Bonjour bonsoir, and music with Fishbach.

News

Story of the US electric tramway in the 1920s (continued).

Stunning JWST image of a grand-design spiral galaxy.

[fr] Passé sauvage - Qui a inventé le voile obligatoire ?

SMBC: Meditation, Peace, History, Ambition.

Tech

[fr] Nitot : Non, la nouvelle Apple Watch n’est pas neutre en carbone.

Scott Alexander - Book review: Elon Musk, and comments. Also, Elon Musk moving servers.

Cory Doctorow: Greenwashing set Canada on fire, thx James.

Aardvark'd: The Fog Creek documentary, 18 years later.

AI

Ars Technica: Funky AI-generated spiraling medieval village captivates social media, whoa.

An acronym to describe the bundle of ideologies behind the AI dreams and nightmares pushed by AI gurus: TESECREAL. Via Nelson.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Unity’s enshittification is now at full capacity. RPS 1, RPS 2, RPS 3, GoL 1, GoL 2, GoL 3, GoL 4, GoL 5, GoL 6, Muta, Jimquisition and Casey Muratori, Skill Up (video). Learned via cmuratori’s notes that (emphasis mine):

In Unity’s case, paying attention to their quarterly investor materials tells you many things that aren’t as common knowledge as they should be. As a small example, most developers think Unity is primarily in the business of selling game engines.

They’re not! Less than half of Unity’s revenue comes from game engines. Over half comes from advertising. Their bottom line is more affected by the advertising market than it is by how many developers buy their engine.

EDIT Sep. 22: Unity: An open letter to our community (HN, Muta 2), with a partial reversal and slightly less-weasely excuses than before. Fuck them anyways, they will retry bullshit like this, it’s just a matter of time given the garbage direction they’ve been taking (see above quote). Move to community-built-and-supported engines!

EDIT Sep. 23: And they keep gaslighting! Now they pretend the removal of their ToS on GitHub was done because “views were so low” and are “genuinely disappointed at how our removal of the ToS has been framed across the internet”. This, friends, is 100% pure undiluted bullshit corporate gaslighting. Have a “genuine” fuck you, assholes. Devs still not exactly thrilled and still waving fuckbye to Unity, see e.g. BallisticNG abandoning their Switch port or Godot funding jumping from 25k€/month to 50k€/month.

Reddit activity plummeted after the protests.

Hola friends, and music with Clown Core.

News

[fr] Clément Viktorovitch : L’appel à la bienveillance, une forme de violence.

SMBC: Productivity tips.

Tech

OpenGL vs. Direct3D - Servan Keondjian & Casey Muratori. 👏 historical perspective on API design.

AI

Perplexity: interactive LLM visualization, neat. Via Nelson.

Shitty tech ℹ️

StarLink.

Yo, here are some news news news, listening to Rone.

News

[fr] Science Étonnante - Techniques pour mieux apprendre et étudier.

Kottke: In America, the cheese is dead.

SMBC: Introducing the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves-Weinersmith voting mechanism, AI consciousness threshold, Stress.

Tech

CoRecursive #091: The science of learning to code.

EXPI by p01, 1kb JS demo that won this year’s Assembly.

Games

Quake Speedruns Explained: E2M3 and the hardest trick in Quake.

Jim Stephanie Sterling: No sex please, we’re straight.

AI

Drew DeVault: AI crap.

Bonjour bonsoir, geeks. Music, with more GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! and new Islands.

News

Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050. Via Nelson.

[fr] Linguisticae - Quoicoubeh : retour sur une panique générationnelle.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Web scraping for me, but not for thee.

Hey geeks, and music with Hashimoto.

News

Huge cars harm society.

Here's what world-class Scrabble looks like.

SMBC: Rammed, Temple, Co-op.

Tech

Tech over Tea #174: Fedora Linux with the project leader, Matthew Miller. Didn’t know Matthew; lots of balanced takes on many Linux topics.

Gary Bernhardt: The Unix chainsaw.

Julia Evans: Some tactics for writing in public.

Casey Muratori: Efficient DDA circle outlines. Cool, and learned about Digital differential analysis.

KRAZAM: AI boyfriend.

Games

Yahtzee Croshaw: Random documents and audio logs.

The infamous EVE Online bank heist.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Karawynn Long: The coming enshittification of US public libraries, via Nelson, who sums it up: “Maker of beloved library apps Overdrive / Libby was bought by private equity firm KKR in 2020, now turning the screws of rent-seeking”. Context: see Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” playbook & examples.

Holaaa, and music with Léonie Pernet.

News

Berkeley Earth: June 2023 earth temperature update.

Lex Fridman speaks to Palestinians in the West Bank.

Oh the urbanity: Elevated trains are good, actually, on the fiasco of Montréal’s abandoned “REM de l’Est”.

Not Just Bikes: Designing urban places that don't suck.

SMBC: Transporter.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Ars Technica: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web.

Bonjour bonsoir, frendz, and music with Emin Gök.

News

Derek Sivers: The past is not true.

Time lapse of ants invading a flatbed document scanner.

[fr] Jamy / Épicurieux - Utilité écosystémique des insectes et moustiques.

[fr] Philoxime : L’éthique de la voiture électrique.

David Cain: Is it time for Plan A?

Tech

Tom Humberstone: I’m a Luddite (and so can you!)

Why I hate frameworks, or “Modern software development summarized”, or “Factory Factory Factory”. HN.

no-more-secrets, “a command-line tool that recreates the famous data decryption effect seen in the 1992 movie Sneakers”. HN.

Games

Quake Speedruns Explained: The end of E1M5.

Hey geeks, and music with PJ Harvey:

News

Nautilus: A third of North America’s birds have vanished.

“Brossez vous les dents sous la douche”.

Real Engineering: The questionable engineering of Oceangate.

SMBC: Copyright.

Tech

Anil Dash: “VC qanon” and the radicalization of the tech tycoons.

Legal Lullabies, a 50 minutes-long reading out loud of the Instagram Terms of Use. Via waxy. If this makes you giggle, see also Robert Sikoryak’s “Terms and Conditions”.

The Linux Experiment: Prospectives about the crumbling ad-based internet.

AI

Schneier: The AI dividend.

There I ruined it, AI-generated mashups of classic singers singing modern songs. Via Nelson.

Hola frendz, and mmmmmmusic with Fridge { Happiness + The sun }, and Ouai Stéphane.

News

Real Engineering: Why Germany hates nuclear power, and the challenges of France’s nuclear infrastructure.

Derek Sivers: dashing dog, searching for purpose.

SMBC: Man-Spider, How science metrics work, Shining, Solar.

xkcd #2797: Actual progress.

TikTok / Alex Falcone: I have nothing to hide.

Tech

Drew DeVault: Seriously, don’t sign a CLA.

Tech over tea: The future of packaging on Fedora Linux.

Dylan Beattie: The Web that never was and Plain text, thx Heinz.

Games

Sebastian Ruiz / Cold Take: Business-heads are ruining video games

Quake Speedruns Explained: Quake’s most “boring” record; the history of e2m6.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Cory Doctorow: Platforms 3-step enshittification (HN).

[pdf] Lina M. Khan: Amazon’s antitrust paradox.

👋, passerby, and music with more The Bad Plus.

News

[fr] Science Étonnante : La formule qui a transformé la finance mondiale : Black-Scholes.

Not just bikes - The dumbest excuse for bad cities: size and Oh the urbanity: The human-scale urbanism of Dutch suburbia.

Tang ping, a.k.a. “lying flatism”.

SMBC: Status, Virtual.

Tech

Please remind me how we are moving forward. In this video, a machine from year ~2000 (600MHz, 128MB RAM, spinning-rust hard disk) running Windows NT. Note how snappy opening apps is. HN.

Imaginary problems are the root of Bad Software. HN.

Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem: Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well (2019).

sirrandalot: Make your Blender renders unnecessarily complicated, via Nelson.

Games

Quake done Quickest Lite: Full run in 10:09, Cinematic movie, Commentary with runners by “Quake speedruns explained”.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Christian Selig: Debunking Reddit’s API claims.

Hey geeks, and music with Modulogeek.

News

[fr/qc] IRIS : Le Grand Prix du déni écologique.

Asianometry: Soviets attempt to abolish money.

Drew DeVault: How to go to war with your employer.

Tech

Graydon Hare: Curse of the CEMBI / Let maintainers be maintainers, fuck yes.

Scott Alexander: Your incentives are not the same as media companies’.

AI

Ross Scott: Discussion on AI, consciousness, and future of society with Jacy Reese Anthis.

Games

How speedrunners uncovered Quake's strangest bug, and Matt - Shooting through walls: Unraveling the code behind Quake's Lightning Gun bug (HN).

Hi nerdz, and music with Calexico.

News

Why does Jack Nicholson repeatedly break the fourth wall in The Shining?

SMBC: Genius.

Tech

Brodie Robertson: The truth behind Ballmer’s “Linux is a cancer” quote. Or if you prefer reading, a Reddit or Quora on the topic.

AI

Ted Chiang: What’s expected of us, and a recent interview by FT about AI.

Games

Frost / Cold Take: The current state of online multiplayer games is embarrassing.

Bonjour bonsoir, and music with new Horse jumper of love.

News

Arnaud Delannoy: Careless Whisper’s lick on 100 instruments (but without saxophone), via waxy.

xkcd #2782: Wikipedia article titles specificity.

SMBC: Clippy, Grablex.

Tech

Tom7 - GradIEEEnt half decent: The hidden power of imprecise lines 👏.

Graydon Hoare on the Rustconf fiasco: Batten down fix later, via r/rust.

I guess my main suggestion is a don’t-listen-to-me suggestion: “hire and listen to professionals with training in the subject”, where “the subject” covers everything “a bunch of compiler nerds” are typically bad at. Project management to political science to finance to communications to mediation to personnel.

The Project is now a decently large (and very diffuse) organization, and humans have studied how to run those for a long time, have categories of professionals who are expert in each topic. Listen to them. Don’t try to work each out from first principles, and don't pretend that because you're a bunch of compiler nerds on the internet you get to dodge all the mechanisms of a normal organization.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Reddit’s upcoming hostile API pricing mimicks Twitter’s.

Hi frendz, and music with remixed Bell Orchestre.

News

[fr] Science étonnante : Le verre.

[fr] Est-ce que les Suisses sont forts à la guerre ? (merci Berthe)

Tech

Cory Dransfeldt: I block ads.

AI

Simon Willison: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused. Or see video by Leonard French.

Games

The greatest classic Tetris game of all time just happened, via Kottke.

Hola, and music with The Bad Plus (thx Uri).

News

Sepak Takraw, a.k.a. foot-volleyball, via Nelson.

How Tokyo became an low-car paradise.

SMBC: Gifted, Fix social media.

Tech

Yahtzee Croshaw / Extra Punctuation: The pursuit of realistic graphics is killing AAA games.

David Simon: Die of boils, mr. Sparky Car.

Hi geeks, and music with new Colin Stetson.

News

Oh the Urbanity - Montreal’s urbanist transformation: 9 steps towards a better city.

Bobby Fingers, via waxy.

Louie Zong: SING A NOTE, via waxy.

SMBC: The media.

Tech

Amy Goodchild: Early computer art in the 50’s & 60’s, via waxy.

Bonjour bonsoir, geeks, and music with new Grand Blanc.

News

[fr] Linguisticae : Des migrants privilégiés.

Luis: BEST CROISSANT IN PARIS.

No Context French: Broussely.

Tech

Casey Muratori: Performance excuses debunked. 👏👏👏.

madhadron: The seven programming ur-languages.

AI

Ted Chiang: Will AI become the new McKinsey? via Kottke.

An AI artist explains his workflow, via Kottke.

Games

Frost / Cold Take: Why I don’t talk about a game’s worth.

Jim Stephanie Sterling: Ninterror tactics.

Bonjour bonsoir geeks, and music with new Martyn Heyne.

News

Solving a maze with water, and How do electrons find the “path of least resistance”?

aaron hughes: Five Cents, via Kottke.

Charles Brooks: Architecture in music, via Kottke.

Tech

Drew DeVault: Who should lead us? Fuck yeah, and an excellent conclusion rightly bashing on “Craft X/Y/Z should remain apolitical” stupidity (where “Craft X/Y/Z” is software, music, movies, writing, video games, whatever):

Forget the politics and focus on the software? It’s simply not possible. Free software is politics. Treating other people with respect, maturity, and professionalism, and valuing their contributions at any level, including leadership, regardless of their appearance or identity – that’s just part of being a good person. That is apolitical.

Technological antisolutions, via jwz.

Drew DeVault: The Free Software Foundation is dying.

Quake Speedruns Explained: This “Quake Done Quick” project is a work of art.

AI

[fr] Monsieur Phi : GPT-4 est-il incontrôlable ?

[fr] Nitot : ChatGPT et l’IA générative sont-ils compatibles avec le virage climatique ?

Leonard French: You don’t own your AI-generated content.

Shitty tech ℹ️

NYT: The real-world costs of the digital race for Bitcoin.

Mike Masnick @ TechDirt: Substack CEO Chris Best doesn’t realize he’s just become the nazi bar. From the same author, see also (2022) Hey Elon: Let me help you speed run the content moderation learning curve, and Yishan on moderation at Reddit.

BEHIND YOU, A THREE-HEADED MONKEY! And music, with Blithe Field.

News

Kottke: The “Gish gallop”.

[fr] Fanny Ruwet / Les gens qui doutent : Entrevue Guillaume Meurice.

SMBC: Suffering, Human arts, Words.

Tech

CoRecursive: Doug Crockford talks about JavaScript.

Andy Baio / The Verge: Chasing rainbows.

Yahtzee Croshaw / Extra Punctuation: For everyone that says I hate video games.

AI

Rodney Brooks: What will transformers transform?

Simon Willison: Language models like ChatGPT as a “calculator for words”.

Timothy B Lee: Copyright lawsuits pose a serious threat to generative AI.

The Economist: Big tech and the pursuit of AI dominance.

Shitty tech ℹ️

jwz: Clearview AI scraped 30 billion images from Facebook and gave them to cops.

Feedly launches strikebreaking as a service.

WaPo: ChatGPT invents a sexual harassment scandal and named a real law prof as the accused.

Hi nerdz, and music with new Ada Rook and Aleks with a K’s excellent OST for Dwell.

News

[fr] Clément Viktorovitch : Macron, une légitimité en question.

[fr] Homo Fabulus : Racisme et { biologie, sociologie, sciences cognitives }.

Mattias Adolfsson’s whimsical illustrations, via Kottke.

SMBC: Sunset, Inversion of kidhood, Flatten.

Tech

Dwell is !@#$% bonkers.

Legendary Quake e4m2 speedrun record finally beaten after 22 years 🤯.

Planet: One more way AI can help us harness one of the most underutilized datasets in the world.

Yahtzee Croshaw / Extra Punctuation: Three Things, Somewhere, Quarter 4 2027

Joblow: Software complexity, Docker containers, ridiculous layers upon layers to get anything done.