Published
Weekend Reading — Gesturing wildly and in every direction
1970 Ferrari 512 S Modulo That is quite the concept car!
Tech Stuff
derPUPE “If Apple released the C64”
Kate Kirby Yes please!
We desperately need to start a Slow Software movement. High quality, intentionally designed, low defect software done at a quarter of the pace for the same price. Because we've been destroying the mental health of developers for the last quarter century, and what do we have to show for it but a giant mess?
Doggo Doggo is a cool name for a good looking and friendly command-line DNS client.
Introducing Docs in Proton Drive Competing with Google Docs and Microsoft Office except that Proton is actually end-to-end encrypted:
Today we’re announcing a new end-to-end encrypted, collaborative document editor that puts your privacy first. Docs in Proton Drive are built on the same privacy and security principles as all our services, starting with end-to-end encryption. Docs let you collaborate in real time, leave comments, add photos, and store your files securely. Best of all, it’s all private — even keystrokes and cursor movements are encrypted.
Declare your AIndependence: block AI bots, scrapers and crawlers with a single click Cloudflare will now let you block AI bots with a single click!
Bean Heads Get these cute randomly generated characters to use in your apps & games.
Rule Of Three for avoiding over-engineering
(not standard and recommended by no one but me):Don’t implement a fix for something until the third time it has bit you.
Save type hints for after your third type-related bug.
Don’t optimize your code until the third time it has times out.
Don’t create that tracking dashboard until the third time you’ve wished for it.
Don’t automate that deployment step until the third time it’s been forgotten.
exelban/stats Because you want to see key metrics (CPU usage, memory, disk, network in/out, battery life, etc) in your menubar. Free, open source, quick brew install. Almost perfect (I’m on 14.6, some menu bar apps don’t work perfectly on my machine)
florian IPv6 RIP:
so the IETF gave up on IPv6 because "too much effort".
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/GLDqO_ck6zjlg-P3HUP0O8ikGMQ/
quite visionary if you ask me
Free Voice Isolator and Background Noise Remover Upload an audio file and it will strip out the background noises (street noise, mic feedback, etc).
Darkmatter If you like Astro, you might enjoy this UI for editing content:
Darkmatter scans your Astro content collections and generates an interface for managing their content.
diff-pdf Diff your PDFs.
Telescope SEO but for less than the price of a cup of coffee.
Generative AI for Professional Services Do you need an LLM to help you understand legalese?
Harvey builds custom LLMs for elite law firms to tackle the most complex legal challenges across every practice area, jurisdiction and legal system in the world.
If you are a Mac user, or if you have transferred files from Mac to Windows, you’re probably familiar with .DS_Store files. But where does this name come from?
Patrick “Why don’t they have CTRL+F for spices? 🤷🏾♂️”
bisqwit/that_editor “It is a programming editor for DOS environments. More specifically, it is something that looks like a programming editor for DOS environments.”
y.o.n.a. The success loop is complete!
microsoft is both sending advertisements to my work email and automatically categorizing them as spam and quarantining them for me. truly the world's most advanced company
Dan Callahan “JavaScript.”
Eye for Design
I don't know who needs to hear this (yes I do), but if the "slick" UI thing you want to do creates a frustrating experience for assistive tech users, it's not slick. It's just clunky and weird, and probably creates other weird issues you haven't considered. Users don't want weird clunky new interactions you've dreamed up. Do the boring thing.
I spend so much of my time trying to stop people from doing weird things in our UI. That's like 50% of my job at this point.
how to browse the web in 2024
- open site
- close email subscription pop up
- close push notifications
- dismiss cookies pop up
- dismiss the request for your location
- close the "did you find what your were looking for?" dialog
- apologize to those around you for the loud swearing
- try to remember why you opened the site in the first place
Ricki Is Not A Wizard Tarr “I've seen a lot of terrible design choices, but this is one of the first ones, I've seen, that I think would actually kill me”
Peoples
Smart people will tell you to find an Expert; dumb people will always have an answer.
Female hair is either long or political. Sexual orientation is either heterosexual or political. Gender identity is either cis or political. Clothing is either gender stereotyped and boring or political. City infrastructure is either car-focused or political. Energy is either fossil fuels or political. Education is either white christian propaganda or political.
Everything follows the same pattern, tech included.
Business Side
First we see Nintendo eschew the fake layoffs pretenses because they think it's employee hostile and now they say they won't incorporate generative AI because they are concerned about commons copyright.
A technology company with functioning rational ethics. Respect!
"A.I. won't replace you, but a shareholder who doesn't care about quality will" is what the slogan should say.
Figma AI just copies Apple's Weather app every time Figma just cancelled their “AI” feature because it did little more than copy the design from Apple’s Weather app. And it’s not a question of whether this is Machine Intelligence or a blatant ripoff of copyright content. Nobody wants to go into a land war with Apple.
Machine Intelligence
Supervision and truth Or why you can't prevent LLM from hallucinating (this article is an easy read but it’s also deep understanding of the underlying technology):
The real question is, if these problems truly are unsolveable, which with today's state of the art they very much are, will they ever be suitable for this kind of application at all.
Vending machines selling bullets at grocery stores The US in 2024:
Vending machines that are powered by artificial intelligence are selling ammunition for guns in grocery stores in Alabama and Oklahoma
Google's search algorithm still favors AI-generated spam over original content Because of course. And Google Researchers Publish Paper About How AI Is Ruining the Internet.
haIva 😂 “behold, the sloppinator”
Insecurity
Secretly funding a "Memory safety is woke" campaign to ensure that just the worst fucking people keep getting hacked over and over again
If you have ghostscript anywhere in your production services, you are probably vulnerable to a shockingly trivial remote shell execution, and you should upgrade it or remove it from your production systems.
https://codeanlabs.com/blog/research/cve-2024-29510-ghostscript-format-string-exploitation/
One thing to note is that imagemagick will automatically forward postscript files to ghostscript, so if you are using imagemagick anywhere you are probably vulnerable. (If you are using javascript libraries to process images, you probably are!)
'Almost every Apple device' vulnerable to CocoaPods Fantastic!
To claim a Pod, all an attacker needed to do was transmit a particular CURL request, and voila – they would have free rein to modify a Pod and insert malicious code.
OpenAI breach is a reminder that AI companies are treasure troves for hackers Somehow OpenAI forgot to tell us all that they had a security breach.
There’s no need to worry that your secret ChatGPT conversations were obtained in a recently reported breach of OpenAI’s systems. The hack itself, while troubling, appears to have been superficial — but it’s reminder that AI companies have in short order made themselves into one of the juiciest targets out there for hackers.
ChatGPT for macOS raises concerns for storing chats in plain text Because security is OpenAI’s number one priority!
Twilio says hackers identified cell phone numbers of two-factor app Authy users Just a reminder that Authy is a really really bad app. Don’t ever use it. Turns out it’s not just a UI issue, but apparently also this thing is as secure as hiding your cash under the bed.
How to Get Root Access to Your Sleep Number Bed “A guide to gaining root access to your Sleep Number bed hub and setting up a local network control and monitoring server.”
Everything Else
Meanwhile in Canada “An animal's ability to hide and blend into nature is amazing.”
This gesturing wildly and in every direction is utterly exhausting.
My husband’s beige flag is he truly believes we can make “just a quick trip to Costco,” a thing neither of us has ever done in our entire lives
Now even the 'droids are being laid off – sheesh! Amazon is axing its Astro for Business robotic security sentry just seven months after announcing the thing.…
rock: oh fuck I’m covered with paper tell my wife I love her
babe are you ok? you’ve barely even touched your previous instructions
The Jaguar JN-2000 was a sewing machine you could control with your Gameboy.
You don't believe me do you.
Fireside Friday, June 28, 2024 Some of the great things that happened in the last few decades:
- US crime rate at 50 year low
- The Ozone hole disappearing
- The Troubles are over
- Saddam Hussein long gone
- AIDS cure around the corner
- Cars are much safer
- And lightbulbs much better
KC Lemson “I walked past this car and knew I shouldn’t skip it”
This is such an embarassingly human centred headline: "The 'smart' animal club keeps getting bigger" - No! It was always huge!
It is humanity that is very slowly and reluctantly getting smarter at recognising the smartness of animals.
Also, please don't rank animal's smartnesses. That's just awful. Species are highly adapted to their environment. For some, that brings them closer to our very human - and thus not at al universal - definition of smartness. That's all.
“If we designed our homes like we design our cities—there wouldn't be a lot of room for living left.”
The optician says I've got 20-20 vision!
Oh, sorry, I misread that. It says my vision is so-so.
Controversial TwinRay organization closes doors on The Haven in downtown Ashland - Ashland News I have some healing crystals that I’m willing to sell for the right price. Just come by my place, but don’t ever read this article about new age grifters:
As doors shut on a downtown store operated by the controversial organization TwinRay, a former follower and family member of another talk to Ashland.news about the experience — including the loss of more than $80,000 in retirement savings pursuing "Ascendantship."
The Imperial Supreme Court This article was published in Nov 2022 which feels like ages ago yet it is so so timely.
Navy SEALs have disproportionately been dying by suicide 🤯 I had a friend who was social, outgoing, fun, extroverted. He ran a new business that was doing pretty well. And one day he committed suicide. And nobody could understand why such a joyful person would end their life. But he was around 40, and he was ex–Marine (two tours), and well …
Navy SEALs have disproportionately been dying by suicide …
.. with a similar pattern: Each seemed healthy until their early 40s, when — abruptly — a host of severe mental health issues arose
elle “some of you are taking the weighted blanket thing too far”
