<p>Just saw this beautiful teardown of a 3.5&quot; floppy drive with beautiful shots by Richi&#39;s Lab (CC-BY-NC): <a href="https://www.richis-lab.de/floppy.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">richis-lab.de/floppy.htm</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> <a href="https://chaos.social/tags/retrocomputing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>retrocomputing</span></a> <a href="https://chaos.social/tags/floppy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>floppy</span></a></p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@whitequark" class="u-url mention">@<span>whitequark</span></a></span> is nil, is a banana, is not-yet a person</p>

@whitequark@mastodon.social Just found this example from an RF/microwave metrology textbook in my old archive.

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@whitequark" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>whitequark</span></a></span> …but are they really a QA tester if they're not a cat?</p>

<p>OH: &quot;a QA tester goes into a society. is one person. is two people. is zero people&quot;</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@shriramk" class="u-url mention">@<span>shriramk</span></a></span> Reminds me of the part of Manu Pillai&#39;s Travancore book where he goes &quot;oh yeah btw the queen never entered a temple after Vaikom but that doesn&#39;t mean she&#39;s casteist or salty or anything&quot; and then towards the end reveals that his sources include the descendants of the queen lmao</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@shriramk" class="u-url mention">@<span>shriramk</span></a></span> How does the amount of detail and updatedness of the info compare to Nilakanta Sastri? Tbf I might still read Kanisetti even if its the same info just because my boi Sastri is drier than Rudin.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://thepit.social/@Will" class="u-url mention">@<span>Will</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://thepit.social/@peter" class="u-url mention">@<span>peter</span></a></span> I love Fediverse, but this observation strikes me as relevant. If anything, one cultural problem on Mastodon is that if you weigh in on a random conversation you&#39;re risking being called a &quot;reply guy&quot; and subjected to verbal abuse.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://thepit.social/@peter" class="u-url mention">@<span>peter</span></a></span> i have enjoyed some of the rolling discussions on Bluesky started by quasi-influencer types (Michael Sweeney, Jamelle Bouie) where a bunch of random people, some with relevant experience, chime in. Mastodon doesn’t ever seem to get enough mass for something like this, and I do find these enriching and useful. Not sure what the difference is, but what I miss from old Twitter seems to be coming back on that platform.</p>