The Third Man @TheThirdMan@mastodon.technology

What's the definition of prescience? This from 1999: "We're at the beginning of an industry, and this could all turn into television again. It could be controlled by a small number of companies who decide what we see and hear." - Jamie Zawinski

Donations to RNLI rise 3,000% after Farage’s migrant criticism: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/29/rnli-donations-soar-in-response-to-farages-migrant-criticism

My partner just messaged me from a company meeting. This actually happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6xK0Hefsq0

Dusty Hill:

"Even if I were to retire, I wouldn't shave. Everyone I know, including my wife, has never seen me without it."

Another one bites the dust :(

We should dump the fluffy, so-called sports from the Olympics and take it back to its military roots in ancient Greece. Out with glof, ballbase and boreminton, in with drone strikes on weddings.

Olympics Broadcaster Announces His Computer Password on Live TV: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7b9mm/olympics-broadcaster-announces-his-computer-password-on-live-tv

"Why not build a chonky laptop with a desktop motherboard?" Anything with an XLR connector gets my vote: https://teddit.net/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/otl62l/why_not_build_a_chonky_laptop_with_a_desktop/

Clapper's floating mode is most welcome. MPC-BE did that well and it's the feature I've missed most.

The Clapper video player is definitely a keeper. I've been looking for a good replacement for MPC-BE for five years and this seems to be it. It certainly fits the "do one thing and do it well" philosophy. The only feature I'd add would be pause-on-minimise. Bye bye VLC.

Leading the charge! Can I make it from Land’s End to John o’Groats in an electric car?: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/28/leading-the-charge-can-i-make-it-from-lands-end-to-john-ogroats-in-an-electric-car

ASADA latest to access smartphone-hacking tool raising fresh privacy concerns: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-05-23/asada-access-cellebrite-smartphone-hacking-technology/9786106

Lastly and unrelated, I'm watching Olympic rowing live from Tokyo on a PlayStation 4 during a global pandemic. The snake oil futurists didn't see that one coming.

Quake III Arena is perfect but I have yet to figure out how to install Team Arena alongside it. Doom 3 BFG Edition is the next installation challenge. GIMP and LibreOffice work well enough but I don't use either often.

I'm also breaking a few software habits by installing different applications. The KDE Kast podcatcher is pretty good but it stores downloaded files with random names and buries them many levels down. I may go back to the old and fugly gPodder. The Koko image viewer is basic but does all I need. I've swapped VLC for Clapper and QMMP for Audacious. Both working well and much prettier than their predecessors. Cherrytree is staying for now. The usual suspects, Firefox and Thunderbird will never get replaced.

The new desktop box has been here for a week now. So far, so good. The @kde neon installation went flawlessly. Even the Nvidia card drivers were easy enough. The Epson printer/scanner works well too. It's good to use a full-sized keyboard again after five years. Overall I am more than pleased.

I got my AstraZeneca jab four days ago. I went to a local pharmacy to check on availability and left 25 minutes later partly vaxxed. Zero side effects so far. Second jab due in a few weeks time.

The Northern Films challenge on B3ta is probably the funniest thing I've seen there. Northern England meets Hollywood:

https://b3ta.com/challenge/northernfilms/popular