(date: 2024-05-22 09:32:10)
date: 2024-05-22, updated: 2024-05-22, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044666-the-true-story-behind-the
date: 2024-05-22, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-21-2024
date: 2024-05-22, updated: 2024-05-22, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044665-the-wind-phone-is-an
date: 2024-05-22, updated: 2024-05-22, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/the-lost-typeface-recovered-from-the-thames-river
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-22, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Sometimes ChatGPT just repeats itself. Even when you demand that it stop repeating itself, it repeats itself.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/22.html#a134417
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-22, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Has anyone ever asked you, on the social web, what you think about something? Not a message to everyone to which you could reply, but a message specifically to you? I try to do it when I think of it. I find you can get really interesting ideas that way sometimes. And also it’s a way spreading some love around the world, because people like to be asked what they think, I’ve found.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/22.html#a131318
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-22, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I’m going through Battlestar Galactica for the third time. One of the major themes of the show is that the robots that the Capricans created went to war with the humans and almost but not quite wiped them out. Almost every episode is about the conflict between humans and the AIs. It’s a fantastic show, the acting and the writing is far beyond most TV series. I’m at the beginning of season 3. I’ll let you know if I figure anything out from watching the series again.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/22.html#a125735
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-22, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today’s
song: Everything
You Did. “Turn up the
Eagles
the neighbors are listening.”
http://scripting.com/2024/05/22.html#a124512
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-22, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Campaign commercial. A picture of Trump at 88. Voiceover: “It’s 2035. He’s still president. Don’t you wish you had a vote? (You don’t.)” This message was approved by Uncle Sam and The Founders wondering wtf you were thinking when you voted for him in 2024.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/22.html#a123633
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-22, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I watched 15 minutes of the playoff game between the Boston team and the Indiana team and found that I only gave the very slightest of fucks. I knew all the players. I like Obi Toppin, a former Knick we traded for some reason. That’s about it for my inner fan. I turned it off as it went to overtime and looked up the result when I got up in the morning. That’s how I like my NBA, frankly.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/22.html#a123424
date: 2024-05-22, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
The main problem seems to me that nobody knows. So how do we find a way out of this uncertainty? What should or priorities be?
Before we even start, let me just say that I’m never interested in debating climate change. It’s real, it’s here, and people denying it are just trying to waste our time.
The first category of action, I think, would be political: Vote green, on all levels of government. And by “green” I mean the most radical green possible but not necessarily a Green Party member. It all depends on the voting system, on the actual parties you have. If you live in a one or two party state or if your Green Party is run by fascists, I have no idea what you should do. Something about political change, something about local politics, and so on.
On the individual level, I think uncertainty arises because we’re not sure. No littering looks nice but probably doesn’t help much against the climate. Perhaps it helps against the micro-plastic? But how many plastic bags from land-locked Switzerland actually end up in the ocean? How much plastic is that compared to the fishing nets lost at sea? The oil spills? And here’s the moment where it spirals out of control. Stop! I need to stop because there’s no “thinking it through” when things are so complex unless you’re a scientist working on it. I hope the scientists can do their research, and somebody else can compile the research into arguments, with weights attached, so that politicians and individuals know what to tackle first.
This is why I appreciate lists of priorities, even if they are slightly wrong. They don’t have to be perfect because perfection is a goal used to derail the conversation. If you think the top priority is to get rid of cars, and you have a lot of arguments against cars, then getting involved in a discussion where the other party argues about electric vehicles, lithium batteries, hydrogen storage, road access for emergency vehicles, mobility for the disabled, then yes to all of that, but also: get rid of cars. We can have nuance as long as we also start doing something. We can start by making large, private cars illegal. Then medium, private cars. Then add fees for long haul trucks. Build railways. Build trams. Get rid of public parking spaces without special permits. And on and on. This allows us to pull back out of car society with grace. We can get started and keep the things that we think are precious.
The alternative is living as we do, followed by uncontrolled collapse, I fear.
Yes, it’s expensive. Not doing anything, however, is fatal.
Here’s what @peterdutoit recently posted:
In order of impact:
🚫 Live car free
🚙 Shift to BEV [i.e. Battery Electric Vehicle]
✈️ One less flight (long return)
☀️ Use renewable energy
🚋 Shift to public transport
🔨 Refurbishment and renovation
🥗 Vegan diet
🆒 Heat pump
⏲️ Improved cooking equipment
♨️ Renewable-based heating
He offered these two sources:
The full report of Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change is a PDF with 2042 pages. So there’s an answer if anybody is claiming that we don’t know what to do. But also: there’s your answer if you’re wondering why nobody is doing anything. Politicians at the top need people who read this report for them and my guess is – given what little I know about Swiss politics, for example – that there is only a very small number of people that have actually read this report, let alone understand enough of it in order to make informed decisions.
This is why a public “chain of trust” needs to lead from interviews with public figures to interviews with experts. The media, including social media, needs to mediate this. Then people can at least go along with people they trust, even if this trust is built on public appearance, hollow campaign promises, good looks, height and whatever else engenders trust in people.
Anyway, number one: 🚫 Live car free. If you can. Make the kind of choices that make this easier in the future, or for your children, or for your friends and family. If you can. But this is one of the goals we need to pursue. We need to get our priorities right.
(We don’t need them to perfectly right, as discussed above. But we cannot save the planet and car culture, both. One of them will have to go.)
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-05-12-uncertainty
date: 2024-05-22, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Experiments in unredacting text that has been pixelated.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/unredacting-pixelated-text.html
date: 2024-05-22, from: Ayjay blog
In the last few days I have come across, or had sent to me, anguished cries from people who have recently been dragged on social media and cannot fathom the injustice of it, and I find myself thinking: You haven’t figured this out yet? You complain about your words being taken out of context when […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/the-attention-cottage/
date: 2024-05-22, from: Enlightenment Economics blog
I’ve been travelling, including a week of holiday, so my reading has leant more towards fiction than usual. (Tokyo – my first trip, highly recommended, loved the TeamLab exhibitions.) Among the non-fiction, though, were two excellent (non-economics) books: Philip Ball’s … Continue reading
http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2024/05/reading-on-the-go/
date: 2024-05-22, from: Robert Reich’s blog
It may be the ideological heart of his campaign.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/but-seriously-is-trump-now-openly
date: 2024-05-22, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Trump’s lawyers rested their defense of the former president today, putting an end to the testimony we will hear in the case. Trump did not testify. Trump’s refusal to take the stand encapsulates the MAGA approach to politics. Since the 2020 presidential election, he and his surrogates have made repeated accusations and statements about how the system is rigged against them and alleged there is evidence that proves them right.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-22-2024
date: 2024-05-22, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
Numbers the 257th release8 changes56 days (total: 9,560)220 bug-fixes (total: 10,271)348 commits (total: 32,280)1 new public libcurl function (total: 94)1 new curl_easy_setopt() option (total: 305)1 new curl command line option (total: 259)84 contributors, 41 new (total: 3,173)49 authors, 20 new (total: 1,272)0 security fixes (total: 155) Download the new curl release from curl.se as always. … Continue reading curl 8.8.0
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/05/22/curl-8-8-0/
date: 2024-05-22, updated: 2024-05-22, from: Daring Fireball
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pixar-layoffs-underway-175-jobs-162130943.html?guccounter=1
date: 2024-05-22, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
Did you know you’re likely funding the right-wing media machine?
https://steady.substack.com/p/fox-news-0e7
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=d0z8d8rx
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/24105991/msi-claw-review
date: 2024-05-21, from: John Naughton’s online diary
The edge of Europe The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare last Sunday. Quote of the Day ”Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors.” Ernest Hemingway Guilty as charged, … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-22-may-2024/39474/
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044662-registration-for-the-2024
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/three-pieces-that-prove-bachs-genius
date: 2024-05-21, from: Matt Haughey blog
About 15 years ago, I'd say I was at my high point of weird internet fame, where a few thousand people online knew who I was. When you run a big community website, you get to know thousands of people and they got to know me too.
The
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/xoxo-is-on/
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044661-given-the-lack-of-decency
date: 2024-05-21, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
In the 2015 time frame I had come to the conclusion that the curl logo could use modernization and I was toying with ideas of how it could be changed. The original had served us well, but it definitely had a 1990s era feel to it. On June 11th 2015, I posted this image in … Continue reading A history of a logo with a colon and two slashes
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/05/21/a-history-of-a-logo-with-a-colon-and-two-slashes/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
What if Scarlett Johansson had said wtf let’s see what happens. Might be fun to be the first default voice of AI. Like the jockey in this movie.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/21.html#a201506
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044659-the-earths-rotation-is-sl
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044657-john-green-on-the-tradeof
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/contenting-ourselves-with-stories
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
“Every day’s an endless stream of cigarettes and magazines” is from Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/21.html#a181310
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Podcast:
What is a
magazine? It depends on what direction you look at it from. An iPad
was like a magazine, but what would you tell a young person who never
used a magazine? What is it? Right now almost everyone is looking at AI
from the point of view of a world with no AI. And it turns out that once
you have it, it starts solving problems you never thought would be
associated with AI. But there it is. You just have to sit down and start
playing and you find all kinds of amazing things. But if you don’t try
it, you’ll always be looking at it from the past. We’ve seen this kind
of explosive growth in the power of the individual human. It’s a
20-minute podcast and I’m all over the map, but it’s good stuff, imho of
course. YMMV, my mother loves me, I am not a lawyer.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/21.html#a180113
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-05-21, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, On Monday afternoon, Trump posted a 30-second video on his Truth Social site featuring images of hypothetical newspaper articles celebrating his 2024 victory and referring to “the creation of a unified Reich” under the headline “What’s next for America?”
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/office-hours-is-trump-openly-embracing
date: 2024-05-21, from: Melanie Mitchell, AI Guide for Human Thinking
Hello all. This post is about some very recent research results on LLMs and analogy, and a discussion of a debate that has arisen about them. Warning: I get a bit into the weeds here. If you’re already familiar with the letter-string analogy domain, you might want to skip to section 2.
https://aiguide.substack.com/p/stress-testing-large-language-models
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044658-have-you-seen-a-cybertruc
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044656-david-marchese-interviews
date: 2024-05-21, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-20-2024-886
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
If I were building a product like Substack or Ghost, I would build on top of WordPress, for the widest compatibility.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/21.html#a161840
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I found a fairly painless way to transcribe voicemails using Google Docs. 1. Open a text document. 2. Choose Voice Typing from the Tools menu. 3. Play the voice memo over the speaker of your iPhone. 4. That’s it. Google transcribes it into your document. It would be better if Apple offered that as an option in the Share menu, but they don’t.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/21.html#a160019
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044655-todays-music-to-work-to
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
March 2024: “WordPress is, among other things, a perfect time capsule of open technologies from the early days of innovation on the web, and widely deployed and able to deliver all their benefits, if we widen our view of social media to be a social web.”
http://scripting.com/2024/05/21.html#a153827
date: 2024-05-21, from: David Rosenthal’s blog
|
| Source |
we collected a random sample of just under 1 million webpages from the archives of Common Crawl, an internet archive service that periodically collects snapshots of the internet as it exists at different points in time. We sampled pages collected by Common Crawl each year from 2013 through 2023 (approximately 90,000 pages per year) and checked to see if those pages still exist today.Their results are not surprising, but there are a number of surprising things about their report. Below the fold, I explain.
We found that 25% of all the pages we collected from 2013 through 2023 were no longer accessible as of October 2023. This figure is the sum of two different types of broken pages: 16% of pages are individually inaccessible but come from an otherwise functional root-level domain; the other 9% are inaccessible because their entire root domain is no longer functional.
And in news sites, government sites and Wikipedia:
- A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, as of October 2023. In most cases, this is because an individual page was deleted or removed on an otherwise functional website.
- For older content, this trend is even starker. Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, compared with 8% of pages that existed in 2023.
There is a long history of research into both phenomena. Content drift is important to Web search engines. To keep their indexes up-to-date, they need to re-vist URLs frequently enough to capture changes. Thus studies of content drift started early in the history of the Web. Here are some examples from more than two decades ago:
- 23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link, as do 21% of webpages from government sites. News sites with a high level of site traffic and those with less are about equally likely to contain broken links. Local-level government webpages (those belonging to city governments) are especially likely to have broken links.
- 54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in their “References” section that points to a page that no longer exists.
I like to cite an example of really bad reviewing that appeared in AAAS Science in 2003. It was Dellavalle RP, Hester EJ, Heilig LF, Drake AL, Kuntzman JW, Schillin MGLM: Going, Going, Gone: Lost Internet References. Science 2003, 302:787, a paper about the decay of Internet links. The the authors failed to acknowledge that the paper repeated, with smaller samples and somewhat worse techniques, two earlier studies that had been published in Communications of the ACM 9 months before, and in IEEE Computer 32 months before. Neither of these are obscure journals. It is particularly striking that neither the reviewers nor the editors bothered to feed the keywords from the article abstract into Google; had they done so they would have found both of these earlier papers at the top of the search results.
The first surprise is that the Pew report lacks any acknowledgement
that the transience of Web content is a long-established problem; like
Dellavalle et al it is as if it was a new revelation.
Even before published research had quantified it, link rot and
content drift were well understood and efforts were underway to mitigate
them. In 1996 Brewster Kahle had founded the
Internet Archive, the first of several
archives of the general Web. Two years later, the
LOCKSS Program was the first effort to
establish a specialized archive for the academic literature. Both were
intended to deliver individual pages to users. A decade later,
Common Crawl was set up to
deliver Web content in bulk to researchers such as the Pew team; it is
not intended as a mitigation for link rot or content drift.
Although Common Crawl was a suitable resource for their research, the
second surprise is that the Pew report describes and quantifies the
problem of link rot, but acknowledges none of the multiple, decades-long
efforts to mitigate it by archiving the Web and providing users with
preserved copies of individual pages.
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/05/pew-research-on-link-rot.html
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/ayo-edebiri-settles-your-petty-disputes
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044653-the-benefits-of-cycling-i
date: 2024-05-21, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
Here’s
what I’ve learned from
owing
a Tesla Model Y with
Full Self
Driving. I don’t believe it’s safe. It absolutely does require your
full attention at all times. You are still driving the car. I’ve seen it
do crazy stuff in simple situations. I’ve seen it panic, basically throw
its hands in the air and say Dave this is your problem. That’s why you
always have to be ready, as if you were driving the car yourself because
at any moment you could be. You never know when it’s going to happen.
Now focus on that moment. Your car has given up and turned the driving
over to you. How much experience do you have with that? Do you know
where to look? Do you hit the brakes or veer to the left or right? If
you’re an experienced driver, a lot of these reactions are completely
programmed into the lower levels of the brain. You don’t have to think
at all. When the car panics, I tend to panic. If I had 10 or 20 years
experience with this connection, then I guess it’s probably safe. But
not the way it is.
I’m amazed there aren’t more terrible accidents with FSD, and that Tesla still promotes this as “self-driving,” which it is not.
Also, I love my Tesla. Every time I get into that mofo I feel privileged. It looks like a Toyota Camry but drives like a muscle car. I might still switch to a Kia EV9, at some point, if it drives as well as the Tesla, simply because the nearest Telsa dealer is over an hour away, and the Kia dealer is in Kingston which is practically in the neighborhood.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/21/114712.html?title=whyTeslaFsdIsUnsafe
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Bruce Schneier blog
From Slashdot:
Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called “Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers” to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple’s AirTags being used for malicious purposes.
Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/detecting-malicious-trackers.html
date: 2024-05-21, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Samuel Alito and the politics of vice signaling
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/giving-liberals-the-finger
date: 2024-05-21, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
There is a curious dynamic at work in politics these days. Trump does not appear to be trying to court voters to his standard. If he were, he would be reaching out to Nikki Haley voters and trying to moderate his stances. Instead, he is rejecting her voters and doubling down on extreme positions. Rather than trying to appeal to swing voters, he seems to be trying to whip up his right-wing base to engage in violence on his behalf.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-20-2024
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=q12024
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-22, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24160769/microsoft-surface-pro-2024-hands-on-pictures
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24160463/microsoft-windows-laptops-copilot-arm-chips-m1
date: 2024-05-21, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/05/20/introducing-copilot-pcs/
date: 2024-05-21, from: James Fallows, Substack
A striking phrase from Joe Biden’s speech at Morehouse yesterday, which was another example of his underappreciated craft.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdown-169-days-to-go
date: 2024-05-21, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
A lot of entrepreneurs go in for hustle culture, seemingly working 60-80-hour weeks, but I’ve been trying to create a sustainable practice. To help myself take time to rest and give myself a break from work, these are the guidelines I’ve developed for myself over the past year and a half. Check email once in […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/20/my-current-work-life-rules/
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24161253/scarlett-johansson-openai-altman-legal-action
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://mastodon.social/@rjj/112475257264582082
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Daring Fireball
https://developer.apple.com/pathways/
date: 2024-05-20, from: Matt Haughey blog
The Delta game emulator was recently released for the iPhone and it's pretty great. But it takes some setting up to get it working best on an iPad, so I wanted to cover how to do that here, so others don't have to make the same
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/how-to-enjoy-retro-nintendo-games-on-your-ipad/
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-21, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/05/20/apple-releases-ios-17-5-1-photos-bug/
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/the-evolution-of-hokusais-great-wave
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/2023-App-Store-Transparency-Report.pdf
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-plans-a-thinner-iphone-in-2025?rc=jfy0lk
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-20, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Don’t miss that Twitter has become a blogging platform. It’s sad that it took this long. And we’re still missing a bunch of features.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/20.html#a194130
date: 2024-05-20, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
Here’s something you may find funny if you study the evolution of software technology.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/20/193616.html?title=aPostIWroteOnTwitter
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/la-maison-du-pastel
date: 2024-05-20, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-19-2024-ab6
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044649-can-shame-help-us-become
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/queendom
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044645-ahead-of-the-paris-olympi
date: 2024-05-20, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
Borgmann opposed devices to what he called focal things. Focal things demand something of us. They require a measure of care, practice, and engagement that devices do not. Our use of them induces our focus, which they invite by design. “The experience of a [focal] thing,” Borgmann also notes, “is always and also a bodily and social engagement […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/20/devices-versus-focal-objects/
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044647-interesting-hypothesis-th
date: 2024-05-20, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
Via RSS: Sad veggies by Derek Kedziora What’s not wrong by Lisa Olivera Hot Takes on Malaysian Comics 2024 by Reimena Yee Free Library and The next decade of the web by James G Week 299: Jollies by Alice Bartlett ‘No sign of life’ at crash site of helicopter carrying Iran’s president, others by Jon […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/20/articles-i-read-today-may-19-2024/
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/future-2024-bestsellers
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044648-a-recent-study-estimates-
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044646-how-to-get-google-search
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Bruce Schneier blog
IBM is selling its QRadar product suite to Palo Alto Networks, for an undisclosed—but probably surprisingly small—sum.
I have a personal connection to this. In 2016, IBM bought Resilient Systems, the startup I was a part of. It became part if IBM’s cybersecurity offerings, mostly and weirdly subservient to QRadar.
That was what seemed to be the problem at IBM. QRadar was IBM’s first acquisition in the cybersecurity space, and it saw everything through the lens of that SIEM system. I left the company two years after the acquisition, and near as I could tell, it never managed to figure the space out…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/ibm-sells-cybersecurity-group.html
date: 2024-05-20, from: Ayjay blog
Two of the best things I’ve read in response to the horrific “Crush” commercial Apple recently put out and half-heartedly apologized for: Mark Hurst and (especially) Mike Sacasas. I have to say that I’m finding it difficult to get over this: the ad has, I feel, given me a peek into the company’s soul, and […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/crushed-again/
date: 2024-05-20, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Why Biden’s good news isn’t getting through, and what Biden should do about it
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-do-americans-really-know-about
date: 2024-05-20, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Delivering the commencement address to the graduating seniors at Morehouse College today, President Joe Biden addressed the nation. After thanking the mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and all the people who helped the graduates get to the chairs in front of the stage, Biden recalled Morehouse’s history. The school was founded in 1867 by civil rights leader Reverend William Jefferson White with the help of two other Baptist ministers, the Reverend Richard C. Coulter and the Reverend Edmund Turney, to educate formerly enslaved men. They believed “education would be the great equalizer from slavery to freedom,” Biden said, and they created an institution that would make the term “Morehouse man” continue to stand as a symbol of excellence 157 years later.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-19-2024
date: 2024-05-20, updated: 2024-05-20, from: Daring Fireball
https://cabel.com/2024/05/16/the-forged-apple-employee-badge/
date: 2024-05-19, updated: 2024-05-19, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/17/23829098/twitter-x-com-url-links-switch
date: 2024-05-19, from: John Naughton’s online diary
On Heaney’s ‘flaggy shore’ We were in Galway on Friday for lunch, and afterwards decided to drive south along the glorious coast road from Ballyvaughan to the cliffs of Moher. We stopped at this point, where the limestone pavement of … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-20-may-2024/39467/
date: 2024-05-19, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
May 17: Via micro.blog: On building a home on the web by Daniël Van Der Winden Information Overload by Darren You Are What You Consume by Brandon Via RSS: Sometimes you have to escape your problems in order to solve them by Annalee Newitz Finite echo by Chris –> I’m tired of all of us […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/19/articles-i-read-today-may-17-18-2024/
date: 2024-05-19, from: Thomas Denney Blog
|
|
Over the last year and a half I ran the entirety of the River Thames! In total it took 20 runs for a total of over 440km.
Let’s get the obvious question out the way first: “why?” And I, errr, don’t have a good reason. It’s not the first time I’ve done a big themed running project, but it’s by far the biggest I’ve ever done.
Second obvious question: “was it a good idea?” Kinda… I really enjoyed running through a lot of the countryside, and for the most part the Thames Path is very easy to run on. It’s also mostly well connected with public transport, which makes the point-to-point nature of the runs manageable. But on the other hand I often spent far more time travelling than running, which made it a much larger time commitment than “just” 20 weekend half marathons.
The best part of this project was seeing the contrast in landscapes and communities across the length of the river. Until now my only familiarity with the Thames was with its murky, curvy path through London or the college boathouses in Oxford.
An interesting historical pattern with the Thames — as with many English cities — is that effluence flows downstream and affluence upstream. A lot of this has to do with the Thames’s role in London’s history: for centuries waste water was literally dumped in the river. Land up river became more desirable. It’s no historical accident that the royal court at Hampton Court Palace was far west of the City of London.
Those historical trends are reflected today, even as sewage practices have improved (a little) and London de-industrialised. House prices are twice as high in Richmond-upon-Thames in south-west London than Bexley, in south-east London. Further out of London, on an Essex-bound train I overheard a group of men lamenting the loss of working men’s clubs, an important third place in their communities, whilst in Oxfordshire I sat near a frightfully posh former Home Secretary concluding with a group of friends that taking the train to a party was a “terrifically smart” decision. (Decisions they made in government weren’t quite so clever.)
Deeper into the country the Thames cuts a path through “green and pleasant” English countryside. Over the course of my 20 runs I developed a newfound appreciation for it. I’ve genuinely come to believe that we’re incredibly fortunate in the UK to be so well connected to so much accessible, open space.
I ran with a running vest, a 1.5L Osprey water bladder, a handful of snacks (Clif bars in particular), gels, AirPods, iPhone, and Apple Watch Ultra. I experimented with cheaper water bladders but they’re a false economy: after a few runs they’d start to leak and I’d have to replace them.
The Watch was the MVP of all these: I used Pedometer++ to display my planned route and route taken throughout each run. The app supports both OpenStreetMap and Ordnance Survey tiles; I generally preferred the former as they were clearer on the small display.
For the most part I was following the Thames Path, but I often deviated around it to either explore other countryside or take shortcuts on routes that would otherwise be too long in one go.
I ran mostly in winter and spring 2023 and spring 2024. In the winter months the path was often very muddy, whilst in spring there were sections with very overgrown grass (which was joyless with my hayfever). The Thames burst its banks last year, flooding parts of the path. The Environment Agency has pages monitoring current river conditions.
Towards the source of the river the Thames Path is often just a trodden path along the edge of fields. This makes for a very uneven surface: I had to slow down to avoid turning an ankle.
I only ran in the summer once, but even in spring it was often 20º+ and sunny. Most of the route is very exposed: by the end I regularly ran with a baseball cap.
I live in London, which made travel to and from each run easy. (Cities in the UK are well connected by rail to London and far less well to one another.) All in I spent about £400 on train tickets, local buses, and (only twice) taxis. I used a railcard to decrease costs but otherwise I generally optimised for time. I’ve no doubt that booking advance singles, split tickets, or cheaper train lines could reduce the cost by at least £100.
At the end of each run I made a tradition of buying a meal deal (or equivalent) and extra snacks: I spent a further £200 on these.
Between Lechlade, Gloucestershire and Teddington, London the Thames is interrupted by dozens of locks. These locks often have extra facilities for boaters, which the Environment Agency lists here. I learned way, way too late (literally at the last lock I ran past) that this often includes drinking water taps that you can use to refill water bottles. A lock keeper recommended running the tap for 30s before using it.
I’ve posted GPX files for all the routes below.
For all the London and Kent routes I took South Western trains, TfL services, or High Speed 1.
The best sections were from Battersea Power Station to Greenwich: you get far more diversity in the built environment on this leg than any other section of the Thames (beyond these points London is mostly just suburbs).
For all the Essex routes I took c2c trains from West Ham and Fenchurch Street. I chose to cross to running on the north side of the river and run the Thames Estuary Path instead of the Thames Path as it was far better connected to London.
I took a mixture of trains from South Western trains from Waterloo and GWR services from Paddington. As this whole area is still well within the London commuter belt it had by far the easiest train connections, though the trains were often the busiest.
Statue of Queen Elizabeth II at Runnymede, even though I’m fairly confident she wasn’t around in 1215 to watch King John sign the Magna Carta.
For some of the Oxfordshire runs I took GWR trains directly from Paddington, whereas for others I stayed overnight in Oxford (which is also connected to London via slower Cross Country services from Marylebone).
For all the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire runs I took trains to or via Swindon and then either local buses or taxis to reach towns or villages on the Thames.
[20/20] Cricklade to Thames Head (22km): For the final leg through the Cotswolds I didn’t push the pace at all. The Thames Path hugged the river tightly but my route deviated slightly from it. The only challenge I had was when I encountered a herd of cows that took a little too much interest in me for my liking … the correct solution was not to climb through a barbed wire fence but instead to walk around them calmly, which I unfortunately learned the hard way.
By May the spring at Thames Head had dried up, but I instead found the spring that was the current source of the Thames tucked away in some woodland between the A433 and the A429. I wouldn’t recommend doing what I did, which was to wade through the Thames (it was only a few centimeters deep here!), cut myself on a whole bunch of brambles, and then get stung by a bunch of stinging nettles to find it. But on the other hand there was no chance I was going to run 400km and not find the start.
I continued on to Thames Head, the traditional start of the river and of the Thames Path. There I met a friendly group of walkers and runners, most of whom were about to set off down the path in the opposite direction. I considered getting a pint in at the Thames Head Inn nearby, but instead opted to avoid train delays and cancellations so I caught the train back to London from Kemble.
The final obvious question: “what’s next?” … A break?! The lesson from this project has been that I don’t mind travel for runs, just so long as the travel doesn’t take significantly more time than the run itself. That said, I’ve definitely got a couple more daft projects in the pipeline…
https://www.thomasdenney.co.uk/blog/2024/5/19/running-the-river-thames
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
BTW, this blog will have been running for 30 years on Oct 10.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/19.html#a135238
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
If
I were desiging a system to compete with Twitter, I’d implement a
one-click Block button. It should be as easy to block someone as it is
to follow them. It would make a statement to trolls and users alike. To
users it would say that blocking is a common thing, don’t think about it
too much, and certainly don’t be intimidated into not doing it. It must
be almost as easy to undo. A command to review the list of recent
blocks. Facebook comes closest to this. It is very easy to block an
account but not quite this easy. I think they’re probably heading
there.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/19.html#a132531
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today the Knicks play a game 7 vs the Indiana team at the Garden. If the Knicks win, they go on to the next round vs the Celtics, starting on Tuesday. If they lose, we relax for four months or so, when it starts all over again. With love for the heart of gold team. Either way we win, imho. I know you’re not supposed to feel that way, but that’s how I feel right now. During the game, if we’re losing, based on recent experience I won’t like that so much. 😄
http://scripting.com/2024/05/19.html#a130618
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Poll: “If you’re not using Twitter these days where can we find you?”
http://scripting.com/2024/05/19.html#a130347
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today’s song: Blue Sky. “Good old Sunday morning..”
http://scripting.com/2024/05/19.html#a125609
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-19, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I’m seriously going to try not writing about ChatGPT today. 😄
http://scripting.com/2024/05/19.html#a125547
date: 2024-05-19, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
A Reason To Smile
https://steady.substack.com/p/salt-peanuts
date: 2024-05-19, from: Robert Reich’s blog
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-what
date: 2024-05-19, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
Questions and followup thoughts from today’s Bonus Homebrew Website Club on the social norms of the IndieWeb. Notes here. Social norms across platforms and between communities There are different social norms within different communities on different platforms — how much do the community members shape its norms versus the platform and its affordances? E.g. are […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/18/social-norms-of-the-indieweb/
date: 2024-05-19, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Spent a lovely day today with family and let the world turn without me. Handing tonight’s letter over to my friend Peter with a photograph of his heralding the summer that is just over the horizon. I’ll be back at it tomorrow. [Image, “Moon, Hardwood,” by Peter Ralston]