birdcat

I'd love to hear about your personal experiences and traditions!

What are you offering? And how much and when, what time? And if it's food/drinks/cigarettes, what to do with it after tomorrow?

Is it better to put the offerings outside your home or inside? Or is the balcony ok too?

I put 5 cigs, a pack of soy milk, a fizzy beverage and a bottle of soda water on my balcony railing. Would also have put incense sticks, but I only have the ones that repeal mosquitos and my friend advised against using it.

(If you're too smart and logical to believe in ghosts, congratulations, here's your cookie 🍪 if you're curious, this video explains the Chinese version/history of the Festival)

I allow everything from FOSS that I like, you?

Really super interesting and well-made video!

summarize.tech:

The video discusses how El Salvador's high homicide rates and overflowing prison population called for a change in the government's gang policies, leading Nayib Bukele to emerge as a potential presidential candidate and eventually winning with a focus on his "territorial control plan" aimed at transforming the country from one of the most dangerous to one where people could go outside without fear. While phases 1 and 2 were successful, phase 3 involving purchasing equipment for national security forces to fight an all-out war against gangs was met with pushback from the Legislative Assembly, leading to a constitutional crisis. Bukele also implemented a state of exception, leading to the detainment of nearly 70,000 people, reducing daily homicides significantly. While the president's actions have been controversial, the Salvadoran people support him in solving the issue of gang violence. The video also discusses how Ciudad Juarez, once the most dangerous city in the world, transformed into a comparatively safer place due to a new investigative approach implemented by authorities, called "Comprehensive Investigation Methodology."

Any thoughts on this one?

Just in case anyone needs an eli5 (not me, obviously, I totally understood how it works 🙄)

Of course! I'll simplify everything for you.

Imagine you have a toy box with a secret toy hidden inside. This app works in a similar way to hide and protect your secret number (PIN).

How it hides your PIN:

1. PIN in a Puzzle: The app places your PIN in a puzzle-like grid and fills up the rest with random numbers. It's like hiding a toy among many other toys.

   • Even the app doesn't know where your secret toy (PIN) is in the grid.
   • If someone tries to peek over your shoulder, they won't easily figure out which toy is your secret one.

2. Special Keyboard: Instead of using the regular way of typing, the app gives you a special keyboard inside it.

   • This makes it hard for sneaky apps to see what you type.
   • Also, the buttons on this keyboard keep changing places, so if someone is trying to see where you touch, they'll get confused.

How it keeps things safe inside:

1. Magic Lock (Encryption): The app uses a magic spell (called AES) to lock your secret toy so that even if someone gets it, they can't play with it without the magic key.

2. Secret Name-Tag (Hashing): Every toy (PIN) gets a secret name-tag that only the app can read. It's like writing a name in a language only the app understands.

3. Strong Password: If you ever forget things and need a backup way to get your toy, the app has a super-strong password system (called Argon2id).

What happens when you use the app:

1. Starting the App: The app looks for your toys (PINs) using the magic key and shows you their secret name-tags.

2. Picking a Toy (PIN): When you choose a toy by its name-tag, the app shows you the toy in its puzzle grid, but hidden among other toys.

3. Adding a New Toy (PIN): If you get a new toy, you can give it a secret spot in the grid and a secret name-tag. The app will use its magic spell to lock it up safe.

In short: This app is like a magical toy box. It hides your secret toys (PINs) in clever ways and uses special magic to keep them safe.

Every day I get those fucking notifications and it drives me crazy

I need to click on them, then click on install now I know its not super much work, but it really makes me so mad, idk why.

How to make windows to just install those updates automatically?

That is my update policy, changed some stuff in O&O Shutup: but never something like don't install automatically, so idk where to change that first policy

All I'm asking is to not suddenly restart the PC while i might be working.

Thanks for any help 🙏

There used to be XClipper

But it's not developed anymore because, according to the developer Kaustubh Patange:

with Android 10, Google removed clipboard monitoring through the background process. [...] After quite a lot of research, I discovered a hack that enables clipboard monitoring for Android 10 devices. Although this feature is still in BETA with lot's of functionality missing. I made this project open source so developers can contribute their solution to this project.

What happened with this "hack" and the findings of Mr. Patange?

Did Android simply kill the possibility of such a sync function?

Microsoft's own Android Keyboard Swiftkey (yea I know, but I really need some functions of it) allows the syncing of clipboard content between Android and Windows. However, I heard that it's bad security and privacy practice to even enable clipboard history on Windows. I disabled it and use CopyQ.

However, it would be super nice to see something like XClipper for Android/Windows. 

Any chance?

Made with kandinsky-2 and upscaled with upscayl

"A weary, orc police officer, evident lines of stress and sadness on his face. He's drinking a cup of coffee, his broad shoulders sagging with exhaustion. His uniform is slightly disheveled, hinting at a long, hard day."

I started slow, only added

> Instead of long apologies for mistakes, just write "huh!" > never end messages with an apology, also not with "huh", leave them out.

But this response makes me doubt the whole thing a bit 😅

Disabled the custom instructions and asked the same question again:

>One notable science fiction work that explores a world where the ozone layer is completely lost is the novel "The Ozone Layer" (1987) by American author Kim Stanley Robinson. [...]

Upscayl lets you enlarge and enhance low-resolution images using advanced AI algorithms. Enlarge images without losing quality, it's almost like magic! 🎩🪄 Upscayl is a cross-platform application built with the Linux-first philosophy. This means that Linux users receive pre-release builds earlier but Upscayl itself is available on all major desktop operating systems :)

now look what this baby can do ...

Huh? A sparkly fart in the sky? 🧐

Holy fuck, a Supernova! Cosmic spectacle of incomprehensible dimensions! 🤯

I wanted to implement the pics into the post via

![alt text](image url)

But it was not working for the upscayl version, sorry.

Not exactly breaking news (article is from June 14, 2023), but as it's not known or discussed widely, I thought its ok to post.

I'm also adding a short commentary (that can be used as a summary) from Urs P. Gasche, published on the independent news site infosperber.ch. (Translated with GPT, left-out parts reference the nyt-article)

In the USA, electricity is consumed and wasted as if Russia were not waging war against Ukraine. Every year, American energy corporations transfer around a billion dollars to the Russian Rosatom corporation for cheap enriched uranium. [...]

Rosatom belongs to the Russian state and produces low-enriched uranium for nuclear power plants and highly enriched uranium for military purposes. The USA imports about a third of the enriched uranium needed for nuclear power plants from Russia. It is cheapest there. "The US payments go to a subsidiary of Rosatom, which in turn is closely intertwined with the Russian military apparatus," [...]

In order to halve the US's CO2 emissions, the capacity of nuclear power plants would need to be doubled, estimates the US Department of Energy. The company TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, plans to enrich uranium one day in a decommissioned coal mine in the US state of Wyoming. A centrifuge factory is also planned in Ohio. "But years will pass and more state subsidies are needed," [...]

In the meantime, the USA could reduce their power consumption with savings programs, calls to the economy and households, and financial duties, in order not to finance the Russian war machinery as much as possible. However, such a savings policy, which is useful anyway, is not popular in the USA. As a result, Democrat Joe Manchin III, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, had to resign resignedly:

"We cannot make ourselves hostages to nations that do not share our values, but that is exactly what has happened."

Europe, on the other hand, has taken action: most countries voluntarily forego a lot of cheap Russian oil and even completely on Russian natural gas, so that Russia receives as little foreign currency as possible. In doing so, the countries of Europe accept high prices and inflation with all its consequences.

The news is full of it, excitement seems high, and I really don't get it. I'm not against space-related research, but why suddenly the moon? And why send people there? Can someone fill me in on what's to be gained or why one might be excited about it?

Allow me to use the linked article for my questions.

There have been three primary drivers of renewed interest in the Moon. The first was the discovery and confirmation in the 1990s and early 2000s that water ice is likely to exist at the lunar poles in permanently shadowed craters. The presence of abundant water, providing oxygen and hydrogen resources, has given space agencies a new reason to explore the poles.

Yea but so what? Hydrogen is literally the most common thing in the universe, no fucking way there is also some on the moon 🤯. Then what's so spectacular about moon ice, water, or even oxygen? And why does it need people to explore it?

A second factor has been the rise of China's space program, which has sent a series of ambitious robotic missions to the Moon that have both landed on the far side and returned samples from the lunar surface. China has made no secret of its interest in sending astronauts to the Moon, leading to competing efforts between NASA's Artemis Program and China's lunar station goals.

Again why? Is this some repetition of the Cold War Soviet-US competition?

Finally, there has been some interest from private companies in the commercial development of the lunar surface, both to exploit resources there but also for other purposes. This has stimulated investment in private companies to provide transportation to the lunar surface, including ispace, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Firefly.

Exploiting resources has to be a joke, right? Do they want to sell us the newly found moon water? The only point I get is the tourism aspect. Because, of course, I always encourage billionaires to pursue dangerous hobbies 😊