2024

╒═════╣▒ 05/01/2024 @13:07 ▒╟──────────┘

I swear, iTunes^W Apple Music was designed by people who don't actually *USE* the thing. In what world does 'Play Later' mean *immediately after this song if it is part of an album that I just clicked play on*?

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 05/01/2024 @13:07 ▒╟──────────┘

Attachments:

[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2024/04/29/falling-in

April

╒═════╣▒ 04/29/2024 @20:12 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Falling In - Penny Arcade»¹And maybe halfway through an episode the cast soft-locks themselves into an un-progress-able situation and then the episode just fades to black early... next week's episode opens 2 episodes prior...

╒═════╣▒ 04/29/2024 @20:07 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «You are not a commodity. — Joan Westenberg»¹> Resist the urge to self-commodify. Embrace what makes you different, not what makes you blend in. Focus on the process, not just the outcome. Pour yourself into your craft and trust that your tribe will find you.The internet is becoming a sea of sameness. But what we crave most is something genuine-something real-not a hollow imitation, but an artist who has the courage to be fully themselves.

[1] https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/you-are-not-a-commodity

╒═════╣▒ 04/29/2024 @19:37 ▒╟──────────┘

😂

Attachments:

[1] https://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-not-to-release-historic-source-code/

╒═════╣▒ 04/28/2024 @20:16 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «How Not To Release Historic Source Code | OS/2 Museum»¹> It’s terrific that the source code for DOS 4.00/4.01 was released! But don’t expect to build the source code mutilated by git without problems.Historic source code should be released simply as an archive of files, ZIP or tar or 7z or whatever, with all timestamps preserved and every single byte kept the way it was. Git is simply not a suitable tool for this.This is only going to get worse. Anything other than a pure ASCII (bytes 0x00 to 0x7F inclusive) file is destined to become unreadable when modern tools are naively waved over them.h/t tedu

╒═════╣▒ 04/28/2024 @19:22 ▒╟──────────┘

I can't believe I listened to this for 40 minutes...«https://www.dnalounge.com/webcast/»¹It is alarmingly good. Probably the best 404 page on the Internet...«via»²

[1] https://www.dnalounge.com/webcast/

[2] https://mastodon.social/@dnalounge@sfba.social/112350678255284836

Attachments:

[1] https://aftermath.site/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-sequel-interview

╒═════╣▒ 04/26/2024 @22:27 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «How Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty Reshaped CD Projekt Red - Aftermath»¹> "Sustainability is incredibly important,” Sasko told Aftermath. “To be able to, when you are finishing up a project, have a team in a state where they haven't been doing crunch or overtime or anything, that they are able to go into the production of the next thing, which means delivering something earlier, which means having a product you can sell as a studio, which means having the money to sustain. That requires your production to be structured in a way where it does not require those spikes, those moments when suddenly there's an all-hands-on-deck approach."I love Cyberpunk 2077. I have like 200 hours on the game and I've got to get around to playing Phantom Liberty here. I'm very pleased it turned into such a redemption story for CDPR. It's unusual in the video game industry to see a studio come back from such an utter disaster. I very much look forward to another Cyberpunk and a new Witcher. Hopefully other studios can learn from their lessons too — crunch isn't sustainable, and is a debt you will have to pay sooner or later.

╒═════╣▒ 04/26/2024 @22:06 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «First woman to receive a pig organ recovering well»¹> Lisa Pisano, once near death, is recovering well after receiving a new kidney from a genetically modified pig.Ms Pisano couldn't undergo a traditional transplant due to her condition so her doctors offered her an unusual option - a mechanical pump for her heart in combination with the new kidney.Despite the risks, she took the chance saying she "didn't have any other options".This has some pretty wild implications for the thousands waiting for donor organs but all I can think of is the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode "SA: The Fortunate Ones – MISSING HEARTS" and the CEO of Meditech trying to convince Togusa and Kusanagi to reserve their pigs...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-68894452

╒═════╣▒ 04/26/2024 @13:39 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Bazed And Confused - Penny Arcade»¹Next time you find yourself near some stagnant water, check yourself for Bezos.

[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2024/04/26/bazed-and-confused

╒═════╣▒ 04/25/2024 @17:07 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Apple Vision Pro Sales Slow To A Trickle Despite Months Of Gushing Tech Press Hype | Techdirt»¹> When the Apple Vision Pro launched back in February, the press had a sustained, two-month straight orgasm over the product’s potential to transform VR and the world of spatial computing.[...]Much like the Metaverse, the Apple Vision Pro roared into the tech press hype bubble like a freight train, then retreated like a bit of a simpering wimp. Reports are now that sales for the headsets are fairly pathetic:Turns out screaming into the void doesn't suddenly make a thing that people don't want into a thing that people do want.There are plenty of use cases for AR, but the vast majority of people aren't going to be doing those things and you still have to ask yourself if HMDs are truly the right solution.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/25/apple-vision-pro-sales-slow-to-a-trickle-despite-months-of-gushing-tech-press-hype/

╒═════╣▒ 04/25/2024 @16:08 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Issue 56 – What are you gonna do, arrest me?»¹> The most popular coins on Runes' [Bitcoin's memecoin analog] release day included [...] and my personal favorite, PEPE•WIT•HONKERS. Finally, I can trade a coin on the bitcoin network with a logo featuring a breasty Pepe in a rainbow clown wig holding two horns. Sadly, all 69,420 tokens from that project have already been minted [...]Crypto is a truly *strange* place, probably best avoided.

[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-56/

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @21:40 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Pop Culture Apocalypse – The modern ruins of Filip Hodas»¹These are amazing.h/t @wilwheaton

[1] https://jedavu.tumblr.com/post/165547104946/pop-culture-apocalypse-the-modern-ruins-of-filip

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @18:38 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *time-to-buy-new-mice* department:🔗 «Logitech adds ChatGPT to its computer mice – OSnews»¹> Logitech mice users were surprised to find out that after the latest mouse software update, it now contains an “AI” prompt builder tool, so that you can click anywhere and have a little pop-up appear that taps into ChatGPT.Welp. *plonk*h/t @jwz@mastodon.social

[1] https://www.osnews.com/story/139409/logitech-adds-chatgpt-to-its-computer-mice/

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @14:26 ▒╟──────────┘

Cutting in the new DNS server at Panix. Once complete I'll be able to turn down my last DigitalOcean Droplet. It's fun watching queries pick up and balance out as my NS records propagate.

Attachments:

[1] https://phys.org/news/2024-04-hubble-celebrates-34th-anniversary-dumbbell.html

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @13:21 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Hubble celebrates 34th anniversary with a look at the little dumbbell nebula»¹> Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has made 1.6 million observations of over 53,000 astronomical objects. To date, the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, holds 184 terabytes of processed data that is science-ready for astronomers around the world to use for research and analysis.Since 1990, 44,000 science papers have been published from Hubble observations. The space telescope is the most scientifically productive space astrophysics mission in NASA history. The demand for using Hubble is so high it is currently oversubscribed by a factor of six-to-one.I remember watching the Hubble launch on TV and the drama that followed with it's mis-ground mirror (a fascinating story of flawed testing processes leading to induced error) and subsequent heroic repair efforts. It's an amazing space craft and I'm still a firm believer that it deserves to live on in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum — though I imagine it will be unlikely. Much like the JWST which followed it, the images it brought back inspired a generation of us to look up and imagine what's out there.

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @13:15 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Chattanooga VW Worker: “This Will Change What People Think Is Possible”»¹> On Friday night, workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, unionized. The victory was decisive: 2,628 to 985, meaning 73 percent of ballots were in favor of unionizing with the UAW. Of 4,300 eligible voters, 83.5 percent cast ballots, a remarkably high turnout. These workers really wanted a union.[...]ZACH COSTELLO: "That job also made me realize that people need more say at the workplace, and that this idea that we should just do what we’re told and that unskilled labor is something that you shouldn’t make much money doing. I’d think: I work harder than a lot of the businessmen who own this place. They make all the money, and they make all the decisions, and all the decisions suck, because my job gets harder and more painful when they make a decision. Every day is filled with more frustration whenever a corporate guy comes in. The amount of misery that goes into a busy day and yet I don’t make a penny more when I make you guys more money. How does that make sense? That’s when I first started having the wheels turn and realizing that this is a raw deal."It's so great to see the growth of labor organization continuing. This is one of those rising tide raises all ships situations and I'm very here for it. ✊

[1] https://jacobin.com/2024/04/chattanooga-vw-uaw-unionization/

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @13:05 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «The Man Who Killed Google Search»¹> It’s because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it. Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December 2019 (the same year as the Code Yellow fiasco), and while they remain as controlling shareholders, they clearly don’t give a shit about what “Google” means anymore. Prabhakar Raghavan is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, is mostly made up of “did some stuff at IBM, failed to make Yahoo anything of note, and fucked up Google so badly that every news outlet has run a story about how bad it is.”This is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when “management” is synonymous with “staying as far away from actual work as possible.” And when you’re a do-nothing looking to profit as much as possible, you only care about growth. You’re not a user, you’re a parasite, and it’s these parasites that have dominated and are draining the tech industry of its value.An interesting look inside the changes at Google that have led it down the path of extreme enshittification (hopefully on the way to obsolescence).

[1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @12:45 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Curiosity is a choice. — Joan Westenberg»¹> Curiosity is a choice. It's a choice to listen more than we speak. To crave understanding more than victory. To get OK with the discomfort of not having all the answers.It's not easy, but it's a razor sharp competitive edge.I learned this when I moved from my last job into this one. It's far more important to listen.

[1] https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/curiosity-is-a-choice

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @11:29 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Dan Solove on Privacy Regulation - Schneier on Security»¹> In this Article, I contend that most of the time, privacy consent is fictitious. Privacy law should take a new approach to consent that I call “murky consent.” Traditionally, consent has been binary—an on/off switch—but murky consent exists in the shadowy middle ground between full consent and no consent. Murky consent embraces the fact that consent in privacy is largely a set of fictions and is at best highly dubious.Because it conceptualizes consent as mostly fictional, murky consent recognizes its lack of legitimacy. To return to Hurd’s analogy, murky consent is consent without magic. Rather than provide extensive legitimacy and power, murky consent should authorize only a very restricted and weak license to use data. Murky consent should be subject to extensive regulatory oversight with an ever-present risk that it could be deemed invalid. Murky consent should rest on shaky ground. Because the law pretends people are consenting, the law’s goal should be to ensure that what people are consenting to is good. Doing so promotes the integrity of the fictions of consent. I propose four duties to achieve this end: (1) duty to obtain consent appropriately; (2) duty to avoid thwarting reasonable expectations; (3) duty of loyalty; and (4) duty to avoid unreasonable risk. The law can’t make the tale of privacy consent less fictional, but with these duties, the law can ensure the story ends well.The US needs meaningful privacy legislation. I agree that the current method of 'notice-and-choice' is a complete fiction and that the GDPR's 'express consent' is extremely onerous on both the data processor (the company asking) and the data subject (you and I). I think there is a lot of merit in the approach of codifying duty of care and repercussions for breach that might be a good middle ground.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/04/dan-solove-on-privacy-regulation.html

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @10:22 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «On obscenity and modernity – Going Medieval»¹> The morals of this story are several. The most important is that paternalism like this can’t really succeed and is harmful in general. People don’t need to be protected from pictures of nudity and should instead be trusted to interact with art as they see fit because its none of your business how they feel about a particular piece of art.A less important rule is that I am very strong willed, and if you tell me I can’t show people something medieval I will find a way to do so. …even to the detriment of my own bank account.How does the misogyny of FOSTA/SESTA through-line with medieval attitudes on nudity and sexuality? What does that have to do with an Italian church fresco from the 15th century? Is The Once and Future Sex available in paperback yet? Find your answers here.

[1] https://going-medieval.com/2024/04/22/on-obscenity-and-modernity/

╒═════╣▒ 04/24/2024 @08:49 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «AI Is Poisoning Reddit to Promote Products and Game Google With 'Parasite SEO'»¹> A service called ReplyGuy advertises itself as “the AI that plugs your product on Reddit” and which automatically “mentions your product in conversations naturally.” Examples on the site show two different Redditors being controlled by AI posting plugs for a text-to-voice product called “AnySpeech” and a bot writing a long comment about a debt consolidation program called Debt Freedom Now.I'm only surprised that this didn't drop sooner. Comment farms seem to be a natural use case of AI botshit. It's funny that they chose to name their service after a pejorative though...

[1] https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-products-and-game-google-with-parasite-seo/

╒═════╣▒ 04/23/2024 @22:17 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «TikTok ban expected this week but it's not so simple : NPR»¹> While there are many technical obstacles to enforcing the ban of a social media app, and ways to circumvent such a restriction, the legislation would make it illegal for web-hosting companies to support TikTok.It also would force Apple and Google to remove TikTok from its app stores, making it impossible for TikTok to receive critical software update, leading to its eventual, if very slow, death.I'm almost certain that this statute won't pass Constitutional muster. It seems like this is mostly a performance and will eventually strengthen American tech monopolies.Further it points to the harm that allowing Apple (and to some extent Google and Microsoft) to leverage their 'App Store' ecosystems and paper-thin excuses of 'security' and 'trustworthiness' to control what people can install and run on their devices does to the owners of these devices.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/04/22/1246391855/tiktok-ban-congress-biden-china-lawsuit

╒═════╣▒ 04/23/2024 @22:10 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «musicForProgramming();»¹This is pretty cool, I've spot listened to a couple and they seem nice but man the page transition animations are obnoxious and unnecessary.h/t waxy

[1] https://musicforprogramming.net

╒═════╣▒ 04/23/2024 @17:37 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Neil Gaiman»¹Seeing this all over Tumblr today.

[1] https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/748577472181846016

╒═════╣▒ 04/23/2024 @12:38 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Don't Talk to the Police - YouTube»¹Found in a Toot comment. Great life advice.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

╒═════╣▒ 04/23/2024 @10:15 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth – Voyager»¹> The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.So it sounds like to 'patch' around a failed memory chip they essentially hand re-linked the flight software and updated it... over a kilo-bit-per-second radio link... with a RTT of around a day.Absolutely astounding. Amazing work.

[1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/04/22/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth/

╒═════╣▒ 04/23/2024 @08:40 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «DNA Lounge: 22-Apr-2024 (Mon): Wherein the Millennial influencers weigh in on staying until last call»¹An epic rant.

[1] https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2024/04/22.html

╒═════╣▒ 04/22/2024 @13:13 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «AI - SkyNet Is Not Coming to Kill You»¹> Be it art or software, “productivity” as some point starts being “mediocrity.” Generative AI is going to be responsible for churning out a lot more “work” and “art” at this point, but it is not going to grant you a way out of being good at what you do. In fact, it creates new, more subtle dangers to your skills, as this technology can make us believe that we are better than we actually are. Being good still requires work, trial, error, and tons of frustration.And at the same time, It’s futile to try and stop the stubborn wheel of enshitification from turning. It’s becoming easier to create content. Everyone is now a writer, everyone is an artist. The barrier of entry is getting closer to nil, but so is the quality of it all. And now it is autogenerated.Another really good look at the reality of AI.

[1] https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence-skynet-is-not-coming-to-kill-you.html?ref=feedle.world

╒═════╣▒ 04/22/2024 @12:36 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *oh-yeah-the-innocents* department:🔗 «Cyberyuck - Penny Arcade»¹*snort*

[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2024/04/22/cyberyuck

╒═════╣▒ 04/21/2024 @16:29 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Gurman: Apple Working on On-Device LLM for Generative AI Features - MacRumors»¹> Writing in his "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's LLM underpins upcoming generative AI features. "All indications" apparently suggests that it will run entirely on-device, rather than via the cloud like most existing AI services.If I can't disable this I'll not be upgrading to iOS 18. I want *nothing* to do with 'AI'.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/21/apple-working-on-on-device-llm/

╒═════╣▒ 04/21/2024 @11:57 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Zilog Z80 End Of Life Notification « RC2014»¹> For those of you that haven’t heard, on 15th April 2024, Littlefuse, the parent company to Zilog, announced the End Of Life of the Z80 and associated peripherals [...] and it is fair to say that this has sent shockwaves through the retro computing community. In the wider electronics community there has been shock too, although some of it was that the Z80 was still in production 48 years after it launched.I guess it's time to finally order that RC2014 I've always wanted.

[1] https://rc2014.co.uk/2757/zilog-z80-end-of-life-notification/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zilog-z80-end-of-life-notification

╒═════╣▒ 04/21/2024 @10:47 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «How generative AI will alter grieving and loss.»¹> I’m researching an essay on how generative AI might alter the grieving process, and I need your help. People now use AI chatbots to interact with synthetic versions of lost loved ones. Companies like HereAfter AI are training AI chatbots — let’s call these ‘GriefBots’ — on the digital footprints of the deceased, and we’re interacting with them.Note to self, include clause in will to make it clear that *I Do Not Want This To Be Done To Me*.

[1] https://untangled.substack.com/p/how-might-generative-ai-alter-grieving

╒═════╣▒ 04/20/2024 @22:57 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Senate Must Follow House’s Lead In Passing Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act | Techdirt»¹> The Wyden bill just says that if a government agency wants to buy such data, if it would have otherwise needed a warrant to get that data in the first place, it should need to get a warrant to buy it in the market as well.Anyway, the bill passed 219 to 199 in the House, and it was (thankfully) not a partisan vote at all.I think this is something we very much need to see passed into law. Hopefully the Senate will... uncharacteristically... do something.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/19/senate-must-follow-houses-lead-in-passing-fourth-amendment-is-not-for-sale-act/

╒═════╣▒ 04/20/2024 @22:46 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «They're Looting The Internet»¹> It's the direct result of The Rot Economy, a growth-at-all-costs mindset built off the back of immovable monopolies where tech companies profitably punish users as a means of showing the markets eternal growth. In practice, this means twisting platforms from offering a service to driving engagement, which, in Facebook and Instagram's case, meant finding the maximum amount of interruptions that a user will tolerate before they close the app. In Google's case, it meant making changes to search that made advertisements and sponsored links significantly harder to differentiate from "real" search results and allowing the quality of search results to decay to the point that users now rely on TikTok and Reddit instead.A solid expansion upon the enshittification process. Looking with open eyes at what we have wrought with technology really does beg the question "why do we still use this?"

[1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-great-looting-of-the-internet/

╒═════╣▒ 04/20/2024 @14:50 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?»¹> But I find one common thread among the things AI tools are particularly suited to doing: do we even want to be doing these things? If all you want out of a meeting is the AI-generated summary, maybe that meeting could've been an email. If you're using AI to write your emails, and your recipient is using AI to read them, could you maybe cut out the whole thing entirely? If mediocre, auto-generated reports are passing muster, is anyone actually reading them? Or is it just middle-management busywork?As for the AI enshittification of the internet, we all seem to agree already that we don't want this, and yet here it is. No one wants to open up Etsy to look for a thoughtful birthday gift, only to give up after scrolling through pages of low-quality print-on-demand items or resold Aliexpress items that have flooded the site.As always, Molly has a very well thought out and thorough walk through her experience with 'AI'. Worth the read.

[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/

╒═════╣▒ 04/19/2024 @19:51 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *entirely-too-good-for-the-whole-wide-world* department:🔗 «Cat Brings Flowers to Her Adopted Human Every Day»¹> A really sweet cat named Fiddy brings her newly adopted human Aalish beautiful fresh flowers on a daily basis.Awww.

[1] https://laughingsquid.com/cat-brings-flowers-to-human/

╒═════╣▒ 04/19/2024 @18:00 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *you-had-the-right-to-something-i-think* department:🔗 «Cops can force suspect to unlock phone with thumbprint, US court rules | Ars Technica»¹> Payne conceded that "the use of biometrics to open an electronic device is akin to providing a physical key to a safe" but argued it is still a testimonial act because it "simultaneously confirm[s] ownership and authentication of its contents," the court said. "However, Payne was never compelled to acknowledge the existence of any incriminating information. He merely had to provide access to a source of potential information."The appeals court cited two Supreme Court rulings in cases involving the US government. In Doe v. United States in 1988, the government compelled a person to sign forms consenting to disclosure of bank records relating to accounts that the government already knew about. The Supreme Court "held that this was not a testimonial production, reasoning that the signing of the forms related no information about existence, control, or authenticity of the records that the bank could ultimately be forced to produce," the 9th Circuit said.It has been pretty long established that the police can «compel»² you to unlock your device if it uses biometrics (or just «take it and point it at you»³) and now it seems that the courts can compel you too.I don't use biometrics and neither should you.h/t jwz

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/cops-can-force-suspect-to-unlock-phone-with-thumbprint-us-court-rules/

[2] https://xkcd.com/538/

[3] https://mashable.com/article/police-try-to-unlock-handcuffed-man-iphone-face-id

╒═════╣▒ 04/19/2024 @10:25 ▒╟──────────┘

Been watching some of the VIP creator preview of «Gray Zone Warfare»¹ and it looks absolutely amazing and to think it's a pre-alpha.

[1] https://grayzonewarfare.com

Attachments:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2M8Y0z9Rl0

╒═════╣▒ 04/18/2024 @10:36 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *well-that-was-unexpected* department:🔗 «What if everyone jumped at once? - YouTube»¹If you, somehow, have not found yourself in possession of a copy of any of Randall Munroe's work (such as What If?, What If? 2, or Thing Explainer), you should fix that.This particular scenario's outcome may surprise you.

╒═════╣▒ 04/16/2024 @09:50 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Song of the Worm | RPO»¹> The Prince and the peasant, the despot and slave;All, all must bow down to the worm and the grave.Just a quick reminder that humanity has always been metal as fuck. 🤘h/t tumblr

[1] https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/song-worm

╒═════╣▒ 04/15/2024 @11:59 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Toot from @lori@hackers.town »¹> [...] I posted recently about my experiences and outlook on Kagi, the paid search engine. It's gotten some positive press recently, ironically right after I made my blog post about why I no longer liked or trusted it.[...] this morning I woke up to an email from Kagi's CEO, Vlad, who had seen the post and was upset about it.I ran across Kagi a couple weeks ago in a Pluralistic post and thought it had promise. The idea of de-enshittifying Google's search index and adding a special 11 herbs and spices to it seemed really good. After reading this thread I'm glad I had not gotten around to signing up for it.

[1] https://hackers.town/@lori/112255132348604770

╒═════╣▒ 04/13/2024 @23:15 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «TIM MINCHIN - THE AEROPLANE (FEAT. ASMARA FEIK) - LIVE AT THE PALACE FORESHORE - YouTube»¹Jesus.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCYzau2xato

╒═════╣▒ 04/13/2024 @22:49 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Tim Minchin and the Australian Matildas perform »¹Tim is just beaming with pride singing with these kids, it's truly a joy to watch.

[1] https://youtu.be/HSR32QzJblQ?t=116

╒═════╣▒ 04/13/2024 @09:30 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «BOLTR: Snap-On Ratchet - YouTube»¹TIL the origin of 'on'. Come for the tool review, get a little learnin!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVU60bCOREM&t=236s

╒═════╣▒ 04/12/2024 @11:32 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Fairphone Fairbuds review: ethically made earbuds with replaceable batteries | Headphones | The Guardian»¹> It is only the outline of a battery and a small screw in the bottom that marks the Fairbuds out as different. Unscrew it to release the innards of the case from the translucent outer shell and pop out the battery just like the Fairbuds XL or a Fairphone 5.The earbuds have a little door hidden behind a silicone sleeve, which opens to reveal a small button battery ready to be replaced once it wears out. The design seems so simple you wonder why no one has tried it before.This is awesome. Proof that products can be designed to be user-maintainable and not just disposable. Frankly, this should be a requirement for all electronics.h/t Pixel Envy

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/11/fairphone-fairbuds-review-ethically-made-earbuds-with-replaceable-batteries

╒═════╣▒ 04/11/2024 @22:07 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «ORIGINS (feat. Clickspring) - YouTube»¹Still one of my favorite ToT videos

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycoCwoplU6Y

╒═════╣▒ 04/11/2024 @18:18 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Panicked Trump Desperately Backpedals on Abortion After Shock Arizona Ruling: A Closer Look - YouTube»¹Fucking. Preach.

[1] https://youtu.be/i4vb-sfvzJw?t=448

╒═════╣▒ 04/11/2024 @15:42 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «I Am No Longer Attending Vintage Computer Festivals « ASCII by Jason Scott»¹> [...] This was a shipping container worth of material, so we are talking dozens and dozens of crates, received by trustworthy and great folks across the entire country.Among these donations were a set of publications, mostly IEEE-related but with a few other sets of titles, to the Vintage Computer Federation, based in New Jersey.[...]To make this donation, I paid for the containers, filled them, put many issues in bags, and then rented a truck to drive them the roughly 70 miles to the VCF headquarters in Wall, NJ. There I dropped them off and went home. This was roughly 2017.A number of years later, I contacted the Vintage Computer Federation to ask how the magazines were doing, if they were part of a project, or if I needed to transfer them elsewhere.I was told they tossed them out. Every one.However, I was told, they had decided to keep the plastic boxes, and were making use of them.I am aghast. They claim on their webpage that "Our mission is to preserve computing history through education, outreach, conservation, and restoration." I don't know how they reconcile these two things.

[1] http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5587

╒═════╣▒ 04/11/2024 @15:21 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «The Motion Picture Association Doesn’t Get to Decide Who the First Amendment Protects | Electronic Frontier Foundation»¹> It’s just that today, with MPA president Charles Rivkin openly calling on Congress “to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States,” the MPA is taking its mask off.[...]This censorious abuse, whether intentional or accidental, is far more damaging when it targets the internet’s infrastructure. Blocking entire websites or groups of websites is imprecise, inevitably bringing down lawful speech along with whatever was targeted. For example, suits by Microsoft intended to shut down malicious botnets caused thousands of legitimate users to lose access to the domain names they depended on. There is, in short, no effective safeguard on a new censorship power that would be the internet’s version of police seizing printing presses.Never *ever* trust the private sector, and especially the media cartel that what they want is *just to protect our intellectual property*.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/mpa-doesnt-get-decide-who-first-amendment-protects

╒═════╣▒ 04/11/2024 @15:08 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Elon Musk’s Lawyer Faces Sanctions After Deposition Meltdown, While Engaging In Unauthorized Practice Of Law | Techdirt»¹> "[...] I’m very concerned that Mr. Spiro, a non-Texas lawyer who is — came to this deposition to practice law in violation of Texas law with no pro hac admission completely shut down many segments of the deposition, issued several instructions not to answer that were wholly inappropriate, completely interrupted and made objections outside of Rule 199.5. And then at the end of the deposition demands that it be treated confidential."Yikes. You usually think of high priced, experienced lawyers are professional and unflappable but uh, this does not seem to be the case here.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/11/elon-musks-lawyer-faces-sanctions-after-deposition-meltdown-while-engaging-in-unauthorized-practice-of-law/

╒═════╣▒ 04/10/2024 @21:27 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Apple Store Employees in New Jersey File to Unionize - MacRumors»¹> There are 104 workers at Apple Short Hills, which is located in the Short Hills Mall. Communication Workers of America (CWA) filed a unionization petition with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of employees earlier this week.In a statement, the CWA said that forming a union would be the best way to "ensure all Apple workers receive the respect, pay, benefits and working conditions" that they deserve. The group has requested that Apple "not to interfere in our ongoing organizing efforts and, instead, allow workers to freely determine for themselves whether to form a union."I wish them luck in getting the union that they deserve.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/10/apple-store-new-jersey-union-filing/

╒═════╣▒ 04/10/2024 @20:13 ▒╟──────────┘

Hm. Patreon's API seems to have quietly stopped working. How... professional of them. Good thing their documentation is excellent and not a steaming pile of 💩.```

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### ╒═════╣▒ 04/10/2024 @20:13 ▒╟──────────┘
Hm.  Patreon's API seems to have quietly stopped working.  How... professional of them.  Good thing their documentation is excellent and not a steaming pile of 💩.```
None

╒═════╣▒ 04/10/2024 @12:26 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *first-taste-is-free* department:🔗 «I tried Tesla FSD»¹> So now, for this month only, it’s free, and Tesla can juice their numbers.And, yes, I tried it.And let me be clear: nope. Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.I’ve rarely been so frightened behind the wheel of my own car. [...][...] I was driving at 25mph down my local road to the store. On this 10 minute drive (5 minutes there and back), my car clung surprisingly close to cars parked on the side of the road — but more importantly, I had to intervene once because, on a stretch of road that had been coned off and narrowed into one lane for both directions, it felt like the car was driving directly into an oncoming vehicle. It’s possible (and, in fact, quite likely) that the car wouldn’t have smashed into the oncoming Subaru. But it felt like it was about to, and I had no desire to make it a scientific test. FSD requires you to keep your hands on the wheel — a lean-back experience this is not — so safely intervening was very natural. The car then asks you to leave a recorded message explaining why you intervened, and the struggle is to use words instead of screaming over and over.I really don't understand how the NTSB or NHTSA or DOT or DMV or *literally anyone* has not intervened in this.

[1] https://werd.io/2024/i-tried-tesla-fsd

╒═════╣▒ 04/10/2024 @12:14 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «‘AI Instagram Influencers’ Are Deepfaking Their Faces Onto Real Women’s Bodies»¹> Stealing video footage from real women to make an AI influencer more “believable,” because the underlying video footage actually is real, is a strategy that I repeatedly saw being espoused by guides to making these AI influencers. Unless you have a side-by-side of the original video and the fake video, the footage can be incredibly hard to detect as AI because rather than swapping the face of a well-known celebrity onto a porn scene, the people behind these accounts are swapping an unknown, AI-generated face onto stolen video from creators who are not as well known. The practice highlights an often overlooked harm of deepfakes that’s been happening since they first appeared in 2017.This is so gross.

[1] https://www.404media.co/ai-influencers-are-deepfaking-their-faces-onto-real-womens-bodies/

╒═════╣▒ 04/09/2024 @21:21 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Cybersecurity Roundup: April 9, 2024 | Patreon»¹> AI generated scambots sent UK MP’s sexts and nudes, asking for dick pics in return – and some of the MP’s actually sent them. “Last week, it was revealed that MPs, staffers and journalists who work in and around parliament had been targeted in an apparent ‘spear phishing’ scheme. Each received texts from unknown numbers posing as people named ‘Abi’, ‘Charlie’ or ‘Charlotte’, which would then escalate to salacious flirting. Several were even sent explicit pictures, and asked for some in return – with two MPs reportedly reciprocating."I wonder if the UK will suddenly start considering strong AI regulation 😆P.S. Violet's Roundups (Cyber and Pandemic) are always bangers. I'm proud to be a supporter. You should be to.h/t Metro UK

[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-9-101999268

╒═════╣▒ 04/07/2024 @20:23 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR dot COM»¹> REMEMBEREAT THEIR PIZZA ANDFORM A UNIONANYWAYGood advise.

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/747135021293387776

╒═════╣▒ 04/07/2024 @20:14 ▒╟──────────┘

I love that «RFC-1855»¹ contains a footnote referencing the US House of Representatives' Gopher site. Oh how optimistic we were about new users on the Internet 🫤.

[1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @18:31 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Public Housing Is Social Housing»¹> Public housing remains a critical source of deeply affordable housing for the lowest-income families. Yet, in the midst of growing houselessness, we lose fifteen thousand of these precious homes every year to decay and lack of repair. Instead of allocating direct public funding for affordable housing, we rely on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC), a scheme offering tax breaks to Wall Street investors, which diverts public money toward their profit-skimming. Meanwhile, policymakers’ decisions to gut our public housing directly fueled the explosion of mass homelessness we’ve seen across the United States since the 1980s.I'm pretty sick and tired of socialism for corporations and the already-wealthy and the short end of the 'free market' for the rest of us.

[1] https://jacobin.com/2024/04/public-housing-green-new-deal-lihtc/

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @17:43 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Dwarf Planet, Giant Slug – Lowering the Bar»¹> Last week, the governor of Arizona signed House Bill 2477 into law, thus designating the roughly spherical object generally known as “Pluto” to be Arizona’s “official state planet.”As you know, the connection between a state and the crap it declares “official” can be a bit tenuous. [...] But generally, there is at least some geographic connection.As you may also know, Pluto is not actually located in Arizona, nor has it ever been (unless you count the time that all matter in the system was part of one big lump, and then you’re just being ridiculous). Pluto’s orbit is highly eccentric, but even at its closest approach to Arizona the two are still about 2.66 billion miles apart.It feels like designating things the official state *something* is akin to naming parts of highways after random people — one of those things that legislators just kinda do when they're bored.

[1] https://www.loweringthebar.net/2024/04/dwarf-planet-giant-slug.html

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @17:18 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Federal Court Dimisses X's Anti-Speech Lawsuit Against Watchdog | Electronic Frontier Foundation»¹> The court ruled that X’s accusations were insufficient to bypass the protective shield of California's anti-SLAPP statute. Furthermore, the court's decision to dismiss X Corp.'s claims, including those related to breach of contract and alleged infringements of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, stemmed from X Corp.'s inability to convincingly allege or demonstrate significant losses attributable to CCDH's activities. This outcome not only is a triumph for CCDH, but also validates the anti-SLAPP statute's role in safeguarding critical research efforts against baseless legal challenges. Thankfully, the court also rejected X’s claim under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). X had argued that the CFAA barred CCDH’s scraping of public tweets—a erroneous reading of the law. The court found that regardless of that argument, the X had not shown a “loss” of the type protected by the CFAA, such as technological harms to data or computers.I'm glad that the CFAA claim didn't hold up, web scraping has a long history and is one of the most important ways of maintaining Cory Doctorow's so-called "adversarial interoperability".The orders are pretty decent reads, the opening of the anti-SLAPP (CCPC § 425.16) order specifically is pretty bangin'.> Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between thelines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose. Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.«ORDER GRANTING CCDH MOTION TO DISMISS AND STRIKE ¶ 1»²

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/federal-court-dimisses-xs-anti-speech-lawsuit-against-watchdog

[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.416212/gov.uscourts.cand.416212.75.0.pdf

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @15:03 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *automation* department:🔗 «Friday Facts #405 - Whole belt reader, New logistics GUI | Factorio»¹I'm really enjoying watching the steady quality of life improvements that are coming to the Factorio 2.0 / expansion release.

[1] https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-405

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @14:50 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «This Camera Turns Every Photo Into a Nude»¹> I asked Vef and Groß if they worried about putting this idea out there, despite their intentions.“I think this is actually the opposite,” Groß said. “We’re not putting it out there. With this twist that is an object that's a camera we really tie people who are photographed and the person whose picture is being taken together in the same space and with that we had really, really interesting conversations. I think this is maybe the most valuable bit.”One of the most interesting parts about this project is that it handles consent in a way that I don't think most of the deepfake / AI 'art' world has up until now — by putting the camera in the hands of a person standing before the subject as opposed to being some unknown rando or bot online trawling content without permission.

[1] https://www.404media.co/nuca-camera-turns-every-photo-into-a-nude/

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @14:15 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Bullying in Open Source Software Is a Massive Security Vulnerability»¹> In the case of the Xz backdoor, a malicious actor was able to pressure the owner of a widely-used Linux compression utility called Xz Utils into making them a trusted maintainer of the project. They did this in part by arguing that the owner was letting the community of users down because they weren’t pushing new features and updates often enough[...]Tuesday, Hans-Christoph Steiner, a longtime developer of F-Droid, explained that a very similar situation nearly led F-Droid to push an update that would have introduced a security vulnerability into the product three years ago: “Three years ago, F-Droid had a similar kind of attempt as the Xz backdoor,” he posted on Mastodon. “A new contributor submitted a merge request to improve the search, which was oft requested but the maintainers hadn't found time to work on. There was also pressure from other random accounts to merge it. In the end, it became clear that it added a SQL injection vulnerability. In this case, we managed to catch it before it was merged. Since similar tactics were used, I think it’s relevant now.”Lots has already been said about the xz fiasco. Much of it technical but thankfully a lot focusing on the toxic culture that ultimately was the vector for enabling it. Outside the obvious bullying, I remember a time when software would reach a state where it was 'finished', and all that remained was maintenance (bug fixes, keeping up with dependancies, etc). It seems like these days there is a huge push for software to continue to grow (and often get rewritten in a new fad language du-jour) constantly and I think that's a dangerous thing — especially for infrastructure software. Mature software is important and speed shouldn't be its aim. Resisting the cries of people who don't understand that is going to get harder and harder though.

[1] https://www.404media.co/xz-backdoor-bullying-in-open-source-software-is-a-massive-security-vulnerability/

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @13:59 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Back in my day... some thoughts on blogging then and now - BrettTerpstra.com»¹> This is all to say that I recognize that things have changed. I just don’t think it’s for the better. Gone are the halcyon days of independent bloggers sharing original work, and the knowledge networks that cropped up between them. Gone are the days of a rising tide that lifts all boats. The tide is just Social Media, and it is, at my most generous, not concerned with the boats. I think, in fact, it’s actively hostile toward themI've had a website of a sorts since around 1997 and I think I find myself mostly agreeing that the Internet as we knew it late in the last century has changed so much it's almost unrecognizable. The funny thing is that most of it is still there and still works. That is the power of the web.

[1] https://brettterpstra.com/2024/04/05/back-in-my-day-dot-dot-dot-some-thoughts-on-blogging-then-and-now/

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2024 @13:53 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Death is a Feature – Doc Searls Weblog»¹> To explain why life needs death, answer this: what do plastic, wood, limestone, paint, travertine, marble, asphalt, oil, coal, stalactites, peat, stalagmites, cotton, wool, chert, cement, nearly all food, all gas, and most electric services have in common?They are all products of death. They are remains of living things or made from them.Consider this fact: about a quarter of all the world’s sedimentary rock is limestone, dolomite and other carbonate rocks: remains of beings that were once alive. The Dolomites of Italy, the Rock of Gibraltar, the summit of Mt. Everest, all products of death.An interesting look at the planet.

[1] https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/death-is-a-feature/?ref=feedle.world

╒═════╣▒ 04/05/2024 @18:28 ▒╟──────────┘

Whomever decided smaller SIM cards was a good idea is a complete asshole who has never tried to switch to a new phone. I dropped my nano SIM and it yeeted itself into another goddamn dimension. A pox upon you, your house, and your offspring.

╒═════╣▒ 04/05/2024 @10:43 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *we-don't-have-to-care* department:🔗 «Pluralistic: Too big to care (04 Apr 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow»¹> I hadn't even heard of Kagi, but the Nielsen Haydens are among the most effective researchers I know – both in their professional editorial lives and in their many obsessive hobbies. If it was good enough for them…I tried it. It was magic.[...]Kagi just let me get a lot more done, and I assumed that they were some kind of wildly capitalized startup that was running their own crawl and and their own data-centers. But this morning, I read Jason Koebler's 404 Media report on his own experiences using it:«https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/»²Koebler's piece contained a key detail that I'd somehow missed:When you search on Kagi, the service makes a series of “anonymized API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek, and Brave,” as well as a handful of other specialized search engines, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, etc. Kagi then combines this with its own web index and news index (for news searches) to build the results pages that you see. So, essentially, you are getting some mix of Google search results combined with results from other indexes.In other words: Kagi is a heavily customized, anonymized front-end to Google.The implications of this are stunning. It means that Google's enshittified search-results are a choice.I've been a DuckDuckGo convert for quite a while now but my interest is piqued. Further, Cory notes Jon Stewart's interview with Lina Khan («https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM»³) which is, indeed, a banger.> The coverage of Khan's appearance has focused on Stewart's revelation that when he was doing a show on Apple TV, the company prohibited him from interviewing her (presumably because of her hostility to tech monopolies)But for me, the big moment came when Khan described tech monopolists as "too big to care."What a phrase!It's nice to see someone young, and passionate who is clearly extremely smart and well informed trusted with the levers of power. The fact that so many tech oligarchs are trying to sue the FTC out of existence is telling that she's *doing a great job* because they are clearly terrified.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

[2] https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

╒═════╣▒ 04/04/2024 @18:17 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Nuberodesign > Blog > The Basics of Legibility»¹> I didn’t explain why Apple’s “San Francisco” typeface is not the ideal candidate for a user interface or why “FF Unit”, which I suggested as a possible replacement, would have been the better choice. It would simply have been outside the scope of that piece to do so. That is why I’m now writing this: A short guide to legibility for non-typographers and UX designers.There are reasons that programmers can get very particular over the font they use in their editors... There are a number of meaningful symbols that, depending on the font look entirely too much like each other and intermixing them will cause errors, sometimes very difficult to track down errors.As with so much, form should follow function.

[1] https://www.nubero.ch/blog/011/

╒═════╣▒ 04/04/2024 @17:47 ▒╟──────────┘

«https://strangeobject.space/@esther/112212861597942648»¹Touchscreens are a terrible interface for most things, they excel at almost nothing, but we slapped them into everything because they're so generic that they're overall cheaper than any other and better interface.I have not yet seen a single instance of a physical control like a button/lever/slider/knob/etc where people said "damn, I wish this was a featureless glass surface with buggy software on it".On extremely generic devices having a touchscreen makes some sense, like on a smartphone, although I'd argue even there it has caveats.But the main reason touch interfaces are everywhere now is an economic one. It's just cheaper and easier to slap a touchscreen on something and figure out the software later while users serve as involuntary beta testers, instead of designing and committing to physical controls that need to be manufactured.Button / knob / switch gang 4 lyfe 🖖

[1] https://strangeobject.space/@esther/112212861597942648

╒═════╣▒ 04/03/2024 @09:34 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *april-fools* department:🔗 «[1588] My 36 Inch King Dick Wrecks Locks! - YouTube»¹About the only April 1st content I ever look forward to is from the Lock Picking Lawyer.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X2PuE6ELmg

╒═════╣▒ 04/03/2024 @09:28 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *hack-the-planet* department:🔗 «HOPE XV TICKET SALES TO BENEFIT EFF THROUGHOUT APRIL | 2600»¹> Starting Monday, April 1st (no fooling), we will begin our EFF benefit, where ten percent of all ticket sales go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help with the many worthy causes this organization is a part of. The benefit will last the entire month of April. If you haven't gotten your HOPE XV tickets yet (physical or virtual), this is a great way to get your hands on them and make a worthwhile contribution at the same time.If you haven't bought your ticket yet, now is probably a great time to do so!

[1] https://2600.com/content/hope-xv-ticket-sales-benefit-eff-throughout-april

╒═════╣▒ 04/03/2024 @09:11 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Pluralistic: The antitrust case against Apple (22 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow»¹> Bruce Schneier has a name for this practice: "feudal security." That's when you cede control over your device to a Big Tech warlord whose "walled garden" becomes a fortress that defends you against external threats[.]The keyword here is external threats. When Apple itself threatens your privacy, the fortress becomes a prison. The fact that you can't install unapproved apps on your Ios device means that when Apple decides to harm you, you have nowhere to turn. The first Apple customers to discover this were in China. When the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove all working privacy tools from its App Store, the company obliged, rather than risk losing access to its ultra-cheap manufacturing base (Tim Cook's signal accomplishment, the one that vaulted him into the CEO's seat, was figuring out how to offshore Apple manufacturing to China) and hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers[.]Killing VPNs and other privacy tools was just for openers. After Apple caved to Beijing, the demands kept coming. Next, Apple willingly backdoored all its Chinese cloud services, so that the Chinese state could plunder its customers' data at willApple made great products, and for a long time was laser focused on driving a predictable customer experience with their entire ecosystem that made their technology a joy to use and their company, ultimately, valuable. I can't fathom the idea of going back to Linux or Windows on the desktop, however; that doesn't mean that under the watchful eye of Tim Cook (and late-stage Steve Jobs) they have taken all that hard work and turned themselves into the worst kind of company shoveling increasingly less-great products to entrap the world in their rent-seeking quagmire.And yes, I will remain mad until I can write software for my iOS device without having to ask Apple first.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/

╒═════╣▒ 04/03/2024 @09:03 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *time_t-is-good-enough-for-me* department:🔗 «NASA wants to come up with a new clock for the moon, where seconds tick away faster»¹> It's not quite a time zone like those on Earth, but an entire frame of time reference for the moon. Because there's less gravity on the moon, time there moves a tad quicker—58.7 microseconds every day—compared to Earth.[...]Last year, the European Space Agency said Earth needs to come up with a unified time for the moon, where a day lasts 29.5 Earth days.You thought juggling time_t and struct tm was tricky, you just freaking wait until we start writing blog posts on the moon.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2024-04-nasa-clock-moon-seconds-faster.html

╒═════╣▒ 04/03/2024 @08:58 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Key Bridge Collapse Shipowner Could Legally Skirt Liability»¹> On Monday, the opaque shipping company that owns the ship that crashed into the bridge, Grace Ocean Private Limited, filed an action in federal court using the Limitation of Liability Act, an antiquated law from 1851, to argue that the damages it owes for the crash should be capped at $43 million — the remaining value of the ship and its cargo. This is despite the fact that by some estimates, it may cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the bridge.I suppose "you break it you buy" it only applies to us little people.There is an argument to be made that increasing the cost of shipping could bring back some pressures to, you know, actually make things in country instead of shipping materials around the world 3 or 4 times just to get to the cheapest, most labor-hostile despot you can find.

[1] https://jacobin.com/2024/04/key-bridge-collapse-liability-law/

╒═════╣▒ 04/03/2024 @08:50 ▒╟──────────┘

Garak is a *huge* reason why even though TNG was my first, DS9 is probably my favorite Trek.«via»¹

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/746732895811567616

Attachments:

[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-54/

╒═════╣▒ 04/03/2024 @08:47 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Issue 54 – Cases continue»¹> Portugal is the latest country to crack down on WorldCoin, ordering the eyeball-scanning orb company to stop collecting biometric data for ninety days.27I was surprised to learn that WorldCoin still exists.

╒═════╣▒ 04/02/2024 @22:06 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Bologna’s medieval canals – Going Medieval»¹> [...] we’ll learn to spot where medieval city walls, or even bridges, used to be in modern cities; we’ll consider the every day elements of city life like laundry, bathing, and watering animals; and we’ll see that medieval city life was complex enough to necessitate things like municipal housing. There is still, somehow, some swearing.Take a bangin', albeit soggy (and slightly sassy) tour with your favorite medieval historian as she rambles her way through some random spot in Italy for some reason.

[1] https://going-medieval.com/2024/03/26/bolognas-medieval-canals/

╒═════╣▒ 04/02/2024 @21:53 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «ode to a faux grecian urn | McMansion Hell»¹> The problem with having a house that is 12,700 square feet is that they have to go somewhere. At least 500 of them were devoted to this foyer. [...]The theme of this house is, vaguely, “old stuff.” Kind of like if Chuck E Cheese did the sets for Spartacus. Why the dining room is on a platform is a good question. The answer: the American mind desires clearly demarcated space, which, sadly, is verboten in our culture.I love Kate's scathing deconstructions of the wasteland that is modern 'not really rich' architecture. Each post is a lovingly curated mix of insight and snark that takes a consummate professional to assemble.

[1] https://mcmansionhell.com/post/746655614978129920/ode-to-a-faux-grecian-urn

╒═════╣▒ 04/02/2024 @19:46 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *nope-nope-nope* department:🔗 «I actually love this idea: host a PowerPoint Night “where al...»¹> [...] host a PowerPoint Night “where all your friends present on their jobs so you can finally understand what the heck everyone does all day”.I'm extremely grateful I *don't* have friends like this. This looks *awful*.

[1] https://kottke.org/24/04/0044305-i-actually-love-this-idea

╒═════╣▒ 04/02/2024 @18:37 ▒╟──────────┘

I miss being able to wander out on a random Tuesday afternoon to buy a Tribe Called Quest CD and a 7446A.

March

╒═════╣▒ 03/30/2024 @20:41 ▒╟──────────┘

Finally watching Strange New Worlds S02. This is my favorite of the new Treks.

╒═════╣▒ 03/30/2024 @17:02 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «DNA Lounge: 29-Mar-2024 (Fri): Wherein the logo rides eternal»¹> Meet Venus and Jay -- their relationship began at around the time they first discovered DNA Lounge, and they like this place enough that they got matching tattoos!Long may you rave, you crazy kids.

[1] https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2024/03/29.html

╒═════╣▒ 03/30/2024 @16:32 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *birds!* department:🔗 «Effin' Birds»¹If you don't know, Aaron Reynolds has daily affirmations that most of us can find use for.

[1] https://effinbirds.tumblr.com/post/746316221572677632

╒═════╣▒ 03/28/2024 @21:12 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Oregon's New Right to Repair Law Bans 'Parts Pairing' Restrictions - MacRumors»¹> In addition to preventing manufacturers from requiring components to be free from pairing restrictions, the law requires companies to make parts, tools, documentation, and software available for smartphones produced in 2021 or later. For other electronics like computers, it is applicable to devices produced in 2015 and later.Killing parts pairing is a hugely important part of Right to Repair but one of the things I'd like to see more work on is ensuring that *owners* have the right to repair their devices *themselves*. I get that not everyone can but for those of us who *are able* it remains frustrating that we can't source parts, schematics, tools, or software ourselves.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/28/oregon-right-to-repair-law/

╒═════╣▒ 03/28/2024 @15:08 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *do-you-want-some-fraud-with-that* department:🔗 «Sam Bankman-Fried is going to prison. The crypto industry isn’t any better for it | Sam Bankman-Fried | The Guardian»¹> The downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried, and many others like him throughout 2022, stemmed not from proactive regulators protecting investors by cracking down on widespread malfeasance, but rather from the enormous implosions of the cryptocurrency firms built on rickety, risky loans and illusory tokens.[...]Rather than protecting investors from these predatory crypto schemes, financial regulators and enforcers only stepped in once it was time to pick up the pieces and comb through the rubble of millions of people’s shattered investments. These agencies have been playing catch-up, laggardly investigating and charging people like Bankman-Fried or his cryptocurrency rival, Changpeng Zhao, after problems at FTX and Binance ballooned to enormous size.Crypto’s crests and crashes will continueAs surviving firms crow of the sector’s newfound legitimacy, they can’t point to any changes that would prevent this checkered history from repeating itself.We have seen this cycle before. Early excitement around bitcoin peaked and then plummeted in 2014 with the explosive growth and catastrophic collapse of the Mt Gox cryptocurrency exchange, which lost hundreds of thousands of bitcoins due to a combination of theft and mismanagement. Ten years later, most of those who had tokens stored on the Mt Gox exchange are still waiting to see any reimbursement for assets that would be worth billions today.[...]When it comes to new legislation, lawmakers have been deadlocked on bill after bill as industry interests pressure them to codify the current state of lax regulation with carve-outs and loopholes. The crypto industry argues this will allow for continued “innovation” – despite little innovation to date from the sector, aside from finding new and inventive ways to scam people out of their money.There will be others like SBFBankman-Fried is likely to spend a significant amount of time in prison for the fraud he engineered. But with no changes to how the industry operates and no watchdogs to check the abuse and greed that have defined it over its now-15 years of existence, we are doomed to see history repeat itself. More Bankman-Frieds will emerge to take his place, drawn by the promise of easy money and the low likelihood of consequences. How many like him have escaped punishment or even scrutiny?Molly's writing on the crypto world and it's prevalent fraudsters — techbros cum wall street traders is always quite good. This is no exception.h/t @mollywhite

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2024/mar/28/sam-bankman-fried-prison-crypto-regulation

╒═════╣▒ 03/28/2024 @14:44 ▒╟──────────┘

This is important.«via»¹

[1] https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/746204652286181376

Attachments:

[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/03/26/boeing-nasa-target-may-1-for-first-crewed-flight-of-starliner-to-the-space-station/

╒═════╣▒ 03/28/2024 @14:37 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *space-the-final-frontier* department:🔗 «Boeing, NASA target May 1 for first crewed flight of Starliner to the space station – Spaceflight Now»¹> “What’s really kind of cool about Starliner is that it’s very much a pilot’s spacecraft. It’s really maneuverable,” Lammers said. “There’s close to 50 reaction-control and orbital maneuvering jets on it and there’s a stick. And what’s really cool about it is, when you have astronauts that are pilots, they really gravitate towards using it.”Starliner will dock at the forward port of the Harmony module of the ISS. Starting with the six-month long Starliner-1 mission set for spring 2025, the spacecraft will have the capability of docking at the zenith port as well.I wish the Starliner team godspeed and the best of luck. It's been a pretty fraught program, seemingly thanks to the same executive malfeasance that lead to the door plug debacle — hopefully they got their act together after the previous near failures and will proudly add Starliner to NASA's Commercial Crew program. Relying on a single vendor has never been a great situation for NASA / the ISS.

╒═════╣▒ 03/28/2024 @11:17 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «404 Media Now Has a Full Text RSS Feed»¹> Since we launched 404 Media in August, the most common request we’ve gotten from our subscribers is for an RSS feed that contains the full text of all of our articles. We are proud and excited to announce that today, we have finally figured out how to make this available to all of our paid subscribers.Yes! More full-text RSS feeds please.

[1] https://www.404media.co/404-media-now-has-a-full-text-rss-feed/

╒═════╣▒ 03/28/2024 @11:14 ▒╟──────────┘

I don't know what the angle is on this new breed of e-mail only newsletters. No, I'm not giving you an e-mail address. I don't care how good your newsletter is. Give me an RSS feed you heathens.(In response to «https://waxy.org/2024/03/hank-green-announces-were-here-a-weekly-newsletter-of-good-and-cool-stuff-from-around-the-internet/»¹)

[1] https://waxy.org/2024/03/hank-green-announces-were-here-a-weekly-newsletter-of-good-and-cool-stuff-from-around-the-internet/

╒═════╣▒ 03/27/2024 @22:37 ▒╟──────────┘

THE 69 EYES, THE BITES, BUDDERSIDE, LOVEBOXX

Attachments:

[1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-trial-date-certain-ish-ny-trump-case-set-to-begin-april-15

╒═════╣▒ 03/27/2024 @15:09 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *not-a-great-sign* department:🔗 «A Trial Date Certain-ish: NY Trump Case Set to Begin April 15 | Lawfare»¹> Merchan interjects again. “If you don’t have a case right now, it’s really disconcerting, because the allegations that the defense makes in all of your papers about the People’s misconduct is incredibly serious—unbelievably serious.”His voice raises, and a chorus of clacking keys swells in tandem as the gallery reporters’ typing intensifies. “You’re literally accusing the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the people assigned to this case of engaging in prosecutorial misconduct and of trying to make me complicit in it and you don’t have a single cite to support that position.”I'm no lawyer, but I don't think it's *ever* a good idea to cause a judge to utter a phrase like [...] and of trying to make me complicit in [...]

╒═════╣▒ 03/26/2024 @12:48 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «the Apple curl security incident 12604 | daniel.haxx.se»¹> When this command line option is used with curl on macOS, the version shipped by Apple, it seems to fall back and checks the system CA store in case the provided set of CA certs fail the verification. A secondary check that was not asked for, is not documented and plain frankly comes completely by surprise. Therefore, when a user runs the check with a trimmed and dedicated CA cert file, it will not fail if the system CA store contains a cert that can verify the server!I can see why Apple might think this is desirable behavior but it seems wildly suspect to me. If I wanted to pin an app to a specific CA or set of trusted CAs I should be able to without shipping my own TLS library. We have operating systems for a reason.

[1] https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/03/08/the-apple-curl-security-incident-12604/#comment-26945

╒═════╣▒ 03/24/2024 @10:40 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Rockstar Employees Concerned About Crunch, Grand Theft Auto VI As Company Moves Forward With Return To Office - Aftermath»¹> They also added that the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of Grand Theft Auto V were developed almost entirely remotely, adding to a growing body of evidence that teams don’t need to be in an office five days a week to complete projects.Workers at Rockstar are worried about where things go from here. The studio’s struggles with brutal crunch are well-documented, and though things have improved in recent times, employees are concerned that they’re staring down the barrel of a backslide.Bosses just don't want workers realizing their lives can actually be fulfilling outside of work so make sure you bring everyone back into the soul extracting machine.> [...] "With what we have at the moment as policy, if you're slightly ill, you can work from home as long as your lead agrees. In a world where we are still dealing with covid, just being able to be considerate of your colleagues around you in staying away from the office is a really good benefit to have. That will be completely lost. ... That's going to result in a loss of productivity for the company.""We're quite worried that we're gonna lose personnel over this or it will have a large negative impact on people's health,” said another Rockstar employee. “It's a very anti-parent move. For people with disabilities, it's a massive problem."Tell me you have substantial money invested in commercial real-estate without telling me you have substantial money invested in commercial real-estate.I remain unconvinced return to work is about anything other than protecting wealth, exerting control, and trying to ratchet up the amount of unpaid labor companies can extract from labor. Those tech company office amenities have always been about keeping workers in the building working much longer than the 40 hour week their salaries pay for.

[1] https://aftermath.site/rockstar-return-to-office-grand-theft-auto-vi-crunch

╒═════╣▒ 03/22/2024 @18:57 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «United State v. Apple - Complaint»¹The Complaint for US v Apple. The Verge has quite a lot more details though I suspect it's going to be a *lot* of fluff until things start happening in the court. I expect *plenty* of talking heads and posturing from Apple as this trundles through the process. Expect it to take years.h/t The Verge

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544402/gov.uscourts.njd.544402.1.0_3.pdf

╒═════╣▒ 03/22/2024 @18:57 ▒╟──────────┘

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544402/gov.uscourts.njd.544402.1.0_3.pdf

╒═════╣▒ 03/22/2024 @18:33 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *emperors-new-clothes* department:🔗 «Apple Silicon Vulnerability Allows Hackers to Extract Encryption Keys - MacRumors»¹> An unpatchable vulnerability has been discovered in Apple's M-series chips that allows attackers to extract secret encryption keys from MacsRemember, these huge tech monopolies try to tell you they *have* to gate-keep software development and distribution and extort their vig from developers because *only they* posses the ability to properly secure systems from the big bad cybercriminals and that all the DRM they wrap everything in is *for your protection*.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/22/apple-silicon-vulnerability-encryption-keys/

╒═════╣▒ 03/22/2024 @18:30 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *its-about-time* department:🔗 «Apple Facing Imminent U.S. Antitrust Lawsuit - MacRumors»¹> The United States Justice Department is preparing to sue Apple for violating antitrust law [...]. The lawsuit will be the culmination of an investigation that initially started in 2019 as an antitrust review of major technology companies. U.S. regulators have already sued Google, Meta, and Amazon.This would be the perfect use for the much-needed guillotine emoji.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/20/apple-facing-imminent-u-s-antitrust-lawsuit/

╒═════╣▒ 03/22/2024 @18:06 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *always-punch-nazis* department:🔗 «Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis? - YouTube»¹Never forget. We literally defeated Nazis in, and I can't stress this enough, *a world-wide shooting war*. I don't think there's any reason whatsoever to debate them, nor tolerate them. Being a Nazi is *not* a protected class.Also. Don't give more of your life up to enrich a billionaire.h/t @jwz

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKICKcMU3MU

╒═════╣▒ 03/21/2024 @19:24 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *anti-gravity-racing* department:🔗 «Lick Switch - Midnight Eye (Cyberpunk 2077 88.9 Pacific Dreams) - YouTube»¹Every now and then a track would come across Pacific Dreams and I'd swear it was a downtempo remix of a track from wipEout.Turns out it's not but I swear it could be.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR2ylVq1un4

╒═════╣▒ 03/21/2024 @18:47 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *new-music-and-more* department:🔗 «Locked Away | Cyberaktif»¹New music from Cevin Key of Skinny Puppy and Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly? Yes, Yes Please.Thank you Communion After Dark.

[1] https://cyberaktif.bandcamp.com/track/locked-away

╒═════╣▒ 03/20/2024 @16:21 ▒╟──────────┘

If you want to find out the recipient of the inaugural "Senate Twink Memorial Award for Belatedly Good Judgement" from Very Serious Media, you should probably subscribe to Serious Trouble and enjoy the «latest episode»¹.

[1] https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/belatedly-good-judgment

╒═════╣▒ 03/19/2024 @18:59 ▒╟──────────┘

I really which macOS updates would stop overwriting my changes to */etc/auto_master*.

╒═════╣▒ 03/18/2024 @09:59 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *lies-damn-lies-and-math-no-one-understands* department:🔗 «Pluralistic: The Coprophagic AI crisis (14 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow»¹> But "The Curse of Recursion: Training on Generated Data Makes Models Forget," a recent paper, goes beyond the ick factor of AI that is fed on botshit and delves into the mathematical consequences of AI coprophagia[...]Co-author Ross Anderson summarizes the finding neatly: "using model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects"I admit, I am interested in seeing what Bovine spongiform encephalopathy looks like in terms of AI but I'm not looking forward to what the web will become while that reaches critical mass. Frankly I think we're already seeing some of the immune system reaction with the likes of the newly launched 404 Media putting *everything* behind a login to try to stymie the lazier AI bots (lets face it, anyone with half a care will simply try harder and scrape their content with a login and then sell that *enriched dataset* to other AI companies).

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/

╒═════╣▒ 03/17/2024 @18:38 ▒╟──────────┘

~ NO MESSAGE ~

Attachments:

[1] https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2024/01/2023-emoji-law-year-in-review.htm

╒═════╣▒ 03/17/2024 @13:13 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «2023 Emoji Law Year-in-Review - Technology & Marketing Law Blog»¹> I continue to maintain my census of U.S. cases referencing emojis or emoticons. In 2023, I logged 225 such cases [...]. The case count continues to grow exponentially. The 2023 count represented a 17% increase over the 2022 count.RNIL someone is keeping track of the *growing* number of emoji-involved legal cases. Personally I think that a judge using 🤯 in an opinion is the pinnacle.h/t inks

╒═════╣▒ 03/17/2024 @13:01 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *caturday* department:🔗 «Purr.in.ink — Happy Caturday 🐈‍⬛🖤 sound on 🔊»¹Ok, I'm a day late, sue me.🐈‍⬛🖤

[1] https://purr-in-ink.tumblr.com/post/745064009574776832/happy-caturday-sound-on

╒═════╣▒ 03/17/2024 @12:48 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «TOKYO FASHION WEEK 2024 Autumn/Winter DAY SIX - Anrealage Street Style»¹No one does fashion quite like Japan.h/t @TokyoFashion

[1] https://www.tokyoscope.blog/p/tokyo-fashion-week-2024-autumnwinter

╒═════╣▒ 03/17/2024 @11:49 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *puppies-dot-supplies-it's-a-real-address* department:🔗 «‘Hello From The Magic Tavern’ Podcast Set For Animated Adaptation»¹> Hello From The Magic Tavern, the hit comedy fantasy podcast, is being turned into an animated series.Well holy shit. I sorta figured something was up during their hiatus but this is kinda big. I really wish them the best of luck and hope it doesn't end up like King Falls AM's attempted pivot to television did :(h/t Hello from the Magic Tavern

[1] https://deadline.com/2024/03/hello-from-the-magic-tavern-podcast-animated-series-sam-rockwell-starburns-industries-1235855196/

╒═════╣▒ 03/17/2024 @11:30 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Teslas Can Be Stolen by Hijacking WiFi at Charging Stations, Researchers Find»¹> Mysk tested out the vulnerability on his own Tesla and found that he was easily able to create new phone keys without ever having access to the original, physical key card. That's despite Tesla promising that wasn't possible in its owner's manual.Even more reasons to disable all that telematics crap and not use your phone as a freaking key fob for anything. <voice="jeff goldblum">Just because you can put some things on the Internet doesn't mean you *should*</voice>h/t Violet Blue's Cybersecurity Roundup

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/teslas-stolen-wifi-charging-research

╒═════╣▒ 03/14/2024 @22:52 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *but-can-it-run-doom* department:🔗 «NASA Engineers Make Progress Toward Understanding Voyager 1 Issue – The Sun Spot»¹> Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the results of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers began working to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that it contains a memory readout.You really have to hand it to the Voyager team at NASA/JPL. Debugging a memory dump from a computer, launched in 1977, the better part of a light-day away, traveling at nearly 38,000 MPH (relative to the sun). 😲🤯

[1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2024/03/13/nasa-engineers-make-progress-toward-understanding-voyager-1-issue/

╒═════╣▒ 03/14/2024 @09:40 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *cursed* department:🔗 «PGlite: PostgreSQL in WebAssembly (and TypeScript)»¹> People have brought Postgres into the browser before, albeit atop a Linux VM WASM layer. PGlite, however, packages a WASM build of Postgres into a TypeScript library that can be run in the browser or on Node.js or Bun and is only 3.7MB gzipped.This is straight up cursed. If you are using this, holy shit stop. WASM probably shouldn't exist.h/t JavaScript Weekly

[1] https://github.com/electric-sql/pglite

╒═════╣▒ 03/13/2024 @21:58 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Evolved adapter for future NASA space launch system flights readied for testing»¹> [The universal stage adapter] will also serve as a compartment capable of accommodating large payloads, such as modules or other exploration spacecraft. The SLS Block 1B variant will debut on Artemis IV and will increase SLS's payload capability to send more than 84,000 pounds to the moon in a single launch.It's amazing to see the SLS & Orion flying after all the years of hard work. Artemis I was a thrilling achievement and this is an important incremental step back to the Moon. 42 tons to lunar orbit is nothing to sneeze at.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2024-03-evolved-future-nasa-space-flights.html

╒═════╣▒ 03/13/2024 @18:10 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *i-do-not-want-this* department:🔗 «Here's Everything We Know About Apple's Next-Generation CarPlay - MacRumors»¹I have quite a lot of safety concerns here. I just don't think one should be relying on the functionality of a smartphone for the operation of a multi-ton death machine. This seems like a way for the auto manufacturers to obsolete cars even faster.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/13/apple-next-generation-carplay-recap/

╒═════╣▒ 03/13/2024 @18:05 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «TikTok Closer to Potential U.S. Ban as House Passes Bill Requiring Sale - MacRumors»¹> If passed, the bill would require ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months to a company approved by the U.S. government. Should ByteDance not sell the company, U.S. app stores would not be able to distribute the app without breaking the law, effectively leading to a ban.I don't see how this survives a first amendment challenge. This feels like more posturing by a congress so unable to actually do anything useful it has lapsed into pointless posturing.Seems like being able to install apps from sources other than The One True App Store might be useful, though... eh?

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/13/house-passes-tiktok-sale-bill/

╒═════╣▒ 03/13/2024 @18:02 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Brave Browser Reports Spike in EU Installs After iOS 17.4 DMA Changes - MacRumors»¹> "Monopoly defenders argue that the monopolies simply offer better products," wrote Brave in a subsequent post. "But as you can see, when consumers get a clear choice of iOS browsers, they're choosing alternatives to Safari."I like Safari, but boy would I appreciate some meaningful competition in the browser marketplace. Hopefully, inch by inch, we can pry open Apple's monopoly and turn the thing in our pockets from someone else's computer, to a computer we own.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/13/brave-browser-rise-installs-ios-14-7-eu/

╒═════╣▒ 03/13/2024 @09:48 ▒╟──────────┘

Ah yes, exactly what I expected to be doing today.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/03/enumerating-objects-counting-objects-compressing-objects-receiving-objects-resolving-deltas-updating-files-fast-forward/

╒═════╣▒ 03/12/2024 @11:53 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «jwz: Enumerating objects... Counting objects... Compressing objects... Using up to 4 threads... Receiving objects... Resolving deltas.... Updating files.... Fast-forward....»¹The Classic MacOS interface with the Windows hour glass and the DOS prompt is just... *chefs kiss*.

╒═════╣▒ 03/12/2024 @10:15 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *you-see-its-a-chain-of-blocks* department:🔗 «The untold story of Kickstarter’s crypto Hail Mary—and the secret $100 million a16z-led investment to save its fading brand | Fortune Crypto»¹> In return for the a16z largesse, Kickstarter would take its own crack at becoming a Web3 company. The grand but improbable plan called for shifting its entire platform onto a blockchain called Celo, another a16z portfolio company, where it would operate as an open-source protocol—akin to http or Bitcoin—rather than rely on the proprietary code model used by most tech firms.It's funny, even after reading the article I still don't understand how crypto would have actually helped anyone (other than line go up and a16z cashes out) here. There's some handwavery at fraud and trust with the public ledger but that hasn't helped the rest of the crypto ecosystem be less '*fraud but with computers*'. The idea that people might setup a federated croudfunding ecosystem built in their protocol, a *Twitter but for funding* seems to completely ignore the role of the marketplace in the creator-consumer transaction. And once you've 'decentralized' the marketplace, why are you paying a someone a vig?h/t «W3IGG»²

[1] https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/

[2] https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/single/kickstarters-a16z-induced-pivot-to-blockchain

╒═════╣▒ 03/11/2024 @20:55 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Boeing whistleblower found dead in US»¹> In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.[...]It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating.A tragic loss for all involved. I hope his legacy is the FAA holding Boeing accountable for their lapse in caring about the lives of those who fly and ride in their aircraft and returning safety as the most important metric in aircraft manufacturing.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703

╒═════╣▒ 03/10/2024 @16:48 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *aghast-and-agog-again* department:🔗 «George Santos says he's running for office again in N.Y. : NPR»¹> Santos' return to politics is unwelcome news for Republicans in New York who already face a challenging election season as they fight to defend key House seats won in 2022.[...]Among the nearly two dozen charges he faces, Santos is accused of ripping off former campaign donors. Santos has denied any wrongdoing. His former campaign treasurer has already pleaded guilty.I don't understand why the party is allowing this guy to run again. Wasn't it embarrassing enough the first time? Not to yuck yums or anything but this seems like a pretty strange kink.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1236905535/george-santos-fraud-trial-election-new-york-long-island

╒═════╣▒ 03/10/2024 @16:45 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Immigrants less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born : NPR»¹> Some of the most extensive research comes from Stanford University. Economist Ran Abramitzky found that since the 1960s, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born people.There is also state level research, [...] researchers at the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, looked into Texas in 2019. They found that undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime.Beyond incarceration rates, research also shows that there is no correlation between undocumented people and a rise in crime. Recent investigations by The New York Times and The Marshall Project found that between 2007 and 2016, there was no link between undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crime in those communities.[...]The study also suggests that there's a real fear of getting in trouble and being deported within immigrant communities. Far from engaging in criminal activities, immigrants mostly don't want to rock the boat.It sure seems like people whose immigration status is in question would be less likely to want to come to the attention of authorities. They're also an easy emotional scapegoat, I suppose.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1237103158/immigrants-are-less-likely-to-commit-crimes-than-us-born-americans-studies-find

╒═════╣▒ 03/10/2024 @10:42 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «What the Supreme Court Got Wrong in the Trump Section 3 Case | Lawfare»¹> here are several flaws in the Court’s analysis. The most basic is that there is no good reason to believe that Section 5 is the exclusive mode of enforcing Section 3. As the Colorado Supreme Court emphasized in its ruling, Section 5 empowers Congress to enforce not just Section 3 but also every other part of the 14th Amendment, including its protections against racial and ethnic discrimination, the Due Process Clause, and more. These other provisions are considered to be self-executing, under long-standing federal Supreme Court precedent. Section 5 legislation is not the exclusive mode of enforcement for these other parts of the amendment.Thus, state governments and federal courts can enforce these provisions even in the absence of congressional Section 5 enforcement legislation. Otherwise, as the Colorado Supreme Court notes, “Congress could nullify them by simply not passing enacting legislation.” Why should Section 3 be any different? Monday’s Supreme Court decision doesn’t give us any good answer to that question.It seems to me that if a significant number of states removed from the ballot an individual running for federal office under the power of the 14ᵗʰ that chaos has already ensued and handwringing over potential subsequent electoral chaos is — at best a waste of time.

[1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-the-supreme-court-got-wrong-in-the-trump-section-3-case

╒═════╣▒ 03/10/2024 @10:14 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Major US corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle’ | US unions | The Guardian»¹> SpaceX, Starbucks, Amazon and Trader Joe’s have put forward three main arguments for holding the NLRB unconstitutional: it penalizes companies without a jury trial, exercises executive powers without the president being free to remove board officials, and violates the separation of powers by exercising executive, legislative and judicial functions. This corporate attack is part of a wave of lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of various federal agencies that regulate business.Frankly, if the NLRB is struck down, there would be very little to recommend against 1789. I am frankly floored that we have found ourself in an environment where these plutocrats aren't sufficiently afraid of labor that they think they can do this without consequence.It also could seriously hamper the government's ability to enforce laws — stripping federal agencies from rule-making and enforcement, key functions of everything from the FDA, FCC, FAA, EPA and more. This really is not just a direct attack on labor rights by absolutely out of touch billionaire plutocrat sociopaths, but an attack of the very ability of the United States government to meaningfully exist.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board

╒═════╣▒ 03/10/2024 @10:02 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «COVID-19 is Still a Threat. So is Biden’s CDC. ❧ Current Affairs»¹> The most important basis for the modified guidelines, though, is something even simpler: the idea that COVID “is no longer the emergency that it once was.” This is both an extremely widespread idea, and one that has more to do with politics and ideology than it does material reality. It’s President Biden who first started to push it in September 2022, when he went on 60 Minutes and declared that “the pandemic is over.” As even the New York Times pointed out, 400 people were still dying every day when he said that. Today, it’s still fundamentally a lie. The pandemic may have reduced in severity from its peak, but it never actually ended—certainly not for the thousands of people who continue to catch the virus, get severely sick, develop symptoms of Long COVID, and even die.Even people I know that *know* that the pandemic is still out there raging talk about the pandemic in past-tense, the marketing is extremely strong...> COVID is still an active threat—but so is Biden’s CDC, and its wildly irresponsible policies. We need an entirely different kind of leadership, oriented toward the needs of ordinary workers and citizens, not corporations and political parties. We need leaders who actually believe in public health and the health of the collective.> [...] Some hospitals have already brought back mask mandates, but that should be all facilities that offer healthcare in-person. (It’s probably not an overstatement to say that the lack of basic precautions like masking in healthcare institutions ought to be considered outright criminal—at the very least, it is clearly unethical.)[...]With the resurgence of respiratory illnesses I just don't understand why PPE in healthcare settings isn't mandatory, pandemic or not. The point of health*care* is not to be *made ill*, is it? We should always be evaluating the current corpus of knowledge to develop best practices to ensure the safest possible environment for people. Setting aside patients, infecting healthcare workers is only going to make the strain on an already understaffed system worse.> [...] In a bizarre Vox article, Dr. Keren Landman attempts to justify the CDC’s new return-to-work push by saying that “workers often don’t have paid sick leave and emergency child care”—but the government can, and should, simply mandate that employers must provide those things.It does seem like the moment people started to realize we could, as a society, afford and survive with things like mandatory paid medical leave and rent stabilization and broad unemployment insurance and eviction protection that the corporate world started to freak out and push back, insisting we all get back to work. Heaven forbid society work for everyone, instead of just the obnoxiously wealthy (that still enjoy broad infection prevention measures, one might note).

[1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2024/03/covid-19-is-still-a-threat-so-is-bidens-cdc/

╒═════╣▒ 03/07/2024 @21:44 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *best-views-around* department:🔗 «North to Alaska : Air Facts Journal»¹> The old maxim about flying to Alaska, “Sometimes invited, sometimes tolerated, and sometimes told to go home” was answered with, “you are invited” by both government and Mother Nature.One of the things I always wanted to do when I was pursuing my Private Pilot License was to fly Alaska. It still sounds like quite the experience.

[1] https://airfactsjournal.com/2024/03/north-to-alaska-2/

╒═════╣▒ 03/07/2024 @20:16 ▒╟──────────┘

Watching the retrocomputing folks on Mastodon lose their minds tunneling AppleTalk over the Internet reminds me of the time a friend and I built etherip(4) bridges over the Internet so we could '*LAN*' play Gran Turismo 4 on our PlayStation 2s (we both even had the official Driving Force Pro wheels). It was on of my earliest forays into making Linux and OpenBSD work together... something I still do almost 20 years later.

╒═════╣▒ 03/05/2024 @21:21 ▒╟──────────┘

Dear Lazyweb. The Wayback Machine uses a client side JavaScript interposer apparently called Wombat, it «overrides window.open»¹ so my «link sharing bookmarklet»² is broken in really novel ways (the Wayback Machine saves a copy of my script, rewrites the URLs and serves it from itself, quite obviously breaking all the things). Is there a way to get ahold of the actual, unmolested window.open so I can pop up my link share sheet and actually share a Wayback Machine link instead of having to manually copy/paste? I can't for the life of me find an accessor to the original Window object from the monkey patched JavaScript environment that the bookmarklet sees.

[1] https://github.com/webrecorder/wombat/blob/00c46c491181202d2391619b9517f3f626dd1e6f/src/wombat.js#L5740

[2] https://www.going-flying.com/blog/thoughts-link-bookmarklet.html

╒═════╣▒ 03/05/2024 @21:15 ▒╟──────────┘

ðŸ”— «Behind F1's Velvet Curtain»¹> The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever. People clinked glasses of free champagne in outfits worth more than the market price of all the organs in my body.I love Kate Wagner. McMansion Hell is a treasure. Her writing in this piece is excellent and while you are left to wonder why Road and Track published and then deleted the article, you can remain ever thankful to the Internet Archive for getting a copy.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240301170542/https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a46975496/behind-f1-velvet-curtain/

╒═════╣▒ 03/05/2024 @16:23 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *wayback-machine-gonna-getcha* department:🔗 «Digital archives: a time machine for the web | Internet Archive Blogs»¹> In the summer of 2023, the New York Times ran an article titled “Ways You Can Still Cancel Your Federal Student Loan Debt.”The article outlined six ways to cancel student debt, with the final being:“DeathThis is not something that most people would choose as a solution to their debt burden.”At least that was the sixth reason until the New York Times revised it with a stealth edit.Way to be straight up ghouls, NY Times. I assume the article didn't go on to talk about how absolutely *broken* our student loan system is while listing *suicide* as a way out to their readership.That aside, the Internet Archive is almost as important to the Internet as DNS is.

[1] https://blog.archive.org/2024/03/05/digital-archives-a-time-machine-for-the-web/

╒═════╣▒ 03/05/2024 @14:56 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *we-need-all-of-us* department:🔗 «Stonekettle Station: No Safety»¹> The Republican nominee for president is a twice impeached, self-declared serial rapist, a convicted fraud, and a tax cheat currently out on bail, facing ninety-one felonies in four different jurisdictions, who owes over a half a billion dollars in restitution for his crimes, [...] who led an insurrection against his own country live on national television.[...]There is no easy way out of this where you again get to be a lazy spectator to history while someone else does the grunt work of democracy.[...]You're going to have to show up and do your duty even if you don't want to.You're going to have to show up and make a decision, even if you don't like the choices. That's why they call it duty, Citizen.It's not about you. It's about the Republic.[...]If you want a better nation, then you're going to have to be a better citizen. Even if you don't want to be.It's up to us, same as it always was.Protest the primary, sure. Sending messages is important. There are horrors at home and abroad that the country should be doing more about. But when the general election comes around this November, you either go and vote for Joe Biden or you are abandoning your *duty* to the republic and then we *all* may lose it.

[1] https://www.stonekettle.com/2024/03/no-safety.html

╒═════╣▒ 03/05/2024 @09:16 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *labor* department:🔗 «Greggs staff to share £17.6m bonus pot after record annual profit | Greggs | The Guardian»¹> Britain’s biggest bakery chain said 25,000 employees – out of a total of 32,000 across the UK – would receive a bonus in their pay packets at the end of March, as it reported a 27% jump in profits to £188m.Under a profit share agreement, Greggs shares 10% of profits each year with staff who have worked at the chain for at least six months.Good for Greggs! More companies should return profits to labor!

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/05/greggs-staff-bonus-pot-record-profit-price-rises

╒═════╣▒ 03/03/2024 @20:23 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *united-ireland* department:🔗 «The 'banned' Star Trek episode that promised a united Ireland»¹> "[At the time] 2024 seemed a long way away. I probably should have made it, you know, 2224! I just pulled that number and it didn't occur to me that suddenly we would be here."I have found myself surprised encountering a lot of dates from past futurism. Blade Runner (2019), Johnny Mnemonic (2021)... I guess this year is the Irish Reunification and the Bell Riots!

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68342135

╒═════╣▒ 03/03/2024 @14:04 ▒╟──────────┘

Seems like "pivot to AI" is that one neat trick to piss off everyone.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.404media.co/wordpress-firehose-allows-ai-companies-to-buy-access-to-a-million-posts-a-day/

╒═════╣▒ 03/02/2024 @09:47 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *money-vacuum* department:🔗 «A WordPress ‘Firehose’ Allows AI Companies to Buy Access to a Million Posts a Day»¹> The truth is that Automattic has been selling access to this “firehose” of posts for years, for a variety of purposes. This includes selling access to self-hosted blogs and websites that use a popular plugin called Jetpack; Automattic edited its original “protecting user choice” statement this week to say it will exclude Jetpack from its deals with “select AI companies.” These posts have been directly available via a data partner called SocialGist, which markets its services to “social listening” companies, marketing insights firms, and, increasingly, AI companies. Tumblr has its own Firehose, and Tumblr posts are available via SocialGist as well.So it looks like Matt Mullenweg's company is, as I think everyone expected, fully in on exploiting the creatives of the web to fuel their greed. I guess the funny part is that they've been doing it for a while and only are getting called out because they're adding the mass copyright infringement that is "AI" into the mix of shady operators buying user data.I guess for me, the most poignant slap in the face is that Tumblr tends to have been home to creatives in both the graphic and written disciplines and shoveling all that work into the bonfire of OpenAI and Midjourney is just... well peak greed-fueled treachery. It feels so very "... pray I do not alter the deal further." I also suspect it's going to lead to a lot of people deleting their tumblr blogs which means a lot of art and history is about to be lost forever.

╒═════╣▒ 03/01/2024 @22:33 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *baby-its-cold-outside* department:🔗 «Mars Express Spots Sand Dunes and Ice Layers at Martian North Pole | Sci.News»¹> “In Martian winter, the layers are topped by a thin cap of carbon dioxide ice a couple of meters thick. This cap completely disappears to the atmosphere each Martian summer.”These pictures are pretty neat but critically it should tell you how bloody inhospitable Mars is. In the winter it's cold enough to freeze *carbon dioxide*. At Earth's relatively high atmospheric pressure that takes place at around -78℃ (about -109℉).

[1] https://www.sci.news/space/mars-express-sand-dunes-ice-layers-martian-north-pole-12732.html

╒═════╣▒ 03/01/2024 @22:09 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *should-be-integrated-into-social-media-posts* department:🔗 «DONOTREPLY.CARDS->EN»¹I'm glad these got a home other than a Flickr album and I'm looking forward to the stickers but *holy crap* the page way over "designed".

[1] https://donotreply.cards/

╒═════╣▒ 02/29/2024 @20:50 ▒╟──────────┘

Sometimes I contemplate how much energy gets expended every time Star Trek: TNG Picard says "evasive maneuvers" given that it involves flinging something like 4 city blocks around the joint (the Galaxy Class starship is 641 meters x 473 meters and a block in NYC averages 80 meters x 274 meters...) at some several thousand kilometers per second.Hell, the amount of energy an inertial damper must require to keep from liquifying the humans aboard must be astronomical.

╒═════╣▒ 02/29/2024 @20:39 ▒╟──────────┘

100% this. You write it off, the public just paid for it. Time to pony up.

Attachments:

[1] https://coloradosun.com/2024/02/28/perelandra-bookshop-reader-in-residence/

February

╒═════╣▒ 02/29/2024 @16:58 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *read-a-book* department:🔗 «Fort Collins bookstore pays people to sit down and read quietly»¹> “I think the residence paralleled my own personal concerns about the extent to which we focus ourselves on production,” said Joe Braun, principal book buyer at Perelandra, and the person who dreamed up the position. “In focusing on production, foregrounding content creation, what we do is necessarily create a consumer in the process. The idea is: produce, consume, produce, consume.”Braun wanted to break that cycle. Is the residency replicable? Maybe. Is it scalable? Probably not. But that has never been the point. The point is to envision what a bookshop can do, not what it already is, Braun said.I love this so much. Just relax and read a book.

╒═════╣▒ 02/29/2024 @15:51 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *got-91-problems* department:🔗 «Trump Disqualified from Illinois Primary Ballot | Lawfare»¹> The court found that Section 3 applies to Trump; that Trump "engaged" in insurrection (in part based on the factual findings of the Electoral Board's Record); that Section 3 is self-executing; and that Section 3 is a qualification requirement that Trump fails to meet. Because of this, the court found that Trump's Statement of Candidacy verifying that he was "legally qualified" for the office he seeks is invalid, and that thus, he should be removed from the ballot.Obviously this is stayed pending appeal and potential interference by the supremes. I find it interesting that the mechanism to remove the candidate from the ballot is that they lied on their official statement of candidacy.

[1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/trump-disqualified-from-illinois-primary-ballot

╒═════╣▒ 02/29/2024 @13:22 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *less-passive-more-aggressive* department:🔗 «Cybersecurity Roundup: February 27, 2024 | Patreon»¹> “Some Raspberry Pi projects are born out of necessity while others are made for passive-aggressive, neighborly warfare. Maker and developer Roni Bandini grew tired of his neighbors' regular habit of playing loud reggaeton music at the same time every day… When this Pi detects Reggaeton music, it interferes with nearby Bluetooth speakers so the audio is distorted."–«Maker uses Raspberry Pi and AI to block noisy neighbor's music by hacking nearby Bluetooth speakers»² [Tom’s Hardware]I love this. Violet's Cybersecurity (and Pandemic) Roundup is well worth the price of admission (free!), so much so that I actually pay for it!Also! Hooray Jim the kitten!

[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/99297818

[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/maker-uses-raspberry-pi-and-ai-to-block-noisy-neighbors-music-by-hacking-nearby-bluetooth-speakers

╒═════╣▒ 02/29/2024 @13:04 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *no-kidding* department:🔗 «Issue 52 – I am Sam's low-level culpability»¹> The European Central Bank released a scathing report on Bitcoin and Bitcoin ETPs, which begins with the statement:Bitcoin has failed on the promise to be a global decentralised digital currency and is still hardly used for legitimate transfers. The latest approval of an ETF doesn’t change the fact that Bitcoin is not suitable as means of payment or as an investment.Molly's newsletter is always a good read.It is so nice to see an official institution to recognize the thing that cryptobros never seem to get. A currency has several characteristics that crypto lacks. A currency at minimum needs to be broadly circulated as a medium for exchange (natch), and a stable store of value (you shouldn't have to wonder how much your groceries will cost between leaving for the store and checking out). The absurd lack of privacy in crypto is also not exactly a feature.Welp.

[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-52/

╒═════╣▒ 02/29/2024 @12:38 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *wild-frontier* department:🔗 «How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI - Schneier on Security»¹> More ambitiously, we can choose not to privatize the economic gains of AI. We can cap corporate profits, raise the minimum wage, or redistribute an automation dividend as a universal basic income to let everyone share in the benefits of the AI revolution. And, if these technologies save as much labor as companies say they do, maybe we can also all have some of that time back.I'm really interested in how the early copyright cases play out. They could influence where the law ultimately goes here quite a bit. It is amazing how little the public discussion is focused on how to make "AI" a benefit for humanity writ large.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/how-the-frontier-became-the-slogan-of-uncontrolled-ai.html

╒═════╣▒ 02/28/2024 @21:01 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *repeated-failure* department:🔗 «FAA closes investigation into SpaceX Starship's double-explosion 2nd flight»¹> "The most likely root cause for the booster RUD was determined to be filter blockage where liquid oxygen is supplied to the engines, leading to a loss of inlet pressure in engine oxidizer turbopumps that eventually resulted in one engine failing in a way that resulted in loss of the vehicle," SpaceX reported.[...]"More Starships are ready to fly, putting flight hardware in a flight environment to learn as quickly as possible," SpaceX posted. "Recursive improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable launch system capable of carrying satellites, payloads, crew, and cargo to a variety of orbits and Earth, lunar, or Martian landing sites."Throwing billions of dollars into the fire blindly bashing your face against the worst possible scenarios you can image doesn't seem to be the best way to develop a rocket. I'd seriously question the sanity of anyone who would ever agree to get onboard this thing. One engine failure (out of 33) lead to the loss of the booster. That's... unacceptable.Let's recall the Saturn V had a flight record with zero loss of vehicle incidents and is the only rocket to take human beings to another celestial body.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2024-02-faa-spacex-starship-explosion-2nd.html

╒═════╣▒ 02/28/2024 @21:01 ▒╟──────────┘

[1] https://phys.org/news/2024-02-faa-spacex-starship-explosion-2nd.html

╒═════╣▒ 02/28/2024 @20:44 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *for-the-betterment-of-all-of-us* department:🔗 «Social Housing for New York Is on the Table»¹> “Almost monthly, we watch somebody lose their home in this district who has lived here for a long time, often lifelong residents who are elderly, who then have nowhere to go,” she told Jacobin. “We [in the United States] don’t think of the city as its people. We think of the people who live in the city as incidental actors who can come or go; it doesn’t matter if they stay because someone else will come and take their place. That is not a healthy way to think about community.”The mindset a government takes towards its community is reflected in its constituents’ ideas of what is possible within it: “Here we have people dying on the street because they don’t have housing,” Gallagher said. “They have problems [in Vienna], but they’re not life-destroying problems. Here we let things that should be human rights become luxuries.”Reliable, dignified access to *shelter* is about as fundamental a human right as I can think of. I really hope my state passes this and it doesn't just turn into a graft-hole but actually makes people lives better.

[1] https://jacobin.com/2024/02/social-housing-development-authority-new-york/

╒═════╣▒ 02/28/2024 @14:40 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *web-we-weave* department:🔗 «The Subversive Hyperlink - Jim Nielsen’s Blog»¹> Links form the whole. Without links, there is no whole. No links means no web, only silos. Isolation. The absence of connection.Subvert the status quo. Own a website. Make and share links.We got so lucky the Internet was able to be born in relative obscurity and allowed to mature to a critical mass before the enshittification began. The fact that even in the face of monopolistic consolidation the average person can still just *put things online* is amazing.Of course, discoverability is still being death-gripped by Google but we'll get there.

[1] https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/the-subversive-hyperlink/

╒═════╣▒ 02/28/2024 @14:36 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *whoo-boy* department:🔗 «JavaScript Bloat in 2024 @ tonsky.me»¹> Call me old-fashioned, but I firmly believe content should outweigh code size. If you are writing a blog post for 10K characters, you don’t need 1000× more JavaScript to render it.I mean same. I remember when Dreamweaver used to give page load times in the UI over a 'high-speed' 56K connection and tens of kilobytes would take SECONDS.I do wonder how much of this code is third-party things like tracking, ads, telemetry, and not actual code required for the application itself.Of course, many of these have *no* need to serve JavaScript at all.

[1] https://tonsky.me/blog/js-bloat/

╒═════╣▒ 02/27/2024 @21:06 ▒╟──────────┘

Its nice that so many of these shitty AI crawlers are run by people who don't know how to computer good. Has made it pretty simple to block them. I'm tempted to do something much more abusive, but I don't want them to notice and ask ChatGPT how to computer better.

╒═════╣▒ 02/26/2024 @20:26 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *today-i-learned* department:🔗 «FULL CASSETTE | 90s Hiphop (Take1) | DJ YEW | Distortion FM Air-check Ver - YouTube»¹> When the afternoon light was pleasant, we went to DJ YEW's home studio to record. He played 90s Hiphop on cassette only 🔥I had no idea that they made cassette players you could scratch. I'm low key in love.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXN6XipidU0

╒═════╣▒ 02/25/2024 @22:11 ▒╟──────────┘

It would be entirely in line with Apple's post-Jobs track record if they did in fact re-invent the 2002 iMac G4, only enshittified.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.eff.org/pages/san-francisco-say-nope-vote-no-proposition-e-march-5

╒═════╣▒ 02/24/2024 @20:04 ▒╟──────────┘

A friend of mine in San Francisco just sent me a picture of a plane flying by her apartment. Super proud to be an EFF member!«sfprope.org»¹

Attachments:

[1] https://aftermath.site/kingmakers-game-steam-pc

╒═════╣▒ 02/23/2024 @20:29 ▒╟──────────┘

You do you, I suppose, but I find it really quite strange that people subscribe to my website's RSS feed via a bridge to Mastodon. I'm not at all certain what exactly that accomplishes.

╒═════╣▒ 02/23/2024 @17:07 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *yee-haw* department:🔗 «Men Will Look At This And Say “Hell Yeah” - Aftermath»¹> You’ll play as a future soldier traveling back to ye olde Englande to change the course of a gargantuan war and head off an apocalypse at the pass. In addition to a pickup truck that’s somehow older than the knights it’s running over, you’ll be able to use modern weaponry like assault rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, armored SUVs, bikes, and helicopters.I'm not sure I'd go with "Hell Yeah" over "Yee Haw" but I suppose it's a similar sentiment.

╒═════╣▒ 02/23/2024 @16:22 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *deez* department:🔗 «DeezNutz_404 hacked for $170,000»¹> One thing that keeps me from ever trying my hand as a crypto project hacker is that if I made $170,000 from exploiting a project called "DeezNutz_404", I would immediately be caught because I wouldn't be able to resist telling everyone I know that I'd just made enough money to not have to work for a couple years by exploiting deez nuts.LMAO and possibly ROFL. My favorite part about the crypto grift at large is how that the layers of scams are underlaid by so much incompetence that *comical* amounts of money keep getting siphoned out from these poorly implemented grifts-as-a-service.

[1] https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/single/deeznutz404-hack

╒═════╣▒ 02/22/2024 @21:02 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 02/22/2024 @16:22

I didn't expect to hear Cory on a history podcast but an hour after I finished The Bezzle, We're Not So Different updated and what do ya know.

╒═════╣▒ 02/22/2024 @16:36 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *wtaf* department:🔗 «Television»¹So like, someone made an app for the Apple goggle things that puts a television in your space and one of the features is that you can use SharePlay to let other people watch your virtual television too.What the actual f**k.*Why* is this a thing?I thought this was a joke when I saw it over on waxy but... I think it's not a joke.We have *truly* forgotten the face of our fathers.

[1] https://sandwich.vision/

╒═════╣▒ 02/22/2024 @16:22 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *good-reads-(listens?)* department:🔗 «The Bezzle | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com»¹> [...] The Bezzle, a high-tech ice-cold revenge thriller starring Marty Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant, as he takes on the sleaziest scams of the first two decades of the 2000s, from hamburger-themed Ponzis to the unbelievably sleazy and evil prison-tech industry[.]After backing and *thoroughly* enjoying the audio book edition of Red Team Blues I of course backed the follow-up audio book (both expertly read by the Internet's Wil Wheaton) The Bezzle. I just finished listening to it and it is *excellent*. I never thought I'd find myself rooting for an accountant to kick ass at accounting but well, I did. I look forward to Picks and Shovels, the next installment coming next year.

[1] https://craphound.com/bezzle/

╒═════╣▒ 02/22/2024 @09:43 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *lemon-cake* department:🔗 «Japanese mafia boss conspired to traffic nuclear materials, says US»¹> Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, tried to sell uranium and plutonium that he believed would be transferred to Iran to build a nuclear bomb, it is alleged.Wasn't this a subplot in one of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex shows? I wonder if he called it lemon cake.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68365597

╒═════╣▒ 02/22/2024 @09:36 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *grift-6.7* department:🔗 «AI agents like Rabbit aim to book your vacation and order your Uber : NPR»¹> [...] Rabbit claims its device will allow people to get things done without opening apps (you log in to all your various apps on a Rabbit web portal, so it uses your credentials to do things on your behalf).My very first question is *when* this thing misinterprets your instructions and spends a pile of your money because it hallucinated^W doesn't work who is left holding the bag? The merchant that got scammed by some software? The software company that scammed the merchant and the end user? The credit card company / bank? The end user? There is a little bit of precedent with the Air Canada chatbot case but I expect these scam companies to be frantically working to close that loophole and ultimately saddle *someone else* with the costs of their failures.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/02/21/1232561606/ai-assistant-agent-rabbit?ft=nprml&f=1006

╒═════╣▒ 02/22/2024 @09:31 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *should-be-in-handcuffs* department:🔗 «Boeing 737 Max leader ousted after door plug blowout : NPR»¹> The Boeing executive who oversaw the company's troubled 737 Max program is out — part of a broader leadership change the company announced on Wednesday.The shakeup comes amid intense scrutiny of Boeing's quality control after a door plug panel from a 737 Max 9 aircraft blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight last month.Boeing executive Ed Clark, who was in charge of the 737 Max program, has left the company. Clark oversaw Boeing's factory in Renton, Washington where the plane that became Alaska Airlines flight 1282 was assembled.Frankly, I suspect several of these individuals shouldn't be leaving Boeing under their own steam but in handcuffs.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/02/21/1232964668/boeing-737-max-8-9-chief-ousted-leadership-changes

╒═════╣▒ 02/21/2024 @20:23 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *electile-dysfunction* department:🔗 «Jon Stewart Tackles The Biden-Trump Rematch That Nobody Wants | The Daily Show - YouTube»¹In his usual fashion, Jon gives us 18 minutes of witty and honest observations followed up by an impassioned call to vigilance. If we want to have a better world to live in, and to leave behind, we have to work at it... every single day.As Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station has said — You want a better nation, be a better citizen.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpBPm0b9deQ

╒═════╣▒ 02/21/2024 @14:28 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *smells-in-here* department:🔗 «Pluralistic: Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain; The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV) (21 Feb 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow»¹> Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.I switched to Duck Duck Go a long time ago and have not looked back. Getting reasonable results from Google was an ever-evolving problem even back in the day and it seems like it just keeps getting *worse*.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/

╒═════╣▒ 02/21/2024 @14:11 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *bad-touch-experience* department:🔗 «Nuberodesign > Blog > In Praise of Buttons – Part Two»¹> Knobs and buttons work. They might seem uncool at first but they work. That’s the most important part. I can’t speak for my readers but personally, I’m a much bigger fan of “working product = happy customer” than I am of “touch = good”. And if you have a good industrial designer, knobs and buttons can look really good too.I don't know if there is anything more satisfying as far as input devices go as a nice chunky toggle switch.

[1] https://www.nubero.ch/blog/010/

╒═════╣▒ 02/21/2024 @13:23 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *trees-in-space* department:🔗 «Japan to launch world’s first wooden satellite to combat space pollution | Satellites | The Guardian»¹> The timber satellite has been built by researchers at Kyoto University and the logging company Sumitomo Forestry in order to test the idea of using biodegradable materials such as wood to see if they can act as environmentally friendly alternatives to the metals from which all satellites are currently constructed.This seems like a really interesting approach. I wonder how well it would scale to larger satellite systems.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/17/japan-to-launch-worlds-first-wooden-satellite-to-combat-space-pollution

╒═════╣▒ 02/20/2024 @23:15 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *nearly-a-shart* department:🔗 «What is Utility-First CSS?: HeydonWorks»¹> So why is this utility-first approach so popular at the moment? Partly because the designs we’re charged with coding often are f**ked and we need equally f**ked tools to wrangle them. Partly it’s because the f**ked tools we’ve adopted to write f**ked JavaScript don’t play so well with CSS or, for that matter, HTML. Mostly, it’s because developer insecurity and neophilia are easily exploited: “Have you ever written CSS you weren’t quite happy with? Well here’s a radical, paradigm-shifting, quasi-proprietary solution! You’ll never embarrass yourself again!”It turns out, people in tech are particularly bad at distinguishing between paradigm shifts and paradigm sharts. That’s why we have nose-diving cryptocurrencies, dust-collecting monkey JPEG portfolios, and AI-generated children’s books teaching kids about pink, two-headed dinosaurs that never existed.This pattern sucks. I tried using Twitter Bootstrap for a while in various projects and the sheer weight of the CSS was just so obnoxious I ended up going back to writing CSS by hand.All my CSS from the early 2000s still works.

[1] https://heydonworks.com/article/what-is-utility-first-css/

╒═════╣▒ 02/20/2024 @22:49 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *martin-hench,-crimefighter* department:🔗 «Pluralistic: An excerpt from The Bezzle (17 Feb 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow»¹My copy of The Bezzle audiobook arrived and has been duly converted into a m4b and is presently copying onto my phone just in time for bed! I have an *excite*.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/

╒═════╣▒ 02/20/2024 @15:29 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *das-blinkenlights* department:🔗 «LED Matrix Earrings - mitxela.com»¹> I originally imagined the LED Industrial Piercing as a project specifically to make use of 0201 LEDs. In the end, they weren't even necessary. 0201 LEDs are just too small! Evidently, we needed to go deeper, so the purpose of this next project was to stick as many as possible of them onto the face of a stud earring.I am always amazed by how much Mitxela can pack into really small packages. 0201 LEDs are just mind-blowingly tiny, I typically use 1206, with the occasional 0603 which is about the smallest I'm comfortable hand soldering. I've started to experiment with hot plate reflow but find an iron and hot air pen faster in most situations.

[1] https://mitxela.com/projects/ledstud

╒═════╣▒ 02/20/2024 @14:12 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *gosh-that's-big* department:🔗 «The brightest object in the universe is a black hole that eats a star a day»¹> The accretion disk of J0529-4351 emits light that is 500 trillion times more intense than that of our sun. Such a staggering amount of energy can only be released if the black hole eats about a sun worth of material every day.It must also have a large mass already. Our data indicate J0529-4351 is 15 to 20 billion times the mass of our sun.There is no need to be afraid of such black holes. The light from this monster has taken more than 12 billion years to reach us, which means it would have stopped growing long ago.Seeing the past is so mind-bending. The scope and scale of things across space and time is so hard to imagine — yet we still can't stop wasting our lives fighting over petty differences.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2024-02-brightest-universe-black-hole-star.html

╒═════╣▒ 02/20/2024 @13:43 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *is-he-serious-though* department:🔗 «John Oliver offers to pay Clarence Thomas $1m a year if he resigns from supreme court | Clarence Thomas | The Guardian»¹> Oliver alluded to all of those circumstances as he extended his lucrative offer to Thomas, saying: “Lot on your plate right now, from stripping away women’s rights to hearing January 6 cases … and you deserve a break, you know, away from the meanness of Washington. So you can be surrounded by the regular folks whose lives you made demonstrably worse for decades.”The host suggested that Thomas could upgrade his “favorite mode of travel” by signing a contract requiring him to step down from the supreme court in exchange for $1m annually from Oliver along with the tour bus, which is outfitted with a king-sized bed, a fireplace and four televisions.I think by making the offer publicly he guarantees it won't be taken but it is nice to dream.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/19/john-oliver-clarence-thomas-resign-1-million-offer

╒═════╣▒ 02/20/2024 @13:14 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retoot of Lars Brinkhoff (@larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org)»¹ by jwz (@jwz@mastodon.social)«Feb 19, 2024 at 02:52»²> «#OnThisDay»³ 45 years ago, the MITAI Lab PDP-10 magic switch was removed.I will raise a glass later this evening to the memory of the magic switch.

[1] https://mastodon.sdf.org/@larsbrinkhoff/111957055672356100

[2] https://mastodon.sdf.org/@larsbrinkhoff/111957055672356100

[3] https://mastodon.sdf.org/tags/OnThisDay

Attachments:

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/742702768569090048

╒═════╣▒ 02/18/2024 @19:49 ▒╟──────────┘

«[Reblogged from wataksampingan by wilwheaton]»¹«Feb 18, 2024 at 17:49»²«wataksampingan»³:> In mine and many other east Asian cultures, the dragon traditionally symbolises things like power, wealth and strength (imperial symbol and all)I think we often forget that in the story of the Great Race, the dragon came in fifth because it’d stopped to give people rain. Then it’d stopped again to push a rabbit adrift on a log across the wide river so it reached the shore safely (that’s why the Rabbit year comes before the Dragon).Dragons aren’t meant to just be powerful - they are meant to do good with such power, and to help those in need.So in this lunar new year, I hope you gain more power, so that you might be able to help others. I pray you have abundant resources so you may give to yourself and those around you. I wish you courage, endurance, kindness and generosity, for yourself and your people.I hope you, and I, will be rain givers, life preservers, joy bringers.I hope we will be dragons.Extremely belated postscript that should have been here far earlier: Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo 🇵🇸🇸🇩🇨🇩May we all use our power to help others. 🐉

[2] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/742702768569090048

[3] https://wataksampingan.tumblr.com/post/741895935588810752/in-mine-and-many-other-east-asian-cultures-the

╒═════╣▒ 02/18/2024 @16:11 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *continuing-decay-of-the-hig* department:🔗 «In Loving Memory of Square Checkbox @ tonsky.me»¹> Apple is the first major operating system vendor who had abandoned a four-decades-long tradition. Their new visionOS — for the first time in the history of Apple — will have round checkboxes.Well God damnit. Another reason to not like the Apple Vision boondoggle. Confusion is not a feature.

[1] https://tonsky.me/blog/checkbox/

╒═════╣▒ 02/18/2024 @00:09 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *small-hands-energy* department:🔗 «Trump launches gold high top sneaker line a day after $350m court ruling | Donald Trump | The Guardian»¹> The shoes, shiny, gold high tops with an American flag detail on the back, are being sold as Never Surrender High-Tops for $399 on a new website that also sells Trump-branded Victory47 cologne and perfume for $99 a bottle.What a sad, sad little man... everything about him is not only shallow, and fake, but also just so... gauche.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/18/trump-launches-gold-high-top-sneaker-line-a-day-after-350m-court-ruling

╒═════╣▒ 02/16/2024 @09:43 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *super-well-thought-out-we-swear* department:🔗 «Premium Airline Beond to Offer Passengers Apple Vision Pro Headsets - MacRumors»¹> The premium leisure airline said it will provide the Apple devices to passengers on its flights to the Maldives, where the airline is based.So I guess if you are rich enough to fly this 'premium leisure airline' but not rich enough to fly private, do not wear glasses and likely don't worry too much about whose face goo you are strapping to your face, and want to watch advertisements for a place you are already going... this might be neat?

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/16/premium-leisure-airline-apple-vision-pro/

╒═════╣▒ 02/15/2024 @13:20 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *command-flavored-burp* department:🔗 «The time to unmaintainable is very low | daverupert.com»¹> It’s so easy nowadays to get up and going on a project. I can burp some npm commands into my terminal, burp some more to setup a deployment pipeline and blam! Website. The time to product demo is so low. You can get far on your own… very quickly… but then… you’re on your own. And it’s possible you’ve built something way past your ability to maintain.One of the things that has made *nix and the foundation of the Internet so enduring (and the critics of systemd so loud) is that the philosophy of do one thing, do it well, interoperate freely. It takes longer to build something that will last for a very long time than it does to copy paste from StackOverflow and commit directily to main.

[1] https://daverupert.com/2024/01/time-to-unmaintainable/

╒═════╣▒ 02/15/2024 @09:57 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *less-is-more* department:🔗 «Why Bloat Is Still Software’s Biggest Vulnerability - IEEE Spectrum»¹> The state of software security is dire. If we only look at the past year, if you ran industry-standard software like Ivanti, MOVEit, Outlook, Confluence, Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Citrix NetScaler ADC, and NetScaler Gateway, chances are you got hacked. Even companies with near-infinite resources (like Apple and Google) made trivial “worst practice” security mistakes that put their customers in danger. Yet we continue to rely on all these products.A thoughtful essay on why less is more should always have been — and should once again be a touchstone in software development. The unease I have with shipping 3rd party code is why I really never bothered learning any of the JavaScript frameworks and why I apparently missed a huge Python kerfuffle recently. Standard library / language builtins only unless there is a *really really really good reason* not to.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/lean-software-development

╒═════╣▒ 02/15/2024 @09:37 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retoot of Professor Charles Haas (@ProfCharlesHaas@mastodon.social)»¹«Feb 14, 2024 at 18:59»²> «#cdcsays»³ If you've been hit by cars twice and survived, it means you’ve acquired immunity to car fatality and can safely ignore “don’t walk” signals at crosswalks.

[1] https://mastodon.social/@ProfCharlesHaas/111932550905331843

[2] https://mastodon.social/@ProfCharlesHaas/111932550905331843

[3] https://mastodon.social/tags/cdcsays

╒═════╣▒ 02/15/2024 @09:28 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *you-can't-buy-happiness* department:🔗 «WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR dot COM»¹A good insight (unfort. as a screenshotted twitter thread) into how hard space actually is.

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/742388024028119040

╒═════╣▒ 02/14/2024 @18:57 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *lies* department:🔗 «Warning: Fraudulent App Impersonating LastPass Currently Available in Apple App Store - The LastPass Blog»¹> LastPass would like to alert our customers to a fraudulent app attempting to impersonate our LastPass app on the Apple App Store. The app in question is called “LassPass Password Manager” and lists Parvati Patel as the developer. The app attempts to copy our branding and user interface, though close examination of the posted screenshots reveal misspellings and other indicators the app is fraudulent.In case you believed Apple that their App Store is anything other than a monopoly inserting itself into the distribution channel and violently protecting the rent it has been collecting. This made it through their 'stringent review process.'

[1] https://blog.lastpass.com/2024/02/warning-fraudulent-app-impersonating-lastpass-currently-available-in-apple-app-store/

╒═════╣▒ 02/14/2024 @16:53 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «On secret romantic communications – Going Medieval»¹> It’s the commercial day of love, and you know what that means – it’s time to buy things to prove your emotions, or something. And look, we all know that Valentine’s Day is made up and has nothing to do with St Valentine. Did people sometimes pass love notes around St Valentine’s Day? Yes. I mean, at least from the fifteenth century onward. Did people buy chocolates and book restaurants? Not so much. Anyway, other people have written about the oldest Valentine and the commercialisation of a forgotten saint’s day and I don’t need to add to that. Instead, I thought I would talk a little about fancy medieval people and their various ways of communicating about love.> A word to the wise though, if I know that a couple of nuns were getting it on in the twelfth century, some day historians might be all up in your secret love letter business too. I’m just saying. We will read your letters, and we will judge them. Bring your A game.In case you needed to be disabused of the notion that people have always had rizz to spare.

[1] https://going-medieval.com/2024/02/14/on-secret-romantic-communications/

╒═════╣▒ 02/14/2024 @16:40 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *arts-and-crafts* department:🔗 «Suite 2412 – Things We Make»¹> I’ve spent the past month recreating my dad’s old law office (which was basically a second home, a babysitter, an afterschool program and a playground for my entire childhood) in miniature.The soundscape he created for this is amazing. I recognized all the layers and they do blend well into an authentic experience — which is not what you would expect out of a miniature!

[1] https://thingswemake.com/suite-2412/

╒═════╣▒ 02/14/2024 @14:49 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *orange-julius* department:🔗 «As President, I Will Champion Gen X Rights - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency»¹> Never forget, Gen X, we are the party of Kennedy. MTV’s Kennedy. Who I’m proud to announce as my VP. Kennedy’s first task: reclaim the word “rock star” from the hands of the corporation. Kennedy will also serve as cultural ambassador. We will play more post-punk in public spaces like airports and drugstores. We will pioneer a bold new way to microdose cocaine. Last but not least, we will order Max and other streaming services to broadcast softcore porn late at night once again!

[1] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/as-president-i-will-champion-gen-x-rights

╒═════╣▒ 02/14/2024 @10:40 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *just-keep-walking* department:🔗 «A Beautiful Exploration Of The Edges Of Red Dead Redemption's World - Aftermath»¹> a team of Australian Red Dead Redemption players who, when encountering the game's notorious "never-ending" borderlands, decided to document their explorations.Their travels later made their way to an exhibition at Melbourne's excellent ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image), but for those who never got a chance to see it--and that's most of you, Melbourne is a long way from North America and Europe!--it has now been adapted into an interactive video experience that we can all kick back with and enjoy.Eerie, and a good display of some of the more... interesting tricks various open world explorers use to push boundaries. I'd suggest the video, the website was a bit whacky.

[1] https://aftermath.site/red-dead-redemption-border-glitch-the-grannies-acmi

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @18:12 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *sound-stage-b* department:🔗 «Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise – cabel.com»¹> …I knew I was in for something special.It began to sink in that what was in front of me was literally one-of-a-kind — and contained recordings that, most likely, nobody has heard in 70 years.And then I told myself:“Cabel you really can’t screw this up.”I needed a way to get these archived. Folks, I wasn’t about to slap them on an Urban Outfitters USB Turntable.Really quite an amazing find and piece of history. I agree that I would find it very unlikely for something so magical happening today in the age of *Intellectual Property Lawyers*.

[1] https://cabel.com/2024/02/13/firehouse-five-and-the-cinderella-surprise/

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @17:19 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *do-not-reply* department:🔗 «Stickers to Manage Replies By | Flickr»¹A series of (somewhat) tongue in cheek warning stickers to apply to social media posts to warn the reader in absence of reasonable reply controls.Someone should open a PR for Mastodon to include these. 🤣

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/danhon/albums/72177720314761105/

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @14:30 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *outta-this-world* department:🔗 «Swatch of Wright Brothers Flyer 1 Attached to Mars Helicopter | NASA Image and Video Library»¹> NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter carries a small swatch of muslin material from the lower-left wing of the Wright Brothers Flyer 1.Via APOD — I didn't know they did this but it's a pretty neat nod to the history of aviation here on Earth.

[1] https://images.nasa.gov/details/PIA24291

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @13:06 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *outta-this-world* department:🔗 «Mars Helicopter - NASA Mars»¹> NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has completed 72 flights since first taking to the skies above the Red Planet on April 19, 2021, far exceeding its originally planned technology demonstration of up to five flights.NASA has some neat media to commemorate the first powered aircraft to fly in another planet's atmosphere.

[1] https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Helicopter-Highlights

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @11:01 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *art* department:🔗 «Reverse-engineering an analog Bendix air data computer: part 4, the Mach section»¹> Each value in the Bendix CADC is indicated by the rotational position of a shaft. Compact electric motors rotate the shafts, controlled by the pressure inputs. Gears, cams, and differentials perform computations, with the results indicated by more rotations. Devices called synchros converted the rotations to electrical outputs that are connected to other aircraft systems. The CADC is said to contain 46 synchros, 511 gears, 820 ball bearings, and a total of 2,781 major parts (but I haven't counted). These components are crammed into a compact cylinder: just 15 inches long and weighing 28.7 pounds.The people who designed these mechanical computers were far, far, smarter than I think we give them credit for. There must be an absolute library full of lost knowledge around the design, implementation, and manufactory of mechanical contrivances. Even something like this which must have been mass produced has all the hallmarks of having been touched by humans all over it.

[1] http://www.righto.com/2024/02/reverse-engineering-analog-bendix-air.html

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @10:14 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *the-telephone-is-ringing-so-i-ripped-it-off-the-wall* department:🔗 «[mailop] 2600 Magazine podcast about Gmail issues»¹> 2600 Magazine just did a podcast about the issue that they can't reach most of their subscribers because they're on Gmail and Google seems to not like hacking related content and either blocks it or pushes it to the spam folder.I actually heard about this via the 2600 RSS feed but this message just crossed my inbox. This year they even have a remote attendee ticket (which I bought). If you want to support / attend, «https://hope.net/tickets.html»² will get it done.More info: «https://www.2600.com/content/hope-ticket-sales-update»³

[1] https://www.mail-archive.com/mailop@mailop.org/msg21040.html

[2] https://hope.net/tickets.html

[3] https://www.2600.com/content/hope-ticket-sales-update

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @09:46 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *history-is-wild* department:🔗 «My fav saints: St Margaret of Antioch – Going Medieval»¹> Because Margaret did cool stuff like bust out of dragons she was very very popular in medieval Europe. In the medieval German lands, by the fourteenth century, she was named as one of the fourteen holy helpers who were thought to be particularly down to intercede with you in times of sickness.More specifically, St Margaret was included in this bunch not just because she was a super cool saint that everyone loved because – very specifically – by this time she was considered the patron saint of childbirth.I am sorry but I love this so much? Get it? She busted TF out a dragon safely like you want a baby to come out of the womb. I mean, however one does hope that the mother isn’t the dragon in this instance, but like, come on. It’s so cool.I feel like the medieval church had a lot more fun with things than we do...

[1] https://going-medieval.com/2024/01/30/my-fav-saints-st-margaret-of-antioch/

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @09:34 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *antisocial-media* department:🔗 «Rebecca Solnit: How to Comment on Social Media ‹ Literary Hub»¹> 13) Finally if the post is about something O.P. cares about, remember that you’ve cared about it longer, deeper, harder than they have, and that even someone’s care can be a basis for your triumph, along with condemning them for all those other things they evidently do not care about.> P.S. Anyone who quotes William Shakespeare supports everything that was happening in 1594.I have to admit, I giggled at a lot of these. The Internet remains... a place.

[1] https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-how-to-comment-on-social-media/

╒═════╣▒ 02/13/2024 @08:26 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *oh-my* department:🔗 «Woman Sues Sex Toy Retailer Adam and Eve, Claims It Shared Data About Her Dildos»¹> The plaintiff, [...] claims that Adam and Eve uses Google Analytics, which has an anonymization feature that obscures IP addresses of users, but that the site didn’t have that feature enabled. She’s suing PHE, the owner of Adam and Eve, as well as Google, for allegedly disclosing her “sexual preferences, sexual orientation, sexual practices, sexual fetishes, sex toy preferences, lubricant preferences, and search terms” without her consent.“By using the Google Analytics tool without anonymized IP feature, PHE is sharing with Google Plaintiff’s online activity, along with her IP addresses, even when consumers have not shared (nor have consented to share) such information,” the complaint claims.I suspect that they'll weasel out of this by pointing at their privacy policy or terms of service or noting that if she was using Chrome all that and more was already shared with Google but I sort of hope not. It seems like useful caselaw to have established that there is in fact a duty of care when building websites that deal with... sensative details.

[1] https://www.404media.co/woman-sues-sex-toy-retailer-adam-and-eve-claiming-it-shared-data-about-her-dildos/

╒═════╣▒ 02/11/2024 @18:11 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *proportional-response* department:🔗 «Waymo robotaxi set on fire in San Francisco's Chinatown»¹> Earlier in the day, numerous celebrations were held across Chinatown to kick off the Lunar New Year, drawing people across the Bay Area.“There were thousands and thousands of people,” Peskin said. “On the street, it was so crowded we couldn’t get through the crowd [to other events]. How that led to graffiti and stomping on an autonomous vehicle—and arson—I don’t know. But I’ve never seen Chinatown so crowded.”The video is just perfect. The fact that this thing felt that driving through a crowd of pedestrians was acceptable shows how completely not ready to be allowed anywhere near the streets these things are.

[1] https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/10/waymo-robotaxi-goes-up-in-flames-in-chinatown-after-crowd-attacks-vehicle/

╒═════╣▒ 02/10/2024 @12:56 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *fox-guarding-the-hen-house* department:🔗 «Boeing’s Self-Inspection Program Is Deeply Flawed»¹> Most worryingly, after two Boeing crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people, a congressional investigation concluded the accidents were due in part to the self-inspection program giving Boeing too much discretion when approving critical safety work.Deregulation has always been deeply flawed — rules written in the blood of the injured and killed cannot be enforced by those who spilt the blood. Also, as further proof that business is too short-sighted to be trusted to make good decisions for anything other than this quarter's profits, if we end up making the FAA Airworthiness Certificate worthless, we might as well stop making airplanes in this country. The fact that you could get a FAA certification and be good to go globally has enabled the modern aviation manufacturing ecosystem. Try to make Boeing or Textron (Bell, Beechcraft, Cessna) certify with several different countries and they'll likely fold. I've been deeply unimpressed with Pete Buttigieg — from his mishandling of the railroads to his ignoring potential rule-making possibilities for semi-autonomous vehicles, to his apparent ignoring of the FAA I think he's probably been one of the worse members of the Biden cabinet.Safety has to be part of the culture of an industry and it has to be enforced by a body that can punish someone who puts profits over people's lives, both the executives and the company itself.

[1] https://jacobin.com/2024/02/boeing-self-inspection-safety-oda/

╒═════╣▒ 02/10/2024 @11:18 ▒╟──────────┘

“It is our belief that the bill’s current language around parts pairing will undermine the security, safety, and privacy of Oregonians by forcing device manufacturers to allow the use of parts of unknown origin in consumer devices,” John Perry, Apple’s principal secure repair architect, told the legislature.It is asinine that *anyone* listens to this argument. I bought the thing. I can do whatever the hell I want to with it, including replace parts of it with other parts. The manufacturer has *zero* right to tell me otherwise. They are not liable for anything that breaks because I modified / repaired it, but they should have no say on *if* I modify or repair it.Remember kids, corporations are *not* your friends and the executives at monopolies are *scumbags*.«https://www.404media.co/apple-is-lobbying-against-right-to-repair-again/»¹

[1] https://www.404media.co/apple-is-lobbying-against-right-to-repair-again/

╒═════╣▒ 02/09/2024 @20:28 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *uncivil-liberties* department:🔗 «What is Proposition E and Why Should San Francisco Voters Oppose It? | Electronic Frontier Foundation»¹> Proposition E is a “kitchen sink" approach to public safety that capitalizes on residents’ fear of crime in an attempt to gut common-sense democratic oversight of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). In addition to removing certain police oversight authority from the Police Commission and expanding the circumstances under which police may conduct high-speed vehicle chases, Proposition E would also amend existing laws passed in 2019 to protect San Franciscans from invasive, untested, or biased police technologies.I can't think of a reason that the gang of armed thugs wandering the streets should endure *less* oversight from the government and citizenry.Oh, and why exactly does one need *more* reasons to drive at high speed in a densely populated, hilly, urban environment filled with pedestrian and unaccountable murderbots? Jealous that the murderbots get to do all the consequence-free running down of pedestrians?

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/what-proposition-e-and-why-should-san-francisco-voters-oppose-it

╒═════╣▒ 02/09/2024 @20:18 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *florida-man* department:🔗 «Florida Rep: This Bill Doesn’t Target All Bears, Just “the Ones That Are on Crack” – Lowering the Bar»¹> Florida House member Jason Shoaf told a committee meeting that his House Bill 87, which would make it almost impossible to punish someone for the unauthorized killing of a bear, isn’t motivated by a dislike of bears in general. “We love bears,” he said, though it wasn’t clear whether he meant his family, his staff, or the Florida Republican caucus in general. “Bears are cute and cuddly and … amazing creature[s].” No, it’s only some bears that need to die. Which bears? The crack bears.“We’re talking about the ones that are on crack, and they break your door down, and they’re standing in your living room growling and tearing your house apart,” Shoaf told the committee. “When you run into one of these crack bears, you should be able to shoot it, period.”I'm certain this isn't anywhere near the craziest piece of legislation ever considered — but for Florida it's downright pedestrian.

[1] https://www.loweringthebar.net/2024/02/florida-crack-bear-bill.html

╒═════╣▒ 02/09/2024 @14:46 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *its-about-time* department:🔗 «Standards for Software Liability: Focus on the Product for Liability, Focus on the Process for Safe Harbor | Lawfare»¹> [...] this paper sets the stage by briefly describing the problem to be solved. Section 2 canvasses the different fields of law (warranty, negligence, products liability, and certification) that could provide a starting point for what would have to be legislative action establishing a system of software liability. The conclusion is that all of these fields would face the same question: How buggy is too buggy?I think it's high time some good liability law is made for a number of industries. Accountability would be a good thing in the software world, shining some much needed sunlight down into what has become — frankly a cesspit.

[1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/standards-for-software-liability-focus-on-the-product-for-liability-focus-on-the-process-for-safe-harbor

╒═════╣▒ 02/08/2024 @22:21 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *dose-of-credulity* department:🔗 «Review: Chris Dixon's Read Write Own»¹> Anyway, fear not, says Dixon, because he has found the solution to the internet's Big Tech sickness: blockchains. "While plenty of people recognize their potential—including me—much of the establishment disregards them," complains a general partner at one of the most powerful venture capital firms in the web space. Now, if we would all just be so kind as to ignore the last fifteen years since blockchains' inception — during which innumerable companies have flailed around trying to find any possible use case beyond the manic speculation that has enriched a few at the expense of many — he's got an idea to sell us.Props to Molly for slogging through what I'm sure was a poorly disguised diatribe of "oh please buy my bullshit so I can become more richer." I'm sure his next book will be Blockchain was such a success that I've pivoted to AI now.

[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

╒═════╣▒ 02/08/2024 @22:14 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *just-the-good-bits-about-the-web* department:🔗 «“Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement - Anil Dash»¹> ... here's the thing: being able to say, "wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that's supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that's not owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.The core idea here might be why I believe so strongly in preserving podcasting as an open architecture that I'll never ever use an enclosed service like Spotify. I've even gone so far as to «write software»² to keep corporate platforms at bay a little longer. Every time a corporation inserts itself needlessly between producer and consumer to extract value the world dies a little.

[1] https://www.anildash.com//2024/02/06/wherever-you-get-podcasts/

[2] https://www.going-flying.com/code.html#youtube-podcast

╒═════╣▒ 02/03/2024 @19:13 ▒╟──────────┘

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-qN-zC0ylk

╒═════╣▒ 02/03/2024 @12:13 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 01/29/2024 @22:30

I do wonder how much Apple is paying the usual suspect media outlets to act like the Apple Vision Pro doesn't make you look like a loser who spent $3500 to scream to everyone that they are in fact an asshole?

╒═════╣▒ 02/01/2024 @13:20 ▒╟──────────┘

Honestly, the LockPickingLawyer is a *master class* on How To Make *Good* YouTube Content. No shorter or longer than it needs to be. Direct. Minimal cuts. It is interesting, gets the point across, and never *ever* wastes your time, whether it is a 20 minute video or a 2 minute video.«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-qN-zC0ylk»¹Over 1500 videos on his channel and every single one is worth watching.

╒═════╣▒ 02/01/2024 @11:10 ▒╟──────────┘

In case this helps anyone, gitolite 3.6.12-1 on Debian 12 (bookworm) has 'master' hard coded in the post-update hooks for the admin repo so if you rename your master branch it will *not* work anymore.

January

╒═════╣▒ 01/30/2024 @18:27 ▒╟──────────┘

Hmm...«https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/30/sinn-fein-united-ireland-within-touching-distance-stormont-deal»¹

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/30/sinn-fein-united-ireland-within-touching-distance-stormont-deal

Attachments:

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/29/amelia-earhart-plane-location

╒═════╣▒ 01/29/2024 @22:30 ▒╟──────��───┘

If the Vision Pro isn't a massive flop I'm afraid that the world is going to somehow figure out a way to become even *more* insufferable.

╒═════╣▒ 01/29/2024 @18:31 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *wild-blue-yonder* department:🔗 «Ex-US air force pilot claims he may have located lost Amelia Earhart plane | Amelia Earhart | The Guardian»¹> A modern-day ocean explorer has claimed to have possibly solved one of the great mysteries of modern aviation by publishing sonar images which he claims may show the wreckage of the the airplane flown by Amelia Earhart at the bottom of the Pacific.I admit it would be interesting if we could figure out what happened but it also feels a bit like a mystery better left a mystery so future generations can be fascinated by it. I think the world deserves to have a little magic in it.

╒═════╣▒ 01/29/2024 @17:40 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Japan’s Slim moon lander overcomes power crisis to start scientific operations | The moon | The Guardian»¹> Japan’s Moon lander has resumed operations, the country’s space agency said on Monday, indicating that power had been restored after it was left upside down during a slightly haphazard landing.I'm always glad when things work out for our little robot friends! Congratulations, Japan!

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/29/japan-slim-moon-sniper-lander-power-issues-landing-working-photos-surface

╒═════╣▒ 01/27/2024 @21:14 ▒╟──────────┘

Nothing like the influx of AI crawlers to make you re-order your Apache mod_rewrite rules and ACLs to return 403 and 404 errors as fast as possible.

╒═════╣▒ 01/27/2024 @20:35 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *boop-beep-boop* department:🔗 «Pong wars | Koen van Gilst»¹This is.. really quite mesmerizing...

[1] https://pong-wars.vercel.app/

╒═════╣▒ 01/27/2024 @20:23 ▒╟──────────┘

«Toot from Rusty Hodge [SomaFM] (@SomaFMrusty@defcon.social)»¹«Jan 27, 2024 at 15:40»²I love that random people are giving Brian Krebs infosec advice in this thread. «#mansplaining»³«https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/111828341000760370»⁴Mastodon somehow seems absolutely designed for reply-guys... The only upside is that it seems to be the only social media network left that I can read without having to *join*.

[1] https://defcon.social/@SomaFMrusty/111829846353146276

[2] https://defcon.social/@SomaFMrusty/111829846353146276

[3] https://defcon.social/tags/mansplaining

[4] https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/111828341000760370

╒═════╣▒ 01/27/2024 @14:18 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Platforms ～ take»¹> But, there's a problem now. And the problem is a very simple one. It's called: Windows. The Mac didn't progress much beyond the fifth floor, and over ten years, Microsoft copied it. And now they can offer developers, you know, you squint your eyes, one's a little better than the other in some areas, but you squint your eyes and they're basically both fifth floor. That's not good for us. It's even a little worse. Because they've been a little ahead of us in getting a multi-threaded, multi-tasking operating system underneath Windows. And that's arguably even better for the developer.So, here's what we have to do. What we have to do is bring out an operating system that's even more advanced than NT. And this is not easy. This is not easy to do because these operating systems are very complex. We forget many times that it's taken NT eight years to get where it is today. Eight years. So to do this, we can't do this overnight. Fortunately, we've got one that's been battle tested and is ready for the challenge. But on top of that, we're going to put something called OpenStep, and OpenStep lets you start developing your apps on the 20th floor. And the kinds of apps you can deliver are phenomenal.An interesting quote and kind of interesting to realize that MacOS X was what you got when a company was facing life-threatening competition and iOS, iPadOS and the modern macOS is what you get when that company becomes an invincible monopolist. We are unlikely to see anything innovative out of Apple until the situation changes and it feels fear again.The rest of the post is an interesting take on the importance of platforms as a foundation and enabler of ecosystems but that they need to keep in mind that a foundation is useless without things to use it.

[1] http://take.surf/2024/01/27/platforms

╒═════╣▒ 01/26/2024 @19:09 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *just-five-more-minutes* department:🔗 «Reminder: Lawyers Should Try Not to Sleep Through “Important Aspects of Trial” – Lowering the Bar»¹> [...] this does mean at least some amount of sleeping during trial is acceptable. Well, maybe “acceptable” isn’t the right word. But courts have unanimously held that merely showing your lawyer was unconscious part of the time isn’t enough to show “ineffective assistance.” How much is too much? The Fourth Circuit and at least three others apply the “substantial portion” standard. The Second Circuit has focused more on whether naps were taken during “critical times.”

[1] https://www.loweringthebar.net/2024/01/reminder-lawyers-should-try-not-to-sleep.html

╒═════╣▒ 01/26/2024 @16:54 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *tsunami-of-robots-screaming-at-other-robots* department:🔗 «We Need Your Email Address»¹> Requiring an email address to read our articles has, for the moment, stopped our content from being scraped and repurposed by AI. It will also, we hope, serve as a preventative measure against the impacts of the internet being flooded by all of this AI-generated drek. We are worried that a flood of low-quality, AI-generated bullshit—articles written by robots to appease a robotic search ranking algorithm—is going to drown out what we do, and make it harder to organically find our work.I hate this. I hate that it is coming to this. I read most of the Internet via RSS and the fact that I will be unlikely to do so in the near future because sites will have to retreat behind paywalls is infuriating. It's also disheartening because in most cases I'm going to do the math of *do I care enough about reading this to give them an e-mail address*and come up with *no*.

[1] https://www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-address/

╒═════╣▒ 01/26/2024 @11:02 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *those-blobs-are-the-actual-content* department:🔗 «Nuberodesign > Blog > In Praise of Buttons – Part One»¹> In graphical user interfaces, we have seen an increase in buttons recently that consist merely of text or icons, without a clear, visible button shape being present. This insipid, uninspired mediocrity, exemplified by Google’s “Material Design” or – even worse – IBM’s “Carbon Design System”, was popularised by Apple’s iOS 7 and its equally miserable “Flat Design” aesthetics. This lazy minimalism is often considered modern and streamlined, but we must ask: Is it also user-friendly?The answer is clearly: No, it is not!I am also very sick and tired of the continual sanding off of the edges of all the UI elements. The reduction of contrast might 'flow' better or be less 'blobby' or whatever meaningless UI/UX speak we are using today *but* it is significantly less *usable*. Doubly so when you aren't in possession of perfect 20 year old eyes.

[1] https://www.nubero.ch/blog/009/

╒═════╣▒ 01/25/2024 @19:12 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «LEATHER TERROR | Carpenter Brut»¹

[1] https://carpenterbrut.bandcamp.com/album/leather-terror

╒═════╣▒ 01/25/2024 @13:17 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *malicious-compliance* department:🔗 «iOS 17.4 Introduces Alternative App Marketplaces With No Commission in EU - MacRumors»¹

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/25/ios-17-4-alternative-app-marketplaces-eu/

╒═════╣▒ 01/24/2024 @21:20 ▒╟──────────┘

🔗 «Driven to Madness | DANCE WITH THE DEAD»¹

[1] https://dancewiththedead.bandcamp.com/album/driven-to-madness

╒═════╣▒ 01/24/2024 @21:02 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *sometimes-you-lie,-sometimes-you-juggle* department:🔗 «Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out | Cracked.com»¹

Maybe the word that upsets me most is the word “we” — if you use the word “we,” and you’re not talking about eight billion people, fuck you.> Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, “It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,” and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate.> Well, let’s go to empirical evidence: I’m going to vote Democrat, maybe that’s all you need to know. I will not vote for a third-party candidate.

I love Penn Jillette. He seems like such a thoughtful, humble guy who truly enjoys what he does. I respect the *hell* out of anyone willing to stand up and say "I was wrong", too.

[1] https://www.cracked.com/article_40871_penn-jillette-wants-to-talk-it-all-out.html

╒═════╣▒ 01/24/2024 @14:17 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *corporate-welfare* department:🔗 «FTC bans TurboTax from advertising ‘free’ services, calls it deceptive | CNN Business»¹

“TurboTax’s predatory and deceptive marketing cheated millions of low-income Americans who were trying to fulfill their legal duties to file their taxes,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a May 4, 2023, press release. “Today we are righting that wrong and putting money back into the pockets of hardworking taxpayers who should have never paid to file their taxes.”If you ever wonder why the US tax code is such an eldrich horror, a big part of it is because parasites like Intuit want to *sell* you 'services' to do a thing you are *legally obligated to do*, rather than allowing the government that you already pay for to do it for you.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/22/business/ftc-turbotax-free-services/index.html

╒═════╣▒ 01/24/2024 @11:27 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *do-what-we-tell-you-or-else* department:🔗 «Pluralistic: How lock-in hurts design (24 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow»¹

Apps – and other technologies that are locked down so their users can be locked in – are the height of technological arrogance. They embody a belief that users are to be told, not heard. If a user wants to do something that the designer didn't anticipate, that's the user's faultA *lot* of the software I write these days are attempts to exert control over my Internet experience because my particular desires are considered *wrong* by website and app designers.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/

╒═════╣▒ 01/23/2024 @22:13 ▒╟──────────┘

I'm really close to unsubscribing from the macrumors.com RSS feed until after the Vision Pro launches (and hopefully fails spectacularly)... I really don't need 15 articles a day on a product that I will *never* buy.

╒═════╣▒ 01/23/2024 @19:20 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *leave-the-old-world-behind* department:🔗 «Deplatforming Myself: A Tech Manifesto – Haste Makes Waste»¹

To the extent that any Platform is being steered at all, they are steered by executives and venture capitalists. Now personally, I believe that empathy is inherently incompatible with any position that hoards that much wealth. If you had even a shred of it, you wouldn’t be a CEO in the first place, for the same reason you wouldn’t be a cop.I've been pretty happy not having social media, but I am lucky enough to not be tied to the Internet as the means to make a living, I just shout into the void periodically and shake my fist ineffectually at the kids playing on my lawn.

[1] https://evhaste.com/blog/deplatforming-myself

╒═════╣▒ 01/23/2024 @16:57 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *come-fly-away-with-me* department:🔗 «Pluralistic: Boeing, Spirit and Jetblue, a monopoly horror-story (21 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow»¹

The 737 disaster(s) epitomize the problems of inbred, merger-obsessed capitalism. As Luke Goldstein wrote, the rampant defects in Boeing's products can be traced to the decision to approve Boeing's 1997 merger with McDonnell-Douglas, a company helmed by Jack Welch proteges, notorious for cost-cutting at the expense of reliability[.]Greed destroys everything it touches. The nearly century long history of methodical safety culture in aviation is being speed run to ruin to boost shareholder value.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/22/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/

╒═════╣▒ 01/22/2024 @20:03 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *share-and-share-alike* department:🔗 «Sharing links | hidde.blog»¹

The amount of content on the web is so large, that it's tricky to find the stuff worth reading. One of my strategies is to follow people I trust and read what they share.I actually found this via «Good links: 21 January 2024»² — I ended up building a bookmarklet that publishes to Thoughts instead of a dedicated link blog. I will probably blog about it at some point.

[1] https://hidde.blog/sharing-links/

[2] https://localghost.dev/blog/good-links-2024-01-21/

╒═════╣▒ 01/22/2024 @18:11 ▒╟──────────┘

«Toot from Jason Scott (@textfiles@digipres.club)»¹«Jan 22, 2024 at 13:16»²> One of the hackernews commenters in the (massive) thread about TEXTFILES.COM asks why I simply don't host the whole site as README files in Github. These people work on things you depend on....> «https://infosec.exchange/@drsbaitso»³*Dr. Sbaitso (*@drsbaitso@infosec.exchange)@textfiles Everything is simple when you don't understand it.Those who do not learn history are *doomed* to repeat it. In computing *yesterday* is history and the average denizen of hackernews can't remember yesterday.

[1] https://digipres.club/@textfiles/111800968100345313

[2] https://digipres.club/@textfiles/111800968100345313

[3] https://infosec.exchange/@drsbaitso

╒═════╣▒ 01/22/2024 @17:06 ▒╟──────��───┘

From the *neither-artificial nor intelligent* department:🔗 «Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing? - Aftermath»¹> Beyond the marginal utility of use cases like transcription and realtime voice cloning for goofy bullshit jokes, the majority of this stuff has made my experience on the internet (where I hang out a lot) measurably more unpleasant. This latest push for AI is making the world lazier, less curious, harder to navigate, ripping people off, and creating a topic somehow more tiring than that year these people wouldn’t shut the fuck up about NFTs and then never brought it up ever again when the market imploded.I really do hope the whole AI thing fizzles out quickly...

[1] https://aftermath.site/why-would-i-buy-this-useless-evil-thing

╒═════╣▒ 01/22/2024 @15:58 ▒╟──────────┘

Thinking about the kind of stuff that I share and trying to decide if I want to create an entirely separate 'Links' section on the website of if I'm really just looking for a different posting interface to Thoughts...It almost feels like the latter, frankly.

╒═════╣▒ 01/21/2024 @21:22 ▒╟──────────┘

None*> Slip the switch by flipping it while the trolley's front wheels have passed through, but before the back wheels do. This will cause a controlled derailment bringing the trolley to a safe halt.*None*«https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244»¹Lower down the thread is some gold too..> This actually comes from railroad workers talking in comments on a fb group. I just made the meme for them.They were like "those trolley memes are stupid, we have to do this in our railyard like once a week when some intermodal runs loose."

[1] https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244

╒═════╣▒ 01/19/2024 @21:50 ▒╟──────────┘

I've been writing software for almost three decades and other than trying to neuter JavaScript with Safari's Web Inspector, the thing that causes me to reach for an honest-to-god debugger the most is building animations for arrays of LEDs.

Attachments:

[1] https://inessential.com/2024/01/17/corporations_are_not_to_be_loved

╒═════╣▒ 01/19/2024 @14:30 ▒╟──────────┘

Worth remembering... «Corporations Are Not To Be Loved»¹.

╒═════╣▒ 01/15/2024 @18:38 ▒╟──────────┘

«Goddamnit, we need the Digital Markets Act here»¹... I wonder if I can buy a European iPhone to get the sideload option.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/15/app-store-to-be-split-in-two/

╒═════╣▒ 01/14/2024 @19:05 ▒╟──────────┘

Same, fam.Same.From «tumblr:amtrak-official»¹.

[1] https://amtrak-official.tumblr.com/post/738686599289815040/this-is-so-me-i-really-really-want-good-cities

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 01/14/2024 @16:16 ▒╟──────────┘

I hate everything about this including how plausible it is. It is long past time the DOJ swings the anti-trust bat at Google and yeets them into a chipper/shredder.

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 01/13/2024 @22:11 ▒╟──────────┘

There is something relaxing about writing a pile of C and seeing a few hundred LEDs blink...

Attachments:

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/739268333983105024

╒═════╣▒ 01/11/2024 @23:21 ▒╟──────────┘

I get that the rolling band effect in «these»¹ are being used for aesthetic purposes but it makes me wonder if the kids realize that the rolling bands you see in movies of CRT screens are an artifact of the camera being out of sync with the electron beam in the screen and that you didn't see it with your actual human meat eyes when looking at CRTs.(It is not lost on me that you may be reading this Thought with an artificial CRT effect overlayed on it, but I've seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion so I'm happy taking the artistic license).

Attachments:

[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/my-dinosaur-just-threw-up-in-its-mouth-a-little/

╒═════╣▒ 01/05/2024 @18:56 ▒╟──────────┘

We *desperately* need broad privacy protection legislation and *aggressive* anti-trust enforcement across all sectors of the economy. Not just in the US but *globally*. This is the kind of absolute batshit craziness that happens when companies become so unfettered by the petty cares of things like "the market" and just wanders off into the swamp of gas-you-can-huff-to-get-really-fucking-high.«https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/my-dinosaur-just-threw-up-in-its-mouth-a-little/»¹

2023

December

╒═════╣▒ 12/31/2023 @17:18 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retoot of Max Leibman (@maxleibman@mastodon.social)»¹ by jwz (@jwz@mastodon.social)«Dec 31, 2023 at 11:48»²My sincere wish for the new year is that everyone who makes how-to videos instead of writing concise articles gets demonetized.I feel very much the same. I can't think of a single one of these videos that after watching I have said "*oh boy am I glad this was a video*".

[1] https://mastodon.social/@maxleibman/111676043168464093

[2] https://mastodon.social/@maxleibman/111676043168464093

╒═════╣▒ 12/30/2023 @22:56 ▒╟──────────┘

Please, read the important work Violet has been doing and if you are able support her. The first bit is really important though, it truly could save your life.«https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-95546410»¹

[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-95546410

╒═════╣▒ 12/30/2023 @21:21 ▒╟──────────┘

I feel like if you feel the need to «deny something so ridiculous and inconsequential»¹ as how you got a cameo in a movie a few decades ago while you are facing criminal indictments for a number of felonies... then whatever you're denying is *absolutely* the truth.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67834817?at_medium=RSS

╒═════╣▒ 12/30/2023 @10:06 ▒╟──────────┘

I hate the UX pattern of dismissing a modal popup with "Maybe Later." Folks, this is like when your friend says "maybe" when you invite them over. The real answer is "no, and please never ask me again."

╒═════╣▒ 12/29/2023 @19:25 ▒╟──────────┘

If I were an InfoSec "*professional*", I might perhaps refrain from buying anything from Palo Alto Networks as they appear to be... a bit thick.```

None



### ╒═════╣▒ 12/29/2023 @10:11 ▒╟──────────┘
Saw «this floating around Tumblr»¹  It's good advice *None*SSDs are not «https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/potential-ssd-data-loss-after-extended-shutdown»².  You will likely find that your backup is unreadable if you ever need it.  In practice this could take years but assume their shelf life is measured in *months*.Also, *TEST* your backups.  An untested backup is an unusable backup.  It's the opposite of Schrödinger's backup.  If you don't know, it's dead.

=> https://tzikeh.tumblr.com/post/734611705261359104/hey [1] https://tzikeh.tumblr.com/post/734611705261359104/hey
=> https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/potential-ssd-data-loss-after-extended-shutdown [2] https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/potential-ssd-data-loss-after-extended-shutdown



### ╒═════╣▒ 12/25/2023 @20:47 ▒╟──────────┘
The «DNA Lounge Yule Log »¹is something extra special right now...

=> https://www.dnalounge.com/webcast/ [1] https://www.dnalounge.com/webcast/


    Attachments:
=> Screenshot%202023-12-25%20at%2020.46.42.png	image/png


### ╒═════╣▒ 12/25/2023 @15:02 ▒╟──────────┘
«This is really cool»¹.  For all you kids out there, this is how the Internet used to be — and frankly could be again.  Individuals creating all sorts of neat things just because they want to see it in the world, not some corporate overlord vomiting crap at you to trick you into 'engaging' so they can sell your time.

=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYcHOEjGzPA [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYcHOEjGzPA



### ╒═════╣▒ 12/23/2023 @12:02 ▒╟──────────┘
Sometimes people say I am difficult to shop for.

    Attachments:
=> IMG_6185.jpeg	image/jpeg


### ╒═════╣▒ 12/22/2023 @09:00 ▒╟──────────┘
│ In-Reply-To: 12/21/2023 @21:05
I ended up having to re-install macOS.  So bizarre.  Ethernet worked, Wi-Fi would connect and I could access things on the connected network as long as I didn't need to do DNS.  I could use dig(1) but the system resolver library wouldn't work.  Trying to pass any traffic past the gateway resulted in "No route to host" but route(8) had a valid default route with a valid arp entry.  Same for IPV6, route(8) and ndp(8) all looked good, but the damn computer wouldn't route.🤷‍♂️


### ╒═════╣▒ 12/21/2023 @21:05 ▒╟──────────┘
Of *course* there is an unanswered question with my *exact* problem.  Thanks, lazyweb.«https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255287728»¹

=> https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255287728 [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255287728



### ╒═════╣▒ 12/20/2023 @18:34 ▒╟──────────┘
Who decided to not include a download size / rate display in the macOS installer?   This estimate must be wrong, I am on gigabit fiber not DSL.

    Attachments:
=> IMG_6170.jpeg	image/jpeg


### ╒═════╣▒ 12/20/2023 @12:24 ▒╟──────────┘
> Don't listen. Don't listen to the talking heads, their only interest is rage, fear, and anger because that's what sells advertising copy. That's what makes them rich. Steady on, Folks. Be hopeful instead. Show up and you'll win.*You want a better nation, be a better citizen. *[ emphasis mine ]«https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/12/fear-hope-and-polling.html»¹

=> https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/12/fear-hope-and-polling.html [1] https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/12/fear-hope-and-polling.html



### ╒═════╣▒ 12/20/2023 @12:18 ▒╟──────────┘
I love that DHL gives you a 3 hour delivery window estimate and UPS gives you a **checks notes** *15 hour* delivery window estimate.  This is especially lovely in the case of *signature required* packages.


### ╒═════╣▒ 12/20/2023 @08:50 ▒╟──────────┘
«These are cute»¹ but man when I see people replacing the escape key with gnarly shaped key caps all I can think is "there is someone who uses a *bad* editor".

=> https://duckeys.com [1] https://duckeys.com



### ╒═════╣▒ 12/19/2023 @23:26 ▒╟──────────┘
From the *pass-the-popcorn* department:> [...] think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.> So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? Personally, I think we're looking at the Enron/smoking hole/it all ends in tears outcome here.> The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.ChatGPT is well funded and broadly adopted by just about any corporation that you care to look at for one reason and one reason only – the promise that they will be able to fire all of their customer service / call center employees.  Then their internal help desk employees.  And then their training development people.«https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop»¹

=> https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop [1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop



### ╒═════╣▒ 12/19/2023 @21:16 ▒╟──────────┘
If the space billionares meme isn't enough to get you to read Violet Blue's «Cybersecurity Roundup»¹, I don't know if we can be friends.

=> https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-19-94924039 [1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-19-94924039


    Attachments:
=> Screenshot%202023-12-19%20at%2012.09.11%20AM.png	image/png


### ╒═════╣▒ 12/19/2023 @17:41 ▒╟──────────┘
It's nice to see some things just work.```
None

╒═════╣▒ 12/19/2023 @13:10 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *where-can-I-get-one* department:«Steampunk DDC OLED»¹The video of the build is well worth watching. Dat knurling tho.«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBQi_peHI4»²

[1] https://mitxela.com/projects/steampunk-oled

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfBQi_peHI4

╒═════╣▒ 12/19/2023 @12:25 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retoot of Derek Powazek 🐐 (@fraying@xoxo.zone)»¹ by jwz (@jwz@mastodon.social)«Dec 18, 2023 at 23:16»²Twitter's original sin was putting the posting form above the rest of the conversation. When you make people to scroll past your words before getting to the posting form, like on a blog, there's at least a chance they'll read some of them before talking back.Unfortunately, most social media copied Twitter, not blogs, so they're about talking first and listening later (if at all).Interestingly this seems to be an extensions of why I chose 'comments' for my blog to be sent via e-mail instead of posting by a web form. The harder you make replying the higher quality the replies become. In the 5+ year history of this incarnation of the blog I have never said '*I wish this comment didn't exist*.'

[1] https://xoxo.zone/@fraying/111605146675830148

[2] https://xoxo.zone/@fraying/111605146675830148

╒═════╣▒ 12/16/2023 @22:15 ▒╟──────────┘

I have been against cloud hosted control planes for a while, and have been recommending people get off Ubiquiti for a similar amount of time so nice of them to remind everyone why they are a bad idea...«https://www.404media.co/ubiquiti-users-somehow-being-fed-access-to-strangers-security-cameras/»¹

[1] https://www.404media.co/ubiquiti-users-somehow-being-fed-access-to-strangers-security-cameras/

╒═════╣▒ 12/14/2023 @19:13 ▒╟──────────┘

What the actual fuck is this shit? Jesus christ I am increasingly tempted to smash my phone and bury the pieces.

Attachments:

[1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=170205367232026&w=2

╒═════╣▒ 12/13/2023 @09:24 ▒╟──────────┘

I'm excited for the «upcoming changes to syscalls»¹ in OpenBSD but the real **chefs kiss** is the «snark from Theo»².> "go" required two fixes -- 1) a framework issue withold library versions, and 2) like perl, a fake syscall(2) wrapper to

handle ioctl(2) and sysctl(2) because "syscall(SYS_ioctl" occurs all over

the place in the "go" ecosystem because the "go developers" are plan9-loving

unix-hating folk who tried to build an ecosystem without allowing "ioctl".

[2] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=170239504300386&w=2

╒═════╣▒ 12/10/2023 @21:58 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 12/10/2023 @20:39

Of course decino is doing an Ultra Violence no saves 100% run ON RELEASE DAY. You *absolute* mad lad.«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bborOfIEdMA»¹

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bborOfIEdMA

╒═════╣▒ 12/10/2023 @21:56 ▒╟──────────┘

I've only briefly played Elite, and only after playing Elite Dangerous. This is a good look at its unlikely complexity and impact.«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4YLMLar5I»¹

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4YLMLar5I

╒═════╣▒ 12/10/2023 @20:39 ▒╟──────────┘

"Thanks for playing our games, everybody."It's funny to think that a video game changed the world and the creators of it somehow manage to be the kind of people you could see yourself having a beer with. It's been a privilege to play your games, John.«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvAkaJsvAXs»¹

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvAkaJsvAXs

╒═════╣▒ 12/07/2023 @22:05 ▒╟──────────┘

Totes a feel.

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 12/07/2023 @17:15 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 02/08/2022 @10:31

Let this serve as your sorta annual reminder to clean the decaying human out of your computer prepherals.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/spying-through-push-notifications.html

╒═════╣▒ 12/07/2023 @15:49 ▒╟──────────┘

Stuff «like this»¹ is why I use as few 'cloud' services as possible. Any time you do *anything* with *someone else's computer* it can be stolen, intercepted, logged, replayed, copied, relayed, and more without your knowledge or consent. Encryption can't protect you if that encryption is managed by the same people whose computers you are using.

╒═════╣▒ 12/07/2023 @13:26 ▒╟──────────┘

«Toot from Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (@foone@digipres.club)»¹«Dec 6, 2023 at 17:34»²I hate hacker news so much that I'm suspicious of hackaday. They haven't actually done anything to piss me off, it's just that they're on thin ice with that nameFucking *same*, fam.

[1] https://digipres.club/@foone/111535853753090176

[2] https://digipres.club/@foone/111535853753090176

╒═════╣▒ 12/05/2023 @10:34 ▒╟──────────┘

Oh this is awesome!I hope Gary would be proud.«https://laughingsquid.com/dungeons-and-dragons-usps-forever-stamps/»¹

[1] https://laughingsquid.com/dungeons-and-dragons-usps-forever-stamps/

╒═════╣▒ 12/05/2023 @10:13 ▒╟──────────┘

I do *not* want this. I will *not* use this. Please stop.«https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/digital-car-keys-are-coming.html»¹

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/digital-car-keys-are-coming.html

╒═════╣▒ 12/03/2023 @13:56 ▒╟──────────┘

Incentives matter. Money talks and bullshit walks. Enshittification isn't due to the moral failings of individuals in tech companies. It's possible to have a good internet run by flawed people. But to get that new, good internet, we have to support technologists of good will and character by terrorizing their venal and cynical colleagues by hitting them where they live: in their paychecks.«https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/»¹I still remember losing an argument over injecting ads in NXDOMAIN DNS responses. It still makes me mad, though the one saving grace is that the company didn't make much money from it and in the end the particular VP whose idea it was 'moved on'.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/

╒═════╣▒ 12/02/2023 @16:07 ▒╟──────────┘

I'm so glad Kate Welch is involved in this season of The Adventure Zone!

╒═════╣▒ 12/02/2023 @14:47 ▒╟──────────┘

The various fundraising beds they put on Wikipedia genuinely makes me wish the foundation goes bankrupt and disappears, that is how onerous they are. If you worked on them I hope you are ashamed of yourselves.Also, begging when you have a «quarter of a billion dollars in NET assets»¹... is disgusting.

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf

╒═════╣▒ 12/01/2023 @11:01 ▒╟──────────┘

Altman has had a career that any Silicon Valley exec would absolutely kill for, and he hasn’t accomplished a single worthwhile thing. He founded one failed company, ran a factory that bought predatory amounts of equity for virtually nothing from every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do, then founded a company to build a product that *he himself believes could eventually destroy humanity*.«https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism»¹via«https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/»²

[1] https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

[2] https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/

November

╒═════╣▒ 11/29/2023 @22:51 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 10/10/2023 @20:00

I've been watching «John Romero»¹ build the maps for «Sigil 2»² and keeping up with «decino's»³ current play-throughs and it strikes me how impressive it is to have a game that is coming up on 30 years old still have such an active community that almost certainly now spans 3 generations.And people are still pushing the envelope with what id made almost 3 decades ago.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@Romero666/videos

[2] https://romero.com/shop/p/sigil2download1

[3] https://www.youtube.com/@decino/videos

Attachments:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5roMzboK_vA

╒═════╣▒ 11/26/2023 @22:41 ▒╟──────────┘

The «Shadowrun game»¹ on «ClubPA»² is so fucking good. I really wish they'd do a series of it. I think I'd watch just about anything with Kate Welch in it.

[2] https://www.patreon.com/ClubPA

╒═════╣▒ 11/26/2023 @21:25 ▒╟──────────┘

As someone who routinely does his best to repair his own equipment and to get as much longevity as possible from his investment I thourghly support a strong set of FTC regulations enshrining the right to repair. Not only does it make sense from a consumer economic standpoint (as I type this on a laptop from 2015 that I've replaced the keyboard in twice and the battery 3 times), but from an environmental and carbon footprint standpoint. Every device repaired represents CO₂ not emitted in the manufacture, packaging and shipping of the new product as well as from the disassembly and disposal of the old one.«https://www.404media.co/consumer-rights-groups-petition-government-to-create-formal-rules-protecting-right-to-repair/»¹

[1] https://www.404media.co/consumer-rights-groups-petition-government-to-create-formal-rules-protecting-right-to-repair/

╒═════╣▒ 11/24/2023 @18:15 ▒╟──────────┘

While this is nice, the problem of the entire web being funded by Google's monopoly is manifest by the fact that this was not made the default behavior of 'Copy Link...' and instead was made a separate, confusing menu option that almost no one will use.I guarantee if you ask people, most will tell you they don't want to copy tracking parameters, assuming they even understand the question.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.404media.co/bing-ai-generated-disney-logos/

╒═════╣▒ 11/21/2023 @22:23 ▒╟──────────┘

Oh please, oh please, *oh please*, let this wake the beast that is the unspeakable legion of copyright attorneys at Disney and let them descend upon Microsoft and other AI companies like waves of unfeeling Storm Troopers.«https://www.404media.co/bing-ai-generated-disney-logos/»¹

╒═════╣▒ 11/20/2023 @19:54 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 11/18/2023 @20:41

The historic contract is already affecting the industry as a whole. Recently, Toyota committed to giving workers a 9 percent raise. Honda will increase wages by 11 percent and Hyundai by 14 percent next year. Sawyer tells *In These Times*, “The CEOs are not used to Shawn Fain. They were accustomed to our former leadership, taking bribes. They weren’t accustomed to anyone fighting for us.”So glad to see the UAW be successful. Looking forward to April 30, 2028.«https://jacobin.com/2023/11/uaw-members-big-three-autoworkers-strike/»¹

[1] https://jacobin.com/2023/11/uaw-members-big-three-autoworkers-strike/

╒═════╣▒ 11/20/2023 @09:08 ▒╟──────────┘

Your periodic reminder that your freedom to speak your hot take is just as important as my freedom to tell you that your hot take is shit.«https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-shame-and»¹

[1] https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-shame-and

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 11/19/2023 @22:04 ▒╟──────────┘

I've been playing / watching videos of Doom lately and honestly, I find the pain elementals kinda cute.

Attachments:

[1] https://jacobin.com/2023/11/tax-the-rich-people-wealth-inequality-luxury-services/

╒═════╣▒ 11/18/2023 @21:31 ▒╟──────────┘

Looking at what the rich spend their money on shows us why “Tax the Rich” is always such a popular political priority: because it would benefit the majority, and everyone knows that people who can outsource the ironing of their shirts will survive a slight hit in lifestyle.Every billionaire is a crime against humanity.«https://jacobin.com/2023/11/tax-the-rich-people-wealth-inequality-luxury-services/»¹

╒═════╣▒ 11/18/2023 @20:41 ▒╟──────────┘

“If we are going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so that it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it’s important that we not only strike, but that we strike together,”✊❤️✊«https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/»¹

[1] https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

╒═════╣▒ 11/18/2023 @17:15 ▒╟──────────┘

Apple internally believes its iOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, and tvOS 18 updates next year «will be "ambitious and compelling,"»¹ thanks to major new software features and designs in the works. [...]> While little is known about the specifics, many of the changes are believed to involve generative AI [...]I can't stress enough how a) I don't believe Apple executives actually know what the words "*ambitious*" and "*compelling*" mean and b) uninterested I am in having generative AI in my life at all.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/13/apple-says-ios-18-ambitious-compelling/

╒═════╣▒ 11/17/2023 @23:12 ▒╟──────────┘

Internal emails obtained by 404 Media from San Francisco mayor London Breed’s office show that one of the main reasons for this is that NHTSA does not have a mechanism for people to easily report unsafe driving by autonomous vehicles. The news highlights the fact that America’s vehicle safety institutions have not thought through all of the potential ramifications of allowing autonomous vehicles on American roads.Maybe, and I could be completely wrong here, but if you are going to permit these murderbots to operate in your city / state you should, you know, provide some *oversight* to protect your citizenry? Whacky, I know. Almost like something a government should do.«https://www.404media.co/feds-have-no-idea-how-many-times-cruise-driverless-cars-hit-pedestrians/»¹

[1] https://www.404media.co/feds-have-no-idea-how-many-times-cruise-driverless-cars-hit-pedestrians/

╒═════╣▒ 11/17/2023 @17:33 ▒╟──────────┘

Carl Sagan was entirely too smart, too prescient, and too wonderful for this world. I feel like the last 20 years of computing and the Internet is illustrative of this. We have been bamboozled.

Attachments:

[1] https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-stones-left-unturned

╒═════╣▒ 11/17/2023 @16:16 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 11/02/2023 @20:42

As a follow-on to SBF's conviction Molly White has a «good piece»¹ on all of the... abnormalities that didn't get covered in SBF's (first) trial. It's wild just how much fraud was^W is going on in the crypto space. At this point it's pretty much just "how much fraud can we get away with by saying it's not fraud because computers".

╒═════╣▒ 11/16/2023 @10:02 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 11/12/2023 @23:28

I turned on Lockdown Mode on my iPad and I have not noticed anything changed other than a few notifications from a couple apps about potentially missing web functionality.

╒═════╣▒ 11/15/2023 @19:57 ▒╟──────────┘

Just to level set, I hate AR. I think AR is stupid for 99.9% of use-cases. I think Apple's upcoming AR stuff is a Sideshow Bob esque field of rakes that a bunch of out of touch billionaires think is a great idea.This shit basically proves it. Why in the name of all that is holy would you willingly subject yourself to «something like this»¹?

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/14/telegram-demos-visionos-app/

Attachments:

[1] https://mastodon.social/@jwz/111400522875719363

╒═════╣▒ 11/12/2023 @23:28 ▒╟──────────┘

«Toot from jwz»¹:> A little while ago I turned on Lockdown Mode on my iPad and so far have noticed no consequences. This supports my hypothesis that the features that Lockdown Mode disables are features that shouldn't have been implemented in the first place.I have been interested in finding out what the overlap of lockdown mode and my customized settings is.

╒═════╣▒ 11/10/2023 @19:46 ▒╟──────────┘

Every single time I come across a Hacker News comment I am reminded that unironically reading and commenting on Hacker News should qualify you for an all expenses paid yeeting into the Sun.Also, I miss webshit weekly.

╒═════╣▒ 11/10/2023 @09:33 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retoot of Zero Trick Pony (@zerotrickpony@messydesk.social)»¹«Nov 8, 2023 at 21:21»²> Unpopular opinion: advertisers should be delighted with ad blockers. Ad-blockers stop impressions which were unwanted anyway. Every known-unwanted impression that an advertiser pays for is basically fraud. That user didn't want to see it, isn't going to look at it, and is extremely unlikely to convert / act / feel positively about the advertiser if they were forced to see it. Stopping ad blockers is not about advertising, it's about fooling advertisers.«https://www.404media.co/as-youtube-declares-war-on-ad-blockers-google-sponsors-ad-blocking-conference/»³Never thought of it this way but it makes sense, no one wants to pay to advertise to someone who will never be interested, but the ad-tech companies do very much want to be paid to advertise to as many people as possible whether they want it or not.

[1] https://messydesk.social/@zerotrickpony/111378201106265276

[2] https://messydesk.social/@zerotrickpony/111378201106265276

[3] https://www.404media.co/as-youtube-declares-war-on-ad-blockers-google-sponsors-ad-blocking-conference/

╒═════╣▒ 11/09/2023 @22:54 ▒╟──────────┘

The advances of state level protections being enshrined after Dobbs. 597 «U.S.»¹ ___ is just the latest black mark that ensures that the Court under Roberts is wildly unlikely to be well-regarded by history. Small consolation in the face of the massive corruption and utter disconnect from reality currently plaguing the highest court in the US but at least a small amount of schadenfreude to enjoy while the Republic wilts under the tyranny of mediocrity and greed that is plaguing it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Reports

╒═════╣▒ 11/07/2023 @13:43 ▒╟──────────┘

I find it really mind-boggling how Apple Music will just randomly lose its mind duplicating tracks. I'd be less shocked if it wasn't always for things I purchased from the iTunes store. The 2/3rds of my collection that I've encoded from CDs always seem fine, it's the purchased content that keeps doing weird things.Funniest part is that I convinced myself to buy stuff from iTMS because I figured it would be *less* of a hassle instead of *more*.

╒═════╣▒ 11/06/2023 @20:08 ▒╟──────────┘

I am looking forward to adblockers getting the ability to block "AI" bullshit.

╒═════╣▒ 11/06/2023 @11:59 ▒╟──────────┘

«https://tech.lgbt/@chrisisgr8/111359545610778911»¹> silicon valley VCs' best ideas of the 2020s:-put a drone on something-wrongness generator 3000 (uses more energy than a small nation)-fraud-space pollution-self-crashing cars-an app that is actually criminally underpaid workers in another country-an app that is actually criminally underpaid workers in this country-fascism-vrchat but it cost 20x to make and it fucking sucks-layoffsDon't forget "feudalism, now with *computers*!"

[1] https://tech.lgbt/@chrisisgr8/111359545610778911

╒═════╣▒ 11/02/2023 @21:41 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 11/02/2023 @20:42

Molly's substack has «all her coverage»¹ of the trial and they're quite good if you don't know what I'm talking about.«Her Youtube»² has several livestreams of her brain dump of being in the courthouse to experience most of SBF's testimony and oh buddy is it worth watching.

[1] https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/s/the-ftx-files

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@molly0xfff

╒═════╣▒ 11/02/2023 @20:44 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 11/02/2023 @20:42

Yeah, that is what I thought...

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 11/02/2023 @20:42 ▒╟──────────┘

I don't think I need chicken entrails to know that this is unlikely to be a good sign for the crypto bros...

Attachments:

October

╒═════╣▒ 10/28/2023 @18:33 ▒╟──────────┘

Step one of being a better citizen...

Attachments:

[1] https://central.owncloud.org/t/announcement-owncloud-10-and-php-versions/40251

╒═════╣▒ 10/26/2023 @20:46 ▒╟──────────┘

It's *hard* to want to join Mastodon when *every single post* seems to be absolutely rife with reply-guy bullshit. Like what is the value prop if the 'town square' is just *chock-a-block* with fedoras? Self flagellation in hopes of some notoriety? No thanks.

╒═════╣▒ 10/24/2023 @20:19 ▒╟──────────┘

If you are typing a message that contains "*I'm sure you thought of this already, but I'll mention it because I'm very smart.*" either explicitly or implicitly, might I suggest typing one of the following instead:Thank you.

╒═════╣▒ 10/22/2023 @21:40 ▒╟──────────┘

I see blog articles with titles like "How Cloudflare mitigated yet another Okta compromise", and think to myself "thank God I don't trust the cloud^W other people's computers."

╒═════╣▒ 10/22/2023 @14:09 ▒╟──────────┘

Good news, last machine successfully upgraded to Debian 12. Bad news, OwnCloud has decided to «continue developing for an EOSL version of PHP»¹.Now I need to replace OwnCloud. Frankly this has been coming for a while, they seem to be trying to pivot to a commercial product instead of developing open source software. 😞

╒═════╣▒ 10/21/2023 @23:01 ▒╟──────────┘

Re: «this»¹, I think visor Geordi is best Geordi.

[1] https://mastodon.social/@nocontexttrek/111272936877821825

Attachments:

[1] https://cloudisland.nz/@tveastman/111248269458047483

╒═════╣▒ 10/19/2023 @09:19 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retoot of Tom Eastman (@tveastman@cloudisland.nz) by Rusty Hodge [SomaFM] (@SomaFMrusty@defcon.social)»¹The only ethical answer to "please disable your ad blocker" is "go fuck yourself"... and then close the browser tab.

╒═════╣▒ 10/18/2023 @21:11 ▒╟──────────┘

Watch this: «DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow»¹Go read «Red Team Blues»².«Seize the means of computation»³ ✊

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

[2] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

[3] https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

╒═════╣▒ 10/18/2023 @19:38 ▒╟──────────┘

Dear Apple, Please let me remove the voice note button from the text message compose screen. I assure you I will never ever want it.Whoever thought it was good UX is bad at their job and should be ashamed.

Attachments:

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/731534069943402496

╒═════╣▒ 10/18/2023 @14:01 ▒╟──────────┘

«https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/731534069943402496»¹

Attachments:

[1] https://blog.jlist.com/your-friend-in-japan/can-mf-ghost-recapture-the-magic-of-initial-d/

╒═════╣▒ 10/17/2023 @16:23 ▒╟──────────┘

PROTIP: Naming something (or someone) /[a-zA-Z][0-9]{1,}[a-zA-Z]/, is *desperately* lame...

╒═════╣▒ 10/16/2023 @22:02 ▒╟──────────┘

«*Eurobeat Intensifies*»¹

Attachments:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx_IibJH4rA

╒═════╣▒ 10/14/2023 @20:46 ▒╟──────────┘

Yo-Yo Ma is a goddamn *treasure*.I will fight you if you disagree because you are *wrong*.«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx_IibJH4rA»¹«via»²

[2] https://kottke.org/23/10/yo-yo-ma-plays-bachs-cello-suite-no-1-in-the-great-smoky-mountains

╒═════╣▒ 10/14/2023 @10:14 ▒╟──────────┘

I switched iTerm's font to «B612»¹ Mono and it is *SO MUCH MORE READABLE* than Inconsolata.

[1] https://b612-font.com

╒═════╣▒ 10/12/2023 @20:09 ▒╟──────────┘

You can support and criticize Israel and the Palestinians both without engaging in apologia for terrorism.Because there is no justification for barbarism. Full stop. No matter how righteously aggrieved any people might be, no matter how oppressed, no matter how wronged, there is no justification for the murder and rape and kidnapping of innocents. You don't have to pick a side to stand against that. You don't have to pick a side in order to offer support and sincere sympathy and aid. «https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/10/sides.html»¹

[1] https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/10/sides.html

╒═════╣▒ 10/10/2023 @20:00 ▒╟──────────┘

I just finished reading «DOOM Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero»¹, it was *well* worth the read and was unexpectedly emotional.

[1] https://romero.com/shop/p/doomguy

╒═════╣▒ 10/01/2023 @20:55 ▒╟──────────┘

How is it that a cooking Youtube channel can amaze me and make me cry? Merde!«https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchGuyCooking»¹

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchGuyCooking

September

╒═════╣▒ 09/27/2023 @14:27 ▒╟──────────┘

*cackling**«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnEIeVWLtbU»¹(«via»²)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnEIeVWLtbU

[2] https://www.dnalounge.com/webcast/popup.cgi?playlist=PLyALKMPGOR5dHR9OSGiK9oh7GI1nAYoCu&title=jwz%20mixtape%20239

╒═════╣▒ 09/23/2023 @13:26 ▒╟──────────┘

I guess the direction from product management at Apple is to make *everything* harder. Want to attach a photo to a text message? Now it's buried in a menu instead of on the message screen. Want to accidentally start recording a voice memo like some heathen boomer? *WE GOT YOU FAM.* Want to set a timer on your watch, oh, we've buried that behind a menu as well. While we were at it we made one of the buttons on the watch essentially useless and where we had that functionality before we've turned into a completely pointless set of screens that has like 5 ways to accidentally summon.How about a bunch of animations so navigating anything takes longer too?It's like they hate the idea of people ever enjoying themselves while using the things they make.Remember 30 years ago when Apple cared deeply about their stuff always doing the right thing in the most obvious way?

╒════��╣▒ 09/22/2023 @23:23 ▒╟──────────┘

«Toot from Infoseepage (@Infoseepage@mastodon.social)»¹«@foone»² It sometimes feels like instead of creating an age where everything is digital and the bits can be preserved for all time, we are entering an era where everything digital is ephemeral to an absurd degree. The future might come to view the present as a sort of digital dark age, where the vast majority of cultural output is irretrievably lost.2023-09-22 @21:09My sweet summer child, if you have a file and it contains anything other than ASCII characters stored as a collection of single octets ranging from 0x00 to 0x7F, and you have not copied it to your very newest computer from whatever archaic media it might be on (even a 3 year old USB 2 thumb drive is archaic in this hell scape of a timeline), there is a 50% chance that it is gone and you will never be able to read it again.

[1] https://digipres.club/@Infoseepage@mastodon.social/111110809278674610

[2] https://digipres.club/@foone

╒═════╣▒ 09/21/2023 @20:53 ▒╟──────────┘

What auspicious timing, I got my updated bivalent jab today and am rewarded with the latest roundup from Violet Blue.«https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-89603560»¹

[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-89603560

Attachments:

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/

╒═════╣▒ 09/21/2023 @18:18 ▒╟──────────┘

Always* support labor. ✊«https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/»¹

╒═════╣▒ 09/18/2023 @13:04 ▒╟──────────┘

The fact that the Apple Watch has un-dismissable and un-disablable holiday and birthday notifications tells me that the product people at Apple have no friends. Who the hell wants this crap? Having a parasocial relationship with an operating system is sad.

╒═════╣▒ 09/16/2023 @20:25 ▒╟──────────┘

«VV»¹ in Niagara Falls (with Dark Divine and Black Veil Brides)... yeah, excellent pre-birthday evening!

[1] http://www.heartagram.com/

Attachments:

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/

╒═════╣▒ 09/15/2023 @08:57 ▒╟──────────┘

One thing I will miss when I finally upgrade past macOS 10.15.7 is the fact that WebP images don't work in Safari. I consider this to be a *feature*. I may even write a Tampermonkey script to block WebP images just to continue to not subject myself to the onerous format.

╒═════╣▒ 09/14/2023 @20:34 ▒╟──────────┘

The liberal version of intersectionalism observes a world run by 150 rich white men and resolves to replace half of them with women, queers and people of color. The leftist version seeks to abolish the system altogether. «https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/»¹Brick by fucking brick.

╒═════╣▒ 09/13/2023 @21:11 ▒╟──────────┘

Substack's 'SUBSCRIBE' modal popup is a war crime.

╒═════╣▒ 09/08/2023 @11:41 ▒╟──────────┘

Hell yes.«https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/»¹

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/

╒═════╣▒ 09/04/2023 @14:52 ▒╟──────────┘

«https://mastodon.social/@nocontexttrek/111007236638749003»¹Happy Labor Day!

[1] https://mastodon.social/@nocontexttrek/111007236638749003

Attachments:

[1] https://archive.org/details/hypercard_neuroblast-cyberdelia

╒═════╣▒ 09/03/2023 @21:30 ▒╟──────────┘

The Good Omens fandom is a great example of why I refuse to be a "fan" of anything. I can't go near any of Neil Gaiman's Internet presences a year either side of any release of any Good Omens content... It makes me physically ill at the thought of being associated with a fandom.

╒═════╣▒ 09/03/2023 @09:18 ▒╟──────────┘

Proof there are still wonders in the world.«https://archive.org/details/hypercard_neuroblast-cyberdelia»¹

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 09/01/2023 @22:27 ▒╟──────────┘

Every time this crosses my path I snicker wistfully.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/09/01/1197169683/canada-issues-travel-advisory-warning-over-u-s-states-lgbtq-laws

╒═════╣▒ 09/01/2023 @16:45 ▒╟──────────┘

Just another day in the land of the free and the home of the brave... 🙄«https://www.npr.org/2023/09/01/1197169683/canada-issues-travel-advisory-warning-over-u-s-states-lgbtq-laws»¹

Attachments:

[1] https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/nema-14-50-mobile-charger-lucid-air

August

╒═════╣▒ 08/30/2023 @14:23 ▒╟──────────┘

But on a recent 750-mile road trip in an EV, I had a revelation: We’re over-engineering our public charging infrastructure. If we want to speed up the electric car era, we should put aside the apps, doodads, and expensive fast chargers and embrace the cheap dumb plug.«https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/nema-14-50-mobile-charger-lucid-air»¹I keep saying that all this "*smart*" (it isn't) garbage is a useless waste of money and energy and an attempt to keep you continually re-buying things that would last 50+ years without a hitch if it wasn't for the *consumer electronics* shoved needlessly into it.

╒═════╣▒ 08/30/2023 @00:05 ▒╟──────────┘

A «drone lightshow»¹ is a pretty neat alternative to fireworks! Looks like lots of promise for more interesting visuals than uh, circle, big circle, droopy circle, fountain, and explosion.

[1] https://laughingsquid.com/1500-drones-create-flying-dragon/

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 08/24/2023 @16:14 ▒╟──────────┘

Chrome is such a piece of shit browser. If you use it you should stop.

╒═════╣▒ 08/19/2023 @00:56 ▒╟──────────┘

Ghost and Amon Amarth were worth standing in the the drizzle!

Attachments:

[1] https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/08/baloney.html

╒═════╣▒ 08/15/2023 @19:19 ▒╟──────────┘

I know it is hard. Watching the poster-child of the cancer that is rotting away at our country being heaped with indictment after indictment but with any hope of punishment likely years away. An entire election cycle away. The wheels turn slowly. Methodically. Purposefully. The machine gets its due, just not as fast as our attention spans demand.This is the trap, and this is how, through outrage fatigue and '*the new normal*' we forget and let the cancer kill us.We must remain vigilant. We *must* vote. If we can't at least do that then we don't *deserve* the republic. It won't have failed us. *We* will have failed *it*.> The greatest strength of a democratic republic is the citizen. Ironically, that's also its greatest weakness. It doesn't take much to bring down the mightiest Republic. You just have stop believing in it. > An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.― Plutarch«https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/08/baloney.html»¹

╒═════╣▒ 08/15/2023 @09:05 ▒╟──────────┘

Really cool look at the samples behind 50 years of hip-hop. Iconic stuff through and through. Bangers, all of them.«https://kottke.org/23/08/the-most-iconic-hip-hop-sample-of-every-year-1973-2023»¹

[1] https://kottke.org/23/08/the-most-iconic-hip-hop-sample-of-every-year-1973-2023

╒═════╣▒ 08/14/2023 @21:24 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 08/14/2023 @21:16

Not that I'm any good at it -- especially on a keyboard... but the soundtrack still slaps.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/rewriting-wipeout/

╒═════╣▒ 08/14/2023 @21:16 ▒╟──────────┘

joy*«https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/rewriting-wipeout/»¹

╒═════╣▒ 08/14/2023 @21:15 ▒╟──────────┘

Good to see that the replacement for reddit is just as shallow a swamp as what it is trying to emulate.

╒═════╣▒ 08/14/2023 @20:39 ▒╟──────────┘

Thanks to the AI scumbags for making me put User-Agent matching rules back in Apache. You are lucky I am less vindictive than I was when I had rules to screw with jerks who used images hosted on my server for their MySpace profiles or I would find the chunkiest uncompressed goatse that I could find to redirect your bots to.

╒═════╣▒ 08/12/2023 @23:07 ▒╟──────────┘

Katamari Damacy might be the perfect video game.I will not accept dissent on this.«https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/725502507846107136/footlongdingledong-yorhaw-hi-im-op-of-the»¹(I can't seem to find a legitimate streaming source for it so you'll want to do the typey-typey into your favorite textbox to get *Katamari on the Rocks*)

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/725502507846107136/footlongdingledong-yorhaw-hi-im-op-of-the

╒═════╣▒ 08/12/2023 @22:00 ▒╟──────────┘

I shudder to think how many *days* of my life that I've spent listened to «this song»¹...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgAEMZBRGI0

╒═════╣▒ 08/11/2023 @20:06 ▒╟──────────┘

Once upon a time we made things that «looked awesome»¹. Now everything is a soulless slab of black glass and we are poorer for it.«via»²

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/gmaletic/albums/72157688760958876

[2] https://kottke.org/23/08/striking-vintage-calculators

╒═════╣▒ 08/10/2023 @15:02 ▒╟──────────┘

Every generation these dirty rotten insane sons of bitches come again. The madness starts to rise up yet again. The barbarians are at the gate and the drums of war and revolution are beating loudly yet again.The madness must be stopped now while it's still possible. This time we have a chance to stop them before they burn the world down yet again. Before it's us, those of us lucky enough to survive, standing there among the bodies of our countrymen, wondering why somebody didn't stop it. We're that somebody. ...> You want a better nation? You want a better world? A better future? «Then you have to be a better citizen.»¹

[1] https://www.stonekettle.com/2023/08/the-latter-days-of-better-nation-part-vi.html

╒═════╣▒ 08/06/2023 @10:31 ▒╟──────────┘

Just a random reminder — technology is a *tool*, a *force multiplier*, never a solution. This is true of *all* technology. The computer is the same as a knife. Solutions only come from one place — human creativity. We are seeing venture capitalists and marketeers foam at the mouth about AI but it's important to remember it's actually neither of those things. Humanity created a vast catalog of stuff and made it accessible via a global information storage and retrieval network and then some dorks came by and hoovered it all up to plug in to their remix robots (put another way, into their copyright laundering machines). Out churns things that almost, if you squint right, nearly resemble something someone might have made and so they wave their hands and exclaim they have created a thing that can create. The vultures circled and the *grift* began. The flow of money from the marks to the grifters is now predicated on people believing that the hype that AI is here, it works, and it's coming for our jobs. There is no technical solution for this grift but I hear there are some cozy prison cells available that would fit the grifters.

July

╒═════╣▒ 07/28/2023 @10:22 ▒╟──────────┘

Private equity is a cancer. Its profits come from buying productive firms, loading them with debt, abusing their suppliers, workers and customers, and driving them into ground, stiffing all of them – and the company's creditors. The mafia have a name for this. They call it a "bust out":«https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups»¹We really need regulation and enforcement to come in and toss these parasites into a chipper shredder as an example for others.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

╒═════╣▒ 07/28/2023 @09:33 ▒╟──────────┘

You love to see it.«https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/723914574817017857»¹I have a hard time believing anyone has ever told Spare Karen the man-child *no* in his life.«https://sfstandard.com/2023/07/24/twitter-sign-being-removed-downtown-san-francisco-office-x/»²Somehow he has people convinced that he's not only capable of chewing his own food unprompted but that he's a *genius*.

[1] https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/723914574817017857

[2] https://sfstandard.com/2023/07/24/twitter-sign-being-removed-downtown-san-francisco-office-x/

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 07/25/2023 @22:46 ▒╟──────────┘

Apropos of everything...

Attachments:

[1] https://www.tumblr.com/theclueofthebrokenneedle/722758344968912896/this-is-my-pride-and-joy-a-gift-for-my-dad-who

╒═════╣▒ 07/19/2023 @18:02 ▒╟──────────┘

This is amazing. I love everything about it.«https://www.tumblr.com/theclueofthebrokenneedle/722758344968912896/this-is-my-pride-and-joy-a-gift-for-my-dad-who»¹

╒═════╣▒ 07/17/2023 @17:10 ▒╟──────────┘

I think that the reason we all need to be vigilant of the regulation that is going to spring up around AI (which of course is *neither* artificial nor is it intelligence) is because it has the potential to be a conduit for un-attributed and un-paid transfer of copyrights from millions of authors, actors, and artists of all stripe into the hands of the companies that own the software. It's already happening and if history has taught us anything with the current state of US copyrights, the entertainment industry is already hard at work setting it up so it will continue to happen.AI isn't here to take your job. Capitalists are already doing that part far more efficiently.

╒═════╣▒ 07/11/2023 @14:38 ▒╟──────────┘

«https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/»¹*Please*, in my lifetime, let's have some of *this,* my dear Democrats*.* I'm tired of losing even though we've *won*... *over and over again*.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/

╒═════╣▒ 07/10/2023 @21:35 ▒╟──────────┘

More and more I find myself using the *Whats New* list for each new version of Apple's software as a list of *shit to figure out how to turn the fuck off*.

╒═════╣▒ 07/10/2023 @14:12 ▒╟──────────┘

Watch this «https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1J6Ou4q8vE»¹, then if you are like me and only get bits an pieces of it, watch this «https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igDeXHS5kUU»²«via»³

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1J6Ou4q8vE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igDeXHS5kUU

[3] https://waxy.org/2023/07/animation-vs-math/

╒═════╣▒ 07/05/2023 @09:31 ▒╟──────────┘

Looks like Apartheid Emerald Mine Edge Lord Man has hidden his new toy behind a login-required screen so I finally shut off my Twitter to RSS gateway. It can join the Instagram to RSS feed gateway in the dustbin.

╒═════╣▒ 07/04/2023 @10:28 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 06/27/2023 @16:57

«d2dx»¹ is a really simple to install and nice upscaler for Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. If you're using the downloaded version of the game you need a «simple fix»² to make it work.It does break taking screenshots using the in-game bind, but Windows+Print Screen works just fine.

[1] https://github.com/bolrog/d2dx

[2] https://github.com/bolrog/d2dx/issues/160

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 07/03/2023 @17:01 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 06/27/2023 @16:57

I'm not going to lie, it's been so long I forgot the opening area of Diablo 2...

Attachments:

[1] https://www.gog.com/en/game/diablo

June

╒═════╣▒ 06/27/2023 @16:57 ▒╟──────────┘

In preparation for playing Diablo IV, I'm re-playing all of the previous Diablos.I almost want to pull out my 17" CRT, the upscaling is a little bit rough on «Diablo I»¹.

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 06/25/2023 @12:42 ▒╟──────────┘

Maybe the wasteland of commercial real estate, upon mass bankruptcy, will be fertile soil in which we will sew affordable housing.One can hope.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-17-carplay/

╒═════╣▒ 06/21/2023 @16:59 ▒╟──────────┘

I will absolutely NOT ever use my mobile device to «drive critical systems»¹ of the multi-ton death machine that I pilot around. You can fuck all the way off, Apple.

╒═════╣▒ 06/12/2023 @20:05 ▒╟──────────┘

So disappointed that the new 15" MacBook Air will only support a single external display, I guess I'll have to find a used 16" MacBook Pro instead.

╒═════╣▒ 06/10/2023 @23:29 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 06/06/2023 @22:30

To be fair, this is true about all of Apple's products.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.gog.com/game/firmament

╒═════╣▒ 06/09/2023 @11:20 ▒╟──────────┘

Cyan sure knows how to tell a story and set a mood. Glad I backed «this»¹.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/05/apple-reveals-vision-pro-headset/

╒═════╣▒ 06/06/2023 @22:30 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 05/20/2023 @09:33

Please tell me that people don't actually think this looks cool... what kind of absolute chud would wear this???«Via»¹

Attachments:

[1] https://music.apple.com/us/album/love-minus-80/1683527512

May

╒═════╣▒ 05/26/2023 @09:34 ▒╟──────────┘

Oooh! The «Bunny X album»¹ dropped today!

Attachments:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A48XXWvwMzE

╒═════╣▒ 05/23/2023 @20:06 ▒╟──────────┘

«https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A48XXWvwMzE»¹

╒═════╣▒ 05/20/2023 @12:04 ▒╟──────────┘

"AI", 2023's version of the crypto grift. At least it seems to use slightly less energy to separate idiots from their capital.> These guys are pumping their upcoming dump, and all the biggest disaster-stories are part of the scam: "AI will become sentient" and "AI will do your job as well as you" are both statements whose primary purpose is to increase the value of the stock in companies making "AI" technology (neither "artificial" nor you get the idea).I mean, sure, our bosses will fire our asses and replace us with shell-scripts, but they don't need *working* AI to do that – no more than they needed working voice response systems to replace human operators. They just enshittify their products and services, and do it under cover of chasing amazing new technology, and reap the stock gains bequeathed by keyword-drunk investors.«via»¹

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

╒═════╣▒ 05/20/2023 @09:33 ▒╟──────────┘

So Google couldn't get 'Glass' off the ground -- except maybe to end up inspiring the term '«glasshole»¹' but maybe Apple can do it this time.. by making you look even stupider.I know there are people who will buy this because Apple under Tim Cook is first and foremost a fashion company but I can't help but feel that this is smells a lot like the metaverse and Zuck -- some out of touch billionaire's pet project that wasn't allowed to go to a farm upstate.

[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/14/glasshole

Attachments:

[1] https://kottke.org/23/05/tour-the-bridges-of-all-of-star-treks-starships-enterprise

╒═════╣▒ 05/13/2023 @10:27 ▒╟──────────┘

If Jack Dorsey isn't enough of a reason to avoid Bluesky the lack of any public facing web interface is enough of a Warning of Things To Come.

╒═════╣▒ 05/10/2023 @19:49 ▒╟──────────┘

It's pretty amazing to see the progression of the Enterprise bridges and I mean, how can you resist John de Lance's narration?«https://kottke.org/23/05/tour-the-bridges-of-all-of-star-treks-starships-enterprise»¹

╒═════╣▒ 05/07/2023 @17:34 ▒╟──────────┘

Why can't I delete this? Is there anyplace in this amateur hour dystopian hellscape ecosystem that I can escape advertising?

Attachments:

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

╒═════╣▒ 05/06/2023 @19:56 ▒╟──────────┘

That's what unions get you: a good job that might be hard at times, and the costs of your work are borne by the employer who profits from your labor. «The dream is alive»¹.

╒═════╣▒ 05/05/2023 @16:11 ▒╟──────────┘

I would love a behind the scenes podcast for whatever the hell is going on in «today's Penny Arcade»¹ because I'm very here for it.

[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/05/05/wheel-saint

╒═════╣▒ 05/03/2023 @18:55 ▒╟──────────┘

Everyone* deserves to be paid fairly and honestly for their labor. Art goes a long way to making this world a place worth living in and there would be a *lot* less art in this world without «writers»¹.

[1] https://www.wgacontract2023.org

Attachments:

April

╒═════╣▒ 04/29/2023 @11:33 ▒╟──────────┘

Dear the idiots over at Wired, *why on EARTH* did you break right click -> Copy Link? Are you monsters? Incompetent? Incompetent monsters?

Attachments:

[1] https://dri.es/nostr-love-at-first-sight

╒═════╣▒ 04/28/2023 @11:56 ▒╟──────────┘

Saw «this»¹ talking about some new alternative to ActivityPub/Mastodon. ActivityPub is a mess for sure but I don't think Nostr is any better. Dries tries to argue that it is, but I disagree.> Migrating to a different Mastodon server can be challenging, as your username is tied to the domain name of the current Mastodon server. However, this is not a problem in Nostr, as users are identified using a unique public key rather than a domain name.*Every* other attempt at this has proven that *no-one *wants to manage public keys much less be known as some random hex string so the *only* option is going to be being identified by some name and unless you have a single source of truth controlling name to key assignments you will *HAVE* to have some sort of domain scope which means that outside of technical pedantry there is no difference. > *Nostr has Zaps, which is potentially game-changing* — ActivityPub lacks an equivalent of Zaps, which could make it harder to address funding issues and combat spam. More on that in the next section.> A Zap is essentially a micropayment made using Bitcoin's Lightning network. Although Nostr itself does not use blockchain technology, it enables each message or event to contain a "Zap request" or "Zap invoice" (receipt). In other words, Nostr has optional blockchain integration for micropayment support.Ah, optional *scumbag web* integration, because the user experience is going to be made so much better by hanging a failed money laundering scheme on the side.

╒═════╣▒ 04/27/2023 @18:41 ▒╟──────────┘

I am *entirely* *uninterested* in "podcasts" that are not delivered via RSS feeds.I have «written software»¹ to this end.

[1] https://www.going-flying.com/code.html#youtube-podcast

╒═════╣▒ 04/26/2023 @19:36 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 04/26/2023 @18:24

Brain damage like this is why I wanted to be logged out of Books.app, I do not want suggestions^W advertising in an app I paid for, in a view of the things I paid for. Everyone at Apple is just bad at their jobs these days.

╒═════╣▒ 04/26/2023 @18:32 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 04/26/2023 @18:24

Ah, it's one of those UX dark patterns I keep hearing about. Going to Settings -> Sign in makes you sign in to iCloud but going to App Store -> Picture Circle Thing -> Account -> Sign in will allow you to *choose* not to also sign into iCloud. Of course it also signs back into Books.app which was what I tried to get out of that caused all this.Books.app is garbage, Music.app is garbage, Podcasts.app is garbage. Really the entire Apple ecosystem is just a giant steaming pile of awful but it's better than the literal one alternative so fuck me I guess.

╒═════╣▒ 04/26/2023 @18:24 ▒╟──────────┘

In further «enshittification»¹ of Apple news, signing out of Books.app signed me out of my *whole ass* iPhone and now I can't sign back in without allowing iCloud to hoover all my private data? What an absolute clown show this company has turned into.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

╒═════╣▒ 04/23/2023 @20:19 ▒╟──────────┘

I've been a The Adventure Zone fan for «like 5 years now»¹. Each adventure has been unique and fun and engaging in their own way. The latest season "Steeplechase" has felt a little wayward getting started — it uses a rather novel game system, but man «episode 24»² went completely off the rails in the way that most T.A.Z. adventures inevitably go. I was laughing out loud the whole way through.Such a great show.(Steeplechase starts «here»³, «whole show»⁴ starts «here»⁵)

[1] https://www.going-flying.com/blog/the-adventure-zone-is-amazing.html

[2] https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/the-adventure-zone-steeplechase-episode-24/

[3] https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/setup-the-adventure-zone-steeplechase/

[4] https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/adventure-zone/

[5] https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/ep-1-here-there-be-gerblins-chapter-one/

Attachments:

[1] https://mashable.com/article/block-the-blue-twitter-campaign-dril

╒═════╣▒ 04/22/2023 @10:38 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 04/22/2023 @10:25

"everyone has always Hated twitter, even before the day elon dragged a sink into the main office while grinning like a doofus," @dril explained. "nobody respects it, it is almost certainly responsible for a sharp increase in overall human misery, and if my brand must suffer so that this entire Shit hole will perish, that is fine to me."«https://mashable.com/article/block-the-blue-twitter-campaign-dril»¹

╒═════╣▒ 04/22/2023 @10:25 ▒╟──────────┘

Just a quick reminder that the JSON object returned by the https://twitter.com/i/api/graphql/[nonce]/UserByScreenName call includes the following useful fields:*data.user.result.is_blue_verified*, *data.user.result.legacy.verified*, and *None*It also looks like they quietly switched *has_nft_avatar* to *profile_image_shape*.*None*Let's just say I have updated my RSS feed generator... accordingly.

╒═════╣▒ 04/19/2023 @10:54 ▒╟──────────┘

«based»¹.

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/715014904638275584

Attachments:

[1] https://defcon.social/@SomaFMrusty/110218532074987680

╒═════╣▒ 04/18/2023 @09:47 ▒╟──────────┘

I'm not going to lie, watching Rusty try to make iTunes^WMusic.app work in Ventura has both made me fear for the day my 2015 Retina MacBook Pro finally dies and I have to upgrade to something more modern than Catalina *AND *feel seen as fuck in my abusive relationship with Apple products (I'd leave if I could but...).«via»¹

Attachments:

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/08/late-stage-sea-monkeys/#jeremys-razors

╒═════╣▒ 04/09/2023 @12:49 ▒╟──────────┘

From: «https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/08/late-stage-sea-monkeys/#jeremys-razors»¹> Remember when Apple created an opt *out* button for tracking, more than 94 percent of users clicked it (the people who clicked "yes" to "can Facebook spy on you?" were either Facebook employees, or confused):«https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html»²Ad-targeting enables a host of evils, like paid political disinformation. It also leads to more expensive, lower-quality goods. "A Raw Deal For Consumers," Sumit Sharma's new *Consumer Reports* paper, catalogs the many other costs imposed on Americans due to the lack of tech regulation:«https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/A-Raw-Deal-for-US-Consumers_March-2023.pdf»³Sharma describes the benefits that Europeans will shortly enjoy thanks to the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, from lower prices to more privacy to more choice, from cloud gaming on mobile devices to competing app stores.[...]> Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen, shifting the market to context ads that let publishers, not platforms, call the shots. As an added bonus, the law would stop Tiktok from spying on Americans, and also end Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft's spying to boot:«https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories»⁴

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

[3] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/A-Raw-Deal-for-US-Consumers_March-2023.pdf

[4] https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

╒═════╣▒ 04/08/2023 @12:32 ▒╟──────────┘

Hard same. I have cameras that are isolated on a firewalled VLAN that can only be accessed from two trusted VLANs or via a mutually authenticated VPN. The system ALSO requires authentication handled by an on-network LDAP directory. All recordings are stored locally and are automatically purged after a short retention period. No video ever leaves my control and yet I have no cameras inside the house (there is one inside a detached garage).«🧵 Tweet from @realsexycyborg»¹«Apr 7, 2023 at 11:08»²> «https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1644352128738000897/»³It's been my conclusion no cameras inside the house unless you use a completely isolated physical system. I use use cloud wireless cameras, but the closest they get to inside is the garage on a mount I can flip-up. Hiding customer data from sysadmins is really really hard.Same. Treat all cameras as globally accessible windows. Don't do anything in front of them you would not want seen on the nightly news. Don't place them in locations where deepfaked video of you doing something you did not would be credible or hard to refute."I don't do anything interesting in my livingroom anyway" With a few hours of actual footage from your livingroom to work with, someone can make credible video of you doing almost anything they want these days. And you get to explain that yes the video is real but you didn't…

[1] https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/1644355420885237763

[2] https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/1644355420885237763

[3] https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1644352128738000897/

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2023 @22:58 ▒╟──────────┘

However, when Elon Musk was told about the New York Times announcing it would not pay, he not only ordered the removal of its verification mark, but also declared that the newspaper was being "incredible hypocritical" for charging for subscriptions for the newspaper yet not giving Twitter any money."Give me your product for free and pay me to promote it" whines impotent billionaire edgelord...«https://twitterisgoinggreat.com/#elon-musk-removes-nyts-verified-mark-for-not-paying-him-money»¹

[1] https://twitterisgoinggreat.com/#elon-musk-removes-nyts-verified-mark-for-not-paying-him-money

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2023 @19:51 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 04/06/2023 @17:49

«https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow»¹

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2023 @18:00 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *never-going-to-own-one-of-these* department:> Two ex-employees said they weren’t bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that *people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private*. Three others, however, said they were troubled by it.«https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/»¹I can't tell you how *incandescently* furious this kind of stuff makes me. Techbro culture is frustratingly sheltered, full of privilege, and thoroughly toxic.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2023 @17:49 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 04/06/2023 @12:51

It just goes to show how unconscionable it is to have a group of lifetime *appointees, *confirmed by legislators, who were elected from gerrymandered districts that don't even represent a plurality of their own constituents much less a significant fraction of Americans act as a check on both legislative *and* executive power in this country.While we can take comfort in the fact that history will judge these people harshly, that doesn't assuage the actual suffering they have wrought today. We need reform now.

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2023 @12:51 ▒╟──────────┘

«https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1643974216696442880»¹This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking - almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached. Barring some dramatic change, this is what the Roberts court will be known for: rank corruption, erosion of democracy, and the stripping of human rights.> «Tweet from @eisingerj»²NEW BLOCKBUSTER: Private jet travel. Superyacht Island-hopping. Stays at a private resort. For decades, Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury gifts from a billionaire. Appears he broke the law.«@js_kaplan»³ & «@JustinElliott»⁴: «https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow»⁵

[1] https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1643974216696442880

[2] https://twitter.com/eisingerj/status/1643917645157216257/

[3] https://twitter.com/js_kaplan

[4] https://twitter.com/JustinElliott

[5] https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow

Attachments:

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/28/imagine-a-horse/#perfectly-spherical-cows-of-uniform-density-on-a-frictionless-plane

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2023 @12:44 ▒╟──────────┘

It's easy to improve efficiency if you don't care about how a system fails. I can improve the fuel-efficiency of every airplane in the sky right now: just have them drop their landing gear. It'll work brilliantly, but you don't want to be around when it starts to fail, brother....> If you do economics without doing politics, you're just imagining a perfectly spherical cow on a frictionless plane – it's a cute way to model things, but it's got limited real-world applicability. Yes, politics are squishy and hard to model, but that doesn't mean you can just incinerate them and do math on the dubious quantitative residue[.]«https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/28/imagine-a-horse/#perfectly-spherical-cows-of-uniform-density-on-a-frictionless-plane»¹

╒═════╣▒ 04/06/2023 @12:35 ▒╟──────────┘

Whether you're burying a loved one, getting dialysis, getting your cat fixed or having your dog's nails trimmed, you are already likely to be patronizing a business that has been captured by private equity, where the service is worse, the prices are higher and the workers earn less for harder jobs. Everyone has a stake in financial regulation. We are *all* in this fight, except for the eminently guillotineable PE barons, and you know, *fuck those guys*.«https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes»¹We really need to start unwinding deregulation and dialing up enforcement of our anti-trust laws.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

╒═════╣▒ 04/05/2023 @19:07 ▒╟──────────┘

So, Google Glass, and Microsoft HoloLens were miserable failures but Apple's going to get it right? 😂

╒═════╣▒ 04/02/2023 @18:17 ▒╟──────────┘

Sometimes the old ways still work really well. Cable lacing sorta per AC-21-99 wrangling my scanners.

Attachments:

[1] https://www.patreon.com/violetblue/

╒═════╣▒ 04/01/2023 @11:16 ▒╟──────────┘

«Violet Blue»¹ of the most excellent «Cybersecurity»² and «Pandemic»³ roundups has an article on how «Hollywood Pretends There Is No Pandemic»⁴ and it's another example on how protections from this deadly, disabling, ongoing pandemic have been available from the beginning for the privileged few while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.

[2] https://www.patreon.com/violetblue/posts?filters[tag]=Cybersecurity%20Roundups

[3] https://www.patreon.com/violetblue/posts?filters[tag]=Pandemic%20Roundups

[4] https://www.pestemag.com/featured-posts/hollywoodpretendsnopandemic-5phhj

╒═════╣▒ 04/01/2023 @11:02 ▒╟──────────┘

Sometimes I think the kids are alright.«via»¹

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@itsjiyounkim/video/7216072524734401798

Attachments:

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/

╒═════╣▒ 04/01/2023 @10:50 ▒╟──────────┘

A strong, enforced, national privacy law will do absolute wonders for our society as a whole. Yes, it will probably traumatize most of the largest technology companies in the US but frankly, they deserve it.«https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/»¹

╒═════╣▒ 04/01/2023 @10:35 ▒╟──────────┘

I've been meaning to write a post about my thoughts of the need for more simplicity in our IT systems, largely based on why I've been slowly leaving behind containerized, cloud like systems and returning to more traditional ones but the folks over at the «37signals blog»¹ are beating me to it at a much larger scale.

[1] https://dev.37signals.com/bringing-our-apps-back-home/

╒═════╣▒ 03/31/2023 @22:01 ▒╟──────────┘

I'm low-key tempted to see if I can generate OpenGraph images for blog posts using Stable Diffusion... It didn't take long for it to figure out my aesthetic.

Attachments:

╒═════╣▒ 03/31/2023 @21:38 ▒╟──────────┘

We need a Congress that isn't absolutely useless.

Attachments:

March

╒═════╣▒ 03/30/2023 @19:02 ▒╟──────────┘

Unchecked greed destroys everything...

Attachments:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG9ahw-5tj8&list=PLDisKgcnAC4SqX0mi1J5_gd7-hrIS5yJp&index=10

╒═════╣▒ 03/27/2023 @09:18 ▒╟──────────┘

If your software randomly interrupts me to ask for my feedback, which I'm assured is taken very seriously, know that I now hate your software.

╒═════╣▒ 03/26/2023 @23:14 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 03/26/2023 @22:47

But seriously, Kraftwerk makes me think of Molly floating somewhere deep inside Villa Straylight.

╒═════╣▒ 03/26/2023 @23:11 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 03/26/2023 @22:47

I think I have two cyberpunk dystopias in my head, both are narrated by William Gibson, but the early ones (probably Sprawl Trilogy) are soundtracked by Kraftwerk and Vangelis and look an awful lot like Bladerunner. The later ones (late Bridge, early Bigend) start to get more punk and industrial, almost like something from the «Cyberpunk 2077 soundrack»¹. Not entirely sure what feels have settled in for Jackpot yet... «Never Fade Away»² into something more... visceral, maybe some «French punk»³.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEhrZ2s0lSI&list=PLDisKgcnAC4SqX0mi1J5_gd7-hrIS5yJp&index=47

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izovpaGOxcA&list=PLr1fy-iYjJ9fY9YF2-w2K_e9M69rtMJMq&index=2

╒═════╣▒ 03/26/2023 @22:47 ▒╟──────────┘

This is such a good breakdown of «Kraftwerk»¹, the joy he has for the work is infectious.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9spBqoc43yI

╒═════╣▒ 03/26/2023 @19:19 ▒╟──────────┘

If Apple launches an AR headset are we thinking it's going to be the next Newton Message Pad or Lisa?

╒═════╣▒ 03/25/2023 @21:40 ▒╟──────────┘

I feel like if anything can be learned from the plague of the "gig economy" is that there is a market for an app to coordinate badge swiping carpools...

Attachments:

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/

╒═════╣▒ 03/25/2023 @20:59 ▒╟──────────┘

I am tremendously onboard projects like «this»¹.

Attachments:

[1] https://albertaradiosupply.com/

╒═════╣▒ 03/25/2023 @20:49 ▒╟──────────┘

I got the 2U mount for my Uniden scanners the other day from «Alberta Radio Supply»¹, I am very happy with it, it cleaned up the rack in my workshop quite nicely.

Attachments:

[1] http://www.porcupine.org/wietse/

╒═════╣▒ 03/25/2023 @20:45 ▒╟──────────┘

Huh, I didn't know this. Very cool. I do remember using SATAn and I still rely on software from «Wietse»¹ every day...

Attachments:

[1] https://mastodon.social/@mcc/110074209352755838

╒═════╣▒ 03/25/2023 @19:54 ▒╟──────────┘

... Tik Tok is very nearly the only piece of software in years I can think of I remember anyone expressing they felt pleasure in using.The enshittification of the web to extract maximal profit continues aplomb.«via»¹

╒═════╣▒ 03/22/2023 @09:46 ▒╟──────────┘

Frankly I didn't think my website was popular enough to be noticed by the scumbag web's host of crypto grifters and their spammers but my INBOX is letting me know that 'Team going-flying.com' has indeed made it.P.S. Friends don't let friends buy crypto. It's a scam all the way down.

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╒═════╣▒ 03/19/2023 @23:25 ▒╟──────────┘

We could learn a lot from this energy.

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[1] https://ssl.ub3rgeek.net/git/?p=containers.git;a=commitdiff;h=HEAD;hp=3d7c82fd856c5b199794566522841a4b6c3e2182

╒═════╣▒ 03/16/2023 @15:59 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 03/02/2022 @11:08

So most of my newer designs these days use the ATmega328pb instead of the 328p but my CI container can't build the 328pb code... so I set about to fix it by «building and patching the upstream avr-libc distribution myself»¹.So far, it seems to work as frustrating as it is to have to work around «a bug from 2018»².

[2] https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?54652

╒═════╣▒ 03/15/2023 @22:18 ▒╟──────────┘

«I gotta have that cowbell...»¹

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlngu_uwvg8

╒═════╣▒ 03/15/2023 @14:49 ▒╟──────────┘

«et tu?»¹

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/711877043357450240/macrolit-eeyore9990-toomanyfandomstocountcx

╒═════╣▒ 03/15/2023 @14:47 ▒╟──────────┘

I wonder if Forbes knows it is garbage and doesn't care because it's audience is also garbage?

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[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

╒═════╣▒ 03/15/2023 @13:54 ▒╟──────────┘

«Learning from Silicon Valley Bank's apologists»¹> These bad takes reveal a *profoundly* out-of-touch elite, the spiritual descendants of the French aristos who went to the guillotine with sincerely baffled hearts, unable to imagine why anyone would be this angry at them.I wonder if we are any closer to having a «guillotine emoji»²...

[2] https://www.going-flying.com/thoughts/1650722097.html

╒═════╣▒ 03/11/2023 @11:35 ▒╟──────────┘

«"Multipass (I Have No Fire)" / Fifth Element Remix / OP-1»¹ 🔥

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH66WDQBIr4

╒═════╣▒ 03/11/2023 @11:03 ▒╟──────────┘

There *have* to be consequences.> Companies and institutions that need to be bailed out by the government when they fail, should be owned by the government.You can’t privatize the profit and socialize the losses.— Halli (@iamharaldur) «March 10, 2023»¹

[1] https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1634332933707243520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

╒═════╣▒ 03/10/2023 @21:26 ▒╟──────────┘

Yes, please!

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[1] https://kottke.org/16/01/a-small-2009-car-demolishes-a-1959-chevy-in-a-crash-test

╒═════╣▒ 03/10/2023 @11:22 ▒╟──────────┘

I admit I'm a little surprised *how badly* the Bel Air did but not surprised that it did poorly.«https://kottke.org/16/01/a-small-2009-car-demolishes-a-1959-chevy-in-a-crash-test»¹

╒═════╣▒ 03/06/2023 @18:31 ▒╟──────────┘

As another round of folks flee the Twitmachine please make sure next location has an RSS feed. 💖

╒═════╣▒ 03/05/2023 @21:53 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retweet of @sarasrabbithole by @GreatDismal»¹«Mar 5, 2023 at 19:51»²The CDC finally says, “Emerging evidence suggests that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, can have lasting effects on nearly every organ and organ system of the body weeks, months, and potentially years after infection”Oh, is that why I couldn't taste or smell for a year? /s

[1] https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1632544324071362561

[2] https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1632544324071362561

╒═════╣▒ 03/05/2023 @12:22 ▒╟──────────┘

I remember the first time I read Idoru and being enamored with the Walled City. The language used to describe its creation, how the creators "... *turned the killfile inside out, and vanished inside of it*", was hugely evocative. Over the years I learned more about the place that inspired it and now I can't help but see it in basically every cyberpunk environ, from Ghost in The Shell, to Blade Runner, to Night City.It has always felt in part a hopeful testament to what people can accomplish and a sad lesson in what people are capable of inflicting on other people.«Kowloon Walled City, China, c.1989»¹via: «wilwheaton: [Reblogged from grossnational] Kowloon Walled City, China, ...»²

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html

[2] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/710920166095093760/grossnational-kowloon-walled-city-china

Attachments:

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/03/landlords-accused-of-making-up-stories-in-campaign-to-change-tax-rules

╒═════╣▒ 03/03/2023 @21:47 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *who-would-have-guessed* department:«Landlords lying to try to avoid paying taxes»¹

╒═════╣▒ 03/03/2023 @21:42 ▒╟──────────┘

│ In-Reply-To: 02/25/2023 @13:52

Putting the save games in *%LOCALAPPDATA%\FactoryGame* instead of *%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\FactoryGame* *fucking sucks* though. The latter is automatically backed up by Windows File History, the former is *NOT*.Needless to say, I haven't wanted to play much after shotgunning 20 hours of my life because the save game management UI sucks and it turns out the save games aren't automatically backed up by Windows.

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[1] https://twitter.com/jortsthecat/status/1631452448136241153

╒═════╣▒ 03/03/2023 @11:10 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retweet of @thebirdunion by @jortsthecat»¹«Mar 2, 2023 at 19:32»²«This!»³ Many of us came to Audubon (and stay here) because we deeply care about the work. Unionizing is a sign that we’re not only dedicated to our important mission but also to each other. The best way forward for the birds and the people who protect them is with a union contract.Want a safe place to work with a healthy work/life balance? Then *you* want a union!«graphic»⁴

[2] https://twitter.com/jortsthecat/status/1631452448136241153

[3] https://twitter.com/nrdcunion/status/1631424794540351489/

[4] https://justseeds.org/graphic/you-dont-have-to-hate-your-job-to-want-a-union/

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[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

╒═════╣▒ 03/03/2023 @09:15 ▒╟──────────┘

While I think that improved natural language processing on the front end of search engines could be a good thing — insofar as extracting a better understanding of what the user is looking for is the goal, it is really funny to watch the «rapidly evolving fad chasing»¹ from the search monopolists.

╒═════╣▒ 03/03/2023 @09:07 ▒╟──────────┘

From the *any-sufficiently-advanced-technology* department:«https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/03/ai-is-magic/»¹Also, from a mathematician's perspective:«https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/»²

[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/03/ai-is-magic/

[2] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

╒═════╣▒ 03/02/2023 @20:20 ▒╟──────────┘

Oh great, the «CADT»¹ at Docker decided to try to get prettier on their output which completely broke a pile of build scripts that expect some form of sanity in the output of *docker build*. I feel like I just bitched about this not all that long ago when they started throwing *advertising* in the output...

[1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

╒═════╣▒ 03/02/2023 @11:33 ▒╟──────────┘

Just a tiny reminder on this, the 1097th of March, 2020... «shit is still not good out there»¹.

[1] https://www.patreon.com/violetblue?filters[tag]=Pandemic%20Roundups

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[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/28/23618804/google-facebook-login-ads-web-design-hell

╒═════╣▒ 03/01/2023 @21:18 ▒╟──────────┘

I feel like I have «this feeling»¹ at least once a day...> And confidential to Substack: if I have clicked into a newsletter on the web, blocking my view of the thing I’m trying to read with a subscription pop-up isn’t going to make me more likely to subscribe. It just means I’m probably not going to read the newsletter.Of course it isn't like anything made for the web by a company in the last 15 years has actually been any *good*...

╒═════╣▒ 03/01/2023 @19:48 ▒╟──────────┘

«Always. Reblog.»¹

[1] https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/710579425020903424/jason-dean-the-rocky-horror-picture-show-1975

Attachments:

[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-79089154

February

╒═════╣▒ 02/28/2023 @17:06 ▒╟──────────┘

Still standing, «Violet's Pandemic Roundup»¹ continues to deliver week after week.

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[1] https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/109932271552812881

╒═════╣▒ 02/26/2023 @15:11 ▒╟──────────┘

«Retoot of Hrefna (DHC) (@hrefna@hachyderm.io) by Molly White (@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io)»¹This idea that somehow search engines _can_ arbitrate "truth" is just so… not how any of this works or could even conceivably work.The reason that search engines "backstop" with wikipedia is because wikipedia is a giant curated and mostly-audience-appropriate collection of knowledge.Knowing what is "true" is so incredibly nontrivial.This with the reminder that in spite of a lot of hard work by a lot of people for a long time there is still an awful lot of utter bullshit espoused by Wikipedia.Now remember that ML algorithms like ChatGPT have been trained with this as a dataset.

╒═════╣▒ 02/26/2023 @14:48 ▒╟──────────┘

I really need to suck it up and get an ATMEL-ICE. Sometimes there is just no substitution for a debugger and writing a test harness to run your microcontroller code on a full blown computer is a little more work than printf.

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╒═════╣▒ 02/25/2023 @19:31 ▒╟──────────┘

In what information people are afraid of, you find their true selves.

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╒═════╣▒ 02/25/2023 @13:52 ▒╟──────────┘

The automation and logistic management systems in Factorio are far deeper and more complex than in Satisfactory but you can't compare the views.

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