Bonjour bonsoir frendz, and music with Jim Guthrie.

News

Lola Dupre, via waxy.

Kottke: Beavers.

SMBC: So much of school is pointless, Nice people with ideas about pedagogy.

[fr] Pourquoi la Suisse est pétée de thunes, merci Berthe.

Software

A curious device from 1985 called the “Etak Navigator”, whoaaaa. HN.

Asianometry: The birth of SQL and the relational database.

Git manpage generator 😄. HN.

doom-htop: “the classic DOOM game over htop, the text-based process viewer” 😄. HN.

AI

[fr] Monsieur Phi : « GPT est NUL aux échecs et n’y comprend rien ! » — Voici pourquoi j’avais tort, et c’est fascinant.

Majeed Kazemitabaar & Zustin Z. Henley: Learning to code with and without AI, interesting results. Direct links to PDF papers: Studying the effect of AI code generators on supporting novice learners in introductory programming and How novices use LLM-based code generators to solve CS1 coding tasks in a self-paced learning environment.

Games

NeverKnowsBest: The past and present of the “Gamergate” culture wars around video games.

Holaaa. This week’s music is Adrianne Lenker, thx Berthe.

News

[fr] Alain Damasio : Un monde repensé par la Silicon Valley.

The case for a maintenance mindset, thx James.

Oh the urbanity: Solving Vancouver’s housing crisis.

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (authors of A City on Mars and SMBC): The lie of colonizing Mars.

Adam Neely: The bizzare ban on musical tempo of Chechnya (and also former UK and USA).

Kottke: The best photos and videos of the 2024 solar eclipse, High-diving penguin chicks.

[fr] La statistique expliquée à mon chat : Monsieur le président, avez-vous vraiment gagné cette élection, merci Adrien.

SMBC: Art school.

Software

MattKC: I backported .NET to Windows 95.

Games

[fr] Kombo : Les incroyables speedruns SA/SO de Hitman et Super Mario Kaizo +++ : Trials of Fire, merci Sylvain.

Modern Vintage Gamer: Why the limitations of the N64 and PS1 mattered.

Jim Stephanie Sterling: Why proposing tip jars for mainstream “AAA” videogames is either stupid or malicious.

Bonjour bonsoir, geeks, and music with Buvette.

News

Farm animal family photos.

SMBC: Perhaps.

Software

500 mile email, “a curated list of absurd software bug stories”.

AI

LLMs are like a trained circus bear that can make you porridge in your kitchen. It’s a miracle that it’s able to do it at all, but watch out because no matter how well they can act like a human on some tasks, they’re still a wild animal. They might ransack your kitchen, and they could kill you, accidentally or intentionally! — Alex Komoroske, via Simon Willison.

Games

Stop Killing Games, via Ross Scott: The largest campaign ever to stop publishers destroying games.

LambHoot: The game where you argue with AI… as a vampire.

Dialogue Trees.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Amazon ditches “Just Walk Out” checkouts at its grocery stores, which was powered by 1000 people working in India reviewing transactions.

Microsoft opens a “high priority” bug in ffmpeg impacting MS Teams, attempting to leech the free labour of the maintainers. HN.

👋, and music with the WipEout soundtrack.

News

[fr] Clément Viktorovitch en entreveue chez Blast : Le journalisme neutre n’existe pas.

Kottke: Gou Miyagi skates very mellow, Tyshawn Jones skates fast, Fabio Wibmer bikes fast, Ryan Williams’ mindbreaking BMX Free Willy.

Software

That was quite the eventful security week:

• Casey Muratori: The Apple M-series GoFetch attack (exploit site).

• Low Level Learning: Linux CVE-2024-1086 exploit is insane.

• Backdoor in xz/liblzma leads to ssh server compromise (HN). Timeline. It’s RCE, not auth bypass (2) (HN). xz/liblzma: Bash obfuscation explained (HN). Xz vuln: A microcosm of open-source projects interactions. xzbot: notes, honeypot, and exploit demo for the xz backdoor (HN). Prime Reacts: Jonathan Blow predicts xz years ago. Also, You are all on the hobbyists maintainers’ turf now and I am not a supplier, via Brodie Robertson. Jussi Pakkanen: Aesthetics matter. Low Level Learning: Revealing the features of the XZ backdoor. Initial detailed analysis & HN.

Dom Marti: Internet users preferences about advertising, personalization, and privacy, varies wildly.

Real Engineering: The engineering of the Gameboy.

Prime Reacts: DHH - Be less precious.

AI

NYC’s AI chatbot tells businesses to break the law. Tasty skewer of factual errors presented as facts by a chatbot supposed to be authoritative. Via waxy.

Oh hey, Google Search is experimenting with pushing AI results first.

Games

[fr] Thief 2 - Une brève analyse.

Woop woop, have some new Squarepusher.

News

[fr] Science4All - Pourquoi encore se battre pour la démocratie ?

Why weather forecasts have gotten so good.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss (Django maintainer) on consensus, snipped from Django Chat - Talking about Django’s history and future.

Lengthy memoranda and gobbledygook language: Be short and use plain English, via DF.

Ghanaian fantasy coffin maker Paa Joe.

25 years of Windowlicker! Merci Berthe.

SMBC: Together, Consciousness, Caveman.

Software

Redis adopts dual source-available licensing. The race to replace Redis (HN). “SSPL is bad” (HN). Prime Time: The downfall of Redis.

Games

Making a game last forever.

AI

Releasing Common Corpus: the largest public domain dataset for training LLMs, via swillison.

Ars: ASCII art elicits harmful responses from 5 major AI chatbots.

Shitty tech ℹ️

There is no EU cookie banner law.

Reddit’s “Advertise like a Redditor” ad product a.k.a. misleading ads disguised as actual “organic content”. Via nelson.