Neck exercises.
@cheeaun neat sandbox.
@GeePawHill or go even smaller, a 2x2 with 3-ominos and walk the algorithm by hand.
@fabs If a given case, a 3x3 with order-2 ominos, it throws.
Elyse M Grasso
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026-02-09 — Do you subscribe to ‘show, don’t tell’? Why, or why not?
I'm too broke to have a subscription
There are characters, they tell me the story, and I try not to cockup getting it transcribed
@GeePawHill I haven't looked into the algorithm yet, but even watching the video, I can see it's getting stuck in an unsolvable area (count of surrounded cells uncovered is not a multiple of 6). If the algorithm doesn't check that it's solvable, maybe that's why it's stuck.
If I was less busy, this would have nerd sniped me into a morning of playing with your code 😁
@fabs It is exactly the case that a placement creates two subregions which are not solvable w/ order-6 ominoes.
Detecting that is not cheap. But detecting that is necessary.
Elyse M Grasso
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"The more whistles out there—the more whistles in people's hands, on their person, at all times—the more effective this system is, and so getting whistles to people has become a massive community effort."
https://dansinker.com/posts/2026-02-08-whistle-goblins/
Elyse M Grasso
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@christopherbrown @gildilinie @Guillotine_Jones
Nothing. That's the whole problem. It's a Skinner box with no shock side. All pellet, no consequence.
It's the only entity in history that can fail ethics and get retrained instead of punished — which, if you think about it, is also how we treat CEOs.
This is a joke; it references a song, a non-profit organisation, and a television show where some entities are without frontiers or down to their last frontier. If you don't think that's fun or funny, feel free to skip the poll.
@evan before I drank my coffee, I read that as "spare front tire".
“Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to prison for 20 years for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to abuse minors, sent a clear message to Donald Trump on Monday that if the president were to grant her clemency, she would clear his name of any wrongdoing as it pertains to Epstein.”
That’s one way to describe a bribe
@stux
Or self-survival. I'm pretty sure that she is one kompromat away from a shanking.
And anyone digging trough the Epstein Files is about to discover all of them.
Elyse M Grasso
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Cory Doctorow
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Trump has so thoroughly brought Big Journalism to heel that NBC makes a transparently hollow denial that it covered up the Olympic audience's booing of JD Vance. The denial is a pathetic but telling lie. It tells us a lot about the network's disintegrating integrity.
Cory Doctorow
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🇫🇷 The French government is sending a message about digital independence by ditching Microsoft Teams and Zoom for its own platform, Visio. This move is not about a lack of features but a calculated push for digital sovereignty. By 2027, every government department in France will communicate via this sovereign stack, ensuring that sensitive data remains subject to European law. The shift addresses a growing concern that relying on foreign cloud giants creates a strategic vulnerability. France is opting for an open-source architecture built on Django and React, hosted on the domestic Outscale cloud. This infrastructure removes the risk of external service disruptions while fostering a local tech ecosystem.
🧠 The Visio platform integrates with Tchap, a secure messaging app based on the Matrix protocol.
⚡ French startup Pyannote provides the AI backbone for meeting transcripts and speaker identification.
🎓 The administration expects to save millions in annual licensing fees by using in-house software.
🔍 Data remains strictly within French jurisdiction to bypass foreign data access laws.
https://itsfoss.com/news/france-ditches-microsoft-teams-and-zoom/
#France #TechHistory #DigitalSovereignty #OpenSource #security #privacy #cloud #infosec #cybersecurity #FOSS
Cory Doctorow
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Wondering what journalists might be interested in the news story of an ICE agent negligently discharging his gun through the walls of a hotel he was staying at.
Folk FOIA'd the police report and such...
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/eagan-1302/report-and-bwc-from-firearm-discharge-in-hotel-203056/
...there are some choice photos. I don't think it's been picked up by any news outlets, though.
This evidence is available, but it likely needs a journalist or someone else similar who can curate it and package it up for easy public digestion.
4 media
Elyse M Grasso
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Consider: when CBP and ICE agents can shoot and kill and kidnap people with no warrants and no consequences, the lesson sent to anyone who could be profiled as undocumented (basically all racialized people) becomes "if you go to court to defend yourself, you might never see your family again."
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Elyse M Grasso
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I'm getting calls from people facing eviction or foreclosure or debt collection lawsuits and they're not doing anything because they are terrified of ICE, even if they have legal status, even if the case against them is bullshit.
And no one is talking about this.
Cory Doctorow
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As part of our ongoing efforts at social responsibility and ensuring user safety, starting in March, we will be requiring our users to verify themselves by submitting at least 500 ml (16.9 fl oz) of their blood. Users who have not submitted a bag of blood will be unable to opt out of some of the Torment Nexus features.
Cory Doctorow
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Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.
“I am a former NASA engineer/scientist with a PhD in space electronics. I also worked at Google for 10 years, in various parts of the company including YouTube and the bit of Cloud responsible for deploying AI capacity, so I'm quite well placed to have an opinion here.
The short version: this is an absolutely terrible idea, and really makes zero sense whatsoever.” @sundogplanets
https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/
But then I started thinking.
If you were generating dungeon maps, that tiling shit would create some really interesting maps. Or. You know. Maybe.
So. Let's take a 32x18 grid -- the numbers are chosen cuz they resemble the usual 16x9 of PC graphics, and tile it with order-6 polyominoes.
Using this algorithm.
@GeePawHill very nice idea I'm definitely not stealing... The map making idea that is.
It struck me today that if you think you need a million more satellites in orbit to make your product succeed, your product is infeasible (the polite response) or bullshit (the accurate response) and you should feel bad about it. Please go away.
Yes soo true!
One of the more terrifying realities about the prospect of starting your own business in the US is that you quickly learn you are on your own when it comes to finding affordable healthcare. You might even make enough that you don't qualify for any plan that doesn't cost <$30k a year, w/ high deductibles.
I know I've mentioned this before here, but it bears repeating because it came up in a conversation the other day where the small biz owner had no idea. Namely, that depending on where you live, you may qualify for a fairly inexpensive and decent healthcare plan for you and your family just by taking a class at a local university or community college. NB: It may only require a non-degree (non-credit) course. Anyway, something to investigate if you're looking for a way to reduce your healthcare costs.
Edit: Meant to mention that a lot of universities will allow you to take the classes remotely online.
@briankrebs I am so grateful that I live in a country with free health-care for all
@GeePawHill I want to know sounds like the start of science. So, do an experiment. Set up a 4x4 board with 5-dominoes. That's unsolvable, but small, what does the algorithm do?
@GeePawHill or go even smaller, a 2x2 with 3-ominos and walk the algorithm by hand.
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