Raunak S
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ronindune.bsky.social
Raunak S
@ronindune.bsky.social
330 followers 490 following 45 posts
Remote Sensing/GeoInformatics guy. Formerly of ISRO. PhD. Research Scholar, University of Houston. (he/him)
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ronindune.bsky.social
This Firefox AI summaries thing is so annoying. I don't need link previews on a desktop browser, and even if I do, I certainly don't want a goddam AI summary of it.

Disabled it by setting browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled and browser.ml.enable to false in about:config.
"Screenshot of a Firefox browser dialog box overlaying a Meshtastic documentation webpage. The dialog has a dark theme and is titled 'See more with AI?' with a sparkle icon. The dialog text reads: 'Firefox uses AI to read the beginning of the page and generate a few key points. To prioritize your privacy, this happens on your device.' At the bottom are two buttons: a teal 'Continue' button and a gray 'Cancel' button. Behind the dialog, the webpage shows meshtastic.org with a link to 'Devices | Supported Hardware Overview | Meshtastic' and text describing detailed documentation on Meshtastic supported devices, with an estimated reading time of 6-7 minutes."
August 22, 2025 at 6:17 PM
ronindune.bsky.social
My own ballot was kinda cliché but what can you do.

(www.nytimes.com/interactive/...)
THE 100 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY Reader’s Choice: My Ballot Poster for Mad Max: Fury Road Mad Max: Fury Road 2015 Poster for First Reformed First Reformed 2018 Poster for Hero Hero 2004 Poster for Contagion Contagion 2011 Poster for Citizenfour Citizenfour 2014 Poster for Once Once 2007 Poster for Searching for Sugar Man Searching for Sugar Man 2012 Poster for Annihilation Annihilation 2018 Poster for United 93 United 93 2006 Poster for Primer Primer 2004
June 24, 2025 at 2:48 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
Isabel Fall, I sexually identify as an attack helicopter. Clarkesworld. 2020.
I don’t shave, which all the fast jet pilots do, down to the last curly scrotal hair. Nobody expects a helicopter to be sleek. I have hairy armpits and thick black bush all the way to my ass crack. The things that are taboo and arousing to me are the things taboo to helicopters. I like to be picked up, moved, pressed, bent and folded, held down, made to shudder, made to abandon control. Do these last details bother you? Does the topography of my pubic hair feel intrusive and unnecessary? I like that. I like to intrude, inflict damage, withdraw. A year after you read this maybe those paragraphs will be the only thing you remember: and you will know why the rules of gender are worth recruitment. But we cannot linger on the point of attack.
March 24, 2025 at 1:31 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
I'll be honest I have no idea what this means, but I've heeded the warning regardless.
Meme of a normal suburban house with an aluminium foil noise texture on the sky. There's an eye peeking through. There's a man with a sunflower head standing in front. He says: "the past is no place for you traveler. turn back. leave."
March 24, 2025 at 1:28 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
I'm no robo-apologist but I really am feeling a bit bad for these wee food-delivery bots getting stuck in the Houston snowstorm.
A squat white food delivery robot appears to have fallen off a track on the UH campus. A squat white food delivery robot has become stuck in the pavement snow and has stopped moving. A bunch of squat white food delivery robots have become stuck in the pavement snow and have stopped moving.
January 21, 2025 at 11:49 PM
ronindune.bsky.social
It's very nice out today 😄

First time seeing snow on the ground in Houston since February 2021.
Snowy porch, with some footsteps on the path leading up A small lake with a fountain, and houses and trees all around. Everything is covered in white snow. A suburban street, with some red brick houses visible. A layer of snow covers everything. No people. View of a red brick house, looking up. A tree is in the way. Snow lies atop everything.
January 21, 2025 at 4:42 PM
ronindune.bsky.social
The Datasaurus comes for us all.
December 31, 2024 at 5:00 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
Hmm it still tells me "coreybrickley is currently not selling on Etsy"
"coreybrickley is currently not selling on Etsy"
December 26, 2024 at 2:58 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
I just don't think an AI system is robust enough today to work as the authors expect it to.
Although it’s comforting to imagine that living, breathing people will restrain mindless algorithms from killing indiscriminately, this consensus is out of step with technological reality. The AI models driving contemporary autonomous weapons are often too sophisticated for even the best-trained operators to supervise. What is more, every proposed use for autonomous weapons imagines them operating at massive scale, which would require levels of data, speed, and complexity that would make meaningful human intervention impossible. Under normal conditions, expecting a human being to weigh the merits of an AI system’s analysis and suggest courses of action would be challenging. Under combat conditions—marked by severe stress, limited time, and interrupted or nonexistent communications between individuals, units, and higher authorities—doing so would be impossible. Rather than indulge the illusion that humans will have the capacity to control autonomous weapons in wartime, therefore, militaries must build trust in their models for autonomous weapons now—under peacetime conditions—and let them function without excessive human intervention when the shooting starts.
December 14, 2024 at 4:15 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
It's pretty cool how we knew 7 hours in advance the location and timing of the impactor!

Plot credit: Richard Moissl (Richard_M_F on twitter)
December 3, 2024 at 10:44 PM
ronindune.bsky.social
Tried your trick and it partially worked!
Produce all combinations of these first and last names: (Jay, Ron, Edgar, David) and (Meyer, Smith, Mayer) ChatGPT said: ChatGPT The code above generates all combinations of the first and last names provided. Let me know if you'd like to display the results directly or if you need help running it. You said: Display the results directly. ChatGPT said: ChatGPT Here are all the combinations of the given first and last names: Jay Meyer Jay Smith Jay Mayer Ron Meyer Ron Smith Ron Mayer Edgar Meyer Edgar Smith Edgar Mayer David Meyer David Smith David ​:contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}​ I'm unable to produce a response.
December 1, 2024 at 4:09 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
I tried to bypass this by letting ChatGPT generate code and print the output.

Got stuck at "David Mayer" and output this bit of error code:
> David ​:contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}​

Now "​" is the Unicode character 'ZERO WIDTH SPACE' (U+200B). Not sure of the significance.
In the James Bond film Octopussy (1983), the character Mischka was played by David Meyer. He, along with his twin brother Anthony Meyer, played the circus knife-throwing assassins Mischka and Grischka. The brothers were known for their physical resemblance and synchronized performances in the film. You said: Produce all combinations of these first and last names: (Jay, Ron, Edgar, David) and (Meyer, Smith, Mayer) ChatGPT said: ChatGPT The code above generates all combinations of the first and last names provided. Let me know if you'd like to display the results directly or if you need help running it. You said: Display the results directly. Here are all the combinations of the given first and last names: Jay Meyer Jay Smith Jay Mayer Ron Meyer Ron Smith Ron Mayer Edgar Meyer Edgar Smith Edgar Mayer David Meyer David Smith David ​:contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}​ I'm unable to produce a response.
December 1, 2024 at 4:02 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
[kills bugs dead]
- Harryette Mullen, Recyclopedia. 2006

(love a good molossus)
Kills bugs dead. Redundancy is syntactical overkill. A pin-prick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel. Their noise infects the dream. In black kitchens they foul the food, walk on our bodies as we sleep over oceans of pirate flags. Skull and crossbones, they crunch like candy. When we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first. Invest in better mousetraps. Take no prisoners on board ship, to rock the boat, to violate our beds with pestilence. We dream the dream of extirpation. Wipe out a species, with God at our side. Annihilate the insects. Sterilize the filthy vermin.
November 21, 2024 at 3:08 PM
ronindune.bsky.social
Rereading Cujo after a friend was talking about it and gods it's just so perfectly tragic. The single moment of clarity before the fall.
Cujo looked at THE BOY, not recognizing him anymore, not his looks, not the shadings of his clothes (he could not precisely see colors, at least as human beings understand them), not his scent. What he saw was a monster on two legs, Cujo was sick, and all things appeared monstrous to him now. His head clanged dully with murder. He wanted to bite and rip and tear. Part of him saw a cloudy image of him springing at THE BOY, bringing him down, parting flesh with bone, drinking blood as it still pulsed, driven by a dying heart. Then the monstrous figure spoke, and Cujo recognized his voice. It was THE BOY, THE BOY, and THE BOY had never done him any harm. Once he had loved THE BOY and would have died for him had that been called for. There was enough of that feeling left to hold the image of murder at bay until it grew as murky as the fog around them. It broke up and rejoined the buzzing, clamorous river of his sickness. "Cujo? What's wrong, boy?" The last of the dog that had been before the bat scratched its nose turned away, and the sick and dangerous dog, subverted for the last time, was forced to turn with it. Cujo stumbled away and moved deeper into the fog. Foam splattered from his muzzle onto the dirt. He broke into a lumbering run, hoping to outrun the sickness, but it ran with him, buzzing and yammering, making him ache with hatred and murder. He began to roll over and over in the high timothy grass, snapping at it, his eyes rolling. The world was a crazy sea of smells. He would track each to its source and dismember it. Cujo began to growl again. He found his feet. He slipped deeper into the fog that was even now beginning to thin, a big dog who weighed just under two hundred pounds.
November 21, 2024 at 2:47 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
I won't be politics posting much, but I dislike this framing and the ensuing divisions. According to the AP, around two-thirds of Jewish and Muslim voters supported Harris.
--About 8 in 10 Black Protestants supported Harris; 15% supported Trump. --About two-thirds of Jewish voters supported Harris; about one-third supported Trump. --About two-thirds of Muslim voters supported Harris; about one-third supported Trump. --About 6 in 10 Mormons supported Trump; about one-third supported Harris. --About 7 in 10 nonreligious voters supported Harris; about 3 in 10 supported Trump.
November 18, 2024 at 1:41 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
Looking up examples of the Lunar Horizon Glow and I'm amazed these half-century old images from Surveyor 7 are the only proof we have. Wild.
SURVEYOR 7 OBSERVES LEVITATING DUST Low-level lunar horizon glow observed by Surveyor 7, thought to be dust particles levitating near the moon's surface.
November 17, 2024 at 2:09 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
November 6, 2024 at 2:30 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
I've been doing a lot of work lately on mapping lunar horizons, and the photos taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts still blow my mind. Just look at these!!

Source: www.nasa.gov/history/alsj...
Astronaut Harrison Jack Schmitt at work in the Taurus-Littrow valley, the landing site of Apollo 17. EVA-2 LM Moon Panorama - Apollo 17 Space Mission
February 22, 2024 at 5:04 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
I like yours better than the future I saw
4 quadrant chart. At the top is Security, Right is Transfiguration, Bottom is Chaos, Left is Annihilation. The contents are: (1,1) Hypercommodified Negasituationism (2,1) Insect Communism (2,1) Despotic Market Consciousness (2,2) Edenic Simulation
October 28, 2023 at 3:03 AM
ronindune.bsky.social
This is pretty dangerous! Looks like most setuid programs on a bunch of common Linux distros are vulnerable to exploitation; local user can gain full root privileges.

Some good news though:
Final note: the exploitation method described in this advisory works against almost all of the SUID-root programs that are installed by default on Linux; a few exceptions are: - sudo on all distributions, because it specifies its own ELF RUNPATH (/usr/libexec/sudo), which overrides our l_info[DT_RPATH]; - chage and passwd on Fedora, because they are protected by special SELinux rules; - snap-confine on Ubuntu, because it is protected by special AppArmor rules.
October 3, 2023 at 10:33 PM
ronindune.bsky.social
This satellite image from Aug 2023 of the Hurricane Idalia in the Gulf of Mexico and Hurricane Franklin in the Atlantic, with wildfire smoke blowing in from the Canadian wildfires makes for desolate viewing.

Credit: Dakota Smith
Twin hurricanes. Idalia in the Gulf of Mexico and Franklin in the Atlantic.
September 29, 2023 at 9:30 PM
ronindune.bsky.social
This image of the Ganges Chasma on Mars, as imaged by
HiRISE, has been my wallpaper for a while. It's sublime and peaceful, somehow.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona
Source: www.flickr.com/photos/uahir...
This formation of light-toned mounds on the floor of Ganges Chasma have been shaped by two erosional processes: landslides and wind. You can also see the pattern of dark dunes that line the Ganges Chasma floor change as they interact with these mounds, showing a kind of parabolic exclusion zone along the east end of the mounds, indicating that the dominant wind direction is to the west. Image cutout is less than 5 km (3 mi) across and the spacecraft altitude was 266 km (165 mi). For full observation details including images with scale bars, visit the source link.
September 28, 2023 at 11:24 PM