🆕 blog! “I'm OK being left behind, thanks!”

Many years ago, someone tried to get me into cryptocurrencies. "They're the future of money!" they said. I replied saying that I'd rather wait until they were more useful, less volatile, easier to use, and utterly reliable.

"You don't want to get left behind, do you?" They countered.

That struck me as a bizarre sentiment.…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/im-ok-being-left-behind-thanks/
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#AI #crypto #future #technology

I did the `human.json` thing!

If you're a blogger who I've met in person, and you're not using AI or LLMs for your content, let me know and I'll add you to my list.

https://codeberg.org/robida/human.json

Hey #ActivityPub friends. Are there any new ActivityPub / Mastodon features I should add to #ActivityBot?

It's a small bot-only ActivityPub server in a single PHP file.

https://gitlab.com/edent/activity-bot/

It can be followed, post images, allow quote posts, etc.

Is there anything else you would like a bot-server to be able to do?

What's the largest number of "trusted partners" you've seen in a cookie consent pop-up?

Hey #Firefox friends. Is there any way to improve TTS on #Linux?

Currently it calls the default eSpeak-NG voices which are robotic and quite difficult to listen to.

Is there any way to hook the JS SpeechSynthesisUtterance to something modern like Piper?

I don't want to rely on a web service like Chrome does. I want to use the local voice models on my machine.

Anyone know if that's possible?

Thinking about age-gates and skill-gates.

You can't buy alcohol until you are old enough.

You can't get an amateur radio licence until you pass a skills test.

You can't drive until you pass a skills test, which can only be taken after a specific age.

What other things are only skill-restricted?

That is, a particularly skilled toddler could theoretically pass a test.

90% of UK homes can get gigabit broadband!

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/uk-reaches-90-gigabit-broadband-coverage-as-full-fibre-rollouts-continue

(Please don't be a dick in the replies as a muting often offends.)

Likewise! It is amazing how much extra space it gives you.

Checked in to De Hems, 11 Macclesfield St, United Kingdom

Testing if photo uploads work with the code I've written. Do you see a photo attached to this post?

https://swarmapp.com/user/56367/checkin/699f3a9de1844e13f7607eb7?s=LIEWJrsA1fPS_fx-_CKSy02kZU4

A bit of a moan, but I need some advice.

Currently https://openbenches.org allows *anyone* to upload a bench & photo without registration.

It has been mostly fine but yesterday an anonymous user added some stupid photos. Only the 4th time that's happened.

I wanted to restrict adding & editing to registered users. But today a GitHub user went in and deliberately vandalised one of the entries.

The users have been banned and the changes reverted.

Is there a realistic way to stop this?

The UK has the largest capacity offshore wind farm in the world. It also has the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms#Largest_operational_offshore_wind_farms