arduinna | Network

Posted by Idiot/Savant

http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2025/09/drawn.html

A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn:

Drug Overdose (Assistance Protection) Legislation Bill (Kahurangi Carter)

There were 76 bills in the ballot today, including three "right to repair" bills and two competing ones on slavery. You'd think that the parties might cut a deal on these topics to at least get bills with clear bipartisan support before the House. But I guess they'd rather squabble over who gets the credit than work together on the increasingly rare areas of common ground...

(There were also five bills on renter’s rights, which suggests that it is going to be a priority issue for the next government).

http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2025/09/drawn.html

galerian_ash posting in

bethefirst

Half the writing time for this flash round has already flown by, which means there's now only a week left to add your fic(s) to the collection! How is it going, guys? I wish you all the best of luck with finishing on time!

scrubjayspeaks

The trouble with being part of a generational magical tradition, he mused as he sorted herbs into bundles for drying, was that people could get rather hidebound about sorting people into boxes based on very little. All those years of gifting him baby’s first scrying orb and child-sized wizard robes and encouraging him to save up his allowance toward his first staff of power had been entirely wasted except as bitter experience for all involved. The saved allowance, at least, had bought him a respectable beginner’s cauldron, but it would be a few years yet before he could afford the witch’s hat he had been coveting all those same years.

---

LL#1302

j_crew_guy

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

sathinfection

Dear ToT Creator,

Thank you so much for creating for me! I hope that you have a good time with your assignment or treat.

( General Likes )

( General Do Not Wants )

( The Servant )

( Sweet Caress )

( Please Be My First Boyfriend! )

( Dangeum and Jigyo )

( I Promise to Return )

( Go Jin and Gam-rae )

( The Insatiable Man )

( I Ship My Rival x Me )

( Kiss the Abyss )

bookblather

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

otw_news_feed

Posted by callmeri

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-420-0-9-426-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=267918

Over the past month, we rolled out behind-the-scenes upgrades and quality-of-life improvements across the site, including the addition of username links and chapter numbers to kudos and comment emails, respectively. We also made some major privacy and security enhancements, such as removing the email, birthday, and location fields from profiles and checking new passwords against known data breaches.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors anna, Liz Watkins, Riya K, and theamandawang!

Credits

Coders: Abhinav Gupta, anna, Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Connie Feng, Domenic Denicola, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, kitbur, Liz Watkins, marcus8448, Riya K, sarken, Scott, slavalamp, talvalin, theamandawang, weeklies
Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, HamHam6, james_, lydia-theda, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, Scott, weeklies
Testers: Allonautilus, ana, Anh P, Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Dre, Keladry, Lute, lydia-theda, Pent, redsummernight, Runt, Sanity, sarken, Teyris, therealmorticia, weeklies, wichard

Details

0.9.420

On July 15, we massively improved the user search used by admins.

[AO3-6565] – We’ve improved the user search feature available to admins by moving it to Elasticsearch and adding the ability to search by past email addresses and usernames.
[AO3-7042] – Instead of redirecting to the main Collections page, we now give a 404 error if you try to access the collections page for a nonexistent user, work, or collection.
[AO3-7004] – We’ve added a database index to make it faster for database admins to search for comments using a specific guest name.

0.9.421

Following some email-related changes in our July 24 deploy, embedded images are now always stripped from comment emails, and usernames in kudos emails now link to the users’ dashboards.

[AO3-3154] – When you receive a kudos notification email, the names of users who have left kudos now link to the users’ dashboards.
[AO3-6060] – Even though they no longer had access to tag comment pages, former tag wranglers would still receive email and inbox notifications of replies to their old tag comments. This was both annoying and confusing, so we’ve stopped it from happening.
[AO3-6746] – If you changed your username or pseud name and you had some chapters that you co-created with another user, the chapter bylines would not always get updated with your new name. We’ve changed this so the cache is refreshed more reliably.
[AO3-6929] – The list of gift exchange sign-ups visible to collection maintainers now includes the pseud and username of signed-up users, instead of just their pseud.
[AO3-7011] – Using the Tab key to navigate in desktop Safari used to select hidden inputs, causing the focus indicator to temporarily disappear. We’ve fixed it so only visible links and inputs receive focus.
[AO3-7032] – If you tried to add your email to the invitation queue when it was already part of the queue, you would see two copies of the same error message. Now it only shows the error once.
[AO3-7065] – We fixed some intermittent failures in the automated tests for the bookmark importing tool used by Open Doors.
[AO3-7052] – We did a schema dump to capture what the current data structure looks like before we upgrade to Rails 7.2.
[AO3-7053], [AO3-7054], [AO3-7067], [AO3-7068] – We updated a whole bunch of gems and GitHub actions: reviewdog/action-rubocop, awalsh128/cache-apt-pkgs-action, nokogiri, and thor.
[AO3-5352] – We prepared the preface of work downloads that are attached to work deletion emails for translation.
[AO3-7001] – As an anti-abuse measure, we now strip embedded images from comment notification emails even when image embeds are enabled on the site itself.

0.9.422 & 0.9.423

On July 28, we made a number of small improvements all around the site. There were some issues while deploying these changes, so we did another release to fix it all up on the same day.

[AO3-5609] – We stopped sending subscription notifications for works hidden by admins, since hidden works are inaccessible to other users.
[AO3-7006] – When a comment contains an HTML list, the list numbers or bullet points no longer overlap with the commenter’s icon.
[AO3-7024] – You’ll no longer get an incorrect success message if you mark items in your inbox as read without selecting any comments.
[AO3-5476] – We cleaned up some unused code in the works controller.
[AO3-7064] – We updated the gems we use for automated testing.
[AO3-7072] – We updated the unicode gem to solve some issues with developing the AO3 software on Macs with Apple Silicon chips.
[AO3-5346] – Collection maintainers get an email notification when matches in a gift exchange have finished generating. We’ve improved the text of this email and prepared it for translation.
[AO3-6484] – We made a small change to the code that generates the HTML class names we use for hiding work blurbs by muted users. We were hoping this tweak would improve performance, but unfortunately it had no effect, so we’ll have to try again.
[AO3-6997] – If an Open Doors archivist tries to leave kudos while logged in to an archivist account, they’ll get an error message telling them to log in with their personal account instead.
[AO3-7015] – Work blurbs now contain an invisible code comment with the work’s update date, to make it easier for developers of third-party tools to automate downloads from index pages like tags, bookmarks, and search result listings.
[AO3-7021] – To make it easier to filter or search using work languages, we’ve added the language codes on the Languages page.
[AO3-7057] – We now provide any applicable error messages when an admin attempts to send an invitation directly to an email and something goes wrong.

0.9.424

On August 5, we deployed another batch of miscellaneous fixes.

[AO3-5025] – The Tag Wrangling committee can now use the Rich Text editor to edit the Wrangling Guidelines pages.
[AO3-7076] – We fixed some unwanted shadows that Chrome was adding to radio buttons and checkboxes.
[AO3-7088] – We fixed some flaky automated tests related to importing works from LiveJournal.
[AO3-7074] – We removed some unused CSS from our default site skin.
[AO3-6580] – We updated the account creation confirmation page’s title from “Create Registration” to “Account Created” so that it’s clearer you’ve successfully made an account.
[AO3-6818] – When an admin bans an email from being used for guest comments, that email is now also banned from requesting invitations.
[AO3-7026] – When we run a spam check on edited comments by new users, we now tell the spam checker that it’s an edit.
[AO3-7046] – We migrated the subscriptions table so it can hold more rows and we won’t run out of room in the future.

0.9.425

On August 19, we deployed an important change to account security that checks new AO3 passwords to see if they’ve been part of a known data breach. We also began allowing CSS variables in site skins.

[AO3-7073] – To better protect users’ privacy, we’ve removed the preferences and fields to display emails, birthdays, and locations on user profiles.
[AO3-7091] – We stopped using fixtures in our integration tests.
[AO3-7098] – We updated cache-apt-pkgs-action again.
[AO3-7099] – We bumped the version of actions/checkout – a utility that helps run automated tests on our code – from version 4 to version 5.
[AO3-3071] – Comment emails now include the chapter number, so you don’t have to follow the comment link to know where exactly it was left.
[AO3-7087] – To improve account security, we updated our password change process to prevent users from choosing passwords that are known to be compromised on other sites. (If you missed our post back on World Password Day, we also have some tips for keeping your AO3 account secure!)
[AO3-7090] – We changed links in emails to be HTTPS instead of HTTP.
[AO3-7093] – We added an automated test to make sure the fixtures used for seeding development databases result in valid records.
[AO3-7094] – We now allow limited use of CSS custom properties in site skins! You can find more information in the skins help text.

0.9.426

We upgraded to Rails 7.2 on August 26.

[AO3-7058] – We updated our version of Rails from 7.1 to 7.2.
[AO3-7095] – We added more example admin and user accounts with a greater variety of roles to our basic development dataset, which will make it easier for coders to work on things that require specific access levels.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-420-0-9-426-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=267918

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32806

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors anna, Liz Watkins, Riya K, and theamandawang!

Credits

Coders: Abhinav Gupta, anna, Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Connie Feng, Domenic Denicola, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, kitbur, Liz Watkins, marcus8448, Riya K, sarken, Scott, slavalamp, talvalin, theamandawang, weeklies
Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, HamHam6, james_, lydia-theda, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, Scott, weeklies
Testers: Allonautilus, ana, Anh P, Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Dre, Keladry, Lute, lydia-theda, Pent, redsummernight, Runt, Sanity, sarken, Teyris, therealmorticia, weeklies, wichard

Details

0.9.420

On July 15, we massively improved the user search used by admins.

[AO3-6565] - We've improved the user search feature available to admins by moving it to Elasticsearch and adding the ability to search by past email addresses and usernames.
[AO3-7042] - Instead of redirecting to the main Collections page, we now give a 404 error if you try to access the collections page for a nonexistent user, work, or collection.
[AO3-7004] - We've added a database index to make it faster for database admins to search for comments using a specific guest name.

0.9.421

Following some email-related changes in our July 24 deploy, embedded images are now always stripped from comment emails, and usernames in kudos emails now link to the users' dashboards.

[AO3-3154] - When you receive a kudos notification email, the names of users who have left kudos now link to the users' dashboards.
[AO3-6060] - Even though they no longer had access to tag comment pages, former tag wranglers would still receive email and inbox notifications of replies to their old tag comments. This was both annoying and confusing, so we've stopped it from happening.
[AO3-6746] - If you changed your username or pseud name and you had some chapters that you co-created with another user, the chapter bylines would not always get updated with your new name. We've changed this so the cache is refreshed more reliably.
[AO3-6929] - The list of gift exchange sign-ups visible to collection maintainers now includes the pseud and username of signed-up users, instead of just their pseud.
[AO3-7011] - Using the Tab key to navigate in desktop Safari used to select hidden inputs, causing the focus indicator to temporarily disappear. We've fixed it so only visible links and inputs receive focus.
[AO3-7032] - If you tried to add your email to the invitation queue when it was already part of the queue, you would see two copies of the same error message. Now it only shows the error once.
[AO3-7065] - We fixed some intermittent failures in the automated tests for the bookmark importing tool used by Open Doors.
[AO3-7052] - We did a schema dump to capture what the current data structure looks like before we upgrade to Rails 7.2.
[AO3-7053], [AO3-7054], [AO3-7067], [AO3-7068] - We updated a whole bunch of gems and GitHub actions: reviewdog/action-rubocop, awalsh128/cache-apt-pkgs-action, nokogiri, and thor.
[AO3-5352] - We prepared the preface of work downloads that are attached to work deletion emails for translation.
[AO3-7001] - As an anti-abuse measure, we now strip embedded images from comment notification emails even when image embeds are enabled on the site itself.

0.9.422 & 0.9.423

On July 28, we made a number of small improvements all around the site. There were some issues while deploying these changes, so we did another release to fix it all up on the same day.

[AO3-5609] - We stopped sending subscription notifications for works hidden by admins, since hidden works are inaccessible to other users.
[AO3-7006] - When a comment contains an HTML list, the list numbers or bullet points no longer overlap with the commenter's icon.
[AO3-7024] - You'll no longer get an incorrect success message if you mark items in your inbox as read without selecting any comments.
[AO3-5476] - We cleaned up some unused code in the works controller.
[AO3-7064] - We updated the gems we use for automated testing.
[AO3-7072] - We updated the unicode gem to solve some issues with developing the AO3 software on Macs with Apple Silicon chips.
[AO3-5346] - Collection maintainers get an email notification when matches in a gift exchange have finished generating. We've improved the text of this email and prepared it for translation.
[AO3-6484] - We made a small change to the code that generates the HTML class names we use for hiding work blurbs by muted users. We were hoping this tweak would improve performance, but unfortunately it had no effect, so we'll have to try again.
[AO3-6997] - If an Open Doors archivist tries to leave kudos while logged in to an archivist account, they'll get an error message telling them to log in with their personal account instead.
[AO3-7015] - Work blurbs now contain an invisible code comment with the work's update date, to make it easier for developers of third-party tools to automate downloads from index pages like tags, bookmarks, and search result listings.
[AO3-7021] - To make it easier to filter or search using work languages, we've added the language codes on the Languages page.
[AO3-7057] - We now provide any applicable error messages when an admin attempts to send an invitation directly to an email and something goes wrong.

0.9.424

On August 5, we deployed another batch of miscellaneous fixes.

[AO3-5025] - The Tag Wrangling committee can now use the Rich Text editor to edit the Wrangling Guidelines pages.
[AO3-7076] - We fixed some unwanted shadows that Chrome was adding to radio buttons and checkboxes.
[AO3-7088] - We fixed some flaky automated tests related to importing works from LiveJournal.
[AO3-7074] - We removed some unused CSS from our default site skin.
[AO3-6580] - We updated the account creation confirmation page's title from "Create Registration" to "Account Created" so that it's clearer you've successfully made an account.
[AO3-6818] - When an admin bans an email from being used for guest comments, that email is now also banned from requesting invitations.
[AO3-7026] - When we run a spam check on edited comments by new users, we now tell the spam checker that it's an edit.
[AO3-7046] - We migrated the subscriptions table so it can hold more rows and we won't run out of room in the future.

0.9.425

On August 19, we deployed an important change to account security that checks new AO3 passwords to see if they've been part of a known data breach. We also began allowing CSS variables in site skins.

[AO3-7073] - To better protect users' privacy, we've removed the preferences and fields to display emails, birthdays, and locations on user profiles.
[AO3-7091] - We stopped using fixtures in our integration tests.
[AO3-7098] - We updated cache-apt-pkgs-action again.
[AO3-7099] - We bumped the version of actions/checkout – a utility that helps run automated tests on our code – from version 4 to version 5.
[AO3-3071] - Comment emails now include the chapter number, so you don't have to follow the comment link to know where exactly it was left.
[AO3-7087] - To improve account security, we updated our password change process to prevent users from choosing passwords that are known to be compromised on other sites. (If you missed our post back on World Password Day, we also have some tips for keeping your AO3 account secure!)
[AO3-7090] - We changed links in emails to be HTTPS instead of HTTP.
[AO3-7093] - We added an automated test to make sure the fixtures used for seeding development databases result in valid records.
[AO3-7094] - We now allow limited use of CSS custom properties in site skins! You can find more information in the skins help text.

0.9.426

We upgraded to Rails 7.2 on August 26.

[AO3-7058] - We updated our version of Rails from 7.1 to 7.2.
[AO3-7095] - We added more example admin and user accounts with a greater variety of roles to our basic development dataset, which will make it easier for coders to work on things that require specific access levels.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32806

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6823 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 25 secrets from Secret Submission Post #974.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

mrshamill

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: calm

melagan

I adulted the shit out of today. W00t! Some of it was kinda-sorta accidental (in the right place at the right time) but stuff got done so that totally counts.

This is worthy of celebrating.

Poll #33597

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

View Respondents

I should celerbrate by....

View Answers

Reading (porn)
3 (15.0%)

Writing (porn)
4 (20.0%)

Having a glass of wine (while reading or writing porn)
19 (95.0%)

The only reason you don't see coffee on this list is because it would be my sixth cup of the day.

lifehacker_feed

Posted by Jake Peterson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/we-already-know-how-much-faster-the-iphone-17-is?utm_medium=RSS

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

The iPhone 17 series has left the realm of mere rumor. Apple announced its four new iPhones at yesterday's "Awe Dropping" event—the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.

All four use the company's new A19 chip, though different models come equipped with different versions of it: The iPhone 17 uses the base model A19, while the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max use the A19 Pro. The iPhone Air has an A19 Pro, but it's a "binned" chip. There's a lengthy explanation of what that means, but in short, the Air uses a weaker version of the A19 Pro, so it isn't quite as powerful as the version you'll find on the Pros.

While Apple frequently touts how powerful its newest iPhones are, they're never all that specific about it, especially during their big keynote announcements. The company likes to compare the new iPhones to random older iPhones, like saying the iPhone 17's A19 chip is 1.5 times faster than the A15 Bionic in the iPhone 13. But Apple doesn't usually put up the raw numbers to compare performance directly. For that, we turn to benchmarking.

Benchmarking tests offer a standardized way of testing a chips' CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit), and comparing their performance against other chips. Geekbench is a popular option for benchmarking, and tests a few different things: the performance of tasks that require one core of the CPU; performance of tasks that require multi-cores; and the "Metal" test, that benchmarks GPU performance.

When you run a benchmark through Geekbench, your results are posted to the site's database. That means whenever a new device is announced, it's only a matter of time before benchmarking data appears there for those devices. As GSMArena reports, it seems some A19 and A19 Pro tests have already been run. These tests give us an early look at the performance of the new chips, and an idea of how much Apple has improved them over previous generations—at least on paper.

As the phones, and iOS 26 itself, are not officially out yet, take these numbers with a grain of salt. With that said, here are the preliminary results.

iPhone 17

The A19, again found in the iPhone 17, scored a 3,608 in the single-core test, and 8,810 in the multi-core test. That represents an 8% jump over the iPhone 16's single-core score of 3,317, and a 7% jump over its multi-core score of 8,198. The A19's GPU scored a 37,014 on the Metal test, a more than 33% increase when compared to the iPhone 16's score of 27,702. The test results show that the iPhone 17 has 8GB of RAM.

iPhone Air

The iPhone Air runs an A19 with a six-core CPU and a five-core GPU—one less than the iPhone 17 Pro, as this is a binned chip. GSMArena reports that it scored a 3,674 in the single-core test and 8,824 in multi-core. That's not much higher than the standard A19, though the results show Apple included four extra gigabytes of RAM in the Air over the iPhone 17.

Turning to the GPU, the Air scored a 37,743 on the Metal test. That represents an improvement of just under 2% over the A19. While you'll likely notice some gains if you're coming from the iPhone 16, or even the 16 Pro (more on that below) the Air isn't going to outperform the 17 much—even with its binned A19 Pro.

iPhone 17 Pro

While the iPhone Air's binned A19 Pro chip seems barely improved over the iPhone 17's A19 chip, the 17 Pro starts to show some advantage—at least in GPU. The A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro scored 3,523 in single-score and 9,028 in multi-core. That's a lower single-core score, and only a slightly higher multi-core score, which is certainly interesting. In theory, the lower-performing A19 and A19 Pro chips could yield slightly faster results in single-core tasks, while the Pro could beat the bunch a bit in multi-core tasks.

However, things get more interesting when it comes to the A19 Pro's GPU—The chip achieved a Metal score of 44,342, 17% over the iPhone Air, and nearly 20% better than the iPhone 17. That's not all that surprising, seeing as the Pro has six GPU cores compared to the Air's five. Compare all that to the iPhone 16 Pro's scores of 3,447 in single-core, 8,576 in multi-core, and 32,673 in Metal. It's only a 2% bump in single-core and 5% in multi-core, but more than 35% in Metal. Not a bad gain.

iPhone 17 Pro Max

If you want the best possible performance in an iPhone, the Pro Max is usually the model to get. It seems the 17 Pro Max is no exception: According to these initial Geekbench results, the 17 Pro Max's A19 Pro chip received a 3,781 single-core score, 9,679 multi-core score, and 45,657 Metal score. Those, of course, are the highest scores of any of the iPhone 17 series. The single-core score is not dramatically higher than the other phones, and the multi-core score isn't a huge jump: The most dramatic difference there is between the iPhone 17 and the 17 Pro Max at just under 9%.

That said, the Metal score is pretty impressive. It's less than 3% better than the 17 Pro, but it's nearly 21% higher than the Air, and over 23% higher than the iPhone 17. We can see improvements from the iPhone 16 Pro Max's 3,430 single core, 8,502 multi-core, and 32,665 Metal scores. That's 10% improvement in single-core, nearly 14% in multi-core, and nearly 40% in Metal. There's no denying the 17 Pro Max is the phone to beat when it comes to graphics processing potential.

You can look up any iPhone model you want on Geekbench's database and compare its scores to the iPhone 17 series' early scores listed here. Obviously, the older you go, the better the gains are going to be. For what it's worth, comparing the iPhone 17 to the iPhone 13 shows a 71% gain in single-core and 79% gain in multi-core—not quite the 150% improvement Apple advertises. Perhaps there's something missing from the early scores here, or maybe Apple is using a different internal metric. We'll just have to see when testers benchmark the released iPhones running the public build of iOS 26.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/we-already-know-how-much-faster-the-iphone-17-is?utm_medium=RSS

siderea

I don't know who needs to know about this, but:

I just discovered the Android app "Periodically". It's described as an "event logger". It's for keeping track of when a recurring thing has happened, and figuring out what the average time is between occurrences. You just keep it updated each time the event happens, and it will do the math for you to figure out the frequency, and even give you a notification when it predicts the event is likely to happen again. If you're tracking more than one thing, it will try to suss out correlations for you.

I mention because twenty five years ago or so, I needed exactly this functionality and could not find any application that would do what I needed, so I wrote a thing for myself, and since then a lot of people I've mentioned it to have wondered where they can get one like it. Mine was Mac/Palm Pilot, so not of much use to most people, especially these days.
Lo, somebody seems to have realized the need for this functionality, and brought it to the market. So I thought I'd mention.

Now, in this day and age, a lot of people, especially in the US, are concerned with security. Especially if they're tracking something to do with their health. This app is not specific to health, so nothing about it immediately reveals that it is storing health information on casual inspection; you could use some sort of other term for whatever health condition it is you are actually tracking. So, for instance, If you were tracking how often your migraines happened, you could call that "new box of cereal".

This app defaults to local-only data storage on your Android device, and the developer claims that it only collects "app activity" for analytics, and shares nothing with third parties. It outputs CSV and has an option to back up to Google Drive.

I haven't tried it myself, but it has a rating of 4.6 stars out of five on the Play Store.

Reviewers on the Play Store note that tracker apps that are specific to the kind of event – such as health- specific loggers – often have needless complexity, and often some weird ideas about graphic design. They praise this app for its clean, elegant look and simple, effective functionality.

In addition to its obvious applicability to episodic health conditions, it strikes me as potentially extremely useful in one of the trickier parts of prepping: figuring out one's burn rate of resources. I think I might trial it to help me figure out how often I should expect to have to buy a fresh bale of toilet paper and how long the big bottle of ibuprofen will last me.

lifehacker_feed

Posted by Beth Skwarecki

https://lifehacker.com/tech/pixel-watch-compared-to-new-apple-watches?utm_medium=RSS

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

Apple recently announced the features coming to the new Series 11 and Ultra 3 Apple Watches. We have highlights here of what was in that announcement, and everything we know about the Apple Watch Ultra 3, if you're still catching up. But if you’re ready to dive into the details and are wondering how those specs stack up with Pixel watches, including the Pixel Watch 3 and the upcoming Pixel Watch 4, here’s a comparison.

Display type and brightness

The new Apple Watch Ultra 3 has the most impressive display of all the watches I’ll discuss here today. Wide-angle OLEDs make the screen visible from more angles, and the LPTO3 technology means it draws far less power. These features mainly benefit the always-on display, since now even the inactive version of the display will be able to update every second, and you’ll be able to easily see the display without raising it to your wrist. Peak brightness is 3,000 nits.

The Apple Watch Series 11 doesn’t have the every-second updates, but it does include wide-angle OLEDs to be more visible when viewed at an angle. Peak brightness is 2,000 nits.

The Pixel Watch 3 has neither of those new features, but it does have a bright display at 2,000 nits. The Pixel Watch 4, due on store shelves in October, uses a domed display and has a peak brightness of 3,000 nits.

Battery life

The Apple Watch Ultra has always had an impressive battery life compared to other models of Apple Watch, and the Ultra 3 is no exception. The Ultra 3 has a 42-hour battery life, according to Apple, extending to 72 hours in Low Power Mode.

The Series 11 gets up to 24 hours in regular use, extending to 38 hours in Low Power Mode.

The Pixel Watch 3 gets 24 hours in regular use, and 36 with Battery Saver—nearly identical to the Apple Watch Series 11. The upcoming Pixel Watch 4 improves on that, with 30 to 40 hours of regular use (depending on which size watch you’re looking at) and 48 to 72 hours with Battery Saver.

Health and fitness features

The new Apple Watches will finally have a sleep score, which is a feature that the Pixel watches have long had through the Fitbit app (which is its native app for health features). This isn't a particularly useful metric, since it can't be validated; I wouldn't put too much stock in any app's sleep score. But Apple shows that it's catching up to other devices by offering an easy-to-read score instead of just separate metrics.

Apple also plans to introduce notifications for signs of high blood pressure, assuming it gets the needed regulatory approval. (Whoop recently got in trouble with the FDA for implementing an unapproved blood pressure feature; Apple is being more careful.) Pixel watches don't have any blood pressure features, although it's not clear whether smartwatches are any good at blood pressure monitoring in the first place.

The latest version of Apple's WatchOS comes with Workout Buddy, a voice that delivers AI pep talks during your workouts (assuming your iPhone is new enough). Pixel watches don't have this, but the Pixel Watch 4 will include an AI fitness coach as part of a premium-tier Fitbit subscription. The subscription is $9.99/month, and you get six months free with a new device.

Connectivity

The Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3 both have connectivity with 5G networks and LTE in their cellular-capable models. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 also features satellite messaging, so that you can reach emergency services and notify your friends and family even without a cellular connection.

The Pixel Watch 3 only has 4G LTE in its cellular-capable models, but the Pixel Watch 4 has a Satellite SOS feature as well.

Pricing

The Apple Watch Series 11 starts at $399 for the 42-millimeter size, and $429 for the 46-millimeter size. The versions with cellular connectivity are $100 more.

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 starts at $799 and comes in one size, 49 millimeters.

The Pixel Watch 3 starts at $249 for the 41-millimeter size and $299 for the 45-millimeter size. As with its Apple counterparts, the versions with cellular connectivity are $100 more.

The Pixel Watch 4 starts at $349 for the 41-millimeter size and $399 for the 45-millimeter size, and again, the cellular versions are $100 more.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/pixel-watch-compared-to-new-apple-watches?utm_medium=RSS

shipperslist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

pauraque

As I was cross-checking Le Guin's short stories to make sure I had access to all of them, I realized I was missing "Selection" which is a story written during the period covered by The Wind's Twelve Quarters but not included in it. The going assumption seems to be that Le Guin left it out because she didn't like it, but the editor of the monthly sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories liked it enough to print it in the August 1964 issue. You can buy a copy of this issue for about five US dollars, which happens to almost exactly track inflation from its cover price of 50 cents. So... I bought one! And since I bothered to do that, I figured I'd read the whole thing and report my findings.

( Notes on the issue and what's in it )

My comments on the stories contain spoilers.

"The HoneyEarthers" by Robert F. Young

A scuzzy rich space dude tries to horn in on his son's young wife... or does he??

Said rich space dude is Aaron Price, who owns a company that harvests water from Saturn's rings. His spoiled son Ronny leaves his wife Fleurette, and Aaron tries to manipulate him into not going through with the divorce by threatening to turn him in for tax evasion. Ronny flees the planet, and Aaron, who's been lusting after Fleurette for years, takes her to a romantic resort on the moon, where he finally reveals the truth: He is a time traveler, and Ronny isn't his son, but his younger self with "space fugue" amnesia brought on by a traumatic incident where he almost died working on the Saturn water-harvesting project. We don't get a super clear picture of Fleurette's reaction to this, but she basically runs like hell, which is the only part of the story that makes any sense.

I disliked this novelette so much it was hard to get through it. The SF elements are boringly infodumpy, the time travel plot is unnecessarily complicated and confusing (my synopsis simplifies it a LOT), the interpersonal drama plays like a bad soap opera, and the prose is so painfully overwrought and filled with clumsy metaphors that I occasionally wondered if it was satire. "The girlish dress she was wearing began below her shoulders, and the firelight had already fallen in love with her smooth clear skin. Meadow flowers grew around her, and her mouth had the redness of the wild raspberries that grew in the fields of his youth. Spring resided in the dew-brightness of her eyes; her cheeks held the hue of frost-kissed leaves." (This character is human, so I don't believe he meant her cheeks were green, though I don't know what he did mean.) I guess we're supposed to think Aaron's behavior towards Fleurette is okay in the end because it turns out he is secretly her husband, but for most of the story we see him as her father-in-law, so he comes off like a disgusting creep. The way the author chooses to constantly emphasize how young and girlish and naive Fleurette is made my skin crawl. I had never heard of this author before, and at the end of this story I was relieved to depart from his presence.

"Selection" by Ursula K. Le Guin

On a colony planet where a supercomputer matches everyone to their genetically and socially optimal spouse, a woman is displeased with her match.

Joan doesn't have any specific reason to dislike Harry, she just finds him annoying and is pretty pissed to be stuck with him, though he likes her well enough. One day they're out skiing and Harry gets in an accident and breaks his leg. Seeing him vulnerable changes Joan's perspective on him and they end up happy together after all. The punchline: We go back to the guy who runs the matchmaking program, and find out that the supercomputer is far too busy with mission-critical processes to actually match the colonists up, so when nobody's looking he just draws names out of a hat.

This story was amusing but pretty slight. I saw the ending coming a mile away since there wasn't really anywhere else it could go, at least not for a writer who obviously isn't going to come out in favor of eugenicist arranged marriages. The execution could be better, but the idea that there are no predestined perfect matches and that relationships are what you make of them is a sensible one that I broadly agree with. I don't see any obvious reason why Le Guin wanted to bury this story; the prose is a little rough (by her standards, mind you, not by the standards of, say, Robert F. Young) but I don't think the story is significantly worse than the weaker entries in The Wind's Twelve Quarters. But as a writer I do understand that sometimes you look back at particular pieces and cringe for reasons that may not make sense to anyone else.

"Valedictory" by Phyllis Gotlieb

A trainee in a time travel project visits herself as a child.

Her childhood was hard, but she doesn't say how, nor does she have a clear picture of what she hopes to accomplish. She imagines she might tell her younger self to hang on, that things will get better. But when she sees herself at recess, singing and playing in spite of everything, she realizes how deeply she'd underestimated her own resilience, and returns to her present without saying anything to herself at all.

This story hit me like a truck and left me in tears. You don't need to know exactly what the protagonist's struggles have been, because the author taps into a universal truth for those of us who went through a lot of shit when we were younger—no matter what happened, we survived it and we're still here. The prose is clear and evocative, and a light touch is used with the speculative premise so it doesn't overwhelm the character work.

This was by far the best story in the issue and I'd be interested to read more by the author. Has anyone read her stuff?

Essay: "Mort Weisinger: The Superman Behind Superman" by Sam Moskowitz

Moskowitz profiles the editor of Superman and related comics.

This pretty extensive biography details how Weisinger got his start in science fiction, writing stories and editing fan and pro zines, before becoming instrumental in the growth of the superhero genre. I'm not a comics person so this wasn't of strong interest to me, but in the pre-Wikipedia age I'm sure it was nice to have a well-researched piece on an important figure from the fandom.

I did enjoy the recounting of the time in 1933 when Weisinger's mentor and co-editor Allen Glasser sold a story to Amazing that turned out to be plagiarized, causing the magazine's then-editor to freak out and refuse to work with anyone associated with Glasser. In turn this led Weisinger to shun Glasser and start his own zine with ~~blackjack and hookers~~ other friends. The drama! (I also liked Moskowitz's description of Glasser as "a slightly older scientifictioneer." There's a word we should bring back.)

"Furnace of the Blue Flame" by Robert Rohrer

In a post-apocalyptic future, a hero battles a dictator who controls the people by suppressing knowledge.

The dictator claims to use magic, but the hero recognizes his powers as forgotten technology—the titular Furnace is a nuclear reactor which he uses to torture dissidents with radiation poisoning. The hero leverages forbidden scientific knowledge to sabotage it and break his control.

This was well-written, well-paced, and it held my attention. I appreciated that it didn't dance around pretending to be fantasy for longer than necessary. I thought it was interesting that the villain's stated motivation is to prevent a reignition of the wars that devastated civilization. He thinks if he can just terrify everyone into absolute obedience, war will never come again. I also thought it was smart to have the hero fully understand the risks of bringing technology back, believing that power must come with an ideology of mercy. The old fashioned sword-and-sorcery style of storytelling with a noble manly hero is played very straight, and that left me cold, but I'd say the piece is successful on its own terms even though it's not really to my taste.

"Zelerinda" by Gordon Walters

Two men, one with psychic powers, search for alien life on a planet with a weather system of liquid metal instead of water.

It's hard to write a synopsis of this novelette because nothing happens in it. Various plot elements are introduced and none of them go anywhere. The psychic guy is afraid of being found out and locked away in a psionics research lab, but that never happens and his abilities have no impact on the mission. His brother was investigating the planet before them and disappeared, but they never find him, dead or alive. They think they find a structure, but it's just a cave. They come up with different theories about how life could exist on this world, but they're all wrong. There are no aliens, it's just a dead world with weird weather. The end.

This story is so long and so pointless that when it ended I felt actively angry that my time had been wasted on it. It takes ages for them just to get to the planet—why did we need all those scenes of the psychic guy being woken up to come to an emergency meeting and their boss waffling on forever??—and when they get there the search for life is full of unnecessary detail and repetition. The writing style also grated on me, especially the overly verbose and self-consciously "clever" dialogue. All the characters sound the same (just like the narrative voice, in fact) and have no development or real conflicts. You could write "liquid metal weather" on a post-it and get as much out of it as I got from this story.

Review column: "The Spectroscope" by Robert Silverberg

Silverberg reviews Starswarm by Brian Aldiss, The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, Ninth Series ed. Robert P. Mills, and Escape on Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Starswarm takes previously published stories and retcons them into a connected narrative with some edits and linking commentaries. Silverberg finds this project "misguided and lamentable" and the commentary "sententious and ponderously coy" but he likes a few of the stories as stand-alones.

He gives a glowing review to the Fantasy and Science Fiction anthology, naming "Flowers for Algernon" first among the standout entries and calling the book "a must for a science fiction library."

Silverberg had apparently panned Burroughs' other works as "unmitigated trash" and "subliterate claptrap," so it is with some sheepishness that he admits to liking Escape on Venus for its more lighthearted comic tone. "Mitigated trash and literate claptrap, I suppose—but fun to read."

tinny

Monthlyinspo was still on summer hiatus, so I had time for another 20in20: Round 18 at

characters20in20. Again, it's a Nothing But You set - this time of Song Sanchuan. Enjoy!

Teasers:

( 20+3 icons of Song Sanchuan )

Concrit and comments very welcome! Take and use as many icons as you like, credit is appreciated. If you want to know whose textures and brushes I use, take a look at my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Annie: I met my husband three years ago, about eight months after he lost his first wife of 20 years. Their marriage was often toxic, and she was very abusive toward him. After she passed, he was ready to move on.

Right away, I knew something wasn't right with my husband. In his mid-50s, he was having short-term memory issues, falling frequently and struggling with his mental health. After seeing his health care provider and enrolling in the Veterans Affairs health care system, we discovered he had suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries during his time in the Army. That diagnosis led to him becoming a 100% service-connected disabled veteran and allowed him to receive the care he needed for a better quality of life.

His family, however, waged a war against me for helping him, accusing me of manipulating and "brainwashing" him. My husband has distanced himself from them, and we're no longer on speaking terms. My husband has a lot of anger toward them as he suffered for decades without their help or support.

His parents, who live in another state, are elderly and in poor health. I fear that if he doesn't reconcile with them before they pass, he will resent me. I love my husband with all my heart, and this has been a hard road. I just want the very best for him, unconditionally. Any advice? -- Wife on the Defensive

( Read more... )

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

DEAR ABBY: My daughter, "Violet," lives about two hours away. She and her mother (my wife) do not get along. Violet was always a rebellious, independent wild child, as well as the source of a lot of family problems. Violet and I also were estranged until we recently reconciled.

Yesterday, she sent me an email inviting me to lunch to celebrate my birthday. When I told my wife about the invitation, she responded, "Do what you want" in a tone and with a facial expression which said: "Go ahead, but if you do, you'll be sorry."

I have tried to reconcile these two women I love without success. My wife tells me she loves Violet but doesn't like her, although she would like to have a better relationship with her. Violet tells me she blames her mother for her PTSD (her unofficial diagnosis) and wants nothing to do with her.

So do I go to lunch with my daughter and incur the wrath of my wife for what she would consider a betrayal, or do I decline the invitation from my daughter and risk alienating her again? -- IN THE MIDDLE IN NEW JERSEY

( Read more... )

settiai

Autumn starts in about a week-and-a-half, and the first day of fall is on a Monday this year. Which, you know, kinda bodes well for new beginnings in my mind since it's the first of the work week at least. And, considering how things have been going so far in September, I feel like I really need a set point for a fresh start.

So, you know, Mabon works fairly well for that.

Things have been pretty chaotic in my life the last year or two for a variety of reasons, and I think that I'm going to force myself to set up a strict daily schedule to start following again come September 22. I won't stick to it forever, but I've found in the past that the structure really does help me even if it's just for a month or so to get me back in the habit.

Now I just have to force myself to start thinking about a set schedule that will work for me while still having some flexibility for when things don't go quite as planned...

Current Mood: hopeful

jesse_the_k

An acquaintance asked me basic questions about “how to get disability benefits” in the USA. Might as well share it here.

I call myself a “disability doula” because I’ve helped many folks through the process of understanding available services, finding disability community, and accepting a new way of life and identity. Except where noted, I’m happy to answer questions.

Local face-to-face free help

Centers for Independent Living (CILs) have been serving disabled people since the late 1970s.

Find one near you: https://ncil.org/about/find-your-cil-list/

( eight relevant topics )

lifehacker_feed

Posted by Lindsey Ellefson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/googles-notebooklm-introduces-quizzes-flashcards-tools?utm_medium=RSS

While AI tools are incredibly divisive, and I remain highly skeptical of them in general (especially as someone who makes a living writing for the internet), I have to give props to Google's NotebookLM, which is the rare AI tool I've found that meets my standards for being both ethical and useful.

This large language model pulls only from the content you put into it, making it a great way to organize your notes, pull out key ideas, and increase your productivity. And now a new update allows you to use it to create flashcards and quizzes, making it a perfect study companion—and it's still free.

What NotebookLM can do

If you're unfamiliar with NotebookLM's capabilities, here's a quick rundown: You start by uploading your materials to "notebooks," which you can think of as your single source of truth on a given topic. (An SSOT is a repository where you keep all the information, resources, and materials related to whatever it is you're doing.) You can upload local files, files from your Google Drive, links to websites or YouTube videos, or plain old copied-and-pasted text. This is particularly useful for students, as you can input links to articles mentioned in your study materials, upload PDFs from your teacher, or even add digital copies of your textbook, putting all your approved study materials in one place.

You can then ask the chatbot questions about the material, ask it to create an audio "podcast" of people discussing the content (which you can then interact with), and more. I most often use it when I'm working on a large project: I input all the interviews I've done, all the research material I have, and any other related elements, then ask it to help me find quotes or develop an outline. It's also great for summarizing and organizing my notes and class materials when I'm preparing for a grad school exam.

And with the latest update, you have more options: Along the side menu, you'll see buttons for Flashcards and Quizzes alongside Mind maps and Audio overview.

Testing NotebookLM's new features

To test these new capabilities, I chose from my collection of notebooks one filled with materials for a certification exam I've been studying for.

Instant quizzes

NotebookLM previously allowed you to ask it to create quizzes, but it would just generate practice quizzes in plain text with an answer key at the end. The new Quizzes feature is a lot more involved.

Credit: Google/Lindsey Ellefson

The quiz it generated from seven PDFs of material was extremely detailed and easy to use. It asked a question, gave me four options, and, after I clicked one, told me if it was right or wrong, and included an explanation for why the right answer was correct. All of the information was pulled directly from my own materials, so I didn't have to worry about checking the sourcing.

Effortless flashcards

There are a ton of flashcard apps out there and I've reviewed plenty, but I never stuck with any of them because creating flashcards is invariably tedious—or expensive. In contrast, the flashcards NotebookLM generates were easy to use and, again, pulled right from my materials.

There isn't much to say about them—they're flashcards; you just flip them back and forth to reveal questions and answers—but notably, and unlike other flashcard apps, NotebookLM doesn't have a way to indicate whether you got a card's answer right or wrong. Some other apps will ask you to indicate how you did so they know how often to show you that card again, in line with the Leitner method of flashcard review. That doesn't mean this approach to flashcards is terrible, however, as it adds some additional worthwhile features. For instance, once you flip a card by clicking on it to reveal the answer, NotebookLM adds an Explain button. Click it to get more context on the answer, or to see exactly where from your uploaded materials the card was generated.

NotebookLM is one of my favorite study apps

I've written about all kinds of learning techniques and studying apps, and used most of them myself, whether for work, grad school, or my own personal development. I am squeamish about most AI tools not only because they can be inaccurate, but because they provide so many shortcuts that it's harder to learn and retain information. NotebookLM, meanwhile, makes it easy to study using proven methods, and as it only pulls information from resources you provide (and therefor presumably trust), you'll be able to trust its output.

The addition of the quizzes and flashcards make it an even more powerful and useful study tool than it already was, and that's saying a lot. I'm going to use both of them to prepare for my next exam exam.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/googles-notebooklm-introduces-quizzes-flashcards-tools?utm_medium=RSS

nonelvis posting in

dwfiction

Title: Five Moments in Liz Shaw's Life as an Alien (and One Before She Knew)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters/Pairing(s): Liz Shaw, Third Doctor, the Brig, Benton
Rating: Teen
Word count: 1,681
Spoilers: None
Summary: Liz Shaw, unexpectedly always an alien.

Author's notes: Written for the Always an Alien square on my Keep Fandom Weird bingo card. Thanks to

platypus for the beta.

follow the fake cut to the fic

lifehacker_feed

Posted by Stephen Johnson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/amazon-developing-ar-smart-glasses-rumor?utm_medium=RSS

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Amazon might be developing its own augmented reality smart glasses to compete with Meta, according to Amazon insiders who worked on the project. Codenamed "Jayhawk," the smart specs will reportedly feature a camera, microphones, speakers, and a full-color display in one eye, all packed in a sleek frame. If the rumors, as reported by The Information, turn out to be true, Amazon's smart glasses will hit the market in late 2026 or early 2027.

The goal, presumably, is to not cede the entire smart glasses market to industry leader Meta and newcomers like Google (we'll pretend Google Glass never happened). Whether Amazon can compete on that field remains to be seen, but the company's last stab at tech glasses, the audio-and-Alexa-focused Echo Frames line of smart glasses, didn't exactly set the world on fire when they were released back in 2019, despite being generally regarded as adequate (though uninspiring).

Amazon drivers may get their own AR smart glasses, too

Amazon is also reportedly developing smart glasses specifically for its delivery drivers. These will feature the same technology as the consumer devices in a sturdier package, and give drivers turn-by-turn navigation on a small embedded screen. According to a report from Reuters in late 2024, the delivery driver glasses are designed to provide extremely precise, location-based directions, in order to "shave valuable seconds off each delivery by providing left or right directions off elevators and around obstacles such as gates or aggressive dogs."

It's hard to avoid considering the nightmarish possibilities of an employer being able to literally look through the eyes of its workers—imagine your boss yelling at you through your eyeballs. Smart glasses could easily track eye movements, pauses, or even monitor employees' emotions through facial expressions and voice analysis. Whether Amazon, a company sued for enforcing a schedule so strict that drivers were forced to urinate in bottles, would use the technology in these, or other exploitative ways, remains to be seen.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/amazon-developing-ar-smart-glasses-rumor?utm_medium=RSS

oursin

What I read

Finished Love at All Ages - think I said most of what I felt moved to say last week, but there was also a certain amount of Mrs Morland whingeing and bitching about the Burdens of Being a Popular Writer (when she wasn't being Amazingly Dotty), whoa, Ange, biting the hand or what?

Sarah Brooks, The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands (2024), which I picked up some while ago on promotion and then I think I saw someone writing something about it. I liked the idea but somehow wasn't overwhelmingly enthused?

Read the latest Literary Review.

Since there is a forthcoming online discussion, dug out my 1974 mass market paperback edition of Joanna Russ, The Female Man - I think this was even before excursions to Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed, somehow I had learnt of Fantast, a mailorder operation with duplicated catalogues every few months that purveyed an odd selection of US books. It's quite hard to recall the original impact. Possibly I now prefer her essays?

Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: The Books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark, and Why They Matter (2024) - EngLit teacher meditates over books that she had taught, her own reading of them, their impact in the classroom, general issues around teaching Lit, etc - this came up in my Recommended for You in Kobo + on promotion. Quite interesting but how the teaching of EngLit has changed since My Day....

Lee Child, The Hard Way (Jack Reacher, #10) (2006) - every so often I read an interview with or something about Lee Child who sounds very much a Good Guy so I thought I might try one of these and this one was currently on promotion. It's less action and more twisty following intricate plot than I anticipated with lots of sudden reversal, and lots and lots of details. I don't think I'm going to go away and devour all the Reacher books but I can think of circumstances where they might be a preferable option given limited reading materials available.

On the go

I literally just finished that so there is nothing on the go, except one or two things I suppose I am technically still reading.

Up next

Dunno.

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