Published
Weekend Reading — Voting time!
Hello and welcome back. If you missed me, I went on a trip for three weeks, so didn't have time to post. But I did enjoy delicious food, beautiful sites, and super fast trains. Now I'm back to posting and this weekend I'm also voting because every vote counts!
Tech Stuff
Maximal effort, minimal impact: How I learned what engineering guidelines should be like
I should have taken a hint from the fact that Moses used a couple of stone tablets and a chisel to write down rules for our entire society and I should have scraped it then and there but I didn’t, the effort I put into it made me blind to the fact that reading these documents was more of an endurance test than a helpful guide. The problem was that I had mistaken detail for effectiveness.
ajft “Throw the programmers in the sea”
look, all the best C coders trash talk C. the only time you should be worried is when someone's using C without talking shit about it
Thea “Well it’s not running Windows”
Allison Husain “i'm so glad the RISC-V vendor ecosystem has embraced reasonable and easy to remember extension names”
just gonna say it, if developer tool companies actually galaxy brained they could be learning a lot from places they will absolutely never learn from, like sewing communities
David Bisset “As a developer sometimes you'll see code comments like this. Often, you'll be the one writing it.”
Eye for Design
Edgar Allan “Bring back this style of UI, you cowards. Let me compute with whimsy”
The Whore of Blahbylon “Fonts matter.”
Peoples
This is not a new thought at all, but I am frequently reminded of it. If you like a thing that somebody has made, be it art, apps, food, or whatever, consider telling them.
This post brought to you by the number of times I have told an author that their book means a lot to me, and they seem visibly moved. Turns out, creators are actually people too!
On the other hand, if you don’t like something, shut the fuck up.
Notion superfans are using the niche software to run their entire lives The Notion the app is cool. Notion the cult is just plain weird:
Couples (and even polycules) have created templates to optimize their relationships, creating shared grocery lists, date night logs, breakup protocols, and a guide to shared principles.
Gavin Shoebridge “Alright, that is a brilliant Halloween decoration.”
Business Side
Covidiocracy Tesla confused California (we don’t like slime running down our streets) with Texas (they don’t like environmental regulations):
Fluorescent green sodium hydroxide liquid, leaked from Tesla's Palo Alto headquarters, flows along a street gutter. The chemical, which is used as coolant for Tesla's "AI supercomputer," eventually ran into Matadero Creek. Fire officials say more than 500 gallons were recovered, as cleanup efforts continue into next week.
Tesla doesn't have a permit to store the chemical, and "could be fined."
Losses on Boeing’s Starliner Program Hit a Staggering $1.85 Billion I guess it's hard to pay your employees a reasonable wage when you're blowing $1.85 billion on dysfunctional space rockets.
Related: Boeing-Built Satellite Explodes In Orbit, Littering Space With Debris
(The reason I’m so upset at Boeing is a) living in the US I’m bound to be flying on Boeing airplanes, b) they used to be the best at hardware engineering, c) if they get a free pass for being so money hungry, what happens to other companies that make products we all use?)
iWalker The future is here. Ads walking down the street. To talk with you. In person.
Machine Intelligence
inTouch This AI service will call your parents so you don’t have to!
inTouch initiates a call to your parent on their phone. Our specially trained AI guides the conversation, asking questions and suggesting topics based on their preferences and previous interactions.
AI Detectors Falsely Accuse Students of Cheating—With Big Consequences Yes, AI detectors are inaccurate on a good day. Yes, teachers still use them. No, teachers do not make these purchase decisions, that’s entirely up to management.
Olmsted disputed the accusation to her teacher and a student coordinator, stressing that she has autism spectrum disorder and writes in a formulaic manner that might be mistakenly seen as AI-generated, according to emails viewed by Bloomberg Businessweek. The grade was ultimately changed, but not before she received a strict warning: If her work was flagged again, the teacher would treat it the same way they would with plagiarism.
Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said So hospital AI is basically WebMD?
“Nobody wants a misdiagnosis,” said Nelson, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. “There should be a higher bar.”
Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity promote scientific racism in AI search results This is not a case of AI being mildly incorrect, this is AI summarizing from white supremacists:
In the case of the IQ results, Google referred to a variety of sources, including posts on X, Facebook, and a number of obscure listicle websites, including World Population Review. In nearly all of these cases, when you click through to the source, the trail leads back to Lynn’s infamous dataset. (In some cases, while the exact numbers Lynn published are referenced, the websites do not cite Lynn as the source.)
This Talking Pet Collar Is Like a Chatbot for Your Dog For the low low sum of $595 your dog will speak to you!
A new smart collar called Shazam aims to give pet owners the ability to talk to their fur babies. Or at least fake it.
Insecurity
"If you can't hack your enemy's network, just change your Wi-Fi name to 'Free Internet' and wait." - The Art of Cyber War
PayPal wanting to access my bank account for NINETY DAYS to monitor all my transactions to prevent fraud!
Confirm bank another way - you better fucking believe I am confirming my bank account another way!
“You are using an ad blocker.”
Yes, and the fact that you know I am is why I am using it in the first place.
Everything Else
Minty “Some witchery taking place”
“Unsubscribe” is such a passive aggressive phrase. You know damn well I never “subscribed” in the first place. Insinuating that it’s my fault now is heaping insult upon injury.
Going to start a band called “Various Artists” just to mess with everyone’s metadata
Jason Thorne “Colourful traffic calming”
Middle age is not about buying new towels. Middle age is about getting excited about buying new towels
quixote 💪
I'm beginning to think we need to lose the phrase "by 2030."
All the catastrophes we've lined up all need X to be done "by 2030."
I'm sure what's happening is a feeling of, "Oh well. Time enough. We'll start in 2029."
We should shift the language. Say 100% is needed right now. Then, maybe, if we're lucky, we'll actually get 10% of the way there by 2030.
Hug it out, but make it quick. New Zealand airport sets time limit on goodbyes
A new Netflix series continues the effort to launder Bill Gates’ reputation.
Don’t worry, you won’t hear anything about all the time he spent with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in this series.
If you'd like to prevent me making a podcast, please donate to my kickstopper.
Streaming subscription fees have been rising while content quality is dropping Subscribers pay more to receive less sounds like a winning business strategy!
Alex Wild (I donate to ProPublica, Mother Jones, and others, because I like good journalism and tired of the click-bait billionaire club)
When you cancel your Washington Post and other billionaire-compromised media subsciptions, consider replacing them with your support for outlets still performing real journalism. Local public media, ProPublica, etc.
slirt “Here's how to write a good BaT comment”
Stevie Nicks on Kamala Harris, Fleetwood Mac, and Making New Music 🔥
As a singer with asthma, I fucking hate the masks, but I wear them. People give you dirty looks. I dare anybody to give me a dirty look. I would just say, “Hey, you know what? I’m Stevie Nicks. And if I get sick, my entire thing goes down. Forty families are out of work. So that’s why I have a mask on, asshole.”
San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks You know you're rich when you have enough money in the bank to finally stop using 5.25 inch floppy disks!
Standing desks do not reduce risk of stroke and heart failure, study suggests The best thing about a standing desk is that you can pretend you’re getting healthier!
The Police Chief and the Immigrant People in small cities just trying to do good by their people:
Meyer hadn’t asked for mass deportations. He just wanted more resources. And he said he never intended his words to become political ammunition for anyone. “It irritates me to no end because when I hear that, I know that there’s no actual desire to fix the issue here,” he said. “It’s a desire to use it for their own political gain.
The city and its police chief were left on their own to figure out what to do next.
I’m never going to forgive people who bought a new Tesla in the past year.
I just learned about this awesome program in Barcelona and some nearby cities (modeled after a similar one in Copenhagen) that takes elderly people and those with reduced mobility around on these electric tricycles so they can “feel the wind on their face”
I have realized that I am now a one issue voter and that issue is preventing a fascist takeover of the United States.
Took my 8-year-old daughter with me so she could push the button for Kamala. Lots of other little kids there so I think other parents had the same idea!
Kevin Rothrock “check out Zelensky's provocative new shirt”
