Inpsired by a recent post about extending Luanti towards SurvivalCraft, this is my favorite non-video guide to getting started writing Luanti mods.

There's some great video guides too, but I don't have those links handy right now.

Everything needed is free, and I think pretty well available on any PC platform (Linux, Mac, Windows).

An ongoing data extortion attack targeting the widely-used education technology platform Canvas disrupted classes and coursework at school districts and universities across the United States today, after a cybercrime group defaced the service’s login page with a ransom demand that threatened to leak data from 275 million students and faculty across nearly 9,000 educational institutions.

I got tired of having to search and sign up for wherever my favorite movie is streaming this month, so I'm going back to DVDs for the foreseeable future, until the streaming overlords get their shit together. So... maybe forever. But at least for now.

It's nice. I put a disc in, and press play, and it plays.

I hadn't quite realize how much messing around the streaming services had added to my movie nights.

(Recover password, verify my email, sign up with a credit card, authorize the TV, remove the old iPad because of a device limit, sign in at least one extra time for no certain reason, sometimes discover I chose the wrong service and start over.)

My commentary: An AI that can be trusted with sensitive information remains a tantalizing but unattainable "holy grail".

And a quote I love from the article:

"As long as machine learning and generative AI is being deployed in production systems, we predict a heartwarmingly lucrative job market in AI security."

Cory Doctorow details the path to the enshitifications of Facebook and Twitter.

"This is what changed: the collapse of market, government, and labor constraints, and IP law's criminalization of disenshittifying, interoperable add-ons. This is why Zuck, an eternal creep, is now letting his creep flag fly so proudly today. Not because he's a worse person, but because he understands that he can hurt his users and workers to benefit his shareholders without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg 2025 isn't the most evil Zuck, he's the most unconstrained Zuck."

Cory recommends a response for Canada to the USA's promised tariffs: break ranks on oppressive IP laws and build a local right-to-repair economy.

Edit: Corrected link. Sorry about that!

Since Game Changer is the best thing that ever happened to game shows, I wonder if there's any chance we can get coverage of a recreational league sports team?

I don't even care what sport, and I don't care if it's not live.

Televised Pistol Shrimps games or some such would be a delightful addition.

This came across my GamingOnLinux feed, and I figured y'all might share my interest.

I'm excited for this dock release because my simple JSAUX HDMI dongle has always been a more reliable SteamDeck dock, for me, than my official SteamDeck dock.

I understand recent patches to the SteamDeck official dock may have solved many of the issues I was having.

But it's still cool to see a brand I already trust adding a targeted SteamDeck product.

I don't see whether it accounts for my habit of keeping my SteamDeck in a protective case, though.

I'm usually the one saying "AI is already as good as it's gonna get, for a long while."

This article, in contrast, is quotes from folks making the next AI generation - saying the same.

Uh...I guess this is a public service announcement.

"Ultimate Spider-Man" is really good.

::: spoiler Core Concept

The Maker has remade a world with no heroes for his evil cabal to rule over.

Iron Lad sent a series of time machine gift bags to people who would have been heroes - including Peter Parker - giving them the option to bootstrap their life to their former heroic destiny. :::

This subverts my expectations, while offering new insights into established characters.

::: spoiler Detailed spoilers

• J. Jonah Jameson is a better man with Ben Parker alive to mentor him
• Harry Osborn is probably either batshit crazy or destined to be the greatest bromance in Peter's life...and maybe both.
• Peter and MJs kids are adorable and perfect.
• The comic completely fails to address how this version of Peter got his webbing, and the suit that Iron Lad provided is capable of an awfut lot of Venom's abilities...Might Iron Lad have cut a dangerous corner in his desperation? :::

"We need policies that keep middlemen weak."

stood out to me.

Many of my influences have railed against middle men, and I think that's unfair. I've worked with plenty of middle men that made everyone then better off.

I've also had the unique displeasure that at least half of all links shared with me in recent years have been to a site called "Instagram", where I am unable to access the content without an account (which I refuse to make because Zuckerberg is a creepy stalker.)

I find it deeply weird that such a locked ecosystem now controls so much attention.

I find Cory Doctorow's thoughts on the problem and potential solutions to be both hopeful and cathartic.

Kind of an inflammatory title, but I like to let it match for accessibility.

I've been enjoying Ed Zitron's articles lately, because they call out CEOs who aren't doing their jobs.

I'm sharing this partly because I'm honestly surprised to see criticism of Satya Nadella's leadership. I think Satya has been good for Microsoft, overall, compared to previous leaders. And I was as convinced as anyone else when the "growth mindset" first hit the news cycle. It sounds fine, after all.

TL;DR:

• Satya has baked "growth mindset deeply into the culture at Microsoft"
• Folks outside of the original study authors have generally failed to reproduce evidence of any value in "growth mindset"
• Microsoft is, of course "all in" on their own brand of AI tools, and their AI tools are doing the usual harmful barf, eat the barf, barf grosser barf, re-eat that barf data corruption cycle.
• Some interesting speculation that none of the AI code flaunted by Microsoft and Google is probably high value. Which is a speculation I confidently share, but still, I think, speculation. (Lines-of-code is a bat shit insane way to measure engineer productivity, but some folks think it's okay when an AI is doing it.)

You might recognize me from such comments as "All AI hucksters are scammers.", and "AI is just an excuse to enshitify while laying off real engineers.", and "I actually use current generation LLMs for a bunch of things and it can be pretty great."

In this article science fiction author and futurist Cory Doctorow is on my favorite AI soap box, and raises some interesting points.

Since I couldn't find it, here's a bare minimum guide to starting using the Pipeworks mod.

This recipe builds a trivial item sorter.

Mods you need:

• Pipeworks
• Mesecon
• I3 Inventory (optional, strongly recommend)

Resources you need (if building this in survival):

• 24 wood planks for 4 chests
• a lot of leaves (for plastic for tubes and for the injector)
• a lot of mese Crystals (for the injector and the sorting tube segment and the blinky plant)
• 3 saplings (for the blinky plant)
• 2 iron for the injector

To build the parts - look up the part recipes in I3 Inventory, or the MineTest wiki.

The Build:

In this order, place, on flat ground, in a straight line:

• A chest
• A stack wise filter injector
• A pneumatic tube segment
• A sorting pneumatic tube segment
• A final chest

Now place the last two chests on the ground on either side of the 'sorting pneumatic tube segment'.

Now place a 'blinky plant' beside the 'stackwise filter injector', to get it running. Yes, it must be a blinky plant.

Now throw some crap in the first chest and watch it get moved randomly to the other 3 chests.

Now, grab an item you want sorted, say 'dirt block'. Left click on the 'sorting pneumatic tube segment'. Put the dirt block next to one of the colors. Put more dirt blocks into the first chest.

Watch the dirt blocks follow the color you chose.

Repeat with more item types.

Now your inventory is sorted, kind of.

Finally, add additional chests and sorting tube segments, as needed, to suit your personal play style.

Edit: Of course now I found a decent wiki page that has more detail, so I put that in the URL.

MineTest on a SteamDeck is so fun, y'all.

(Edit: MineTest is a free and open source game engine that started as a clone of Minecraft, and has grown to be that, and much more.)

I would have tried it sooner, if someone had mentioned it to me, so I'm mentioning it to you.

Edit: Disclaimer, I'm not the author of this blog. It's the walkthrough I followed to start playing.

Here's things I learned, so far, as a new player of Minetest. I'm new at this, so I'll gladly update this post with any corrections.

• Mineclone2 is a great place to just start playing!
• When confident enough to choose my own plugins, I switched back to MineGame/default, for the bigger library of available plugins.
• Mesecons is redstone, but looks way nicer. Insulated wires alone look like a huge sanity saver.
• The world is dramatically taller and deeper, so you're going to want a teleporter or elevator plugin. I found Travelnet a practical option.
• if you're coming from Java edition Minecraft, you may be pleasantly surprised how much faster, lighter and more efficient Mineclone is.
• The hang glider plugin is a giggle and a half.
• Building a Cotton farm was a quicker path to beds and hang gliders, for me, than searching for sheep.