In your records, controlling your headings

Freelance library cataloger posting about: cataloging & processing - books & reading - libraries & archives - people, information, technology

[chirasul]

we got a full redbox and now we're playing go fish with the redbox movies

[chirasul]

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

a redbox makes a wonderful addition to your patio

[fishmech]

for those wondering why they're free to take now, it's because the company that made those "chicken soup for the soul" books bought them a few years ago and then completely collapsed so bad they couldn't afford to dispose of or even take the blu rays and dvds out of their kiosks all over.

so any of them is free game because they're all located on other business' property and they usually don't want to have to pay to get rid of them either. so asking the store manager usually gets you the ok to pull it out and keep it.

[chirasul]

there was a period of time right after their bankruptcy where you could put in any debit or credit card and it would spit out movies without charging you. you could even put in like an expired or deactivated card, or a visa gift card with a $0 balance, didnt matter, they'd just start spitting discs out. a lotta people raided redboxes for movies for a couple months, with some people doing what me and my brother and my dad did here, taking the whole box and signs and marquees as well. because managers sure as hell don't want a big abandoned piece of trash on their sidewalk disappointing customers. BUT they're also often too cheap to pay someone to remove it. so they just sit there.

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

remember: the rules are made up. act like you belong there and you can get away with anything. this applies to your own life

[lilithsaintcrow]

"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — Th

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise t

[jenroses]

pretty sure I did the chrome//flags thing a while ago, but also i switched to firefox, which is not without the occasional bullshit, but is vastly less bullshitty than chrome. This is why I treat genai "features" like the invasive blackberry bushes they are: cut, root, burn, and vigilantly watch for new shoots to uproot. I'm 54 years old and the world got by fine without genai for most of my lifetime.

[lark-and-lyrebird]

This looks legit, but I'm not tech-savvy, and reading the article I can tell I was only gleaning a portion of the information in it. Which is fine, it's a technical article, and those technical details are important. Issue here is, my mom has a mac but mostly uses Chrome, since the majoriy of sites sheneeds to use for work, or beurocratic stuff, or just... Stuff she can't avoid? Tend to break or throw fits when she tries safari or firefox. I've tried to steer her towards firefox but a lot of the time she has to switch to chrome to get the dang site she's looking at to function. She is even less tech-savvy than me, so if I send her this article, her eyes are gonna rightfully glaze over. I don't understand it well enough to summarize it for her, either. It focuses on evidence and legal stuff and tech and that's important, but- Does anyone know of any resources that are more layman-friendly dicussing this issue I could lin alongside this one? "Here's the in depth thing if you want it, but here's the plain language article that explains what this means for you as a mac user"? Because she has been complaining of a lot fo computer problems lately, and it seems to line up timing wise, and this feels like something I should clue her in on. Thing is, I have no idea how to do so effectively. Like. How does this affect her on a mac desktop. i don't see IOS mentioned so i guess her iphone and ipad are safe? Our internet has also slowed to a CRAWL recently, and that timing lines up, too, so I have suspicions. I just dont know how to present this information so we can even begin to try to figure out what, if anything, we can do about it

[behindnightmaresanddreams]

Yeah actually as someone who is tech savvy I can probably summarize this for you. Give me a sec to read it again and I can put it into layman's terms.

[behindnightmaresanddreams]

Ok so @lark-and-lyrebird here's what I've got so far.

On opening chrome, the browser runs a check to see if a certain file (weights.bin) is installed in a specific directory. A layman friendly explanation is to think of it like a library checkout.It asks the librarian "Hey, do you have a book in this library (directory) about a prince (weights.bin)"

The computer checks for that file. From here it actually goes one of two ways. 1. The Librarian successfully finds the book in question (weights.bin) in the library (directory). In this case, no further action is taken. Chrome proceeds as normal. 2. The Librarian fails to locate the book for some reason (file isn't in that directory, directory doesn't exist, corrupted drive prevents reading that directory, etc). In this case, Chrome will make a request to the webserver for the [File, Directory, or other item(s) as needed] to be sent to the computer. This file is immediately, and quietly, downloaded and placed into the directory/the directory is placed into the root file structure*. Chrome then proceeds as normal.

Every so often, Chrome will make another call to the library to check if the file/directory is still there. Steps 1 and 2 will repeat indefinitely.

A lot of the technical information in the article is just details of how the guy confirmed this, basically using normal tools like a command line to ask the computer "Hey, did we get any new books recently? What were they? Where are they located?", so most of it is actually essentaily extraneous information for the average person.

MacOS, at a file system level, runs functionally the same as Windows, in that once an application is told "Yeah, you can download and install files to the OS", it is granted effectively Root permissions.** That is to say, the OS does not check that the item being downloaded is actually something the user allowed personally, it just checks if its malware.***

iOS, on the other hand, actually functions very differently. I'm not exactly sure how its permissions are handled, but I am reasonably confident that Chrome would not be able to run a microAI on an iPhone, due to iOS permissions being so vastly different and weird compared to desktop OS's.

The shortest answer is, you can't really "do" anything about it. Chrome will continue to reinstall this. The longer answer is that you can disable a bunch of stuff in the chrome://flags settings, which can be accessed simply by typing chrome://flags into your address bar and enabling or disabling permissions. I would look up a tutorial on what you need to enable/disable. Unfortunately I haven't used chrome in almost 10 years, so I don't personally know what is in there, and I refuse to install what is effectively malware onto my computer, even if it is for the common good. The good news is, I am aware that the process is really straightforward. There's no tricks or passwords or secret keybinds you have to press, to my knowledge.

Going back to your note about how she has to have chrome, I would consider looking into web browsers that run on Chromium, which may avoid the problem by not being True chrome browsers. Chromium is the basis of Google Chrome, but its also the basis of browsers like Opera, Vivaldi, Puffin, Microsoft Edge, and Brave. You could consider having her check some of those and see if perhaps they work. I cannot guarantee that they will function the way she needs, and I can't even guarantee that they won't install the AI module, but there's a better chance with them than with Chrome.

*It is incredibly rare for anything to be placed in Root, as it requires very high permissions to be accessed, and most programs simply do not have those permissions unless you go out of your way to give them. **As said above, programs do not typically get Root permissions, and its very rare that one will even need root. I'm certain there's exceptions but I don't know the specifics. ***The OS itself does not actually check if its malware, thats handled by the firewall and the antivirus of the computer. Which, in apple's case, is actually OS level iirc, but in Window's case its Window's Defender or whatever third party antivirus you use.

[meme-space-nine]

Dumb question: what happens if you put in a little file called weights.bin where its supposed to go? Does it not install the model because it thinks something is there?

[behindnightmaresanddreams]

That's a good question actually, a very good question, and I have no idea! Presumably it functions as normal, thinking everything is fine. I doubt it's being given read permissions, that's really rare. Then again, it has perms to install an AI model so who knows. Might be worth looking into that tho.

[behindnightmaresanddreams]

Lemme put it in the example of the library again. Chrome asks "Hey do you have a book called weights.bin in your YA Novels section?" Earlier in the day, someone put a copy of Rincewind by Terry Pratchett on the shelf, but replaced the outer sleeve with the sleeve for Weights.bin. The Librarian checks the shelf, sees that yes, in fact, there is (allegedly) a book called weights.bin in the YA Novels section. Chrome then leaves the library.

The only part that I think would go wrong is if its checking hash's, in which case the check fails and the directory is purged/remade/something, and there's always the fact that you have to have all the files its looking for, not just weights.bin. Also, .bin denotes that its a binary file, which. Could pose some other problems. Binaries are lists of instructions, usually used to run a program. You dont exactly want to be putting binaries on your computer that you don't understand, and its not exactly a great idea to make your own binaries, let alone make one that is almost guaranteed to be executed/ran. Closest analogy I have is that weights.bin is a loaded gun. You can swap it out for a different gun, but if you just get a gun from some guy in an alleyway you have no idea if its loaded or not, and good luck making your own gun that passes all the checks that Chrome is looking for but doesn't shoot anything.

It really depends on how much they thought people would potentially mess with it. If they assume a high level of tampering would occur its probably checked against a hash function and you basically can't mess with it. If they just assumed that its gonna sit there and harvest data or whatever, they might have just put a check for "File Name" and left it at that.

[metadata-uber-alles]

I too have a couple pieces of browser-based software I need for work, that go wonky on Firefox.

On Day Job Laptop I can let it be IT's problem honestly, though I'll probably check for the weights.bin file. On Freelance Job Laptop ... I wonder if the Chrome Mask addon will do any good. It's not made for my use case really but worth a shot.

[eroscestlavie]

Genuinely incredible single serve site I just found: a guy made a search tool so you can find completely empty AMC movie screenings in your area and enjoy a private or near-private theatre.

[nunchler]

obviously bigotry isnt rational but "women are naturally worse at spatial reasoning and math" is a wild opinion to have when women have historically been the primary textile producers in a lot of societies. have you ever seen a tablet weaving pattern

[grison-in-space]

do you have any idea how much calculus goes into making a new sewing pattern. how much math goes into knitting. it's amazing.

[metadata-uber-alles]

[jv]

Today is a big day on the Spanish internet. Valentine's day in Spanish is "día de San Valentín", which sounds almost the same as "Sam va lentín", which is how, in some parts of Spain , you would say "Sam goes slowly".

Hence, since a few years ago, every February 14th, the Spanish internet is full of "wait for me mr. Frodo" style memes. One of our holiest days of the year.

[jv]

oh and the post would probably make more sense if I actually shared any meme right?

[jv]

You can't even picture how many variations of the meme people post today. It's all very silly and I love it.

[rosebleue-deactivated20251002]

The funniest part is the actors are aware of the meme!

[mara-was-naomi]

omg this is my favorite discovery of the year I am loving these memes

[kvothes]

oh someone told me something useful yesterday. she said she’s been thinking about her tbr less as an overwhelming list of books she Must Read and more like she’s cultivating a wine cellar. making a rich collection that will provide the perfect thing when needed. a bottle will get uncorked when the time is right

[thoughtportal]

Open Printer

Finally, an open hardware printer you can actually understand, repair, and upgrade

Open Printer is an open-source, repairable inkjet printer designed for makers, artists, and anyone tired of throwaway hardware. Built with standard mechanical components and modular parts, it’s easy to assemble, modify, and repair. You can print on standard sheets or paper rolls and choose between black or color cartridges, refillable at your convenience.

This project aims to reclaim our everyday tools. As such, it features no proprietary drivers, no cartridge DRM that locks you to a single vendor and is designed to never become obsolete. The Open Printer is built for longevity and customizability, ensuring that it remains fully under your control.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

It's freaky how the brain will just plasticly learn novel motor output interfaces on the fly. It's almost like instead of hard coding a control scheme for anatomy that changes every few million years the strat that brains went for was to be openly reconfigurable to fit around whatever its nerves seem to be hooked up to via observed feedback.

I think they've done tests on this by getting people to pilot novel bodies in VR. But you don't tend to notice it day to day until something weird happens like just now. I was reading a paper book and it had a line of text blacked out as if redacted. Instinctively I go to move my cursor over the black line to see if I can read any text if I highlight it.

Except it's a book and not my computer screen, so the cursor my brain thinks it's moving across my field of vision in front of me doesn't exist. At the same time, my right hand is making a bunch of small involuntary movements next to me. I didn't intend to move it and didn't even notice it was moving until I saw it with my eyes. What I intended to move was my Cursor, something that my brain had learned to understand that it has, and the way it moves this is by actuating the muscles in my right arm, an action that is entirely disconnected from any intent to move my arm, which is a different thing.

I love being a pattern atop this eldritch mess of neurons, it's great

[wonderful-emoji]

I haven't used the site in a while because their database got a bit behind, but I'm happy to report Emoji Kitchen Supply has a new Emoji Background generator I have to recommend

[carriesthewind]

Hey! You!

Do you enjoy my posts pointing and laughing at terrible attorneys?

Do you like news that is sourced from original legal filings?

Do you think the public should have not just the right, but the practical ability, to access public records?

Well, do I have an opportunity for you!

In the U.S. even though (most) federal court records are public documents, it costs money to actually access these documents - 10 cents a page!

This can add up fast when you are talking about legal filings. For example, if you followed along with my recent posts about Sir Clownshoes, his response to the Court's Show Cause order was 112 pages, including exhibits. The reason I was able to make those posts without paying the U.S. government $11 was because of a wonderful site called CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/). They have a browser extension that automatically adds court documents that the user purchases from PACER (the federal site that costs money) to their public site (https://free.law/recap). That way, only one person has to pay $11, instead of everyone single person who wants to point and laugh.

What does this have to do with you?

CourtListener recently launched a new project that allows users to indicate documents that they need/want access to, but cannot pay for themselves, their "Pray and Pay" Project (https://www.courtlistener.com/help/pray-and-pay/)

Anyone can register for a PACER account. (https://pacer.uscourts.gov/register-account/pacer-case-search-only) (You don't need to be an attorney, or even in the U.S.! You do need to give your name, DOB, address, and other contact information, however.) And every three months, you can download up to $30 worth of documents - that is, 300 pages, for free.

That means, you - yes you! - can register for a PACER account, download the RECAP extension, and then, four times a year, help provide researches, litigants, interested parties, and shitposters alike access to public records! All without having to pay a cent!

Alternatively, if you need or want access to a public court document, but don't have the funds/can't make a PACER account for some reason, you can request the document through CourtListener. (You do still need to register with CourtListener, but it requires far less information.)

As of the time of this post, there are 1,007 pending requests for documents. Just 17 people could fulfill all those requests, right now, for free.

(And I know I'm framing this in terms of my silly little posts, but having access to these cases and these documents is actually really, really important to a lot of people. You will absolutely make someone's day by fulfilling a request.)

[carriesthewind]

Good news! It's been three months, so you can donate another 300 pages right now for free! :D

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[novella-november]

Another reading focused poll for fun.

What is the *oldest* (based on original publication date, not the translated version you've read, if applicable) book that you have read in full? What year range was it published?

2020+

2000s-2019

1970s-1990s

1940s-1960s

1900s-1930s

1800s

1700s

1600s

1500s

1,000s-1400s

Book from before the 1,000s

Something even older !

Voting ended onOct 2, 2025

[cerubean]

most recent windows 11 update is wiping SSDs

there's been multiple reports of people's computers not booting properly after the windows 11 24H2 KB5063878 update due to it essentially wiping the hard drives (specifically SSDs) on computers and laptops. users have reported their SSDs aren't able to be read/recognized and unable to be seen in bios settings either.

sources: - https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/08/20/microsoft-is-investigating-windows-11-kb5063878-ssd-data-corruption-failure-issue/ - https://www.nichepcgamer.com/archives/windows11-24h2-issue-with-writing-to-the-ssd-is-this-caused-by-kb5063878-kb5062660.html

it's safe to assume all SSDs can be potentially affected by this update, so if you haven't updated yet turn off autoupdates

the bug caused by this update is seemingly triggered by installing/moving/deleting large files (50+ gb), which as simmers is what a lot of us do very pften

if you're unsure what windows version you currently have:

go to settings > system > about (at they very bottom) > and scroll down to see the current OS version

if you do currently have windows 11 24H2:

in settings, click 'Windows update' > 'Update history' > and under 'Quality Updates' check to see if the KB5063878 update is in the list of recently installed updates

don't panic, you can uninstall this update!

while in 'Update History', scroll to the very bottom and click 'Uninstall updates', and click 'Uninstall' for 'Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB5063878)'

from there, give it some time to remove the update and after pause updates for as long as possible (5 weeks is the longest i think), but it will force an update if there's a big/official update for the fix

if you've already been affected and your computer is not starting or giving errors regarding your hard drive, i recommend visiting small pc repair shops to try data recovery as some have reported placing their SSD in an enclosure seems to work to recover the data

hopefully this is helpful is any kind of way! friendly reminder to back up your data to an external drive routinely!

[pitchlag]

THIS AFFECTS WINDOWS 10 TOO For W10 the faulty patch is KB5063709. You can access and uninstall it from Control panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features -> Installed Updates The out-of-band update KB5066188 is supposed to fix issues with the "Reset this PC" recovery failures, the SSD drivers failing hasn't been fixed yet afaik. Best uninstall the faulty patch.

[sonicguillotine-deactivated2025]

Firefox Extensions I like

UBlock Origin - Adblocking

Chameleon - IP and random agent spoofing

TrackMeNot - Floods web search engines with false queries at a settable interval

Location Guard - Obfuscates precise location

Privacy Possum - Blocks and falsifies information collected by tracking

ClearURLs - Removes tracking elements from URLs

LocalCDN - Prevents third party requests

CanvassBlocker - Prevents fingerprinting

UnPaywall - Circumvents paywalls for research papers

Sci-Hub - Adds a Sci-Hub link to academic papers

ChromeMask - Disguises Firefox as Chrome for Chrome-only websites

FlagFox - Adds a flag next to the URL indicating its origin

[metadata-uber-alles]

Footage of 1920s Juneteenth parades in Oklahoma and Texas, video held by Yale Library:

Film 10, 1925 (brbl_wa_mss_S-2636_R10.u.mp4)

Film 26, 1926, 1928, undated (brbl_wa_mss_S-2636_R26.u.mp4)

For more context see the writeup for the collection -> Solomon Sir Jones Films, 1924-1928

[specimentality]

On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.

This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.

Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.

[metadata-uber-alles]

You can find the text of the Endangered Species Act right here: https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/endangered-species-act-accessible.pdf

It says right at the start that the purpose of the Act includes conserving the ecosystems where endangered species live. Seems like solid ground for keeping habitat damage within the purview of the act, if you ask me. In my comment I used the bald eagle as an example--there have been laws against hunting them since 1940, and they still nearly died out until we got rid of DDT. (Bald eagles! Where's your patriotism? Don't you care about our national symbol??) The IUCN Red List Advanced Search page will give you some great stats if you want to show how big a threat habitat loss is. For example I filtered for Endangered species in North America and got a neat bar graph showing the biggest threats.

[yesornopolls]

Did you feel settled into your career by 25?

Did you feel settled into your career by 25?

Yes

No

Under 25

Voting ended onApr 15, 2025