weekly reel September 18, 2022

Well hello, friends. Music, with Monolithe Noir.

Rin by Monolithe Noir (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr/qc] Trucs santé avec Monsieur Mousteille, merci James.

SMBC: Pipe & beard.

Tech

Matt McMuscles: What happened? is an excellent series of gamedev post-mortems digging into the “why?” of particularly tormented game development lifecycles, often using anonymous dev testimonies. A lot of good cautionary tales, not limited to game dev, and actually not limited to development; these are good project management warnings. Chosen bits: XIII, Cyperpunk 2077.

The last person standing in the floppy disk business.

weekly reel September 11, 2022

Bonjour bonsoir, and music with Imarhan and UTO.

The Distance by Imarhan (bandcamp.com)

Touch The Lock by UTO (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr] Bernard Stiegler @ Le Média (2018).

Wikipedia: Flanderization, via HN.

SMBC: AI alignment, Fired for Waldening at work, Metaverse.

Tech

Waxy: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images.

Pavel Safronov: Moscow State Uni. network built by students, thx Heinz.

Windows copy dialog box lunar lander, YES.

[fr] Des paroles simples. Pour dire aux devs des trucs simples. Merci Adrien.

weekly reel September 4, 2022

Yo, geeks, and music with Hubert Lenoir.

Darlène by Hubert Lenoir (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr] Monsieur Phi - Histoire coloniale Corée / Japon.

[fr/qc] IRIS / Pierre-Antoine Harvey : Le rôle potentiel des profits dans l’inflation élevée (“greedflation”) se confirme.

SMBC: How mathematicians want to die, Nouning, The human paradox.

Tech

Linus Akesson: C64 theremin.

Andy Baio: Opening the pandora’s box of AI art, and Exploring 12 million of the 2.3 billion images used to train Stable Diffusion’s image generator.

Large text compression benchmark, a competition that “ranks lossless data compression programs by the compressed size of the first 109 bytes of the XML text dump of Wikipedia”

Aral Balkan: Dear Linux, privileged ports must die.

Skybox Satellite, “skybox images collated from GoldSrc (Half-Life) engine games & maps”

Shitty tech ℹ️

DF / TechCrunch: FTC sues data broker Kochava for sale of people’s location data.

DF / NYT: Facebook’s problems.

weekly reel August 21, 2022

Woop woop, et musique avec Mendelson.

Le dernier album by Mendelson (bandcamp.com)

News

Hank Green: What’s in the U.S. climate bill.

John Carmack interviewed by Lex Fridman 👏👏👏.

Atlantic: Views from the top.

SMBC: Boom, Model parent, AIfterlife.

Tech

Hans Petter Jansson: Adventure game graphics with DALL-E 2.

DALL·E goes commercial, but what about copyright?

Getting the world record in HATETRIS.

adn: Games and “deep instinctive changes”.

jwz: Lucid Emacs was released 30 years ago, cool promo video. FunnySad how “It failed in the marketplace because our target audience mostly still thought that vi and printf("here\n") was good enough and why would you bother with anything more complicated than that” ... still happens 30 years later.

Shitty tech ℹ️

DF / Business Insider: Facebook’s AI chatbot has election-denying, antisemitic bugs to work out.

Ad tech revenue statements indicate unclear effects of “App Tracking Transparency”, via DF: 1, 2.

weekly reel August 7, 2022

Bonjour bonsoir, et musique avec LUMIÈRE, merci Berthe.

A.M.I.E.S.A.M.O.U.R by LUMIÈRE (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr] Linguisticae - « Les jeunes ne lisent plus ».

Aaron Swartz: I hate the news (2006).

Joseph’s Machines: Pass the wine, via waxy.

SMBC: Weird, to which I can relate.

Tech

Ange Yaghi: (Audio) simulating an entire car engine, via waxy. Code.

Technology Connections: The correcting feature of typewriters.

weekly reel July 31, 2022

Geeks! Have some newsnewsnews, en musique avec Hubert Lenoir.

PICTURA DE IPSE : Musique directe by Hubert Lenoir (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr] Stupid Economics & Léa Bello - Inflation et décarbonation.

A good (English) review of “La société du spectacle” by an ACX reader.

Drew DeVault: Conciseness.

Scott Alexander: Forer statements as updates and affirmations.

Comics: xkcd #2650: Deepfakes, smbc: Fanny.

Tech

[fr] Deus Ex Silicium, merci Sam.

adn: Unity and Godot, artists and their hatred of money.

Absurd AI-generated “pro food photography” with DALL-E 2, via waxy.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Amazon caring little about counterfeit books, since they get their middleman money anyway. Via waxy.

Jonathan Blow on app notifications.

Fuck yeah, Microsoft. It’s not my favorite angle to piss on blockchain / NFT bullshit, which to me are first and foremost ecocidal solutions looking for a problem. But okay! “Misalignment with values of creative inclusion” will do! Sure! Whatever floats your PR boat today, and more of this, please.

Each of these uses of NFTs and other blockchain technologies creates digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together. NFTs are not inclusive of all our community and create a scenario of the haves and the have-nots.

The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players.

weekly reel July 17, 2022

👋 and music with a new live of The Armed.

ULTRAPOP: Live at the Masonic by The Armed (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr] Science Étonnante - Mécanique quantique et mesure.

SMBC: Eff, GrandmAI.

Tech

Michael Stapelberg: Why I wrote my own rsync. Cool stuff, and gokrazy seems pretty rad to develop “easy-embedded-ish” stuff running a minimal { Linux, Pi firmware, your-golang-program } stack.

Rejoice! Engadget: You can now play 'Doom' inside 'Doom II'! (GitHub repo). And rejoice again! You can now befriend Cacodemons.

Replicating the styles of well-known portrait photographers with DALL-E 2, via waxy.

Pokemon-inspired cellular automaton battle, via waxy.

Shitty tech ℹ️

jwz: Texas is now too hot for bitcoin mining.

Bruce Schneier: On the dangers of cryptocurrencies and the uselessness of blockchain.

SFGate: Restaurant and private members lounge to be built controversially in San Francisco’s “public” Salesforce Park, via jwz.

Facebook now encrypts links to counter privacy-improving URL stripping.

RPS: UK gov. threatens to legislate on loot boxes if games companies don’t step up parental controls. Skip the threat and just goddamn regulate!

Ross Scott - Dead Game News: Ubisoft / Game journalism zeitgeist or something.

weekly reel July 10, 2022

Hello, nerds. The weekly music is Vincent Peirani (thx Uri!), et pour toi Johnny voilà La moustafette.

Jokers by Vincent Peirani (bandcamp.com)

Karlit & Kabok - La moustafette (youtube-nocookie.com)

News

[fr] Jean Marc Jancovici - Concevoir pour rester en dessous de 2°C.

SMBC: Hardware vs. software failure.

Tech

Shift happens: The modifiers vs. the keepers, via waxy.

Thomas Flight: Why is “Everything Everywhere All At Once” ?

Shitty tech ℹ️

The Guardian: Uber international corruption. HN.

weekly reel July 3, 2022

Hi geeks, and music with Tash Sultana, thx Uri.

Flow State by Tash Sultana (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr] Monsieur Phi - Peut-on démocratiquement priver les femmes de la liberté d'avorter ?

SMBC: Transitory, True.

jwz: Designs for a creature that can walk down a pipe.

Tech

The IBM Selectric bug and operation GUNMAN: How the Soviets bugged IBM typewriters.

DALL-E Mini explained.

matklad: Unit and Integration tests.

weekly reel June 26, 2022

HelloooOOOooo, and music with CSN&Y, merci Isa.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Our house (youtube-nocookie.com)

News

[fr] Monsieur Phi - La meilleure raison de manger vos cerveaux 👽🍴🧠 Une expérience de pensée gastronomique.

SMBC: Math, and thoughts on VR.

The 24h of Lemons 😄. (Not that I support automobile racing, it’s ecological nonsense, but the event idea & name is rad).

weekly reel June 19, 2022

Bonjour bonsoir, and music with Michael Rault.

Michael Rault by Michael Rault (bandcamp.com)

News

Gawker: I should be able to mute America.

SMBC: Unity.

Tech

Scott Alexander - Your book review: The future of fusion energy.

adn on gamedev: Luck, Competition, Authorship isn’t real.

Shitty tech ℹ️

The Onion: Google Maps adds shortcuts through houses of people Google knows aren’t home right now 😄.

weekly reel June 12, 2022

Hi geeks, and music with Gnod, thx Laurie.

Chaudelande by Gnod (bandcamp.com)

News

How many COVID infections will you have in your lifetime?

David Cain: The rut principle.

[fr] Science étonnante - L’expérience de Milgram sur la soumission à l’autorité.

The intense corporate ‘Hell Camps’ of 1980s Japan: Atlas Obscura, Time. Thx Gordu.

[fr] David Castello-Lopes veut du sale, merci Berthe.

National Geographic: Russians were once banned from a third of the U.S., via Nelson.

SMBC: Ten percent, AI, Priority.

Tech

1972 Magnavox Odyssey promotional film 😍. Via Nelson.

If OpenSSL were a GUI is funny. HN.

Shitty tech ℹ️

jwz: The flesh you wear is a lie you tell the world. Apple can see your true face.

RPS: What Diablo Immortal costs if you let it happen.

weekly reel June 5, 2022

👋, and music with new Skinless Lizard.

Andromeda by Skinless Lizard (bandcamp.com)

News

The Ameriguns, thx Isa.

jwz: Long live the new flesh, Say hello to mechanically separated chicken!

Tech

Linus Akesson: Partita prelude for 8-bit ensemble.

MarkovJunior, a “probabilistic programming language where programs are combinations of rewrite rules, and inference is performed via constraint propagation”. No entiendo, but the results are very pretty. Via waxy.

Jblow @ No-frauds club, ep 2 made me want to play The Witness again.

AI generating images: AI versus corporate logos and A still of Kermit The Frog in xyz, both via waxy.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Letter in support of responsible fintech policy.

weekly reel May 29, 2022

Bonjour bonsoir, and music with Narcotix and Ada Rook.

Mommy Issues by The Narcotix (bandcamp.com)

UGLY DEATH NO REDEMPTION ANGEL CURSE I LOVE YOU by Ada Rook (bandcamp.com)

Tech

[fr] Guillaume Pitron @ RTS : Deux fois plus polluant que l’aviation, le numérique pèse insidieusement sur le climat. Via Nouveau Projet.

MRMO-Halftone, a “shader-based halftone offset printing emulation process that aims to evoke the feel of color halftone prints”. 😍.

A City in a Bottle 🌆, tiny city and raycasting that fits in a tweet (decoding by Daniel Darabos). Via waxy.

80s and early 90s chart-making software, from the before-Excel era. Via waxy.

Image AI stuff: DALLE-2 AI “variant test” (twitter thread): starting with the prompt “a bad photo” and requesting variations of each image. Also, Imagen, a new DALL·E 2 rival. Via waxy.

weekly reel May 22, 2022

Hello, nerdlordz. Damnit, this week was chock full of excellent new electro, with fresh stuff from Moderat, M.O.O.N., Wilma Vritra, Four Tet.

MORE D4TA by Moderat (bandcamp.com)

Come! See!! by M.O.O.N. (bandcamp.com)

Grotto by Wilma Vritra (bandcamp.com)

Only Human by KH (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr] Gaël Giraud @ Sismique podcast, excellent comme d’habitude.

These photos of the Davis-Monthan Air Force base in Tucson reminded me of Koyaanisqatsi.

Tech

People Make Games: Making sense of VRChat, the “metaverse” people actually like. Wow; I’m generally skeptical about the whole thing, but this looks fun and goofy. Great documentary too.

... which made me discover other videos from People Make Games, who produce videogames commentary / documentary that resonates with me. In particular, on the topic of receiving and listening –or not– to player feedback in games: Why Subnautica owes its success to this button and Why the sound of a gun had to be nerfed in Wolf: ET.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Nicholas Weaver: All cryptocurrency should die in a fire.

weekly reel May 15, 2022

Hi geeks, and music with new Esmerine, and Totorro (merci Laurie).

Everything was forever until it was no more by Esmerine (bandcamp.com)

Come to Mexico by Totorro (bandcamp.com)

Tech

Charity Majors @ WTFisSRE: It is time to fulfill the promise of Continuous Delivery. Techies, this is a must-see talk that will give you hope and ammo to go push for more CD at $job, and save your sanity. Thx Ian.

weekly reel May 8, 2022

Woop. On the music side, PIANO CHAT / Marceau Boré is awesome. Also, new old Tellier.

Ours Molaire by PIANO CHAT (bandcamp.com)

NOUS by PIANO CHAT (bandcamp.com)

Lands by PIANO CHAT (bandcamp.com)

Schoon Donker by Marceau Boré (bandcamp.com)

La Ritournelle EP [New edition] by Sébastien Tellier (bandcamp.com)

News

Stereogum: Why are musicians expected to be miserable on tour just to break even? and Adam Neely of Sungazer on their tour expenses. Via waxy.

Kevin Kelly: 103 bits of advice.

SMBC: Finite, Robot.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Scott Alexander: Every Bay Area house party.

weekly reel May 1, 2022

👋 geeks, and music with Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales.

Consumed In Key by Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales (bandcamp.com)

News

[fr/qc] Caribou: Qu’est-ce qu’un prix juste ? Merci Berthe.

SMBC: Stages of life.

Tech

It’s union time at/around U.S. software bigcorps: Raven software QA, Dragon Age QA, a second Amazon warehouse, Apple Retail.

Shitty tech ℹ️

[fr] Arrêt sur images : Elon Musk ne vous veut pas du bien.

Ross Scott: “Games as a service” is fraud.

weekly reel April 24, 2022

Bonjour bonsoir frendz, and music with new King Gizzard.

Omnium Gatherum by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (bandcamp.com)

News

Kottke: The bagworm caterpillar is quite the animal architect. THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING. More photos.

Ottoman leaf calligraphy, via Nelson.

Kottke: The mass delusion of the pandemic being over.

Tech

“Just listen to Jaron Lanier talk about social media” is my new go-to answer to why I’m not using them: Who is civilization for? , HOPE 2020 keynote, How the internet failed and how to recreate it. Thx James.

MIT Media Lab: λ-2D: An exploration of drawing as programming language, featuring ideas from lambda calculus.

Magnetron the GPT3 AI. Via Nelson.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Vice: Leaked “shill price list” shows wild world of cryptocurrencies promos.

Axie Infinity collapses.

weekly reel April 17, 2022

Nerds! Hello, and music, with lovely new Daniel Rossen.

You belong there by Daniel Rossen (bandcamp.com)

News

Life advice from NYC chess hustlers, via Kottke.

The endgames of bad faith communication. HN.

Michael Hobbes - Anatomy of a moral panic: The “free speech crisis”.

SMBC: Trippy, Limitless.

Tech

Tom Murphy - Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn’t want or need. 👏👏👏.

SIGBOVIK 2022 proceedings (PDF).

Inigo Quilez: Painting a landscape with math, via waxy.

Eric Goldman: Content moderation remedies.

White House: Executive order on improving USA cybersecurity. Of particular interest, the requirement of an “SBOM” (Software Bill Of Materials) to list dependencies (node modules, go packages, rust crates, etc) and understand / mitigate risks associated to them. Via Schneier.

Anil Dash: A web renaissance.

Wikipedia: Solar cell research, via Nelson.

Horrible edge cases to consider when dealing with music 😄, via Trivium.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Contra Chrome.

jwz: Autonomous murderbot pulled over by SFPD; tries to escape 😄.