mat's recent activity
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Comment on Can we maybe have an informal agreement to avoid posting articles that require you to sell your firstborn child to the devil just to read them? in ~tildes
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Comment on Can we maybe have an informal agreement to avoid posting articles that require you to sell your firstborn child to the devil just to read them? in ~tildes
mat Link ParentIf a government wants you, they're getting you regardless of your cookie choices. It's almost impossible to avoid high-level targetted digital surveillance (which, to be clear, ad tracking is...I'm not sure this is worth bothering with unless you have a specific reason to believe a government might be trying to track you.
If a government wants you, they're getting you regardless of your cookie choices. It's almost impossible to avoid high-level targetted digital surveillance (which, to be clear, ad tracking is absolutely nothing like). Although a malicious regime could just as easily make up whatever evidence they want even if you never so much as power up your computer, let alone read a webpage.
Having once done all the paranoid "privacy" stuff at one time and now do almost exactly none of it, there has been basically zero negative changes in my everyday browsing experience and a few positives. I don't mind seeing adverts because that's how a lot of websites make money and without money they will no longer provide entertainment for me, so that seems like a fair exchange. Eyeballs for cash is an acceptable transaction for me.
If I'm seeing ads I might as well see ads for the kind of things I prefer to see. No booze, no gambling is nice to be able to choose. For a while I convinced the algorithms that I was interested in buying underwear, so I had pictures of beautiful people of various shapes, sizes, ages and genders all wearing tiny items of clothing adorning the web pages I visited. That was very much a positive on accepting cookies.
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Comment on Want to get a 3D printer for miniatures that work well with open source software in ~hobbies
mat Link"Toxic" is a bit strong to describe the fumes from resin printers. Technically that is true but they're not releasing VOCs in sufficient quantity to be significantly dangerous - outside of..."Toxic" is a bit strong to describe the fumes from resin printers. Technically that is true but they're not releasing VOCs in sufficient quantity to be significantly dangerous - outside of industrial print farms, with rooms full of the things running at high capacity all day every day. That's a world away from a little printer in the corner doing the occasional model.
My Elegoo Mars resin printer comes with an air filter built into it but even though I haven't changed that for like two years, there's still barely any smell when printing - and I do most of my printing in an enclosed space, on a shelf in a cupboard. I am careful to limit the time I have the cover off the printer but that's as much to do with limiting the amount of UV the resin is exposed to as anything else (that stuff is expensive, I don't want it curing from daylight!). The print goop is pretty nasty but as long as you wear gloves it's fine. You can even get water washable resins now, although I haven't tried those.
It is very important and reassuring that all of the studies we found recorded average VOC levels in resin printers that were well within the official safety levels prescribed by health organisations. This is why there is generally no big health concern surrounding resin printer fumes.
The thing is, compared to FDM the print resolution is so much higher, it's absolutely worth the small amount of danger, especially if you're printing miniatures. FDM is great for bigger stuff - although I'd still only use it for parts rather than models - but you're just not going to get decent results at small scale, even with heavy post-processing to clean up print lines.
Anyway to actually answer your question I've never had a problem printing from Linux and I've had various 3D printers around my house/workshop for perhaps the last 10 years now. There are plenty of both fully open source and linux-friendly closed source slicer options out there. Try a few and see what works for you, I currently use Chitubox.
If you can get a printer that supports OctoPrint that can make your life a bit easier and much more cool, but it's by no means necessary.
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Comment on Looking for a non-smart watch recommendation in ~tech
mat LinkI have only an anti-recommendation, which is anything made by Mio. I had one of their wrist mounted heart rate/step/etc monitors which also told the time and did very little else and it was great...I have only an anti-recommendation, which is anything made by Mio. I had one of their wrist mounted heart rate/step/etc monitors which also told the time and did very little else and it was great until one day they bricked it with a software update and now it's expensive junk in my drawer.
Avoid.
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Comment on New ‘Stargate’ TV series ordered at Amazon from ‘Blindspot’ creator Martin Gero in ~tv
mat Link ParentMartin Gero was at pains to stress how much fans re-watching the show actually did matter in the announcement video which just droppedI'd like to think the absurd amount of Stargate I've watched over the past few years is a major factor in this getting greenlit, lol.
Martin Gero was at pains to stress how much fans re-watching the show actually did matter in the announcement video which just dropped
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Comment on I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla in ~tech
mat Link ParentWell, they do need to chase revenue. Mozilla exists almost entirely at the whim of Google. That's not great. Being self-supporting would be good. Which means... revenue, which comes from users....focus on being a lean product that doesn't trend chase for maximum revenue".
Well, they do need to chase revenue. Mozilla exists almost entirely at the whim of Google. That's not great. Being self-supporting would be good. Which means... revenue, which comes from users. They're not going to convert any new users by leaving everything the same. Sure, there's a subset of people like me who don't want lots of stuff and another smaller subset who will huff off to another project if there's a new feature they don't like but they're honestly a tiny minority. Mozilla will know how many uninstalls they get after releasing a certain feature (I bet it's next to zero anyway) What about getting new users? Doing the same (no)thing isn't going to get a different result.
This has been going on for as long as there has been the web (yes, unfortunately I am that old). I remember when javascript was considered a silly trend. CSS too. Who even wants in-browser video support anyway? "What's so important about adding support for x/y/z, I don't want/need it?" has been a constant complaint of a certain subset of users since Netscape. If Mozilla listened to the people complaining about every new thing we'd still be in text-only mode and Firefox's userbase would be counted in the thousands rather than the tens of millions we have today.
They can't not piss off a subset of their users because there is nothing they can do which is acceptable to every single user - including doing nothing. I've been on the development end of this kind of thing and you cannot listen to the "keep everything the same forever" crowd, you have to keep moving forward and honestly, they piss and moan loudly and then they shut up until you announce the next thing which they're sure is going to sink your entire project.
Deleting promises to not sell your data when your market line is "we aren't Google" doesn't look good.
My understanding is that this didn't happen. It was a change of language in a legal document which a small number of people mis-interpreted and then it got incorrectly reported everywhere. This is another issue when it comes to dealing with the very engaged and vocal minority group of users - people often get stuff wrong.
I'm not saying this is what happened but as an example, Mozilla might say "we've adding a context menu option to summarise page content with AI, it literally took one dude half a day of gentle hacking" and some people hear "we're turning your entire browser into an agentic system where all your search history and keyboard input will be emailed to Sam Altman personally" then blog furiously about that and someone else reads it, takes it as fact and before you know it, Nabiha Syed is literally Satan.
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Comment on I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla in ~tech
mat Link ParentFirefox's market share (and everyone else's) has been pretty flat for the last five years which isn't too bad in a field which is both dominated by Chrome and also full of forks and new products...Firefox's market share (and everyone else's) has been pretty flat for the last five years which isn't too bad in a field which is both dominated by Chrome and also full of forks and new products (OK, not 'new', they're all Chromium derivatives) coming along every five minutes. Firefox isn't competing with Chrome because nobody is, but it is competing with Opera and Brave and Vivaldi and Kiwi and and and - and I think they're doing pretty well to just maintain the share they have in that environment.
Google destroyed Mozilla, nobody else - although ironically they also saved them with the Google Search deal. There was nothing the foundation could have done in the face of Google's aggressive marketing and solid engineering behind Chrome. There is no feature they could have added which would have changed that. Especially given they had a far worse product at the time Chrome was eating everything else.
The fact that these days Firefox is technically close to Chrome and in some cases even performs better is actually a major engineering achievement on Mozilla's part and we shouldn't let the assorted feature fluff (or lack thereof) around their excellent core work (Gecko and SpiderMonkey) detract from that.
What do you think should be changed?
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Comment on I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla in ~tech
mat Link ParentI could say the same for any of the features J Random Commenter would prefer Mozilla spent time on though. Without access to Mozilla's metrics and user testing results it's impossible to guess at...if only a small percentage of Firefox users would be interested, surely they already have their own preferred tools they use instead of whatever gets shoehorned into Firefox?
I could say the same for any of the features J Random Commenter would prefer Mozilla spent time on though. Without access to Mozilla's metrics and user testing results it's impossible to guess at what "Firefox users" want. There are around 90 million people in that group, after all.
Take me, for example - I've been using Firefox from before it was even called Firefox - I don't care about AI, I also don't really care about privacy either. I want a fast, stable browser with good support for modern web standards and decent cross-device sync. Firefox already does that well enough for me, so I'm not bothered about them spending time on things I'm not currently interested in. If those other features help bring more people over to Firefox, great!
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Comment on I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla in ~tech
mat LinkI think Mozilla's position seems perfectly reasonable. AI options for those who want them and not for those who don't. Seems fine to me. I don't have to use features I don't want. I already don't...I think Mozilla's position seems perfectly reasonable. AI options for those who want them and not for those who don't. Seems fine to me. I don't have to use features I don't want. I already don't use lots of features of Firefox.
I am not particularly interested in AI in my browser but I know plenty of people who use it regularly for various things and would like some browser integration. Why should Firefox only cater to me and not them?
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Comment on The ten best board games we played at Spiel Essen 2025 in ~games.tabletop
mat Link ParentI can recommend Oink's latest, Petiquette, in this vein. It's much less complex than Mysterium or even Dixit, but the art is lovely and it's a nice quick and easy play. Everyone I've played it...another game in the "beautiful art that requires lateral thinking to relate to some clue" oeuvre
I can recommend Oink's latest, Petiquette, in this vein. It's much less complex than Mysterium or even Dixit, but the art is lovely and it's a nice quick and easy play. Everyone I've played it with, even the six year old, has had a good time. It's a great warm up/warm down game, like most of Oink's games.
I really enjoyed Wingspan once. Then after one play it held very little interest for me. People keep wanting to play it though (don't get me started on Ark Nova, which isn't remotely as pretty as Wingspan but is suggested at every single games night!)
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
mat Link ParentI used this in the summer when a holiday rental we were in had an incorrectly set clock on the no-brand cheap and fairly ancient cooker. Those things are notoriously weird to set and I just Lensed...I used this in the summer when a holiday rental we were in had an incorrectly set clock on the no-brand cheap and fairly ancient cooker. Those things are notoriously weird to set and I just Lensed the clock panel and got a short video on how to adjust the time. Spent the rest of the holiday not twitching slightly every time I went into the kitchen.
This is honestly about the extent of my use of "AI". It's certainly the only positive use I can recall.
I should add that I think ML/AI is a fascinating and extremely useful field and is absolutely going to change the world (and already is). I just don't think the chatbots and image generators are particularly part of that interesting or useful group.
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Comment on Timasomo 2025: The Showcase in ~creative.timasomo
mat Link ParentThanks! When I've actually finished the room, I'll post a picture or two because there is way more shelving to build yet - I'm going to be at this until Christmas at least.. My wife has been...Thanks! When I've actually finished the room, I'll post a picture or two because there is way more shelving to build yet - I'm going to be at this until Christmas at least.. My wife has been working in book-adjacent jobs most of her adult life and we have accumulated a lot of books. Last estimate put it in the 2500 region, although we have got rid of some since then, but we have also got more. Luckily I mostly stopped buying print books about 20 years ago when I got my first ereader, otherwise we probably wouldn't have room for a bed in there!
If I could recommend only one book from that wall (picture books and non-genre fiction) it would be Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Ask me again when I've done the opposite wall which is where all the comics, sci-fi and children's literature lives. Or the back wall which is poetry and non-fiction.
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Comment on Automotive repair costs on modern vehicles. Any horror stories? in ~transport
mat Link ParentFirst question: Yes, plenty. Modern cars are more reliable than ever. One useful shortcut is to look for whatever taxi drivers in your area use at the time you're looking to buy. Most of the cabs...First question: Yes, plenty. Modern cars are more reliable than ever. One useful shortcut is to look for whatever taxi drivers in your area use at the time you're looking to buy. Most of the cabs near my are Hyundai Ioniqs, so that's what I drive and I don't regret that choice. Or ask your local garage if you have a good relationship with them - "what don't you see a lot of? What would you buy?" (that's how I bought my current van)
Second question: depends. Some problems set flags in the ODB system (On Board Diagnostics) and for very valid safety reasons, you can't disable a certain class of error messages with a home ODB2 dongle. An example - I fitted an aftermarket stereo unit to my 2014 Skoda a few years back. This meant unplugging the passenger's airbag warning light because it was part of the trim I needed to remove to get to the stereo harness. HOWEVER, when I powered up the system to check the stereo (before replacing all of the trim), this lack of warning light tripped an error. Which is fair enough, it's an important warning light - you need to know if it's not working! But then I had to go and pay my garage £45 to clear the error once I'd reassembled the dashboard, because they have the certified devices to do such things with. It's annoying but it also makes sense - otherwise that used car you're looking at could have all sorts of faults the owner had cleared with a £5 dongle and a phone app.
I can and still do plenty of routine maintenance jobs on my vehicles - changing bulbs, washer pumps, batteries (12V, not 400V!), fitting cameras, changing fuses, wiring in chargers and fixing hinges are all jobs I've done recently - but anything involved in a safety system I can't really touch. Which is, again, fairly reasonable.
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Comment on Study suggests that the Universe's expansion 'is now slowing, not speeding up' in ~space
mat Link ParentI've heard you only need to measure once, right? You can always cut twice if you need to. I make jewellery, and regularly work to tenths or sometimes hundreths of a mm accuracy and before any...I've heard you only need to measure once, right? You can always cut twice if you need to.
I make jewellery, and regularly work to tenths or sometimes hundreths of a mm accuracy and before any machinists come along and have Opinions about that, I do so almost exclusively using hand tools.
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Comment on Automotive repair costs on modern vehicles. Any horror stories? in ~transport
mat LinkThe main control/power unit in my 2017 Hyundai Ioniq blew up (ok, technically it shut down before blowing up, but the electronics were running at over 240C at last logging point!). Cost me £7500...The main control/power unit in my 2017 Hyundai Ioniq blew up (ok, technically it shut down before blowing up, but the electronics were running at over 240C at last logging point!). Cost me £7500 to have it replaced. Barely cheaper than scrapping the car and buying a new one. Wasn't even covered by my insurance because fuck me if I ever wanted to get any of the thousands I've paid those bastards over the years back.
To be fair this unit contains the ECU, the main and secondary inverters and a bunch of other critical stuff - basically everything is in this unit except the traction motor and batteries. It was also such a rare failure than Hyundai don't even keep the part in the country, we had to wait for one to be shipped from Korea. My garage did their best to find a used one but they don't fail so there's no used market for the things. Their techs had never seen or heard of this problem ever happening. Just unlucky, really. Sometimes parts break.
Most of the other work I've had done on modern cars hasn't been so bad. Modern diagnostics are usually good at pinning down the problem so you don't have to have exploratory work done so much, and you often find out about problems while they are still minor (and cheaper!) due to having more sensors everywhere. I had a wheel bearing start to fail which I was notified about when the car noticed weird readings from the ABS sensor which is built into the bearing - and it was a quick trip to the garage for a £300 bearing replacement, took a few hours, no other problems (most of that bill was labour, it's a fairly long job). If I hadn't known about this I could have driven along on it to the point of catastrophic failure which could easily have ended up in a write-off (or worse, injury!) if the bearing broke while driving.
I've had a whole range of ages of cars over the years and while the vintage ones I can strip and rebuild in a weekend with nothing more than a few tools and a grimy Haynes manual were great fun, I'll take a modern car every. single. time. Preferably an EV, far less stuff to break or replace.
it had to be aligned and linked to the computer in the car, which could only be done at the Honda dealership.
btw this isn't usually true and I'm pretty sure it's illegal on the part of Honda to require that. What you need to do this kind of job is a Honda (or whoever) approved and chipped interface and while out of the price range of a casual DIYer, they're not that expensive in the grand scheme of running a buisness. My local garage, whom I trust and have used for years (and who did the above mentioned Hyundai job which also required chip id registration/matching stuff), can do this kind of job because they have the certified cables. They're a single-site non-dealer-aligned small business.
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Comment on Timasomo 2025: The Showcase in ~creative.timasomo
mat LinkI was making a fairly large (2.4x2.4m) set of built-in bookshelves, to replace some aging and saggy Ikea Billy units. I only had three weeks because half-term holidays happen in October so I need...- Exemplary
I was making a fairly large (2.4x2.4m) set of built-in bookshelves, to replace some aging and saggy Ikea Billy units. I only had three weeks because half-term holidays happen in October so I need to be doing childcare. However, I did it!
It didn't go entirely smoothly but it did go pretty well. Build updates: one, two, three
Last week, after a few hours of shelving shelving shelving (my wife works in the library service, she greatly enjoyed this bit), we have a bookshelf mostly full of books. Bigger view
We also have much better access to the side of the bed, which is very helpful given how overbuilt that thing is (it was my 2024 timasomo project).
I am very pleased with how well the recessed shelf supports vanish once the shelves are full. My parents even asked how I managed to span 2.4m without the shelves sagging. We also have a dinosaur nook, which is nice. And there's even a tiny bit of space spare - note that the picture books along the bottom were not shelved on that wall originally, we've already got way more storage than before.
Now I just need to do the same with shelving the other two walls in that room, repaint the remaining visible bits of wall and it'll be done... at least for the next decade.
As always, hats off to @kfwyre for their enthusiasm, hard work and to everyone involved for their support of each other. It's so cool to see the things everyone gets up to. If this goes on long enough I'll redecorate my entire house... :)
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Comment on Timasomo 2025: Final Updates in ~creative.timasomo
mat LinkNot much to report right now as I ran out of time to do anything more on timasomo this year so needed to finish not long after last week's update. However, a little teaser before the showcase next...Not much to report right now as I ran out of time to do anything more on timasomo this year so needed to finish not long after last week's update.
However, a little teaser before the showcase next week.
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Comment on Supermarket rewards card- yes or no? in ~finance
mat Link ParentThey're not doing that in the UK. Some supermarkets claimed they never did that kind of tracking anyway but I didn't believe them. But it's against the law now. Thanks GDPR!They're not doing that in the UK. Some supermarkets claimed they never did that kind of tracking anyway but I didn't believe them. But it's against the law now. Thanks GDPR!
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Comment on Supermarket rewards card- yes or no? in ~finance
mat Link ParentI did this with a UK Nectar reward card account and now my account with them is effectively bricked because it won't let me in without sending a verification text to a number I gave them which...I did this with a UK Nectar reward card account and now my account with them is effectively bricked because it won't let me in without sending a verification text to a number I gave them which isn't a number (their input validation was non-existent, I literally just mashed the keyboard for a few seconds). I can't register another card/create a new account using the same physical address, which is odd because more than one person could live there or I could have moved.
Admittedly I have put slightly more effort into writing this comment than I have into fixing a 'problem' which I do not care about, so it's probably solvable. My reward card still gets me discounts in store, I don't get the digital coupons but given in the past they were always utterly useless I don't think I'm missing much. "Oh, this guy has never bought peanut butter, maybe 50p off a jar will tempt him?" No you stupid fucks I just don't like the stuff. "Hmm, he's never bought pet food so maybe 15% off pet insurance is a great personal offer"
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Comment on Supermarket rewards card- yes or no? in ~finance
mat LinkIn the case of Nectar, you can just pick up a card in the shop and start using it. You don't need to give them any of your information. I regularly do this when I've forgotten mine. I must have...In the case of Nectar, you can just pick up a card in the shop and start using it. You don't need to give them any of your information.
I regularly do this when I've forgotten mine. I must have five or six of them at this point, and that's only the ones I haven't lost.
It does mean you don't get the cashback part of the 'deal' but given that's something like 0.25p per pound spent I'm not losing any sleep over it. Especially because I'm so bad at using the Self-scan machines they never trained me on how to use. Stuff is always getting scanned badly. I'm so careless oh no.
I think we can say for reasonably sure that aggressive psy-op style advertising (which is a polite way to say blatantly lying on hot-button issues) as deployed by the likes of Farage and Trump has influenced elections. However, that's not the same thing.
It was a fairly open secret when I worked in/around advertising that ultra-targetted ads are really not that useful - at least nowhere near as effective as the ad brokers would have you believe. It's much easier to just blanket bomb demographics/areas with one well-crafted campaign than tailor one ad for 37-43 year old men with beards who have previously liked headphones, yoghurt and garden tools, then another for 23-24 year old women who enjoy purple lipstick, hot sauce and CNC mill repair videos; etc etc.
The reason I will fight in the streets to keep the BBC is not because a free and independent press is vital to democracy, it's because they make radio I can listen to all day long without hearing a single advert. The news bit is important too I guess.