[Smile] What's something small that really makes you smile?

Forums › Off topic › [Smile] What's something small that really makes you smile?

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#3447436 27-Dec-2025 06:56

On Christmas Eve my 6 year old was asked to read from Luke 2 (4-20) in front of a group of people without any notice or preparation, and she did it amazingly well. Only struggled with one word ("pledged"), the rest was perfect.

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Tinkerisk

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#3447526 27-Dec-2025 16:25

We have successfully completed the hybrid migration to an EU service, self-hosting and OSS, and several Cloudflare services have been cancelled at the end of the year – purely as an IT policy precaution in uncertain times and in light of the incident on 18 November 2025.

Simply one less dependency on a US corporation in our list of applications. 🙂

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#3447535 27-Dec-2025 18:20

Web 3.0 🙂

freitasm

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#3447536 27-Dec-2025 18:25

Tinkerisk:

Web 3.0 🙂

Sorry, but that's not happening. It relies "blockchain" and this is out, like metaverse, AR and other crap.

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#3447539 27-Dec-2025 20:17

freitasm:

Tinkerisk:

Web 3.0 🙂

Sorry, but that's not happening. It relies "blockchain" and this is out, like metaverse, AR and other crap.

Nope, my dear like-minded friend. It is a technology that does not require BigTech (PERMISSIONLESS blockchain) and is being strongly promoted by the EU in terms of research and implementation. BigTech does have a huge advantage, but there is no dependency on it. While BigTech wants to plunder us in terms of data, we are working on constructive solutions to improve coexistence (even if that sounds like a utopian pipe dream). The EU is far from perfect, but given the current situation in the US, we have every reason to strive for a better future for its estimated 450.4 million inhabitants.

Berlin is not only the seat of the German government, but also the place where all hell breaks loose, and a lot of people are playing their part in all the commotion as small cogs in the wheel. In contrast to the brain farts of a US clown, the EU is anything but inactive in terms of information infrastructure (and military). It took longer, but once we're awake... 🤣

… and finance is in the loop as well. Why do you think I put a Radeon RX 9070 XT in my desktop? Certainly not for gaming or mining bitcoins. 😉

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#3447595 28-Dec-2025 16:05

It’s the last day of my holiday travels. We’ve been travelling through Oman with a couple of days in the middle at home. It’s been great but it’ll be even better to be home.

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#3447660 29-Dec-2025 07:49

After some consideration, I have now disabled unbound (since DNS queries to root servers are still unencrypted and most root servers are legally US servers).

Instead, DNS servers with DNS over TLS under the sovereignty of the EU (aka DNS4EU) will be used from now on.

Note: outside the EU, however, their use does not make sense, as DNS queries from outside EU are delayed. For me, they are quite fast as well.

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#3449513 4-Jan-2026 07:46

Last night and all day today, large snowflakes fell and remained on the ground due to the cold temperatures. The children even built large snowmen outside and went sledging down even the smallest hills – something that had become rare in recent years due to global warming. 🙂

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#3449602 4-Jan-2026 13:48

Quoting from another thread so as to not OT that thread:

@freitasm:

I was born a lot closer to the end of the WWII than today.

Egyptian queen Cleopatra had people studying the Ancient Egypt, because she was closer to our time than to the building of the pyramids. The Ptolomaic period is "modern" compared to the Ancient Egypt.

For some people, the year 2000 was eons ago...

I often think about this time interval thing. My paternal grandparents were born in rural Southland in the 1870-80s. Although there were steam power, railways, telegraph, factories and so on, compared to what was soon to come, life at that time would not have been hugely different from life in the Middle Ages.

By the time they died nearly 100 years later, they would have seen telephones, electricity, cars, radio, TV, flight and space, men on the moon, nuclear fission.

It’s hard to think of another century in which things changed so much.

I was born less than seven years after the end of WWII - which from today’s perspective seems a snap of the fingers.

My Dad was 18 in final year at secondary school when the war ended. If it had gone on for another year, he would likely have gone. Our lives may have been very different but I guess you can always say that.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

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#3449687 4-Jan-2026 18:32

My father had to join the Wehrmacht (RAD labour service) at the age of 17, was an ordinary infantryman on the Eastern Front up to Moscow at the age of 18, then in Italy, and was then ‘luckily allowed’ to become a US prisoner of war (instead of a UDSSR prisoner) at the age of 23 and the time of surrender – fortunately only for 14 days, because he was not a Nazi. The last Russian prisoners of war returned to Germany in 1955 – if at all. He and his comrade-in-arms of decades were miraculously the only ones left from their original platoon. Without any war medals.

His youth and vocational training opportunities were largely gone. Nevertheless, I am much closer to the moon landing, which I witnessed live, than to World War II and was allowed to learn everything that Hitler denied him. 🙂

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#3449733 4-Jan-2026 20:45

The first combat aircraft my father flew in (in 1941, in combat) was the Fairy Swordfish, an open-cockpit propeller-engined biplane with canvas-covered surfaces, capable of about 120 knots "flat out, down hill, with a tail wind" as Dad used to say, and an empty weight of less than 2 tonnes

The last combat aircraft my father flew in (in 1965) was the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, a twin-jet, all-metal supersonic fighter capable of Mach 2.2 (~1,200 knots), which weighed about 14 tonnes empty.

In less than twenty-five years
from this

to this

Time is extremely relative

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Tinkerisk

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#3449736 4-Jan-2026 21:24

My first car was a Smart for Two weighing ~0.75 tonnes. The last thing I flew had an MTOW of 569 tonnes and was the last vehicle with four Rolls Royce engines that I piloted. Now I mostly ride eScooters (in addition to my car/s).

Well, extremely relative is the right word. 🤣

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#3449796 4-Jan-2026 22:16

Tinkerisk:

Last night and all day today, large snowflakes fell and remained on the ground due to the cold temperatures. The children even built large snowmen outside and went sledging down even the smallest hills – something that had become rare in recent years due to global warming. 🙂

You might be surprised to learn that hot weather is exactly what can bring on such weather events. Hail especially, for example.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

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#3449800 5-Jan-2026 01:44

MadEngineer:

Tinkerisk:

Last night and all day today, large snowflakes fell and remained on the ground due to the cold temperatures. The children even built large snowmen outside and went sledging down even the smallest hills – something that had become rare in recent years due to global warming. 🙂

You might be surprised to learn that hot weather is exactly what can bring on such weather events. Hail especially, for example.

That's why we have hail in summer, but here it's only winter right now. We sometimes have blizzards or freezing cold weather when the wind blows from Moscow, or moderate weather due to the effects of the Gulf Stream (hopefully it won't come to a standstill, as is often rumoured – no idea if that's an urban legend).

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#3449844 5-Jan-2026 09:50

@Tinkerisk:

... when the wind blows from Moscow,

A lot more things might be blowing from Moscow. You folks should take care and not underestimate the mad man.

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