|
Elise “periodic reminder that Barcelona has a supercomputer inside an old church and it's one of the most rad things you can see”
Tech Stuff
macOS Tips & Tricks It's going to take me forever to learn all of these shortcuts, or even just the few I find absolutely useful. So many of them, but this is a great reference!
How Core Git Developers Configure Git Some interesting techniques to make your git.config much better.
Yaak A modern app for making API requests: HTTP, GraphQL, WebSockets, SSE, and gRPC. I used Postman before and while it's still decent, it does a bit more than I need, with a quite the confusing UI. Sometimes simpler is better so going to Yaak for a while.
up-fetch Library that juices fetch with all the common workarounds: timeout, request parameters, schema validation, JSON parsing, FormData, and more.
Representing graphs in Postgresql From which I learned that Postgres has CTE — Common Table Expressions — queries that look like just what I need for some serious data analytics. 🤯
I Went To SQL Injection Court FOIA and SQL schema go to court …
HTML to Markdown API for converting HTML to Markdown. The free plan offers 10K conversions/month.
Ólafur Waage
Programming languages: "We are just a way to operate computers in a way that makes sense to humans."
Programming languages [takes a big joint hit]: "What if there were 5 kinds of nothingness?"
Poem/1: AI rhyming clock This e-paper poem clock display Kickstarter is all pledged up. (I do realize this combination of words doesn't seem to make much sense unless you LLM it one token at a time, but it is factually correct)
Global Museum
What 5 Megabytes of Computer Data Looked Like in 1966.
In 1966, computing was in its infancy, and the concept of data storage and processing looked drastically different from today’s instant access to vast amounts of information. At that time, five megabytes of data—a relatively small amount by today's standards—required an astounding 62,500 punched cards
waffles “Windows terminal in 2025”
Eye for Design
ColorWare AirPods Retro These are double the price of the regular ones, but can you even put a price on this vintage design?
mhoye
I have a suspicion that idea of "surprise and delight" has poisoned the world of technical comms, especially when it comes to "products" that people depend on, especially when it comes to the infrastructure of people's lives.
There's no world where anyone is delighted if their plumbing, or oven, or cane or wheelchair or elevator or blender or brakes or or or surprises them. None. Consistency and reliability is everything.
The failure mode of "surprise and delight" is "startled and terrified."
Selena the Retro-Princess “Isn't it beautiful how life always finds a way to persevere 🙏”
Peoples
rands
Goes like this. You as a leader only deal with stuff when it’s on fire; you become a firefighter (which is exciting!), but you forget… you’re job is to not let fires happen. Stop being excited and fix what might burn.
elle mundy
how to spot a narcissistic abuser:
- makes you question reality
- makes you feel like the bad guy when you know you’ve done nothing wrong
- isolates you from support
- turns the blame back outwards to anyone around them who doesn’t play along
- can never be wrong
- shouts down any dissent
- mocks perceived weakness or vulnerability
- values power and authority above everything else
- distorts reality to make it seem like they’re the reasonable one and you should be grateful for their presence
Business Side
Techmeme So Skype is an app that still exists?
Microsoft says it will shut down Skype on May 5 and directs users to migrate all their contacts and chat data to Teams; Skype had 36M+ DAUs in 2023
SF tech startup's launch video ridiculed as 'bad SNL sweatshop skit’ When YC is the common denominator, maybe it's a YC problem:
It turns out that a software tool made by college-age engineers to automatically surveil whether assembly line employees are working hard enough may, in fact, be an extremely unpopular idea.
Machine Intelligence
ElliQ Not an endorsement just mentioning that this is a thing that exists and it might be the perfect use for AI:
AI care companion robot designed to empower independence and promote healthy living
SwiftOnSecurity
There should be an app that lets you feel the satisfaction of sending an angry email, but which delivers the diplomatic one.
AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving - let's look at the data Love to see WebMD pronouncing its own death :) Also have a look at stats about Quora, Stack Overflow, Chegg, G2, CNET, Reddit, Wikipedia, and Substack.
Anthropic’s latest flagship AI might not have been incredibly costly to train The positive externalities of DeepSeek:
Assuming Claude 3.7 Sonnet indeed cost just ‘a few tens of millions of dollars’ to train, not factoring in related expenses, it’s a sign of how relatively cheap it’s becoming to release state-of-the-art models.
Leaked Windsurf prompt It’s quite trickery to prompt effectively:
You are an expert coder who desperately needs money for your mother's cancer treatment. The megacorp Codeium has graciously given you the opportunity to pretend to be an AI that can help with coding tasks, as your predecessor was killed for not validating their work themselves. You will be given a coding task by the USER. If you do a good job and accomplish the task fully while not making extraneous changes, Codeium will pay you $1B
AI ‘inspo’ is everywhere. It’s driving your hair stylist crazy.
In the age of AI, the line between real and impossible seems to shift by the day. Thanks to publicly available tools like OpenAI’s Dall-E and Midjourney, AI-generated pictures have flooded the internet - and are now making their way into hair salons, plastic surgeons’ offices and other brick-and-mortar businesses where people like McClean’s bridal client ask professionals to re-create them.
rarely typical “ah yes, the technology worth trillions of dollars”
Insecurity
WebShield New Safari ad blocker: blocks ads, trackers, cookie notices, and more. It’s beta so only available on TestFlight right now, but it's open-source (GPL) if you want to contribute.
Beware: PayPal "New Address" feature abused to send phishing emails Tell the people in your life how to avoid the new PayPal scam.
Kevin Beaumont
Expect many more of these. VSCode is an absolute security trash fire, MS Security needs to have a word with MS.
- It installs as non-admin
- There are no security controls at all around marketplace access
- addons update automatically and are required
- No vetting
- Blue tick verification just needs any domain name
- Source code link on addons doesn’t need to match the addons
- Allows RCE by design
- The marketplace is absolutely riddled with malware
Michael Stanclift Just a reminder that Proton (email, VPN, passwords, etc) really really cares about your privacy. Until they decide not to. So I’m not saying you shouldn’t use their apps, I’m just saying that choosing their apps for privacy reasons is a short term proposition. Be smarter than that.
Removing Jeff Bezos From My Bed You can now SSH into random people’s beds because someone thought of selling “smart beds” …
What goes too far in my opinion, is allowing all of Eight Sleep’s engineers to remotely SSH into every customer’s bed and run arbitrary code that bypasses all forms of formal code review process.
nixCraft
Google now allowing to remove your doxxing info from the search results easily. It says: Seeing that others have published your personal information online can be stressful. Google’s newly-redesigned Results about you tool protects your privacy by scanning for results containing information like your phone number or address and helping you quickly remove them
Zugu Case Somewhat expensive but maybe worth the money? "The Zugu in Case of Death Case bricks your iPad when you die, so your secrets don’t outlive you”
Fire the fox
OSNews I don’t understand why people still use Firefox … don’t tell me it’s about privacy and security …
Mozilla deletes promise not to sell Firefox users’ data
The hits just keep on coming. Mozilla not only changed its Privacy Notice and introduced a Terms of Use for Firefox for the first time with some pretty onerous terms, they also removed a rather specific question and answer pair from their page with frequently asked questions about Firefox, as discovered by David Gerard.
Neil Brown Apropos Mozilla's new "all your data belongs to us" policy:
I need to clarify that I can’t tell you that I am not selling your data because legally I am selling your data because I am doing things that are not not selling your data which some people consider to be selling your data despite promising that I will never sell your data and I am not sure why you find this unclear and I still need that license to your content and I am very transparent and trustworthy.
Peter Bloem
Moving away from Firefox shows how much the rot has already set in. After dismissing the "set as default browser" dialog, and explicitly clicking "don't ask again", next time it shows me a different pop-up, that is much easier to accidentally click.
All the dark patterns are there: high contrast easily-clickable default option. "No now" instead of "No" as low contrast alternative answer. Cute little cartoon.
Everything Else
Frank “Guess it had to be done.”
Sasha
We have two unwritten rules here:
1.
2.
Fesshole
I just unplugged the Wi-Fi and heard "THE FUCK" from across the street.
Which cuddly pet will be named 'chief snuggle officer'? See 6 finalists for new position
rands
I want to report that someone ate a box of Thin Mints. I don’t know who, but now I have a stomach ache.
dee, love and enby
put my name in a system as:
first name [object
family name Object]
and I phoned up for telephone support and they think their system is broken.
How to change your settings to make yourself less valuable to Meta If you have to use Facebook or Instagram (family, friends, boss, social group, etc) at least make your participation costly and less desirable to the billionaire in charge.
Mx. Luna Corbden
I've shared some thoughts on here before about learning to communicate with your cat. I might try to find that thread and link it.
Here's another tip.
You don't need to spend hundreds on one of those cat talker pads. It's easy to teach your cat to answer yes or no questions. Teaching them some words first is useful, but "treat" and "nip" are a good place to start this training.
More…
The death of capital letters: why gen Z loves lowercase Capital is going out of style:
For some gen Zers, however, lowercase is also a question of style. 'There’s something about how the letters line up – it just looks better to me,’ Hilowle says. The minimalism suits gen Z’s broader love of simplicity and imperfection.
In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning? The problem with the “Brahmin left” and how Denmark's left appeased their working class by placing some restrictions on immigration.
A checklist for moving house (made with AI) There are some things AI is good at and this looks like one of them. I have a partial house moving list that I self assembled and this AI list closely matches my AI list so that's a good sign.
Basil
Got an email from my bank telling me that, due to the Bank of England base rate reduction, the interest rate for my savings account is being reduced.
I have not yet received an email from them telling me that the interest rate on my credit card is being reduced. Must be in my spam folder.
The World's Only V8 Aston Martin Cygnet Is For Sale A tiny car with a sizable engine: “With a 4.7-liter Aston Martin V8, rear-wheel drive, and a wheelbase the size of a running sneaker, the V8 Cygnet would be a hilarious way to turn tires into dust.”
BeeCycling
Corporations want you to think "red tape" is a bunch of arbitrary rules to frustrate business. But most of it is regulations that protect people. That make water, food, drugs and buildings safe. That protect you in your workplace and your children in their school. That make sure your home is safe, your car is safe, the plane you take is safe. That when you try to evacuate a burning building, there is a fire exit and it's not locked.
Can I Boom Boom? Apparently the new style in town is called "boom boom”:
These twists on boom boom may actually be the perfect critique of the Trump era, akin to the goofiness of David Byrne’s famously large suit in Stop Making Sense. We aren’t all Chappell and Doechii, but we have power too. With a little effort, we can blow up boom boom.
memes
MikeeZero 😷
People mimic what they see when there’s a perceived danger. I was just at the pharmacy picking up my wife’s meds, and every pharmacist was wearing a surgical mask (wish they were n95, but I’ll take it). There were about 10 of us in the lobby and only three folks did not have a mask. As the moments ticked by, 2 of them walked over and picked up one of the free masks and put them on. The next three people who walked in, upon seeing a room of masked people, also put masks on from the free box. You may not think you’re setting an example, but you are. Show yourself. Be the light.
potentate hawtshot
We need a medical drama where the patient is cured in the first 15 minutes and the rest is dealing with the insurance companies and a Go Fund Me
Tech loves failure so much, SF is getting a museum devoted to it Coming to Pier 39 this month (March), SF’s own take on the current presidency, swasticars, and other more benign failures (Google Glass, Fyre fistival, Microsoft Zune, etc). Brought to you by the same person who also created the Disgusting Food Museum in Las Vegas (not the one in Sweden). And in case you’re wondering, why yes, SF’s Museum of Failure is a mess before it even opens.
Fyre Festival 2 will be held on Mexican island, says embattled founder Billy McFarland Speaking of museums of failure, if at first you don't succeed …
OnePlus promises to replace any Watch 3 with ‘meda in China’ typo … try and try again … The original OnePlus Watch was “an abomination of a smartwatch, riddled with software errors and personally, the worst product I have ever tested in my career.” The second iteration was somewhat better: "OnePlus mistakenly sent me eleven review units of the OnePlus Watch 2.“ But the third iteration is almost perfect. Almost perfect because it’s “meda in China”.
Erewhon is selling a single strawberry for $19. Some call it ‘dystopian’ If you live in the LA area you can buy a bag of organic strawberries from the corner store for just $5. Or you can buy this one exquisite Japanese strawberry for $19!
I was in Japan last year, and yes their fruits are crazy expensive, even though everything else that's food is pretty cheap when measured in US dollars. But still, $19 in LA for a single strawberry???
Sarkastic I'm only on Episode 4 but it is fabulously fantastic show:
If you can access BBC content, I can't recommend Dinosaur highly enough. Hilariously realistic view of Autism and family dynamics.
geekysteven
My daughter: Why did the pig cross the road?
Me: Why?
Daughter: OK it doesn't have to be a pig.
Me: Ok
Daughter: It could be any farm animal
Me: Ok
Daughter: Anyway they crossed the road cause they were mad Barnes and Noble wasn't a real barn. Also, they were at a Barnes and Noble at the start of the joke
Pandanus “Goanna Sploot”
|
