TIL Nimona (one of my daughter’s favourite movies from last year) started life as a sketch on Tumblr.
/uses page
This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I’m a real sucker for a good /uses page. Because they’re real people taking their time to document the things they’re passionate about, hey can be a great way of discovering new tools that you might not have come across before.
Anyway, after weeks of procrastination, I’ve added my own /uses page. I hope someone will find something useful on it.
Pluralistic: How I got scammed (05 Feb 2024) »
If Cory Doctorow can fall victim to a phishing scam, what hope do the rest of us have?
Coincidentally, someone on the Irish Tech Community slack reported that they were the victim of an attempt where their “bank” read out the first 8 digits of their virtual card and was asking them to read out the last 8. Turns out that you can basically construct the first 8 digits of any card if you know the card type, the issuer and the issuing country.
Let’s be careful out there.
Physical Media 2024
Anecdata!
We were in Harvey Norman yesterday buying a new fridge. Have you ever been fridge-shopping with two small children? Hoooly shit is it hard work. After myself and my wife finally managed to snag 10 seconds of peace and quiet to discuss the options to ourselves, I took the kids off to distract them with the demo-mode TVs while my wife talked to a salesperson.
While the kids were hypnotised by the crisp images of crystal glasses melting like ice, I used the opportunity to ask a salesperson if they happened to have any 4K Blu-Ray players because I’m doubling down on physical media. “I’ll have to check the system” he says. So we walk across the shop to their DOS-based(!) inventory system. Along the way we pass an entire row of record players. About 20 of them. Everything from cheapo all-in-ones to top-of-the-range Pro-ject ones. They were even selling a few vinyl records. “No, we don’t have any 4K Blu-Ray players,” says the salesman, “we could order one in if you’d like?”
Apparently in 2024, a 150-year-old technology is better catered for in a shop like Harvey Norman than a 20-year old one.
(Incidentally, DID Electrical, Curry’s and Power City also did not have any Blu-Ray players for sale, but they did have DVD players for sale.)
See also:
How to Install Custom Fonts on Your Kindle »
This is probably old news, but TIL you can install your own fonts on your Kindle.
Zed Industries - Zed is now open source »
I’m a reluctant Visual Studio Code user. It’s got a lot of great design ideas but it’s so slowwwwww and I miss the speed of something like Sublime Text. Zed (from the makers of Atom) is an editor that prioritises speed but copies a lot from vscode. It’s just missing vscode’s massive extensibility, but now it’s been open sourced maybe that will change? One worth keeping an eye on.
Why Platformer is leaving Substack - by Casey Newton »
This is pretty huge - Casey Newton’s is taking his newsletter off of Substack because of its ridiculous policies on hate speech.
In 2023, we added more than 70,000 free subscribers. While I would love to credit that growth exclusively to our journalism and analysis, I believe we have seen firsthand how quickly and aggressively tools like <substack’s newsletter promotion features> can grow a publication.
And if Substack can grow a publication like ours that quickly, it can grow other kinds of publications, too.
All the Types of Science Fiction - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency »
I think I’ve read most of these books. My favourites are:
Basically Mein Kampf
Bomb Cock 2: Mutually Assured Destruction
and
- The Turing Test, but sexy
Old Made Good
Old Made Good is a vintage shop in Nashville that takes boring old prints and makes them a thousand times better they’re extremely My Shit. Their Instagram was an instant-follow for me.