Random

  • Friday morning links

    DIY Firefighting in California Russians and Belarusians are tired of autocrats China is conducting war games near Taiwan, worrying many An excellent rundown of Pinduoduo and vertically integrated social commerce Build your own dog robot Nat on her backpacking secrets A museum for Winamp skins I don’t know what this is, but I like it:…More

  • Bioelectricity and human regeneration

    This is fairly insane:More

  • Tesla employee thwarts cybersecurity attack

    This Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, a Russian citizen accused of conspiring to breach the network of a US company and introduce malware to compromise the said company’s networks. Media reports about the incident have identified the US company to be electric car maker Tesla. Interestingly enough, a criminal…More

  • Jaron Lanier on social media

    The topic of an interesting article from GQ: Lanier had been early to the idea that these platforms were addictive and even harmful—that their algorithms made people feel bad, divided them against one another, and actually changed who they were, in an insidious and threatening manner. That because of this, social media was in some…More

  • Palantir’s Investor Letter

    Software projects with our nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe, have become controversial, while companies built on advertising dollars are commonplace. From the Palantir Investor Letter See also: Palantir is moving to ColoradoMore

  • On the effectiveness of guilt

    Guilt can be a powerful motivator for action; the feeling of wanting to ‘make up’ for something can lead to reparative action. On the other hand, feeling good about our actions and what they reflect about who we are can elicit positive emotions. These feelings can then provide us with the energy and mental resources…More

  • Managing through interfaces

    Clear interfaces allow you to not have to worry about the exact implementation details of how each of your managers run their teams, but they allow you to make it clear exactly what you expect of each of them in doing so, and therefore how you define success. Managing through interfacesMore

  • 800 Medieval English and French Manuscripts

    Over at the British Library you can browse as many as you want. Amazing.More

  • Transparency and Good Intent

    Few things create conspiracies faster than a message that is adapted for different audiences. When people invariably exchange notes and discover they were told different things their minds immediately jump to malice. From Transparency and Good IntentMore

  • Photos of FiDi during rush hour

    Everything’s empty. Check it here.More

  • The Challenge of Marxism

    An absolutely excellent article. My favorite quote: The Marxist goal of seizing the state and using it to eliminate all oppression is an empty promise. Marx did not know how the state could actually bring this about, and neither have any of his followers. In fact, we now have many historical cases in which Marxists…More

  • Saturday Links

    Things in Belarus are not going well Bill Murray’s face inserted into famous paintings The case for Lost Advanced civilizations Microsoft Flight Simulator has some hilarious bugs The coming backlash against Slack (I agree with this) Citizen scientists spot 95 cold brown dwarfs near our sun Harvard astronomer is arguing that we’ve been visited by…More

  • Feedbin on Mac

    I recently discovered the Multi library and immediately created a macOS app for my favorite RSS reader Feedbin (which is open source). Check it out here: https://github.com/dpaola2/feedbin-macMore

  • Thursday links

    Pixar in a Box from Khan Academy – SUPER cool Chinese students at Princeton will use code names on their assignments to protect their identities Palantir is relocating from Silicon Valley to Colorado I’m a happy SetApp user – now they have iOS apps too Zaha: an open source visual note taking app Some cool…More

  • Tuesday links

    Daring Fireball on the Epic / Apple saga AI renderings of Roman emperors XKCD is right about modern software dependencies More protests in Belarus Excellent: How Social Media And Bad Behavior Are Leaving Wild Places Trashed I’m new to mountain biking, so I found this helpful: 7 tips to make getting into it easier (especially…More

  • Thursday links

    I love architecture write-ups – here’s one for the Nintendo DS An excellent first chapter in the History of the Web by Jay Hoffman Belarus: Police used live rounds on protesters Twitter has a new conversations API, and here’s how to use it What ever happened to that Sidewalk Labs (Google) city in Toronto? From…More

  • Air pollution is much worse than we thought

    Shindell’s testimony reveals that the effects of air pollution are roughly twice as bad as previously estimated. That is a bombshell — in a sane world, it would be front-page news across the country. Read moreMore

  • Wednesday links

    A simple way to frame proposed changes as experiments that I frequently use Revisiting Rdio – the best music streaming service ever created How to create interactive HTML trees with no javascript Multi apps are like a lightweight Electron, built on Webkit rather than Chromium (see also: Flotato) FiveThirtyEight released their 2020 election forecast (and,…More

  • Mozilla Restructuring

    From their blog post:  We’ll experiment more. We’ll adjust more quickly. We’ll join with allies outside of our organization more often and more effectively. We’ll meet people where they are. We’ll become great at expressing and building our core values into products and programs that speak to today’s issues. We’ll join and build with all…More

  • Tuesday links

    11 years ago today: the Blaster worm Ballpoint pen portraits (via Kottke) Five ways Trump + GOP officials are undermining the election process (FiveThirtyEight) XKCD about a seismic pulse (it’s apparently real!) And:More

  • Monday links

    Steven Levy interviews Bill Gates (highly recommended) A neat Raspberry Pi nano computer The lost art of having a chat FiveThirtyEight on Why GOP Senators are sticking with Trump Sixty years ago Dr. Seuss published Green Eggs and Ham – Here’s how it happened Flying is actually pretty safe in the age of covid Good…More

  • Transparency and Accountability

    Good read. I have a management pattern that I refer to that just says “transparency is a serious accelerant”. I refer to it often. I’ve watched first-hand as teams of talented people moved with more energy, advancing faster towards a goal because they understood how those goals fit into the larger picture. And they had…More

  • Boz on Honesty and Optimism

    The honest approach can become self fulfilling. Work that might have been done faster almost never is, so it takes upside out of the equation. Setbacks don’t just stall progress for the groups immediately affected but can destabilize other groups. In an industry where shipping is a feature and timing is everything this is a…More

  • Friday links

    Tom Tunguz on productive group zoom meetings SpaceX successful hopper flight YC now has a content library A rare glimpse inside of a Chinese internment camp A quick primer on isometric rendering Finally:More

  • Tiger King = Politics

    Tiger King is one of the most spectacular examples of a type of entertainment where we just can’t stop watching, no matter the quality of the content. And the more we watched and talked about this crazy show, the more it was amplified across the media in the world. It became a force of nature.…More