Nostr notes by mathew

An update on the fight against the planned hyperscale Google data ...

2026-10-27T03:04:00Z

An update on the fight against the planned hyperscale Google data center in Hermantown, MN.

Tomorrow there's a hearing on a Motion for Contempt, after the city council violated a court order around notice requirements for permitting. Tonight, the council planned a special session to pass a Special Use Permit; a Development Agreement; a Reuse and Decommission Agreement nobody had seen before; and a roadway and utility agreement with the county. 232 pages, posted late on the 21st, and the Special Use Permit is for land the company doesn't actually own yet. The council also planned to formally reject a petition for an environmental assessment.

When I arrived at around 18:00, the parking lots and all the grassy areas were full. Inside, the city council chambers were full, the overflow room was full, and the lobby area was full. Initially, authorities attempted to persuade protesters to leave the building for capacity reasons. However, everyone had been told that legally they can't do that unless the meeting is rescheduled for an alternate venue with enough capacity, so nobody left.

Each person wishing to speak is supposed to be allowed up to 3 minutes to do so; however, the council is required to complete business by 22:00. Clearly these two requirements were incompatible. The city council took away the signup sheets for people who wished to speak. At that point, the situation basically became an occupation and noise protest. The scheduled 18:30 start time came and went. Around 100dB of clapping and chanting continued.

Around 19:50, I saw the police having a strategy meeting. At 20:10, the pro-data-center folks started to leave. At 20:20 the council finally turned up, to a chorus of booing. They announced that they were adjourning the meeting, and left escorted by police.

The battle will continue. For anyone interested in the lengthy backstory: https://racketmn.com/google-data-center-hermantown-minnesota-nda

#Minnesota

I’d recommend against Avro, it’s less complicated than ...

2026-10-25T13:45:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…rjsg
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I’d recommend against Avro, it’s less complicated than Protocol Buffers, but still significantly more work to implement than other options.

I'd suggest that Protocol Buffers vs CBOR to replace JSON is ...

2026-10-25T02:57:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…5pry
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I'd suggest that Protocol Buffers vs CBOR to replace JSON is a false dichotomy. Both are very complex, whereas MessagePack is an alternative that's extremely simple.

I think it's the one from the "teach kids canoe ...

2026-10-21T16:35:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…3x62
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I think it's the one from the "teach kids canoe building" course. It's wood, but the skin is nylon.

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/sports/northland-outdoors/duluth-folk-school-camp-teaches-kids-canoe-building

Have you seen the canoe at the Duluth Folk School?

2026-10-21T14:35:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…juuk
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Have you seen the canoe at the Duluth Folk School?

The Libby app used for reading library books has a new feature ...

2026-10-17T16:09:44Z

The Libby app used for reading library books has a new feature — you can select whether you want to read books someone couldn't be bothered to write.

Nostr event nevent1qqs04jsdnf9fu5xqsg826fcpuas2kv7zerk6c874t20revj2zk3pn7szyzagm63dpdpd4wfx6zn0z6rsvpdr90lwrxts2czuvvagz9uf65fg7rzy4tq

2026-10-08T18:11:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…97ls
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Unfortunately [@davidgerard](https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard ) noticed that the analysis was done by AI bots.

It worked for me. ...

2026-09-26T15:31:57Z

It worked for me.

Something you might remember from childhood is cheap balsa wood ...

2026-09-13T19:24:19Z

Something you might remember from childhood is cheap balsa wood plane kits. You would carefully assemble them — no glue needed — and they would actually fly. The fancy ones had a red plastic propeller and were powered by an elastic band. I just happened to think of them, and went and looked, and it turns out that the company that makes them is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

https://www.guillow.com/product-category/flying-toys/

This is doing the rounds… ...

2026-09-09T23:13:18Z

This is doing the rounds…

Apparently they got rid of the strategic biscuit stockpile in ...

2026-09-04T15:43:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…cjug
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Apparently they got rid of the strategic biscuit stockpile in 1995.

https://www.subbrit.org.uk/features/strategic-food-stockpile/

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2026-09-01T00:29:03Z

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean

2026-08-30T23:35:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…xzae
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean

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2026-08-24T21:38:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…g28j
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A few links you might find interesting… This paper examines how ...

2026-08-20T22:37:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…8nyp
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A few links you might find interesting…

This paper examines how reality and the predictions of The Limits To Growth compare:
https://ideas.repec.org/p/cse/wpaper/2008-09.html

The UK government put out this report:
https://limits2growth.org.uk/revisited/

And there's this followup from Club of Rome:
http://www.ask-force.org/web/Global-Warming/Randers-What-Was-Message-Limits-5th-2010.pdf

Also, The Limits to Growth is available for free download from https://www.library.dartmouth.edu/digital/digital-collections/limits-growth #LimitsToGrowth

And for those who like long videos of lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wBqCTzFP5A

The basic problem is that I'm not aware of any LLMs that are ...

2026-08-18T20:12:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…xwu3
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The basic problem is that I'm not aware of any LLMs that are trained ethically and useful for general purposes. The only open source LLM I've seen is https://www.kl3m.ai and when I tested it, it wasn't up to tasks like answering general questions.

If you're OK with a tainted set of LLM weights, you can already have local search, grammar check and the like. For example, there are tools to use Apple's LLM built in to macOS, you can feed it documents and then ask questions and get answers from those documents, all locally. However, Apple's being sued for copyright violation in training.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/apple-accused-of-ai-copyright-infringement-by-suny-professors

“Can you explain the odd gaps in your résumé?” “Your HR ...

2026-08-17T03:22:52Z

“Can you explain the odd gaps in your résumé?”

“Your HR department wanted it in Microsoft Word format.”

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2026-08-06T16:09:26Z

Reminds me of this classic cartoon by @npub1rkp…dy04 ...

2026-07-13T22:25:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…r0lt
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Reminds me of this classic cartoon by Zach Weinersmith (npub1rkp…dy04)

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gold-3