Bonjour bonsoir, frendz. The weekly 🎶 is new awesome The Armed.

On the news,

• jwz: It's got a good beat and it's easy to dance to.
• Tech:
  • Jacob Kaplan-Moss: Embrace the grind.
  • NYPD deploys Boston Dynamics "Spot" robot dog in Manhattan.
  • Charlie Warzel on Twitter "trending topics".
  • GANCraft: Neural rendering of Minecraft worlds. HN.

Hi geeks, and music, with Nils Frahm.

On the news,

• [fr] Jean-Louis Bianco parle laïcité à Médiapart. Connaissais pas le monsieur; j'aime son {honnêteté, sincérité, pragmatisme}.
• SMBC: Laughs and Nerd detection.
• Tech:
  • StyleCLIP: manipulating images with text (demo), via waxy.
  • uBlock Origin works best on Firefox. HN.
  • The hidden game within Flight Simulator, fun stuff.
  • The "cursed computer iceberg" meme, with clickable links.

👋. Music with Lateralis, and Godspeed again, this album is dope.

On the news,

• [fr] Science étonnante - Pourquoi dort-on ?
• [fr/qc] Chouette capsule sur le travail fait par Le Monde à Bicyclette pour défendre la place du vélo à Montréal. Via Nouveau Projet.
• Sarah J. Ray: Climate anxiety is a white phenomenon. Via Kottke.
• SMBC: Frickin users.
• Tech:
  • The sixtyforgan is "a Commodore 64 equipped with a spring reverb, featuring the keyboard layout of a chromatic button accordion".
  • Uber’s "Flexible Work+" is a scam to evade Canada’s labor laws.

Hi friends. Why read news when you can watch Godspeed's 2021-03-27 filmed presentation of their new album AT STATE'S END. Xoxo ❤️.

Hello, human. Have some Big Thief.

Around the interwebs,

• Tech:
  • Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany, awwwwwwwesome. HN blah.
  • People are speedrunning Wikipedia. ❤️.
  • GPT-3 tries pickup lines 😄.
  • foone does an awesome dissection of a funky corner of old Duke3d: how mirrors are made 🙂.
  • Rolling Stone: The world of Spotify audience manipulation.

Hola and music, with Field Works and Divide and Dissolve (thx Sam).

On the news,

• [fr] Entrevue Jancovici & Polony - Médias et climat / énergie.
• [fr] Blast - Un bon Gaël Giraud sur économie et écologie.
• Kottke: How were the covid-19 vaccines developed so quickly?
• Matt Korostoff: U.S.A. incarceration in numbers, wowww. Via waxy.
• Tech:
  • N.Y.U. study: far-right misinformation is Facebook’s most "engaging" political content.

Geeks! Well hello. The weekly music is Suuns​ + ​Jerusalem in my Heart, Lapalux, and Mansfield.TYA (thanks Berthe).

On the news,

• [fr] Clément Viktorovitch et Usul : Qui peut parler au nom des étudiants ? posent de bien bonnes questions.
• Tech:
  • Google claims it will replace tracking with privacy-preserving ads, yes! And I hear Marlboro is investing in health-preserving cigarettes! Tech-Orwellian newspeak fuckery at its vomitest. Via DF. EFF's take: Google’s FLoC is a terrible idea.
  • Wladimir Palant: How the "Amazon Assistant" browser addon lets Amazon track your every move on the web, excellent technical analysis.
  • The Verge: OpenAI’s state-of-the-art machine vision AI is fooled by handwritten notes 🙂. Via waxy.

Hi frendz, and music, with Fantômes.

News news news:

• McSweeney’s: I’m being censored, and you can read, hear, and see me talk about it in the news, on the radio, and on TV.
• [fr] Le Usul de la semaine est bon.
• SMBC: Math function jokes, Kids.
• Tech:
  • Vice: Amazon sends ‘Vote NO’ instructions to unionizing employees. Slowclap. HN.
  • jwz: "Stop adding Bitcoin as a checkout option like it's not a planet-killer".

Hi folks, and music, with Nubya Garcia.

On the news,

• Tech:
  • Reminder: ‘Smart’ TVs track everything you watch, Roku streaming devices default to scary privacy. Disconnect them!

Nerds!

This blag used to be spat out by a static site generator written in Python!

This blag is now spat out by a static site generator written in Rust, "a language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software" !

Both are dope!

These days I like Rust a lot!

You should totally give it a try and see for yourself if you like it too!

"Why the rewrite?" Because as I learnt Rust, I looked for a project to get my hands dirty, and my head tilted sideways when I thought about this blog's generator: under-engineered, untested, exploding into a million shiny sputtering sparkles everytime I touched a screw. No better way to practice a new language than to rewrite a {small, known, broken} evil!

Nope, I won't publish the source, as 1. it would need a good amount of generalization & configurability work to be broadly useful outside of my narrow use case, and 2. I have zarroo desire to maintain yet another open-source static site generator and answer your bug reports 😁. There are already nineteen bajillion excellent ones under the sun, including a great one in Rust and using the same templating engine: Zola!

Aaaand apart from THANK YOU RUST COMMUNITY, I have nothing to write about Rust, it's totally all the things you read about it on Hipster News, and more! But, happy to chat about it IRL!

::<❤️👋>! On that note, here are ten scraps of rust for your ears:

Bonjour bonsoir. This week's music is GoGo Penguin (thx Marianne), and an awesome Radiohead cover from Kelly Lee Owens:

News news news:

• [fr/qc] François Desrochers: Ne versons pas un sou dans ce qu’il reste de Bombardier.
• [fr/qc] Graffici : Cette lutte que nous perdons contre l’analphabétisme.
• SMBC: Lion autocracy.
• Tech:
  • DF: Google’s iOS apps, which still haven’t been updated since early December (when Apple started requiring clear "App Privacy Facts"), are now warning users they’re out of date. Slowclap.

Hola. Music, with wonderful new Notwist, and James Ferraro (thx Chris).

On the news,

• Scott Alexander: WebMD and the tragedy of legible expertise, 👏👏👏.
• Tech:
  • jblow: The problem with the web.

Hi frendz, and music, with Blind Delon / Contre Soirée.

On the news,

• SMBC: Evolution of language.
• Tech:
  • DF / MacRumors: Most Google apps for iOS still have no privacy ‘nutrition’ labels. More than ever: avoid Google / Android services as much as possible, their interests are opposed to your interests as a user. Using the Google ecosystem daily is to privacy what eating every meal at McDonald's is to nutrition.
  • Shorting fun! Vice: WTF is up with GameStop stock, and Bloomberg: The GameStop game never stops, and DF: RobinHood blocks buying – but not selling – GameStop, AMC, and BlackBerry stock, and ‘Meme stock’ rally rescues AMC theaters from $600M debt.

Hola, and music with Max Richter.

On the news,

• [fr] Thinkerview - Cédric Herrou. Rafraîchissant.
• [fr/qc] ONF : Bûcherons de la Manouane, merci Jo.
• David Cain: Clean the tiles, not the floor.
• Bernie inauguration metal memes and Put Bernie Anywhere! win this week's internets. Also, “I think my Gmail has crashed”: The teacher who made Bernie Sanders’ mittens on watching them go viral.
• Tech:
  • Doc Searls: Toward new kinds of leverage.
  • TTP: US capitol attack was months in the making on Facebook. HN.
  • Here we go again: Amazon: NOT OK - why we had to change Elastic licensing (HN), contradicted by Drew DeVault in Elasticsearch does not belong to Elastic and Open source means surrendering your monopoly over commercial exploitation.

Hi nerdlordz, and music, with Emily Hall.

Around the interwebs,

• [fr] Science Étonnante - La dualité onde-corpuscule, où je comprends enfin l'utilité de mes TPs d'interférométrie de classe prépa. Désolé, chers ex-profs de physique subissant les cancres comme moi.
• [fr] Louis Marion - L’emprise de la machine : une critique décroissanciste de la domination technique.
• [fr] UQAM: Raccourcis - Guide pratique des biais cognitifs.
• VOC-25, a vocal synth made with 25 sets of plastic teeth, well yes. Via waxy.
• SMBC: Heaven.
• Tech:
  • HN comments on an article about toxic / fake / artificial positivity have good examples of varying expectations & perceptions of "toxic positivity" (yes, there is such a thing) in work / social contexts, depending on cultural & education priors. Skip the commented Bloomberg article and go straight to the HN comments.
  • Google's centralized "Sandbox" cookie replacement. HN.
  • Bruce Schneier: Russia’s SolarWinds attack is a great summary for those like me who didn't follow this closely. Also, Schneier: Russia’s SolarWinds attack and software security.
  • Arch Linux's newest public service: a manual pages indexing site at man.archlinux.org that publishes the man pages of all packages. "While there are other man page indexing sites out there, it is our hope that publishing man pages matching the versions of our released packages further improves Arch accessibility and documentation.". Cool!
  • Drew DeVault: History will not remember us fondly. HN.
  • The U.S. House electronic voting system looks R·A·D.

Hello old friends. The weekly music is old-new Grandaddy: The sophtware slump .​.​.​.​. on a wooden piano, merci Berthe.

On the news,

• [fr/qc] Radio Cadenas : Une rare entrevue télé de Pierre Foglia avec son fils. Via Nouveau Projet.
• Felix Colgrave: THROAT NOTES. Also watch DOUBLE KING if you haven't yet. Via waxy.
• Tech:
  • Drew DeVault: A megacorp is not your dream job, 👏👏👏. HN.

Happy whatever, folks! And music with Nicolas Jaar in Against All Logic.

On the news,

• [fr] La construction du métro de Montréal en couleurs (1963-1966).
• Tech:
  • Doc Searls: We've seen this movie before, excellent bit of ad / tracking industry history, and links to current research & standardization attempts: Spec for Global Privacy Control (GPC), GPC reference test server, IEEE P7012 - Standard for machine-readable personal privacy terms.
  • bert hubert : Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, thx Heinz.
  • Ian Bicking: Firefox was always enough. HN.

Hello, weirdos. Have some new Moor Mother.

On the news,

• xkcd #2395: Covid precaution level.
• [fr] Monsieur Phi - Deux expériences de pensée de Judith Jarvis Thomson sur l'avortement.
• [fr] Science Étonnante - Le repliement des protéines : résolu par AlphaFold ?
• Kottke: The art of traditional Japanese wood joinery.
• How to self-rescue if you fall through thin ice.
• Ghosts of segregation, via Kottke.
• Map showing which countries support or oppose the Covid IP waiver at WTO, by Médecins Sans Frontières.
• Tech:
  • 9to5Mac: Apple releases iOS 12.5 for older iPhones with support for COVID-19 exposure notifications. 👏👏👏 for this, Apple.
  • DF: Facebook takes out full-page newspaper ads to attack Apple’s changes strengthening iOS privacy (EFF comments). On that note, Google is pulling the same trick to react to Google hit with third major bipartisan antitrust lawsuit from 38 US states. Looks like "Oh noes, tearing down my monopoly will harm Thee Good Honest Modest People" is the best our modern overlords have to say as defence.
  • GitHub blog: No cookie for you (HN, r/prog). Good job.

Hello frendz, and music, with older GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES!

Around the interwebs,

• Excellent Zeynep Tufekci: The pandemic heroes who gave us the gift of time and gift of information and Small data, big implications.
• What is “protein folding”? A brief explanation.
• Judgement on COVID-19 goes HEAVY METAL [Kenneth Copeland Remix] [I Demand], via waxy.

Hi geeks! Music, with new King Gizzard and Yôkaï.

On the news,

• [fr] Tu mourras moins bête - Mercredi, babyboomerie.
• Correlating Covid-19 cases and negative reviews of unscented candles (people who lost their sense of smell and haven't realized it yet). Via waxy and HN.
• Good comics! xkcd #2390: Linguists and SMBC: Fisher of men.
• Tech:
  • Vice: Exposing Amazon’s surveillance of labor and environmental groups. Fucking Pinkerton, seriously?! Via DF and HN and r/privacy. Related: Amazon workers to stage coordinated black Friday protests in 15 countries (HN). Also, NPR: Amazon has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions (HN).

    "It’s not enough for Amazon to abuse its dominant market power and face antitrust charges by the EU; now they are exporting 19th century American union-busting tactics to Europe", Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global Union, a global federation of trade unions that represents more than 20 million workers, told Motherboard. "This is a company that is ignoring the law, spying on workers, and using every page of the U.S. union-busting playbook to silence workers' voices".

    "For years people have been comparing Big Tech bosses to 19th century robber barons", she continued. "And now by using the Pinkertons to do his dirty work, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is making that connection even clearer".

  • Wolfie Christl: Esoteric metrics based on analyzing extensive data about employee activities has been mostly the domain of fringe software vendors. Now it's built into MS 365, and Gizmodo: Microsoft's creepy new 'Productivity Score' gamifies workplace surveillance, and DHH's take on it. HN1, HN2, merci Heinz.
  • NYT: Amazon hires 427,000 people in 10 months, bringing its global work force to more than 1.2 million 🤯. HN.
  • DF: Apple is not backing down on postponed "App Tracking Transparency" feature in iOS 14, good job on this front, Apple.
  • jblow (via Blow Fan): The problem with online communities.
  • NYT: Facebook struggles to balance civility and growth.