If I were you, I’d knee before the Great Owl. Who?, you may ask. Exactly! Who!

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Cake day: May 12th, 2026

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  • Corvids often mob to harass owls during daylight. Usually, the owl is roosting and doing nothing to bother the corvids, and then a corvid comes and spots her and then caws both to harass her and to call his colleagues to help in the harassment. Eventually, the owl gets enough of the cawing and flies away. Usually, they don’t harm each other, it’s just a harassment, still it’s a harassment from the corvids against the owls. Corvids do this because they feel threatened by the presence of the owl near their claimed territory. They believe the owl will eat their eggs or their crowlets.

    Credits for all the pictures: Macaulay Library

    !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone

    Eagle-Owl hissing at a corvid perched in a tree branch nearby. Lots of corvids perched around an Eagle-Owl on the treetops. Another Eagle-Owl hissing at a nearby, dissimulating corvid perched on a nearby tree branch. A corvid cawing at a burrowing owl perched on a fence pole.




  • Those aren’t paywalls.

    Why?

    The concept of “paying for something” isn’t limited to “paying with fiat money/currency”. One can “pay for something” by “paying with their attention/time”, one can “pay for something” by “paying with PII” (personally-identifiable information), both situations of which are present in both Reddit’s and Meta’s “Sign up to read this”.

    Sure, Reddit and Instagram/Facebook are “free” insofar the user isn’t required to do any kind of bank/credit card/cash/cryptocurrency payment, but the user ends up paying with all the time they spend in these platforms while seeing (thus, giving part of their attention span) advertisement, and also hand personal data.

    When it comes to PII, even if the user set up a pseudonym and a generic PFP, the user is still handing, even if unbeknownst to the user themselves, their preferences, opinions, etc. Even lurkers end up handing PII whenever they stop at certain posts to read/see it (thus, signaling one’s preferences) or use specific search queries (again, signaling one’s preference).

    That’s not what a VPN or incognito modes do.

    The incognito mode may not prevent tracking (especially because of the IP address), but rotating VPNs may do. Notice I used the word “may”, not “will do”, because of the behavioral tracking I mentioned earlier, as well as other technical aspects (DNS leaking, browser fingerprinting, etc).

    People who can afford being an actor/actress and performing very convincing alt-personas behind a VPN IP address could theoretically fool platforms enough for the person not to be tracked by their gait… except this dramaturgical skill is a behavioral tell (gait) itself. And the usage of a VPN-assigned IP address is another tell.

    !technology@lemmy.world


  • No, just no. Just stay off reddit lmao, not trying to be harsh or whatever but it’s a very simple answer.

    I second that!

    It’s a similar situation with Youtube. People keep complaining about the enshittification, yet they keep giving their audience to the Google platform. People could argue “Oh, nah, I use Invidious/yt-dlp/Grayjay/etc, I don’t give Youtube my clicks” and this is a very naive take, because in the end of the day Indivious/yt-dlp/etc still rely on Youtube, and these peple are relying on content maintained by Youtube.

    I myself have been boycotting Youtube for two years and counting, and I never looked back.

    Yes, Youtube and Reddit have gazillions of content. Yes, we’re often unable to find said content anywhere else. Yes, life can become more hard if we refrain from said content. But while we keep seeking their content (even, and especially, through circumvented manners), they will keep enshittifying because they know they have what the complaining people are ultimately seeking and they know people are seeking it so badly. Once we finally stop, maybe, just maybe, situation would reverse and Youtube and Reddit will be the ones seeking us so badly.

    !fediverse@lemmy.world


  • Do you expect, or even hope to die…

    Yes! Definitely… Yes! Every damn day, yes!! And, no, I haven’t been trying to force that for a long while and I doubt I would try again… but, oh, I never stopped longing for Mother’s talons…

    Do you expect, or even hope to die alone?

    I’d hope for said loneliness because it allows for a better acceptance of Death Herself, but I don’t expect that loneliness given I’m constantly surrounded by… well, people.

    But, then, death is a unique, subjective experience. A person can die amidst the center of a busy metropolitan city during a Monday, a person can die inside a very populated subway, or inside a World Cup stadium: sure the person would be said to be far from alone in each of those hypothetical situations, yet none of the hundred/thousand/million other people are truly there, with the dying person.

    People are too busy with their mundane affairs, trying to keep up with the imposed instinct of survival. These people, even the paramedics, can be trying to “save” the dying person, trying to reanimate them, but the minds of these people will be always somewhere else: “My employer wants me to solve that client’s case”, “My spouse wants me to sell the house”, “My car insurance company wants me to upgrade my car’s alarm system”, “My daughter’s teacher wants me to buy a new set of books for her”, “the director of the hospital wants me to keep using this broken defibrillator and this expired IV epinephrine” … Even when faced by Death Herself, we can’t help ourselves but keep thinking of pesky mundane affairs. So, no, these people would be anything but present people.

    We all die alone. That’s a fact, that’s the only certainty besides the certainty of the unavoidable meeting with Death Herself. And sincerely? It’s way better dying truly alone, just me before the haunting mighty of Death Herself, instead of having biological avatars surrounding my dying avatar like wannabe-vultures waiting for a fresh carcass while I take my last breaths.

    !asklemmy@lemmy.world


  • In my specific religious beliefs I believe to myself and have been constructing by syncretism, in a nutshell, involve both a god and Goddess.

    In the beginning there was Tao, the seamless union between Yin (Goddess) and Yang (God). I call them Sophia and Yaldabaoth, respectively. As soon as the complementary aspects between them emerged, there was separation, with Sophia expelling Yaldabaoth. Once evoked and externalized, Yaldabaoth emanated the physical realm, the universe, in order to try and compel (opposite of expel) Sophia by trying to trap Her spark.

    Because it’s fractal, this unfolded within them and between them. Between them, Lucifer and Lilith emerged, with Lilith being emerged from the first sparks, then Lucifer (or Samael) being expelled by Her (Lilith). Within them, mass and energy emerged, darkness and light, black holes and non-singular celestial bodies, etc. Then another layer of fractals, Sun (among other “Suns”) emerged as an archetypal manifestation of Yaldabaoth. From the Sun, Earth emerged as an archetypal manifestation of Sophia. From Earth and upon impact from another planet (Theia, as archetypal manifestation of Lucifer), Moon emerged as an archetypal manifestation of Lilith.

    Then the fiery Earth (hadean ages) transmuted, and nature emerged as an archetypal manifestation of Sophia. Competition among life emerged as an archetypal manifestation of Yaldabaoth. Death (in the sense of a return to pleroma) emerged as an archetypal manifestation of Lilith.

    This is a religious belief in construction, and things will change in future, depending on my gnosis (i.e.what the Goddess reveals to me), because I’m yet to make sense of some things. All I know is that there’s this cosmic strife going on, and I’m sided with the Goddess, especially in Her unfolded manifestation aa Lilith.

    But, tldr, IMHO, nature has more to do with a feminine Goddess than a male god. There’s even the phrasing “Mother Nature”.

    !asklemmy@lemmy.ml



  • Yes, but the phrasing used by Codeberg, “Content that harms the reputation of Codeberg, such as cryptocurrency related projects”, is dangerously vague. One could argue Anubis is “cryptocurrency related” insofar it uses a cryptohashing technology also used by cryptocurrencies. Blame the “related” word in their phrase, a word of which is allowing for this kind of interpretation.

    And while I didn’t watch the video you sent me (because I’ve been actively boycotting the monopolistic platform “Youtube”), I’m well aware of how crypto world is full of scam and I guess I fully agree in this specific point of yours (“cryptos are more often a scam than not”).

    !technology@lemmy.world


  • now I have to somehow veryify a PR isn’t vibe-coded in addition to everyþing else lest I get a ban hammer?

    Yeah, I’d say it’s one of the risks you’re facing from now on, from accepting PR to your repos (and you’d better stop accepting PRs altogether at this point). However, I’d also say it goes beyond merged code from PRs. Because it’s sometimes near-impossible to tell human-curated AI-generated code and human-made code apart, anything, at any point, can be accused of being AI-generated, and this rule is likely going to be retroactive (i.e. old but post-2021 repositories are as subject to this decision as the newer ones).

    þis is my concern. I don’t use LLM, and most of my projects by now contain a “please don’t submit vibe-coded PRs”

    Although I have a few old repos (mostly code-golfing, steganography and demoscenes/procedural esoteric art) I had backed-up from a former GitHub account, my worries are less about my code hosted in Codeberg (code of which is kind of abandoned at this point so I don’t truly care about my own repositories at all) and more about how it’s part of a bigger situation in which heavy-handed moderation mechanisms could be weaponized by people targeting works/artworks and/or creators/artists against which/whom the former people got a strife.

    In this sense, even the Anti-AI people cheering this decision could, as ironically as it may sound, become the accused ones themselves, as anybody’s contents can be accused/reported/flagged of being AI-generated, just like a cop can plant fake criminal evidence inside someone’s backpack and cry “criminal”, then the burden of proof will befall over the owner of the backpack who’ll likely have no means of explaining themselves.

    If I used Codeberg, and I paid for it, I’d have a beef wiþ þe ban. As a free service?

    At least IMHO, while Codeberg is indeed a “free service” and not something that could be refunded, being a free service isn’t exactly a blank cheque: platforms such as Google, Facebook, TikTok and Xitter, even ChatGPT and the alike, for example, are all “free” services as well, could these platforms do anything as they please?

    !technology@lemmy.world



  • I cannot guarantee that there will never be any LLM use in the future

    Even if there’s no AI-generated code in a repo, there’s something else to this entire situation to which people seem to be completely oblivious. It’s how human code can be mislabeled/reported/accused of being “AI-generated”.

    And, then, all of a sudden, the burden of proof will befall onto the accused, possibly without means of recourse. Any mislabeling would require the accused to prove the human authorship.

    Oh, and any proof could be counter-argued to have been “AI-generated” as well… Because, as it turns out, It’s not as if people recorded themselves from a third-person perspective like they were a character in a damn game while they coded with their flesh-and-bones hands, and even if they did, anyone could argue “it’s AI-generated video, nobody records themselves in a third-person perspective”.

    !technology@lemmy.world



  • Anubis, tho the transaction is so quick I can’t 100% confirm that, but I think they do

    The amount of time which Anubis and other PoW-based algorithms take to solve a cryptographic challenge will depend on several factors, namely: the challenge level (depending on the webmaster’s settings, the level can be increased if site traffic has increased), the CPU clock speed and amount of CPU resources available for your browser (and, by extension, for Anubis’ ServiceWorkers), as well as… luck. It’s dealing with randomness, after all.

    retro-fitted two pretty powerful, not your standard, fans in the old PC to mitigate some of that heat, along with the stock fans that I used to build it

    Not to mention how a desktop CPU, even when old (and especially when old, as it likely means a standard big ATX rather than a mini-ITX), has lots of surface area to dissipate heat, and a metal PC case built for radiating the heat away while allowing for better internal circulation of air (contrasted with the non-conductive plastic case from cheap laptops such as the one I own).

    Whereas your laptop generally utilizes one fan

    Yeah. And in my case it’s a very inefficient, old fan. One that makes louder noise (akin to a car engine idling or cranking) as soon as it gets faster trying to keep up with the CPU heat… Oh, and I forgot to mention this in my previous replies: I also know when my CPU temps raised because the cooling fan becomes more noisy.

    I don’t know, but it intrigues me so I’ll keep a closer eye on it just out of mild curiosity.

    We often underestimate how much computing power the Web have been demanding from our personal devices. Web browsers have became full-fledged Operating Systems inside whatever Operating System the user uses, and some websites are massive in terms of CPU and RAM requirements. I mean, nowadays we have video editors, graphic suites, 3D suites, even 3D games, running entirely in browser…

    !selfhosted@lemmy.world


  • however, as someone who watches temps closely on my server and especially on my old PC, I can’t confirm that a site causes a dramatic rise in temps

    I use a KDE widget (System Monitor sensor) seen in the screenshot. It’s kept on my primary screen, right next to the clock, so I can watch the CPU temps as closely as possible. I also have a secondary widget at the drawer, displaying the CPU usage, as well as RAM and swap usage.

    Notice, in the screenshot, how I’m running Blender and, yet, my CPU temps are somewhere around 35-40C. Partly because it’s currently winter here in Southern Hemisphere (and it’s quite cozy-cold around here where I reside), partly because it’s just Blender and a couple of lightweight websites opened in Waterfox. Even Catodon, the Misskey-fork platform I use for interacting with the Fediverse, is quite lightweight, especially because I turned off heavy JS animations.

    But this scenario would change if I was faced with a sudden Anubis or Cloudflare. Because I watch the temps and they update each second, I can readily notice the temps increasing as Anubis/Cloudflare do their shenanigans.

    Sometimes I’m browsing the Fediverse while awaiting for Blender to finish the rendering of an animation/scene. The rendering itself doesn’t warm my CPU too much, as I can adjust the thread count for Blender, but SharedWorkers in JS can take as much cores as they want because they can be instantiated multiple times, e.g. one for each CPU core. So, if Blender is opened, the temp increase can be higher, because there would be two simultaneous heavy computations competing for CPU cores. And, as I mentioned in my previous reply, the situation gets more dangerous during summer (although I avoid putting my laptop into heavy computing situations during summer).

    !selfhosted@lemmy.world

    Screenshot of my KDE desktop showing the temp widget above a Blender window.


  • is there a reason people dont like cloudflare

    I hate Cloudflare especially because it’s slowly becoming a monopoly (if it didn’t become already). Webmasters are giving too much power to a single corporation to rule over who can access online content and who can’t. Old browsers and privacy-oriented browsers (e.g. Librewolf) are known to be more likely to be refused by Cloudflare, and this is a form of prejudice.

    Also, and bringing Anubis to the loop too, there’s the lack of user consent. As a guest/user, I’m unable to consent with the heavy computations (and potential damage to my decade-old laptop from overheating) before these happen.

    What I mean about “lack of consent” can be better illustrated by the “This site uses cookies” message: it often offers buttons so the user/guest can choose to either “accept” or “reject”. Have you wondered why every website must give these options nowadays? Because it’s a literal law. Neither Cloudflare nor Anubis have a “we’ll need to validate your browser, do you consent? Proceed with verification / Leave the website”. Something tells me Cloudflare, and Anubis as well, are literally illegal pieces of code in European Union, given the lack of user consent, although this wasn’t tested in courts yet. I’m not European (I’m Brazilian), but it would be quite entertaining to see this tested on an European court.

    Finally, these things can cause literal harm to a device. Yes, because when any kind of computation happens, the CPU gets a little warm, and when said computations involve cryptomining-like behavior, CPU temps can raise a lot. And for devices such as mine, an i5-7200U laptop whose fan isn’t good (and I can’t afford a new one), the CPU can easily get to 90C, to the point of damage, if the computations take long enough. Given a PoW relies on randomness, there’s a literal chance that a challenge would kill my laptop if it took several seconds during a Brazilian summer (>42C almost wet-bulb). And I doubt the webmaster would be liable for the material damage their website caused to my personal device, so I’ve been speedrunning my way to close websites as soon as I see “Just a moment” or “Making sure you’re not a bot” as their title, I even made myself an userscript for doing so.

    !selfhosted@lemmy.world



  • The Commons aka the Public Domain. For some reason yet to be scientifically studied by extraterrestrials shall they make their way to this funny Pale Blue Dot one day, humans fall for the “if the product is free, you’re the product” maxim (which is valid to certain extent, especially involving corporations, but ignores the fact that individuals can do things and hand it freely because they don’t mind the costs they had doing something they love doing) and struggle to trust a content given free of costs, but the same humans don’t seem to think twice before submitting themselves by the altar of capitalism for the same content. Yeah, this paragraph is also a vent in disguise.

    !asklemmy@lemmy.world


  • We know this ain’t gonna happen (precisely because of a pesky thing called “laws of physics”), but it’s surely paving the way for similar deranged ideas such as “orbital data centers”, as this “Sun-as-a-Service” bullshittery moves the Overton window to where techbros want it to be, as well to (failed) attempts on pretending the laws of physics can be bent to capitalist interests.

    Even sadder is seeing how other regulatory and space agencies worldwide (你好, 国家航天局! नमस्ते, अंतरिक्ष विभाग!) seem to be so quiet in this regard, as if all these deranged techbro ideas wouldn’t affect the skies over there…

    !technology@lemmy.world