SDF Chatter

via

Source

Alt Text: The cartoon illustrates the problem of water use in the AI age: a farmer's child and his mother are pumping a little water from a well for their daily use. Two knights in armor, transporting a large, spherical water container on wheels, come by and say, "The King wishes to make more avatars of himself as a Ghibli character."
In the background, a castle sits enthroned on a hill. The cartoon illustrates the excessive water consumption required for AI model queries.

https://www.inquisitr.com/british-woman-shot-dead-by-maga-father-after-heated-donald-trump-debate

Features

• Enabled PieFed 1.4 features:
  • Filter comment search by instance
  • Sort comments by controversial
• Error toast timeout can now be adjusted (Settings → Advanced → Developer)

Bug Fixes

• Sending messages from external instance admin list no longer causes an error
• Fixed gaps appearing between certain link posts in feed
• The send message button no longer creates duplicate messages if tapped while a message is sending

We have also made significant backend changes to how we handle posts and comments, so if you see any unexpected new behaviors, please let us know!

I've posted this in Open Source as well, please remove if you think it's redundant.

Some time ago I started replacing all services and apps that I use with FOSS altnernatives. Most of them were easy to replace but some corpo/big-tech apps had ecosystems too advanced to be conveniently replaced. For example, substituting Google Maps on Android (or I guess Apple Maps on iOS) was a bit of a struggle as the most popular FOSS alternative app was OsmAnd. First of all mad respect and huge kudos to OsmAnd team of contributors but for me the UX was overwhelming and too customizable which is probably a huge bonus to power users but IMO that makes it very unlikely to become a large scale alternative to Google maps. Probably other people realized that too and some 6-7 months ago CoMaps was released, a FOSS app that is also based on OpenStreetMap layer but this time with a simplistic and smooth UX/GUI.

In case somebody is not familiar with OpenStreetMap (OSM) - basically it is a non-profit org, but its heavily maintained by community members and anybody around the world is allowed to contribute and enrich map content. Even if org can theoretically get corrupt I think anybody can make a fork and continue with community contribution. Creating an account is easy, you could start contributing in like 3 minutes. A huge number of services and apps are basing their map layers on OpenStreetMap, such as CoMaps above.

The quality of OpenStreetMap/CoMaps/OsmAnd is as good as the contributions to it are - so the more people use it - the better and more content it will contain. I would like to invite everybody to give it a chance and use https://www.openstreetmap.org/ on desktop and CoMaps on mobile devices. You should have enough motivation to abandon Google or Apple products, but final piece of motivation is that eventually Google Maps will start censoring content (like Reddit or Instagram) or just share your location history to ICE or perform some other serious violation like that (like Microsoft did recently).

CoMaps has a really nice and simple interface where you can add missing places (business, community services, recreation areas etc) while OpenStreetMap on web browser allows to update anything you imagine (e.g. see a missing street? Add it. A new building was developed - just add it!). If everybody enriched only their local neighborhood with features on the map we could really build something beautiful. Existing layer probably already contains 90% of the stuff you'd ever search for as contributors really did a outstanding job throughout all these years. But that additional 10% makes a real difference for it turning into a much bigger scale tool, and this feels like the right time to kick that off.

It is important not to get demotivated that not many people maintain and contribute as your neighborhood might remain a lonely detailed places for years. OSM existed for a long time now and is very likely to keep existing for decades to come, everything that you update or create remains a legacy that stays forever saved in the map (unless somebody further updates it). Perhaps, in 20 years time people will be grateful. And to tidy up and make max out of your neighborhood you really need one weekend or so.

For example, in my local area I've started adding location marks of recycling bins, dumpsters, parking lots, playgrounds, pathways, building tunnels and monuments, but also I've added missing shops and updated working hours and websites for shops that existed.

Also #1, be responsible when making changes, don't overwrite other people's work unless it is an improvement. Double check everything that you add, and also if you don't have any experience with map editors or GIS software take a watch of some OSM editing tutorial.

Also #2, I most likely omitted some other useful FOSS tools, and it doesn't matter which one you decide to use as long as it is based on OpenStreetMap or any other community driven layer.

Also #3, tell all your friends and family to do the same.

Yeah, this might not be the most important thing to cure the world at this moment but developing community-driven mindset where everybody takes a small or big part in it is the way to go. Cheers!

EDIT: Amazing input in the comments, I'll try to summarize additional suggestions provided by other people. Thank you for pointing out URL errors in my post too.

Very useful suggestion by illusionist:

We need more wikipedia images and content, there is still a lot to improve on maps just by contributing to wikipedia. Osmand added custom buttons and now you can enable wikipedia connections with one click which is great

Related lemmy communities:

• !osm@feddit.uk
• !CoMaps@sopuli.xyz
• !openstreetmap@lemmy.ml
• !osmand@lemmy.ml

List of alternative and open-source maps:

• On Android: https://alternativeto.net/software/osmand/?license=opensource&platform=android
• OpenStreetMap curated list of iOS apps that use it (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iOS_applications) + one additional map missing on the list: Mapply
• Send official OpenStreetMap as a shortcut to desktop and use web-view instead of an app (works on any OS)
• CartesApp (Only in French for now)
• Cardinal Maps (GitHub)

List of tools for contribution & content management:

• Street­Complete
• Vespucci
• CoMaps for simplistic POI edits
• Official OpenStreetMap website

The post A Worker-Led Alternative to Billionaire-Owned News in DC appeared first on Inequality.org.

From Inequality.org via this RSS feed

Source

From Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera via this RSS feed

hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah

Zai Bennet is the CEO and Chief Creative Officer for BBC Studios

No decision more neatly demonstrates the nasty headwinds facing scripted than Disney pulling out of the Doctor Who deal with the BBC, BBC Studios and Bad Wolf after just two seasons. For the show to continue long beyond its 2026 Christmas special, which is being penned by showrunner Russell T. Davies, the BBC now needs to replace some of that lost budget, which totals millions of pounds per hour.

Bennett avoids directly answering the question of whether BBC Studios will stump up some of the lost cash to give the show a long-term future – noting that he “won’t speak for the BBC” – but says “we’re all in it together” when it comes to keeping the Time Lord on the small screen for years to come.

“We’re a big important part of Doctor Who and are all motivated to make sure Doctor Who has a long and flourishing life,” he says. “We’ve got the Christmas special coming. After that, it’s time for us all to work on it.”

How efficient would it be to build gigantic dipping turkeys next to lakes and oceans for power? I am legitimately curious about what practical problems this proposal would have. Does the device just break apart at that scale?