tal

joined 2 years ago
[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 5 hours ago (10 children)

IIRC, border agents do have some expanded authority within a certain distance of the border, and that might affect some of California, but not Los Angeles.

kagis

Ahhh. Apparently water borders count. Doesn't need to be a land border.

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-enforcement-border-patrol-internal-arrests-3f37f3ad15a31f2f1b7c57def9f2c055

Agents are granted by federal law the ability to stop and question people within 100 miles (161 kilometers) of the border, including the coasts. They have heightened authority to board and search buses, trains and vessels without a warrant within the zone.

That encompasses vast swaths of the country that include about two-thirds of the U.S. population, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Los Angeles is well within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 6 hours ago

They've apparently got an above-ground railroad, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Railroad

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 6 hours ago

I don't know how the Dutch see it, but I'm pretty sure that the US considers extreme ultraviolet lithography to be a technology with strategic importance. That is, it's more than some company's sales at stake.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

IIRC, they no longer print it, but you can probably buy used collections.

kagis

Yeah. The final print edition was 2010:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica

The Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for 'British Encyclopaedia') is a general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes[1] and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia at the website Britannica.com

Printed for 244 years, the Britannica was the longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland, in three volumes.

Copyright (well, under US law, and I assume elsewhere) also doesn't restrict actually making copies, but distributing those copies. If you want to print out a hard copy of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica website for your own use in the event of Armageddon, I imagine that there's probably software that will let you do that.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Oh, that's interesting. Didn't know about that.

I don't think that there's a way to list instances that a PieFed instance has defederated from, unlike Lemmy; while both have a list of instances at /instances, only Lemmy indicates which ones have been defederated from. It was a helpful tool to help me guess the sort of content an instance had.

Like:

https://lemmy.world/instances (under "Blocked Instances")

https://piefed.world/instances

EDIT: It does show the last time that the instance sent data, and I guess you could sort of guess that if a large instance that probably has activity hasn't sent data to the PieFed instance recently


like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net on piefed.world


then they're probably defederated. But it doesn't clearly indicate that this is the case, either.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 9 hours ago

ragingHungryPanda

And poop while I was doing it.

looks skeptical

Bamboo is pretty fibrous.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 21 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

I mean, the bar to go get a reference book to look something up is significantly higher than "pull my smartphone out of my pocket and tap a few things in".

Here's an article from 1945 on what the future of information access might look like.

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm

The Atlantic Monthly | July 1945

"As We May Think"

by Vannevar Bush

Eighty years ago, the stuff that was science fiction to the people working on the cutting edge of technology looks pretty unremarkable, even absurdly conservative, to us in 2025:

Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving.

Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.

Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials.

If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 15 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/2016/10/18/puritans-and-sex-myth/

Debunking the Myth Surrounding Puritans and Sex

The Puritans weren't prudish. In fact, they were passionate.

From the beginning, Puritans maintained sexual intercourse was necessary for procreation, but also asserted sex was an important way for couples to bond in a loving relationship.

“They talk about the duty to desire, that you’re supposed to engage in intercourse with your married partner and that this is good,” says Bremer. “There will actually be some people in early New England who are censured by the church because they have deprived their married partner of sex for three months or more and this is seen as bad.”

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

I don't think the Puritans had any issue with pregnant people having sex.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

How to look it up:

M-x org-mode RET

That's "Meta-X" (Alt-X), then "org-mode" and Enter, switches the major mode of the current buffer to org-mode so that we have the org-mode keybindings active.

C-h k C-c C-x C-l

C-h, Control-H, is the "help" prefix. "C-h k" is describe-key, tells you what a given key sequence runs. C-h k C-c C-x C-l will say what C-c C-x C-l does. It gives the following output:

C-c C-x C-l runs the command org-latex-preview (found in
org-mode-map), which is an interactive native-comp-function in
‘org.el’.

It is bound to C-c C-x C-l.

(org-latex-preview &optional ARG)

Toggle preview of the LaTeX fragment at point.

If the cursor is on a LaTeX fragment, create the image and
overlay it over the source code, if there is none.  Remove it
otherwise.  If there is no fragment at point, display images for
all fragments in the current section.  With an active region,
display images for all fragments in the region.

With a ‘C-u’ prefix argument ARG, clear images for all fragments
in the current section.

With a ‘C-u C-u’ prefix argument ARG, display image for all
fragments in the buffer.

With a ‘C-u C-u C-u’ prefix argument ARG, clear image for all
fragments in the buffer.
[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean there’s the EWMM, emacs based windows manager. So it can absolutely do anything.

Nobody's made a Wayland compositor running in emacs yet, just an X11 window manager!

EDIT: Okay, apparently they have, ewx, but unlike EXWM, it's not really in a usable state.

 

Print shows Uncle Sam asleep in a chair with a large eagle perched on a stand next to him; he is dreaming of conquests and annexations, asserting his "Monroe Doctrine" rights, becoming master of the seas, putting John Bull in his place, and building "formidable and invulnerable coast defenses"; on the floor by the chair are jingoistic and yellow journalism newspapers.

Caption:

Uncle Sam's Dream of Conquest and Carnage


Caused by Reading the Jingo Newspapers

Puck, November 13, 1895

Note that I downscaled the image to half source resolution to conform to lemmy.today pict-rs resolution restrictions; it's still pretty decent resolution.

 

Illustration shows Uncle Sam using a magnifying glass to see in his left hand a diminutive man labeled "Rumor Monger" yelling "Panic, National Disaster, Failures, [and] Ruin" into a megaphone labeled "Wall Str."

Caption:

The Wall Street Rumor-monger

Uncle Sam


Well ! Well ! Will this nuisance ever learn that the country governs Wall Street ; not Wall Street, the country ?

 

Illustration shows an old man labeled "Republican Reactionary" and an old woman labeled "Democratic Reactionary" standing together, looking up at a dirigible labeled "Progressive Policies".

Caption:

Set in their ways

"Well, the young folks may go if they want to, but they'll never get you and me in the breakneck thing."

Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.27734/

Puck, May 10, 1911.

94
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by tal@lemmy.today to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
 

Illustration shows a man labeled "Workingman" bent over under the weight of an enormous dinner pail labeled "Tariff for Graft Only".

Caption:

The Fullest Dinner Pail

Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.26274/

Puck, May 27, 1908

Note that the dinner pail was the analog of what we'd call the lunchbox today; dinner was, at one point, the mid-day meal.

58
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by tal@lemmy.today to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
 

Illustration shows Uncle Sam in a tree, chased there by the Russian Bear which is standing at the base of the tree; Uncle Sam has dropped his rifle labeled "U.S. Duty on Russian Sugar."

Caption:

As the tariff-war must end

Uncle Sam (to Russia)


Don't shoot! I'll come down!

Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.25550/

Puck, July 31, 1901

 

db0 set up an AI image generator bot both on the Threadverse and Mastodon some time back for anyone to use. All one needs to do is mention it in a comment followed by the text "draw for me" and then prompt text, and it'll respond with some generated images. For example:

@aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me An engraving of a skunk.

Caused it to reply back to me with:

Here are some images matching your request

Prompt: An engraving of a skunk.

Style: flux

The bot has apparently been active for some time and it looks like few people were aware that it existed or used it


I certainly wasn't!

I don't know whether it will work in this community, as this community says that it prohibits most bots from operating here. However, I set up a test thread over here on !test@sh.itjust.works to try it out, where it definitely does work; I was exploring some of how it functions there, and if you're looking for a test place to try it out, that should work!

It farms out the compute work to various people who are donating time on their GPUs via AI Horde.

The FAQ for the bot is here. For those familiar with local image generation, it supports a number of different models.

The default model is Flux, which is, I think, a good choice


that takes English-like sentences describing a picture, and is pretty easy to use without a lot of time reading documentation.

A few notes:

  • The bot disallows NSFW image generation, and if it detects one, it'll impose a one-day tempban on its use to try to make it harder for people searching for loopholes to generate them.

  • There appears to me in my brief testing to be some kind of per-user rate limit. db0 says that he does have a rate limit on Mastodon, but wasn't sure whether he put one on Lemmy, so if you might only be able to generate so many images so quickly.

  • The way one chooses a model is to change the "style" by ending the prompt text with "style: stylename". Some of these styles entail use of a different model; among other things, it's got models specializing in furry images; there's a substantial furry fandom crowd here. There's a list of supported styles here with sample images.

db0 has encouraged people to use it in that test post and in another thread where we were discussing this, says have fun. I wanted to post here to give it some visibility, since I think that a lot of people, like me, have been unaware that has been available. Especially for people on phones or older computers, doing local AI image generation on GPUs really isn't an option, and this lets folks who do have GPUs share them with those folks.

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