What is Hackers' Pub?

Hackers' Pub is a place for software engineers to share their knowledge and experience with each other. It's also an ActivityPub-enabled social network, so you can follow your favorite hackers in the fediverse and get their latest posts in your feed.

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Raphael Albert @r_alb@mastodon.social
Public
Shared by Em :official_verified:

European tech companies should demand stronger regulation, especially on privacy!

Why? Because it would give them an advantage over their US-based competitors, who are neither willing nor able to operate under strict rules.

That's why the European Commission's Digital Omnibus package is such a bad idea. Weak regulation doesn't create a level playing field for all. It benefits the big and powerful players more than anyone else!
--

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Stacey Campbell @stacey_campbell@aus.social
Public

Los Angeles is in desperate need of 100s of roundabouts to replace the rarely acknowledged stop signs. Spouse informed me that she actually encountered a roundabout in Los Angeles yesterday. Not sure I ever have.

Incredulous, I tracked it down on google maps, and it's a paint-by-numbers beauty. You simply could never go wrong here at what I assume must be some Angelenos first ever roundabout.

maps.app.goo.gl/rst1Wh3rkyyYn5

Framegrab of a two lane entry into the roundabout at the intersection of Riverside Dr, San Fernando Rd, and Figueroa St. Paint on the road guides vehicles to the allowed roundabout exits for each lane, featuring a handy dot to indicate the relative location of the center of the roundabout.Roundabout entrance showing a well marked pedestrian crossing, double pedestrian crossing signs with user-operated blinking LEDs, double Yield signs, as well as quadruple road markings warning drivers to yield to vehicles in the roundabout. Plus some large and immovable art pieces in the middle of the roundabout to deflect anyone trying to drive over the roundabout.
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Micr0byte @micr0@wetdry.world
Quiet public

@anantagdThe Yangsi Michael Dillon @nelsonNelson Lopez i genuinely don't know how to react to all of this.. or to do with this. your points are really good and i personally agree with them. i do think there's value in altbot for posts that would otherwise have nothing, but i also see how it might be doing more harm than good in ways i didn't anticipate. with the whole, people being lazy about it thing.

so i want to ask. what do you think i should do then? shut it down? change something about how it works? i swear im not trying to be defensive, i actually want to know what you personally think the right move is in this situation.

The Yangsi Michael Dillon @anantagd@ieji.de
Quiet public
Shared by Em :official_verified:

@micr0Micr0byte @nelsonNelson Lopez I cannot tell you what to do. Your intentions are excellent. However, whenever seeing people design a Something to improve accessibility for blind people, the result is often sub optimal, because often it's trying to meet needs that aren't there. And then only serves one aspect of that need, disregarding other aspects.

Also, the effect on blind people is perhaps not what you expected to happen. I'm not a "nice" blind person. When someone does the altbot thing and nothing else in my timeline, I think: I'm not worth the effort. Remember: I can't spot read: I need to listen to all of it, beginning to end. Nowadays I recognize alt bot output immediately, even when people have amended it somewhat, and I block them and move on.

An aspect you might consider: AltBot underscores the idea that providing alt text is a heavy burden on seeing people. And often such thinking makes "blind folks", "screen reader users" into an abstraction.

Alt text on Mastodon is a beautiful thing.

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Vagina Museum @vagina_museum@masto.ai
Public
Shared by Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) :blobcatrainbow:

WE’RE CLOSED

Don’t panic, it’s just for the bank holiday!

The Museum will be closed Thursday 1st January. We’re back to business as usual from January 2nd: Wednesday to Sunday, 10am - 6pm, on Poyser Street in Bethnal Green. Admission is FREE because we don’t believe in paywalls.

Have a very Flappy New Year!

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Rob Griffiths @rgriff@mstdn.social
Public
Shared by jnkrtech

I wanted to transcribe a bit of a podcast, and I was curious if @claudeai101Claude AI could do transcriptions. Claude said no problem, so I sent the audio file, and I got the transcript. I know the host (@mcelhearnKirk McElhearn), so I showed him a bit of the output, saying "neat!" He said, "Umm, we didn’t say anything like that." WTF?

I then asked Claude if it’d simply made up the transcript…and yes,it had! Completely! Without telling me.

This is the future people are spending billions on?

Claude admitting they just made up an entire audio transcript.
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Micr0byte @micr0@wetdry.world
Public
Shared by Em :official_verified:

i turned off altbot for now.

a conversation happened that i need to sit with and that i want others to read and also to consider: ieji.de/@anantagd/115804706509

#BlindAltBot (@anantagd@ieji.de)

@nelson@wetdry.world I am blind. Seeing people who think I'm not worth the effort fill my timeline with AltBot generated AI stuff that isn't even accurate in lots of cases. Human alt text is always better, because it doesn´t focus on ocular seeing. Seeing people think, and AltBot was designed around that notion, that blind people must compensate for missing "eye-seeing", but that's not the case. I am interested in the meaning of an image to you, its maker or publisher. Again, human alt text is better, also because it strengthens reciprocity between seeing and blind people. AltBot doesn't but it makes seeing people believe they have done their bit for accessibility. In actuality, the reverse is often true. !!!!!!!!!

ieji.de · ieji.de

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The Yangsi Michael Dillon @anantagd@ieji.de
Quiet public
Shared by Em :official_verified:

@nelsonNelson Lopez I am blind. Seeing people who think I'm not worth the effort fill my timeline with AltBot generated AI stuff that isn't even accurate in lots of cases.

Human alt text is always better, because it doesn´t focus on ocular seeing. Seeing people think, and AltBot was designed around that notion, that blind people must compensate for missing "eye-seeing", but that's not the case. I am interested in the meaning of an image to you, its maker or publisher.

Again, human alt text is better, also because it strengthens reciprocity between seeing and blind people. AltBot doesn't but it makes seeing people believe they have done their bit for accessibility. In actuality, the reverse is often true.

!!!!!!!!!

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Tim Bray @timbray@cosocial.ca
Public

Idly working on my Quamina state-machine-based pattern matcher. (github.com/timbray/quamina)

Hit a bug that smells like an infinite loop. Looked closer. Hmm, seems like my code traversing a dinky little 4-state automaton thinks it needs to consider 25,165,824 possible state transitions. Need more coffee.

Home of Quamina, a fast pattern-matching library in Go - timbray/quamina

GitHub - timbray/quamina: Home of Quamina, a fast pattern-matching library in Go

Home of Quamina, a fast pattern-matching library in Go - timbray/quamina

github.com · GitHub

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Vagina Museum @vagina_museum@masto.ai
Public

WE’RE CLOSED

Don’t panic, it’s just for the bank holiday!

The Museum will be closed Thursday 1st January. We’re back to business as usual from January 2nd: Wednesday to Sunday, 10am - 6pm, on Poyser Street in Bethnal Green. Admission is FREE because we don’t believe in paywalls.

Have a very Flappy New Year!

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Ele Willoughby, PhD @minouette@spore.social
Public
Shared by Em :official_verified:

Bonne année! Happy New Year! Here’s my topical French Canadian folklore print I made for : La Chasse-galerie!

This hand-carved, hand-printed 11” x 14” lino block print on lovely Japanese paper illustrates the famous French Canadian folktale of the Chasse-galerie, or the Flying Canoe. The tale tells of some hardworking voyageurs in their timber camp, 🧵

minouette.etsy.com/listing/440

🛶

My Lino block print shows a night sky with moon and clouds and flying canoe full of paddling voyageurs over rolling countryside with fields and trees covered in snow and a church steeple in the foreground. The moon is covered with grey craters and shadows. The sky with scattered clouds is in a range of golden-green near the moon to minty bluish-green away from the moon. The foreground, canoe and its occupants are in black. The numbered 11”x14” print is titled “La Chasse-galerie” and signed Ele Willoughby 2024.
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Raphael Albert @r_alb@mastodon.social
Public

European tech companies should demand stronger regulation, especially on privacy!

Why? Because it would give them an advantage over their US-based competitors, who are neither willing nor able to operate under strict rules.

That's why the European Commission's Digital Omnibus package is such a bad idea. Weak regulation doesn't create a level playing field for all. It benefits the big and powerful players more than anyone else!
--

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Elena Rossini ⁂ @_elena@mastodon.social
Public
Shared by Em :official_verified:

Looking back at 2025 I can't help but feel an immense sense of gratitude towards the fediverse.

I found so many friends and lovely communities on here. I feel part of a rebel alliance, working towards the goal of creating a better internet - and resisting broligarchs.

This year I made a stock photo for the fediverse and an introductory video. I hope I can find MANY new ways to support the good cause in 2026.

Wishing everyone a wonderful new year!

We got this.

! ✊

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