limitations
Oh happy day! 🎊
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd68q3wynnqo
To be fair, 166 billion dollars would have been fairer, but I'm ok with this too, over the usual joke of a fine.
They've paid to keep their "innocence", in the strictly legal sense if the word.
The last two weeks I am experiencing poorer performance from YouTube. The videos I watch suddenly stop, and then spinning circle is shown, as if YouTube is buffering data, but then the videos never continue.
Are anyone else seeing this?
I am fully convinced it is not my internet connection, as everything else performs 100 percent.
@randahl This is going to be most likely, an issue between your ISP (or their interco) and Google. Basically Google expects ISPs to pay for a lot of the bandwidth used by YT. So your connection to your ISP could be amazing, but your ISP’s interconnection to Google could be saturating, or the regional cache has issues, etc.
The network is vastly more complicated, expensive and intricate than “my internet works great”.
Gabriele Ponzo
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$18 billion!
Some of this money should go to fund better alternatives.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/tech/meta-states-settle-trial-children
@j12t Why not all? Imagine what the open web could do with this amount (which is only about one fifth of the yearly revenue of Meta, incredible)
Mike Masnick
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My full statement here. Again, I'll have more to say about the specific provisions, especially how the settlement is a raw deal for teen users who do not have an emotionally safe relationship with their parent or guardian
www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
EFF Statement on Meta Settleme...
der.hans
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"I listen to my heart, my mind and the gospel of Miss Dolly Parton." 🦋
RE: https://mstdn.social/@stshank/117162806916390598
This is of course where the private equity bros are pivoting to next, to hide their stolen loot (once the data centre bubble pops).
@cstross I have a friend who works for CFS and I have learned about so maybe different ways that welding two pieces of metal can go wrong in the past couple years. I also learned about the Massachusetts Board of Boilers, which I think would be a great name for a villainous organization in a novel (not to tell you how to do your job)
HISOFT presents The Knife by Aries.
This looks like a more polished version than what's available at https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&onglet=notices&num=4647, despite being a photocopy. Our diligent pirate made the effort to bind this one into a little booklet, and then seemingly never looked at it again!
Posterity is grateful for those geeky hoarding instincts.
OK, this is one to scan. To work!
4 media files
@fluidlogic When software vendors encouraged customers to make copies of the distribution media.
Lauren Weinstein
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@darkuncle The ultimate surf film is and will always be Bruce Brown's "The Endless Summer" (1966).
Nizar Kerkeni 🇹🇳 نزار القرقني
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📷 by Naeema
Elias playing with the toy car made of cardboard 🚗 📦
He built it all by himself!
Please support Elias and his family:
https://chuffed.org/project/183929
[Rapha]
#video #FediForGaza #toy #car #cardboard #Gaza #Palestine #DIY #creativity #childhood
Guest Post — From Charity to Intellectual Partnership: The Global Monograph Crisis, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Open Access Through the Lens of Ukraine - The Scholarly Kitchen https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/08/26/guest-post-from-charity-to-intellectual-partnership-the-global-monograph-crisis-artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-open-access-through-the-lens-of-ukraine/
@oatp
Is this a thing? Is it real? I still search for words and phrases and authors in Google Scholar and elsewhere, and follow threads of citations from one paper to the next backwards to find relevant papers.
Am I obsolete? Is the body of knowledge we create through publication now just grist for an AI search engine?
"Pinter: In 2026, Artificial Intelligence has become the primary consumer, parser, and filter of scholarly research. Large Language Models (LLMs) and specialized AI research assistants are entirely rewriting how scholars discover and synthesize literature (discoverability). If a monograph is not ingested into the core databases from which AI systems learn, it effectively ceases to exist for international science."
I begin to think we need a new global scientific effort to develop synthesize and integrate publications into a better catalog so that we can look papers up the same way we'd find a flight or a hotel reservation instead of hoping an AI will make the right connections.
Solidarietà al collettivo Autistici/Inventati che offre da decenni servizi gratuiti di telematica sociale ed è entrato nel mirino di uno stato canaglia complice di genocidio.
@gubi colpiscono A/I mentre stringono la mano a Ciccio Kim, che non finanzia attacchi alle infrastrutture americane. Proprio degli statisti.
@GeofCox @pluralistic Yes, and this effect - communities cooperating under stress- is well documented in the book Disasterology by Dr Samantha Montano. Well worth a read. https://a.co/01MQYLaw
See also Humankind by Rutger Bregman, which also explores the huge difference between our impressions that people are selfish and unfriendly and unpredictable, and the reality that they aren't like that at all.
It opens with 2 scenarios that over many years have been put to new students at Groningen University - one of a plane crash in which passengers panic and just try to save themselves, and another in which people stay calm, and help others before themselves. 97% say the first, selfish scenario is more likely - but the reality is that '"in almost every case" people behave responsibly and selflessly.
