Labnotes - Weekend Reading — The real luxuries

Extinction Rebellion Global “Life shouldn't be about accumulating more money and objects it should be about enjoying real luxury when you can.”

Tech Stuff

(Almost) Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years running infrastructure at a startup Detailed and assortment endorse/regret decisions of various infrastructure options.

Paolo Amoroso A brief summary of Niklaus Wirth's "A Plea for Lean Software“ and Tony Hoare’s "The Emperor's Old Clothes”:

The main takeaway from these works is that omitting unnecessary features and simplifying is an overlooked, low hanging fruit of software design.

Paying people to work on open source is good actually Yes!

My fundamental position is that paying people to work on open source is good, full stop, no exceptions. We need to stop criticizing maintainers getting paid, and start celebrating.

No one cares about open-source, until …

We also would like for this moment to encourage everyone to reflect on the ownership structure of the tools that they rely on, and perhaps to favour building some genuine commons rather than products that can simply vanish because of conflicting interests.

jacklandrin/OnlySwitch This looks interesting. An open-source menu bar app with multiple options: hide notch, dark mode, AirPods, Shortcuts, etc. Start with brew install only-switch.

Superlist is a lovely, business-focused tasks app from the makers of Wunderlist Superlist is really good. You setup projects, write notes, attach files, and create tasks. All in one app with a slick UI. If you’re looking for a more capable yet friendly todo app, check it out. Oh, and also you can toggle between personal and business views within the same app.

rotime The concept of this app is pretty interesting. You add routines, checklists, and events to your schedule, and they automatically adapt to your waking hours. Never miss a beat.

Neil Brown

Roses are red
Violets are blue
To save then exit vim
Use :wq

Can generative AI help write accessible code?

The unavoidable conclusion is that when you ask a generative AI tool for help writing accessible code, is that you should not trust the response you get and should verify it with sources you do trust.

MostlyHarmless

Javascript is when your doctor writes you a prescription for more coffee. Everyone knows that.

maybe-finance/maybe The OS for your personal finances, an interesting open-source alternative to Mint et al.

Mark Moxon

I am very proud to present the results of my latest project...

...the first-ever fully documented and annotated disassembly of Lander on the Acorn Archimedes.

Eye for Design

How to create the perfect icon A meticulous system to ensure that your icons are perfectly recognizable, consistent and legible.

How To Center a Div All the different ways you can center using CSS.

Business Side

Bob

This meeting could have been an email I deleted without reading.

The Final Foundry Fund In my last startup, Foundry was our main investor. One thing that set them apart from other VCs. Typically VCs with that many years of experience and cash on hard, are financial vehicles. The VC firm sticks around, but the actual investors rotate like bank tellers, which sometimes lead to unpleasant drama. Foundry was a group of people who liked each other and wanted to work together. No politics. No drama. That’s how it always was. And now they’re proving that by ending up their fund on a high note.

Machine Intelligence

Sora: Creating video from text OK this demo is really impressive. The short videos (30 sec, 1 min) are really good, lots of detail, breathtaking backgrounds, and more. And just like that, we turned the corner to a world were “I’ll send you the video” is no longer a useful proof of anything :(

for a Chadburger today

an episode of Black Mirror where everyone learns the prompt that caused an AI to generate them

Gareth Halfacree I can see someone’s curiosity making them write Magika on the side, but why would a company ever release that?

Google, following the industry trend to AI-all-the-things, has released Magika - a machine learning model which can identify file types. It claims it can outperform traditional methods by 20 per cent.

I pitted it against BSD File on something I figured Google hadn't included in its million-file-strong corpus: CU Amiga's Mega CD-ROM coverdisc from November 1995.

Magika identified... one file correctly, a plain-text document. File? File got 'em all, and quicker too.

With the rise of AI, web crawlers are suddenly controversial The rise and fall of robots.txt, or a how a simple text file became the most complicated spec you can no longer print on a single page.

Goody-2, The world's most responsible AI model

Insecurity

Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says “Cops have alternative means to access encrypted messages, court says.” Court is 100% right.

Everything Else

Daily Cartoon: Friday, January 19th World Economic Forum.

Andrew

When people talk about sentences that would have made no sense decades ago, it's always things like "my galaxy can't bluetooth my android nexus" and never things like "if you like this video, please consider liking it”

Ignore your fitness tracker and walk to Mordor instead

The app uses your health data to track a quest to Mount Fire — a copyright-friendly version of Mount Doom in Mordor. They were competing with another halfling named Mr. Underhill, aka Frodo Baggins’ traveling alias.

Glenn Fleishman

It seems like I'll never finish assembling this Ship of Theseus LEGO model.

Gavin Shoebridge “But... I want my brakes to slow me down. 😐”

Car dealers step up opposition to White House fuel efficiency targets My guess is, the wave of negative EV headlines is the result of a PR campaign against the White House’s CAFE standard. That’s how industry PR works. Every time. And if you’re wondering why I think that — that same automotive industry worrying about CAFE is also getting awfully worried about BYD entering the US market.

NanoRaptor For All Mankind NYCC Poster cleanup/remake.

(BTW I just finished watching season 4 of For All Mankind on Apple TV. It is good. Really good.)

Mike McHargue

That moment you realize that you are your dog's emotional support animal.

Vee