If they had only included LoRa, the Meshtastic folks would be all over this.

… the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness.

Wittgenstein had it right all along.

Didn’t sound like the communication module to D-Bus interface was encrypted. Proves yet again that once you have access to the physical device, all bets are off.

Really wish somebody had asked what data was going from the comms module to the cloud (and back)? That’s where most of the home privacy and remote tampering issues kick in.

Dammit. I KNEW there was something I was supposed to do this week…

It’s been patiently biding its time for the opportunity to bite my shin.

If someone ever invents a time machine, they should travel back in time and dope-slap Dennis Ritchie into NOT making C strings null-terminated.

So many security violations and malware can be traced back to that one decision.

Edit: Curl dude abides: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/12/29/no-strcpy-either/

OK, just tried it with one of those old forms. Added a text field overlay and a signature. Even flattens before saving. Works great. Awesome, thanks!

Sounds like he’s on-the-fence about it.

Went to look up what XFA forms were (https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-learn/forms/document-services/pdf-forms-and-documents).

Most of the non-fillable forms I encounter are what that document lists as “Traditional” PDF forms, likely generated using older tools from print streams. For example, a school athletics release form, or a membership application for a small organization. None of them have any fillable PDF fields. The original expectation might have been to download and print out the PDF, hand-fill it, then fax the result back.

I’ll dig up a form like that I had to fill a few weeks ago and give it a try.

He notes that LLM vendors have been training their models on Wikipedia content. But if the content contains incorrect information and citations, you get the sort of circular (incorrect) reference that leads to misinformation.

One irony, he says, is that LLM vendors are now willing to pay for training data unpolluted by the hallucinated output their own products generate.

This looks great!

Can you use it to overlay text fields and fill them?

Most of my uses are basic. Like filling out a PDF form that doesn’t have proper form entry fields. These are usually older government or bureaucratic/healthcare/school forms.

I end up adding text boxes and entering values, or adding an X on top of a checkbox, adding a signature PNG file and scaling it to fit the size. Sometimes I have to add a highlight overlay. Then I save it all as a single flattened PDF file.

Amazingly, this is hard to do in Acrobat and a lot of apps. I end up using a janky, 10-yo desktop app that is no longer supported.

😔 We’ve all done that. Thanks again!

Thank you! Great insights.

There are three solutions to adjusting the so-called ‘replacement rate:’

• Reduce death rate (ie improve health outcomes for elderly to extend lifespan).
• Make more babies.
• Allow immigration.

Options 1 and 2 haven’t worked too well, and option 3 can cause a lot of political issues.

Not sure there’s a good way to avert the end-game.

Edit: actually there are two other solutions: cloning, and senecide (killing the elderly). It’s dystopian SciFi and totally unethical, but they’re there.

When it comes to Medium vs Substack or Ghost…

• Can you customize the Medium interface to support custom widgets and themes?

• Have you tried cross-posting between Medium, Substack, or Ghost? Like, posting a long piece to Substack, with a shorter version on Medium and links for people to subscribe to the newsletter version there?

• How much traffic are you getting from the Medium recommendation algorithm, vs organic discovery, vs social media?

• For analytics, do they offer their own or is there a way to integrate 3rd party ones?

• How is Medium for complex content? Like text, graphs, videos embeds, gifs, Markdown, tables (HTML or Markdown), animations, and interactive scripts?

• Is there a posting API so you can automate or schedule postings?

• There’s a mobile app. How much traffic do you get from there vs web or emails?

• Does the mobile app support mixed content widgets like above?

Thank you for the Fascinating Aida link. Spent the afternoon discovering their great back catalog.

Dear Mattermost…

NASA already has a plan on ways to remove orbital debris: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-otps-cba-of-orbital-debris-phase-2-plus-svgs-v3-tjc-tagged.pdf?emrc=224cd2

Federation of American Scientists did a cost-benefit analysis: https://fas.org/publication/how-do-you-clean-up-170-million-pieces-of-space-junk/