Helsinki/Espoo, December 31st 2023. -15°C, photos, video of looking between some snowy trees over a sunlit field covered in a feet of snow
Given the collapse of quality of internet search one of the things documentation pages for any tech should always have: curated list of recommended books
Another enshittified thing: searching for books on a topic. 💩☹️. How does one find, say, the best books on Node.JS? Even going directly to the supposed bookstores doesn’t help anymore as they try to upsell you video courses and subscriptions and whatnot
Finished reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 📚. If your comfort zone was universe of Expanse or world of Firefly this space opera is for you. I loved ”To be Taught if Fortunate” and I loved, loved this.
Story is about wormhole punching ship that goes on a mission to create a pathway to civilization that just joined the ”Galactic Commons”. There is self-sentient AI and hot aliens and interspecies coupling along with your stereotypical crew of a subm… sorry, a space ship. Absolutely enjoyed it and started the next one in the series immediately
Finished reading: Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚. Fifth installment of the Earthsea series. As always, enjoyable. Collection of short stories that take place before and after the first four books. This time it is about magic and men’s and women’s magic in another universe very much ruled by men
Currently reading: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers 📚
Would it be possible to use VPN to trick dynamic ad insertion? Set country to some place I don’t speak language of? Can I set VPN location per app basis?
Seeing the metro car practically empty made me think if I checked the calendar wrong and it is still Christmas holidays (10am Espoo this morning)
Currently reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 📚
I find it fascinating that somehow rick-rolling ended up filling the same internet culture niche as goatse did in the early days. How did we go from that to the most milquetoast of milquetoast pranks?
Who are the people you thought highly of before they ruined it all? I am personally regretting not seeing through the bullshit of Musk earlier (I think my eyes only opened during that “pedo guy” incident). Not sure if there is anything to learn there but still trying to adjust my BS detectors
Could anyone recommend me a book on SQL? My preferred dialects are Postgres and BigQuery but I’d prefer one that explained me basic concepts thoroughly and then went deep into details
I’ve been listening Taylor Swift’s Reputation album lately and it is much better than I remembered. I didn’t care too much for the singles from it but there are excellent songs on that album. My favourites include ”This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”, ”Getaway Car”, and ”New Year’s Day”
I thinnk value of federated Threads for me will come for following the select few big names (for me it is mostly 🏈⚽️🏟️) and regular people I want to follow from the fedi side of the universe.
Ugh, I didn’t know how much I didn’t miss overly familiar brands casually joking before threads opened in EU. Stop pretending to be people social media managers.
Sad part of the Google messaging product mess is that even after all the misdirections, brand changes, competing teams they do have a decent chat product in Google Chat. Hard to recommend it to anyone as I am not even sure if it is called that.
I think there doesn’t have to be a new Twitter at all but Threads will have the best chance to capture the ”I want an audience” Twitter diaspora.
Nerds will stick with fediverse and every other service will fade away.
Tomorrow is Threads day in EU. I think I will move my Finnish language ephemeral posts there, keep Mastodon and Bluesky as my ”syndicate everywhere” (SE also on Threads). My ”post on your own site” will continue to be powered by micro.blog (and available at blog.timokoola.com).
It is fun we are back in the world of choices.
I like the old-fashioned paper and scissors photoshopping but I almost certain Taylor would have picked oat milk instead.
Can someone explain me a 🏈 thing? Yesterday, Baltimore Ravens snapped a ball too early, Lamar Jackson never got it and ball rolled in to their own endzone. Lamar Jackson then ran back and kicked the ball out of bounds and safety was called. Why didn’t he try to pick it up and recover it back out from endzone? At least they could’ve punted it after that?