Copy-on-write archiver

Like tar but the archive isn't a copy, just reflinks to the original files.

2024-09-08 archive • files • tar • car • backups • reflink • xfs • btrfs

Jojos

History of the fried potato snack in Oregon

2024-09-08 jojo • language • oregon • frenchfries • food • potato • fries

Screw the Pooch etymology

Fun story about the vulgar phrase which may have been coined in 1950 by a Yalie

2024-09-07 language • etymology • slang • english • yale

Test Ad Block

Site that loads 135 different ad scripts to see which ones your ad blocker blocks

2024-09-06 adblocker • ads • ublock • testing • web • via:lobsters

Tiny Tiny RSS

Self hosted feed reader, hackable

2024-09-06 rss • atom • feedreader • reader • feeds • internet • browsing

systemd + musl

Modern Linux system manager ported to tiny libc alternative

2024-09-05 alpine • linux • systemd • via:lobsters • musl

Internet Archive loses appeal

Bad news for anyone who reads books or enjoys content

2024-09-04 internet • archive • copyright • internetarchive • archive.org • openlibrary

StreetPass for Mastodon

Nice little browser extension; it keeps track of Mastodon accounts of people whose web pages you happen to visit

2024-09-03 mastodon • social • discovery • metadata • chrome • extension • socialmedia

Backrest for backups

A really nice config manager for the Restic backup system with a good web interface

2024-09-03 backups • restic • sysadmin

Lunar escape systems

Bonkers plan for evacuating astronauts from the moon by basically sitting on some RCS thrusters and steering by hand

2024-09-03 nasa • moon • 1960s • apollo • escape • batshitinsane

Zoom and Enhance

Details of a film trope most famous from Blade Runner

2024-09-02 film • bladerunner • trope • enhance

Ted Chang on AI and art

Argument AIs can't produce art. I'm more optimistic about AI as a useful tool but he makes a bunch of important arguments very clearly

2024-09-02 ai • art • chang • creativity

ICs and Navajo

A couple of points of contact between integrated circuit manufacture and the Navajo nation

2024-09-01 navajo • history • fairchild • intel • indian • nativeamerican • manufacturing • aim

One Million Checkboxes hack

Lovely story of some clever young people figuring out how to do mass art with the Internet experiment

2024-08-29 games • internet • hacking • omcb

Smart light database

A bunch of lightbulbs you can control with computers in a table witih some statistics

2024-08-29 lighting • lights • led • hue • lifx • bulbs • smarthome • iot

Telegram for far right culture

Analysis of why the insecure Russian-controlled chat system has become the popular choice for some of the most awful of America's right wing people

2024-08-27 telegram • signal • culture • politics • uspol • russia

Tesla Supercharger failure

Musk's company has proven an unreliable partner, entire US electric car industry is on pause right now

2024-08-27 nacs • electricity • tesla • musk • charging • ev • cars

Minisforum S100

A reasonably powerful PC a little smaller than an iPhone

2024-08-25 pc • minipc • computer • hardware

Musk and Twitter Blue

A story from the new book "How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter"

2024-08-24 elonmusk • twitter • verification • twitterblue • checkmark • fraud • identity

HTML review / XOXO

Presentation of various textile arts and how they relate to web design

2024-08-23 design • knitting • weaving • textile • XOXO • web

Teaxas grid maximum

A lot of demand, a lot of power, and a lot of very high prices

2024-08-22 texas • energy • electrify • regulation • solar • electricity • via:hackernews

Food analysis

Details of the study protocols which determine what's in food, like how much protein or fat

2024-08-20 food • science • diet • calories • usda • research

How calories are calculated

Deep dive on USDA food research. It's not particularly exact.

2024-08-20 calories • diet • food • usda • science • research

Python magic codecs

Some really bonkers Python hacking using a preprocessing facility to add syntax

2024-08-20 python • preprocessor • coding • metaprogramming • hacks

Just use Postgres

Nuts and bolts advice about database options

2024-08-17 via:lobsters • database • postgres • software

14kB websites

Web pages load significantly faster if you can fit within the first 10 packets of TCP slow start. (I'm not sure this is exactly true in 2024 but I like the idea.)

2024-08-17 internet • optimization • web • tcp • slowstart

LEO satellite pollution

More concerns about environmental impact of thousands of artificial satellites burning up in the atmosphere

2024-08-17 pollution • starlink • orbit • leo • ozone • environment

Kind of Bloop vinyl

Andy's remarkable jazz chiptune album has a new vinyl issue (with a new cover)

2024-08-15 music • vinyl • jazz • kindofblue • chiptunes • waxy

ODDADA

New music game, a step sequencer with game mechanics

2024-08-15 games • music • via:waxy • sequencer

NPD data breach

Detailed analysis of the data in a recent high profile data dump that alleges to include the SSNs of all Americans

2024-08-14 privacy • ssn • npd • darkweb • security • badtech

Illustrated QUIC

Detailed byte by byte explanation of the transport protocol replacing TCP for web communication

2024-08-13 quic • http3 • protocol • tcpip • udp • ssl

GitHub CoPilot alternatives

Various free and self-hosted AI code completion tools

2024-08-13 programming • ai • vscode • copilot • llm

SOPHIE — Faceshopping

Haunting music video (CW: strobing)

2024-08-11 sophie • music • transgender • techno • trans • photoshop • identity

Lahaina one year later

Photos of the aftermath of the awful fire that destroyed one of Hawaii's great towns

2024-08-11 hawaii • lahaina • photos • fire • wildfire • hawaiʻi

$DJT token rugpull

A fraud committed by Martin Shkreli? Barron Trump? Unknown other persons?

2024-08-11 fraud • cryptocurrency • scam • politics • djt • shkreli • trump

"Ope" word origin

Argument it's more of a natural physical utterance than a formal word with etmyology. Related to "oops".

2024-08-11 via:kottke • language • etymology • Excrescence

Circle Tube Map

Useful alternate map of the London Underground

2024-08-11 maps • via:cal • tube • visualization • subway

Tim Walz, map nerd

VP candidate has GIS expertise

2024-08-09 maps • politics • uspol • timwalz • walz • gis • esri • harriswalz

sqlean-time

New sqlite extension for nanosecond precision time

2024-08-09 time • datetime • calendar • sqlite3 • database • sqlite • via:lobsters

Sonos meltdown

Innovative audio player has had a disastrous quarter on the back of a failed launch of a new app

2024-08-08 sonos • music • management • secondsystem

Olympic Tag

Kabaddi, an Indian form of tag, was an exhibition sport associated with the 1936 Olympics

2024-08-07 tag • games • kabaddi • india • sports • olympics

Bewitched Groom

16th century woodcut, one of a series of the artist's obsession with horses

2024-08-07 horses • baldung • hansbaldung • art • woodcut

EP–1320 medieval

Hilarious video introducing the new Teenage Engineering pocket sequencer

2024-08-07 music • Jodorowsky • teenageengineering • synthesizer • medieval

Mining the public domain

Concerns about a new public domain search engine

2024-08-05 publicdomain • licensing • creativecommons • jessamyn • libraries • culture

Repository statistics

Details of versions of software in various Linux distributions

2024-08-05 linux • versions • repos • updates • software

Ventoy

A USB boot disk tool. A generic bootable system which then chains to booting an ISO stored on the USB

2024-08-05 boot • sysadmin • hacking • iso • usb • linux

Kagi leaderboard

A list of domains Kagi users choose to block or promote

2024-08-04 search • spam • pinterest • kagi • crowdsourcing

Musk PAC voter suppression

Dirty tricks with social media ads and voter registration tarpits at America PAC

2024-08-02 uspol • politics • elonmusk • americapac • trump • votingrights

American Height and Weight

A nice static visualization of basic body measurements

2024-08-02 health • america • obesity • weight • bmi • height

Google Quick Share

A newish way to transfer files from a phone to a computer, seems to work

2024-08-01 android • filesharing • google • windows • transfer • files

Intel CPU disaster

Newer Intel desktop CPUs have a flaw that causes permanent hardware damage. There is still no fix.

2024-08-01 intel • cpu • hardware • failure • classaction • microcode

Gymnast / Parmigiano

Olympian Giorgia Villa has a cheese sponsorship and many publicity shots

2024-07-31 funny • photos • sports • olympics • cheese • marketing

Pink Floyd 1970 KQED

Extraordinary recording of the band playing live at a radio station at the height of their best psychedelic era

2024-07-31 music • pinkfloyd • kqed • sanfrancisco • video

VCs for Kamala

A very long list of some influential tech investors

2024-07-31 vcs • politics • uspol • kamalaharris • president • tech

1Password CLI

A way to use 1Password to store secrets in various dev tools using a CLI

2024-07-31 1password • secrets • security • devops • programming

Silver Crest closes

Weird San Francisco 24 hour diner has closed

2024-07-30 sanfrancisco • diner • restaurant • 24hour

Healthchecks business

Report of a small one person tech operation. It's a great service!

2024-07-30 via:hackernews • ping • healthcheck • uptime • devops • lifestylebusiness • sass

Steamlytics

Sentiment analysis of Steam community reviews

2024-07-29 games • steam • reviews • ai • analysis • metrics • sentiment

Baked Data

Simon Willison's description of building websites with static data

2024-07-29 internet • architecture • website • static • simplicity

Nastaliq vs. Naskh

A comparison of two writing systems for Urdu and how computerization is favoring a more utilitarian writing system

2024-07-29 writing • urdu • arabic • calligraphy • typesetting • computers • culture • language

Policy vs Covid deaths

Analysis finds that US states with public health policies restricting transmission saved a lot of lives. Behavioral changes worked.

2024-07-29 covid • politics • publicpolicy • health • medicine • statistics • usa • america

Texas oil methane pollution

Permian basin oil producers often flare or release natural gas rather than use it, wasting energy and creating enormous global warming and pollution

2024-07-28 texas • oil • oilandgas • pollution • methane • corruption • globalwarming • climatechange

Scaling one million checkboxes

Nice writeup of the brief hyperpopular realtime multiplayer website

2024-07-27 internet • checkboxes • scaling • via:waxy • golang • hacking • fun

Stack Overflow Developer Survey

Interesting survey of mindshare of various technologies for software developers. Go go "Markdown file"!

2024-07-27 programming • survey • culture • tools • software

The New Internet

Interesting vision post from the Tailscale CEO about making small computing easier

2024-07-27 computing • usability • tailscale • internet • hacking • networking

Restic 0.17

Release notes for the excellent Linux backup software

2024-07-26 backup • restic • linux • sysadmin

Secure Boot fiasco

Another failure of this incredibly complicated and brittle system that turns out to provide no actual security

2024-07-26 badtech • security • bios • uefi

Z-Library clone

Popular site for downloading unlicensed books was cloned with someone collecting financial data

2024-07-25 zlibrary • piracy • books • scam • fraud

Reddit vs. search engines

Monopoly deal struck with Reddit. Terrible precedent and should be illegal.

2024-07-24 reddit • google • monopoly • antitrust • search • competition • bing

Miyazaki’s Weird Little Guys

Lovely grace note from the animator

2024-07-24 miyazaki • via:kottke • movies • animation • sprites • warawara • kodama

NYT renewal class action

Interesting application of California's special laws about online renewal of subscriptions. A $2.375M settlement of a class action lawsuit.

2024-07-22 nytimes • california • privacy • righttocancel • subscription • politics

American Violence

A brief historical review the odd embrace of political violence in American discourse

2024-07-20 uspol • politics • guns • fascism • america • trump

Late 70s NYC photos

Willy Spiller's photos from the subway (ignore the stupid text)

2024-07-18 newyork • nyc • photos • streetphotography • 70s • subway • transit

The Commercial and Political Atlas

William Playfair's 1786 book in which he invents a bunch of now-common infographic techniques like time series charts

2024-07-18 infographics • playfair • visualization • history • books

Right-to-left time series

A few examples where time moves to the left. Uncommon but not entirely unknown

2024-07-18 visualization • arabic • rtl • timeseries

Why Hatch?

Yet another Python packaging implementation, hatchling is the replacement for setuptools

2024-07-17 python • setuptools • pip • pypa • packaging • software

Defrag 98

Revisit the sights and sounds of DOS filesystem maintenance

2024-07-17 windows • win98 • retro • defrag

"jerry-rigged"

"jury-rigged" and "jerry-built" are two English expressions that mean similar things but have different etymologies. "jerry-rigged" seems to be a malapropism.

2024-07-16 language • english • slang • juryrigged • etymology

Mozilla CTO on ad tracking

Explanation for the new ad surveillance feature in Firefox: they claim it's more privacy-protecting than other ad surveillance.

2024-07-15 facebook • mozilla • ads • surveillance • privacy

Snowflake and AT&T

Major security breaches seem to be the fallout of hackers exploiting the cloud provider's lack of multi-factor authentication.

2024-07-15 security • badtech • snowflake • att • authentication • 2fa • mfa

OKLCH in CSS

Perceptual color space support in browsers

2024-07-13 color • colorspace • lch • oklch • css • javascript • design

Fedipact

A list of Mastodon servers and their policy towards Threads. Many are in the Fedipact, declaring their intent to block Facebook's entry to the fediverse

2024-07-12 fediverse • meta • facebook • policy • banning • mastodon • techlgbt

Firefox 128 ad settings

New version of Firefox opted everyone in to a new form of surveillance

2024-07-12 ads • firefox • mozilla • surveillance • privacy • internet • web • browser

Follow the Crypto

Tracks crypto industry expenditures on US political races

2024-07-12 crypto • politics • election • corruption

Just Use Postgres

List of various advanced database features like spatial queries and fulltext

2024-07-11 database • architecture • postgres • webapp • infrastructure

Sneaked references

Science fraud: authors embed hidden references in papers so people don't see them but the impact measurement robots do

2024-07-11 science • scam • fraud • steganography • references

Delphy

Baysean phylogenetics running in a browser with a live visualization. Just a crazy-powerful webapp.

2024-07-10 webapp • genetics • visualization • benfry • wasm

SignPath Foundation

Free code signing for open source projects

2024-07-09 security • codesigning • microsoft • windows • apple • opensource

Russia v. children's hospital

Russia hits Kyiv's biggest children's hospital with a guided cruise missile

2024-07-09 politics • war • russia • ukraine • warcrime • atrocity • hospital • children

Fascist froth

An argument that reporting on Trump is being skewed by journalists' fears of a coming attack on them

2024-07-08 uspol • trump • politics • journalism • fascism

Python whenever

A new date and time library accelerated by Rust native code. Thoughtful about why it's better than Pendulum

2024-07-08 python • datetime • pendulum • arrow • rust

tty text input

Details of all the various ways shells and terminals read lines of input from the user and let them edit what they're typing

2024-07-08 readline • linux • tty • shell • tui • ui

1994 web pages

A remarkably good roundup of screenshots and discussion

2024-07-06 web • internet • history • websites • culture • 1994 • oldwebtoday

accession-numbers

A library for extracting museum object ID numbers from larger text

2024-07-05 museum • archive • extract

Starfish Prime

In 1962 the US set off a hydrogen bomb in the upper atmosphere causing an EMP that damaged a lot of stuff on the ground and in orbit

2024-07-05 space • warfare • nuclear • history • america • hawaii • emp • fusion

“Some folks need killing"

North Carolina governor candidate leans in on the fascism.

2024-07-05 uspol • politics • fascism • northcarolina • maga • republicans • gop

EV sound design

Short video on the artificial noises electric cars make

2024-07-05 avas • evs • safety • noise • cars • sound • sounddesign

Google Gemini Nano

New LLM you can install in your browser, a Chrome experimental thing

2024-07-05 chrome • ai • llm • google

Alternate screen buffer

xterm's tty has a second buffer you can swap to: programs like vi use this to preserve the old screen. maybe dates to a DEC terminal feature?

2024-07-05 tty • xterm • console • terminal

The ArQuives

Canadian archive of LGBTQ2+ content

2024-07-05 lgbt • gay • video • archive • history • canada