log.nikhil.io

two hundred links of interest

“CEO’s Skill Set Transferable To Any Job That Requires Dumbass To Receive Big Salary”

NEW YORK—Claiming he could easily fit into a similar position at most companies, local CEO Mike Waltke told reporters Monday that his skill set was transferable to any job that requires an inept dumbass to receive a big salary. “I have the incompetence necessary to effortlessly transition into a r…

The Apple Product Cycle

Was doing some digital house-keeping and came by a cached copy of that by MisterBG. Things haven’t changed too much over the past two decades……

In 1942, Bob Emmett Fletcher agreed to manage 90 acres of farmland for his Japanese neighbors who had been forcibly moved to internment camps.

And because no good deed goes unpunished, Fletcher claimed to have been harassed by his own community and he also found bullet holes in his barn. Fletcher used the proceeds from farming the land to pay the taxes for the interned Japanese. From 1942 to 1945 he managed the Tsukamoto, Nitta, and Okamo…

“What we have built together is sad, buggy, quixotic garbage but you have to use it.”

Things are going well with the Metaverse: In a follow-up memo dated September 30th, [Vishal] Shah1 said that employees still weren’t using Horizon enough, writing that a plan was being made to “hold managers accountable” for having their teams use Horizon at least once a week. “Everyone in this org…

“How a Public School in Florida Built America’s Greatest Math Team”

Coached by a former Wall Street bond trader who studied the opposition and set up a pipeline that produces Superstar Mathletes: “You wouldn’t grab a kid in ninth grade who’s never played football and expect him to be a great high-school football player,” he said. “For most of these kids, this is th…

“I Fucking Hate Jira” is a collection of people sharing their feelings about one of the worst pieces of software I continue to use every day.

Jira is middle-management-ware, a term I made up for software that serves the needs of middle management, or, at least, the needs middle management thinks it has, which comes to the same thing as long as you’re selling to them. (link) Jira is a tire fire. It should be condemned and officially des…

OpenCore Legacy Patcher allows you to run the latest macOS (Monterey) on your old Macs

For day-to-day things, a 10-year old MacBook Air is perfectly adequate (except, maybe, if you’re trying to read an article on the Des Moines Register’s or KCCI’s websites without using a PiHole…)…

I finally found the French textbook I used in middle school: Cours de Langue et de Civilisation Françaises

Didn’t realize it was a four-parter. Major nostalgia. Have forgotten most of my French but I somehow still remember a lot of words for things (and their gender!) thanks to these books (well, Volume 1 at least). Looks like the CBSE still uses it. Here’s audio to accompany the books.…

Robert Wardhaugh is a Professor of History in Canada who’s run a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign for 40 years.

I know nothing of D&D, wanted to find out more after watching the latest season of Stranger Things, and came by this video. I still don’t understand how the figurines contribute to the gameplay but was amazed by his vast collection of them. Lots of lovely passion and camaraderie here ♥️ Here’s t…

“If you can’t be responsible of following some other simple rules in society to behave, why should you have a gun?”

That would be a Swiss gun instructor. His country has 2.3 million guns per 8.6 million people and has had exactly one mass shooting since 2001. They are able to do this despite being one of the most armed European countries because they have commonsense gun laws, actually fucking act to prevent sens…

pup is a delightful little command-line utility that lets you parse HTML

Think jq but for HTML/DOM. If you wanted to get all the post titles on this log, curl -s -o - https://log.nikhil.io/ | gunzip - | pup "header > h2 > a" text{} Lovely stuff.…

“We All Want Clean H2O” is a Podcast about Water Quality, Policy, Agriculture, and Climate Change

It’s hosted by three University of Iowa engineers and scientists who are tired of “cropaganda” and is rather entertaining. The latest episode calls the recent E15 Law a “Fart in a Hurricane”. One of the hosts is an engineer named Chris Jones who also writes a very lively blog with wonderful nuggets…

“Tabler Icons” are free SVG icons for web design.

Simple, consistent, SVG, adjustable stroke-width, and there are 1900 of them (and counting).…

ThanosJS is a Hot New Framework that promises to “reduce the file size of your project down to 50%”

It’s what all the Patagonia-clads are raving about. They tell me it solves all perf problems in a snap. Update Here’s an NPM package. And, of course, Java if you’d like to deploy this in an Enterprise™ setting.…

Interview with a Senior JavaScript Developer in 2022

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This really got me: My job is to keep our code running while other packagers are changing theirs. Lord have mercy. NPM continued use and existence is proof that (Almost) Every Day is a Miracle ✨…

An Ingredient Parser using TensorFlow

Really cool stuff. Trained on the New York Times ingredients corpus (large 13.5MB CSV) and turns this ingredients = [ "3 large melons", "5 1/2 cups water", "2 cups flour", ] into this [ { "name": "melons", "unit": None, "qty": 3.0 }, { "name": "water", "unit": "cups"…

There are Disgusting Fucking Human Beings and then there’s Alex Jones

Heslin’s vow on Wednesday comes one day after Jones offered an FBI agent and 18 members of 10 families who lost loved ones in the school shooting $120,000 each to settle defamation lawsuits he lost against them in Texas and Connecticut late last year. […] Jones, the host of the “Infowars” internet…

“entr” provides a nice interface to inotify

Saved me a ton of time with small project I’m working on right now. Looks like it’s written in C.…

Adventuron is a framework that lets you create old-school Text Adventure games for a browser

Here’s a giant list of games people have created with it. Here’s a teeny little introductory adventure. I plan on playing The Quest of DuBebe this evening:…

“Translanguaging” is the act of interleaving elements of two or more languages together to communicate more effectively.

Very common in India. And that article is from a journal that offers EAL news. EAL (English as an Additional Language) is not the same as ESL (English as a Second Language). EAL is favored above ESL among the language pedagogy community: Why? Because sometimes it is not clear what an individual’s ‘…

DNA has a Half-Life of 521 Years

A study of DNA extracted from the leg bones of extinct moa birds in New Zealand found that the half-life of DNA is 521 years. So every 1,000 years, 75 per cent of the genetic information is lost. After 6.8 million years, every single base pair is gone. Bacterial RNA is much tougher and sequences ha…

If “American Psycho” Were About Programmers

Excellent stuff, particularly the mechanical keyboard envy1. There’s a Nikhil in it too! 💁‍♂️ I don’t think I’ll get into them. Got myself one of these (brown switches) about three years ago after outsourcing the research to a highly enthusiastic and helpful co-worker. The “L” key sticks sometimes…

“I have delivered Value. But at what cost?”

Because we don’t simply write non-annoying and non-creepy software that respects you and does the thing you want it to do anymore. Gotta deliver Value™ to all key stakeholders. By which we mean ourselves and the Market. Not you. You are nothing more than Data that taps “Purchase” to us.…

Here’s a “Household Income Percentile Calculator for the United States”

In case that site is unavailable, and for the year 2020, it’s an exponential curve with the 50th at $67,463 75th at $122,500 80th at $141,100 90th at $201,052 95th at $273,850 98th at $386,915 99th at $594,420 Until not-too-long ago, I used to think that “the top 1%” referred to “few hundreds of m…

Former Member of “Elite-Strike Force” Legal Team now on Illustrious Client’s No-Go List to Save him the Embarrassment and Discomfiture of his Association with Her

Forgot to add this to my Collection of Shitkraken. Two lawyers who currently work for Trump or in the former president’s inner orbit say they want absolutely nothing to do with her and have cautioned others in MAGAland to do the same. One said they’d recently deleted her phone number. Two other peo…

Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, as E-mailed by Your Passive-Aggressive Co-Worker

I’m not saying there’s going to be a schism or anything, but I’m not not saying that, either. This is just genius. (Cached)…

Today I Learned that the World Record for Walking A Mile is 5:31:08

It belongs to Tom Bosworth. I thought “I cannot even run that fast” and decided to look at the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOYdS5QZasMÏ While it certainly does look like they’re running, there are some severe restrictions on their movement, of course, else it’d be an event called ‘Trottin…

Fearless Leader of Former (Un-Reinstated) President’s “Elite Strike-Force” Legal Team resorts to side-hustle on Cameo after raising a staggering 0.2% of the $5 million towards the legal defense fund he will need to fight the voting company he baselessly accused of ballot-tampering

Yes, weeks after his buddy Bernie Kerik asked people to spare whatever they could for Giuliani‘s legal bills, the “Rudy Giuliani Legal Defense Fund” has raised a mere $9,590, or less than 0.2% of the $5 million goal. (It’s not clear if the RGLDF is a separate entity the “Rudy Giuilani Freedom Fund…

Fearless Leader of former President’s Elite Strike-Force Legal Team Gets Wasted and Advises his Client to “Just Declare Victory” Regardless of Outcome

“Just say we won,” Giuliani reportedly instructed Trump’s team, explaining that they should simply declare victory in each battleground state. Giuliani is then said to have told Trump directly: “Just go declare victory right now… You’ve got to go declare victory now.” Some solid strategery here. T…

The “No Reasonable Person Could Possibly Believe My Bullshit” Defense Fails for Former Member of Elite Strike-Force Team as Judge Denies Motion to Dismiss Dominion’s Defamation Suit Against Her.

The Fearless Leader’s motion was denied as well. Pillow Bro as well. The best people. “As an initial matter, there is no blanket immunity for statements that are “political” in nature: as the Court of Appeals has put it, the fact that statements were made in a “political ‘context’ does not indiscri…

A Human Being has Eaten 32,340 Big Macs and Appears to be OK

Don Gorske started eating them in 1972 and continues to do so. He will buy 6-8 at a time twice a week (at the same McDonald’s franchise) to save on gas. He’s kept all boxes and receipts, which I suppose are what you’d need to apply for and maintain a Guinness Record. Emphasis mine: Seriously, if yo…

Professor Tara Brabazon on Procrastination

She addresses graduate/PhD students struggling to complete their theses but there’s quite a bit to learn here. She considers procrastination as a perfectly logical response: why wouldn’t one seek pleasure? It’s something that (a) reveals a lot about what you’re afraid of and (b) is hence a protectio…

Pathetic Douchebag and Evil Douchebag Try Too Hard to Connect with Upper Middle Class Douchebags Who can Afford the Outdoors and Woodworking

Pathetic and Evil: “The next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate,” Carlson said. “Ask politely but firmly: ‘Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.’” “As…

“Everyone has JavaScript, right?”

The key takeaways in no particular order. Use <noscript>. If you are using it, use it a lot more. There is no guarantee that chunks will load after the main one does; the user’s location and/or network access might have changed! Think CalTrain. ISPs, Corporate VPNs, and Browser Plugins1 can m…

Former Member of Elite Strike-Force Team Will Most Likely be Reprimanded by a Judge for Legal Ineptitude Over “Fluid” and Unpredictable Election

I’d really hoped that this embarrassment would’ve been forgotten a few weeks after January 6th. But here we are. “Should an attorney be sanctioned for his or her failure to withdraw allegations the attorney came to know were untrue?,” [U.S. Judge Linda Parker] said during a court hearing held by vi…

The Problem with Hyper-Individualism

A simple-enough argument about a dangerous, toxic worldview. […] To highlight that contradiction let’s try to explain these facts with individualist logic. Women and non-white people, by sheer coincidence, all individually chose to be paid less for more demanding jobs. Also by coincidence, they cho…

The Five Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done

By Michael Dearing. Couldn’t find any video and not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek (like the “48 Laws of Power”.) The distortions are: Personal Exceptionalism “I am special.” Dichotomous Thinking “X is sh*t. Y is genius.” Correct Overgeneralization “I see two dots and draw the right line.” Blank-C…

Linux and PRNGs

Being a long and informative post that leads to “Use /dev/urandom” and features a quote by DJB and a list of computationally secure PRNGs. Cached here.…

The TeX Family Tree History

LaTeX, pdfTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX and ConTeXt. That’s a lot of TeX! This was most helpful, even though MacTeX solves all my problems.…

“Calling Bullshit” is a free online course that helps you “detect and defuse” Bullshit when you encounter it.

Our learning objectives are straightforward. After taking the course, you should be able to: Remain vigilant for bullshit contaminating your information diet. Recognize said bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it. Figure out for yourself precisely why a particular bit of bullshit is bulls…

Don’t Use Hadoop - Your Data Isn’t That Big

A still-very-relevant 9-year old article. Pandas has gone from strength to strength since he wrote that. In terms of expressing your computations, Hadoop is strictly inferior to SQL. There is no computation you can write in Hadoop which you cannot write more easily in either SQL, or with a simple P…

How Big is Too Big for JSON?

From over 10 years ago (I’m sorting through my old bookmarks). A single object looks like this: { "ACCTOUNT_NUMBER":"1234567890", "CUSTOMER_NAME":"ACME Products and Services, Inc.", "ADDRESS":"123 Main Street", "CITY":"Albuquerque", "STATE":"NM", "ZIP":"87101-1234" } He test…

Fearless Leader of Elite Strike-Force Team Suspended from Practicing Law in Home State where he was Once Top Federal Prosecutor

This led him to miss a court hearing where his own lawyer sought to dismiss a billion-dollar defamation case against him. This is because the Strike-Force Honcho made “false and misleading” claims about the equipment used in the 2020 election on behalf of his Stable Genius client. I wonder how much…

“Windows is more than just an operating system; it’s a fabric woven into our lives and in our work.”

No. It’s just a fucking operating system1. A giant program on a computer. What weird, disconnected, embarrassing bullshit ‘spiritual’ techbro nonsense. “We made a website full of memes you can search through, powered by Bitcoin and Machine-Learning (of course), and are changing the world.” No. Stop…

“lol Dad and I were one of the first ones inside”

I wonder if our hero has any vacation plans he’d care to share with a judge who might acquit him and his lol-dad. (Cached)…

Leader of the Elite Strike-Force Team Peddles Pillows for CEO who wanted the Former President of these United States to Impose Martial Law over Losing the Most Secure Election this Democracy has Enjoyed So Far

I still remember Giuliani’s stature and gravitas 20 years ago, when I arrived in this country. How the mighty have fallen. It’s almost as if The Orange Sphere of Shit corrupts all those who enter it. And comically so in the case of America’s Mayor. Rick Wilson, the GOP political consultant who cre…

Attorneys general from over 40 states urge Facebook to cancel plans for Instagram for kids

This is for children under 13. Because children over 13 engage with Social Media in very healthy and fruitful ways. “They are also simply too young to navigate the complexities of what they encounter online, including inappropriate content and online relationships where other users, including preda…

Elite Strike-Force Leader’s Supporters Beseech the Angry Yam to Pay for Services Rendered

I have accepted that Shitkraken won’t end for a while. Giuliani’s attorney, son, and allies like convicted former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik have urged Trump aides to dip into his massive war chest to help cover the former New York City mayor’s mounting lawyer bills after Giuliani’s…

We are Facebook. When a fascist, Hindu Fundamentalist government tells us their fee-fees are hurt by a hashtag, we Move Fast and Break Democracy to the pleasure of our shithead plasticine overlord.

Because the only thing that matters is delivering Value to shareholders. (cached) Incidentally, and to the “huh” of many Value-illiterate people, defending totalitarian governments is exactly how one gives “people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”…

I am a Republican politician. This means that I will gleefully ask you, using my Apple phone, via Twitter, to buy a book called “The Tyranny of Big Tech” on Amazon ♥️

And as a staunch Free Market Conservative, I don’t really worry about sales (cached). May the market do its thing (cached), just like St. Reagan said it would.…

This is a fine, minimal ‘modern’ HTML Skeleton

by Josh Comeau. Saving here to refer to later. Here’s another by Manuel Matuzovic. It features a lot more OG tags and a most clever way to cut the mustard apropos modern browsers. Saved here.…

How to Hack Servers using Windows Media Player

A most dangerous Easter Egg by Microsoft, known only to the most elite of hackers.…

Operation Shitkraken is Over

The Supreme Court disposed of the last of former President Donald Trump’s challenges to state election procedures Monday, rejecting his appeal of lower court rulings that upheld Wisconsin’s handling of mail-in ballots. The court announced the rejection without comment in a one-line order, which is…

“A Capitol rioter texted his ex during the insurrection to call her a ‘moron,’ feds say. She turned him in.”

Standing on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, Richard Michetti allegedly took a break from the rioting to argue with his ex-girlfriend over text message. After sending photos and videos of the mob and boasting how he had avoided tear gas, Michetti parroted Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.…

Docsify is a Markdown-based documentation generator.

It’s very simple and clever. This is an example of what’s rendered from this giant Markdown file 💙…

The Collatz Conjecture in TypeScript’s Types

The argument here being that, since the ‘general form’ of the conjecture is undecidable, TypeScript’s type system is undecidable. How does one even think of doing these things? I love Typescript, but it isn’t nearly ambitious enough. It would be vastly improved with an --extremelyStrict flag enforc…

I’m not sure why YouTube’s Omniscient Algorithms recommended this video but I did not learn a damn thing about “After-Dinner Drinks” from the star of this pretentious watch and signet ring ad.

A guide to elegant post-dinner debauchery from Mr Wei Koh, watch aficionado, Style Council member and founder of The Rake Magazine, in partnership with IWC Schaffhausen. The ‘guide’ in a nutshell: “Drink whatever you want, with whomever you like, talking about anything you’d want to, on any day of…

How to Write a Shell in C

About as ‘essential’ as it gets if you want to appreciate a tool you work with every day. (Cached)…

Grown-Ass Human Being and Former World Leader throws tantrum, says “Who cares!”, and proceeds to write six paragraphs which demonstrate that he does, indeed, care.

See also. He was 73 years old, she was 17, and this was in 2019, when nobody had given a shit about Time’s Person of the Year for a while.…

“The Honorable, the Members of the Unites States Senate”

🇺🇸: We the Peope of the Unites States… 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿: 🤣…

A Lovely Illustrated Guide to Home Architectural Styles and Structural Elements.

Here’s another list of 36 styles with real examples. (Cached: styles, elements one and two.)…

“Gigantic Asshole Ajit Pai Is Officially Gone.”

I don’t think I’ve enjoyed an article’s title this much in a while. Here is a list of harmful nonsense Pai and his FCC did over the last four years: Killed net neutrality Approved T-Mobile / Sprint merger Repeatedly released reports that claimed U.S. broadband is fine Defended murder of net neutra…

Scientists Film Salt Crystal Formation in Real-Time.

Nakamuro and his team looked at the videos Sakakibara had captured and were the first people ever to see tiny cuboid crystals made of tens of molecules of NaCl emerging from the chaotic mixture of separate sodium and chloride ions. Straight away, they noticed a statistical pattern in the frequency…

Leader of “Elite Strike-Force” Team sued for $1.3B by Dominion Voting Systems.

The 107-page lawsuit […] accuses Mr. Giuliani of carrying out “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion” made up of “demonstrably false” allegations, in part to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast. You don’t say. The suit […] is based on more than 50 statements Mr. Giuliani ma…

Texan Lawsuit, filed by disgraced attorney who posted videos of himself at the Capitol Attack, cites “The Lord of the Rings” as justification for the removal of the new President and stewardship by the old President’s cabinet.

It would appear that my collection of batshittery is far from complete. “Gondor has no king,” the lawsuit states, a footnote providing an explanation of the woeful fate of Tolkien’s entirely imaginary land populated by dragons, wizards, hobbits and elves, all threatened by a baleful Dark Lord back…

“Elite Strike-Force Team” deemed “clownish” by Client’s Attorney General.

“These things aren’t panning out,” Barr told the president, standing beside his chief of staff Will Levi. “The stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true.” Barr explained that if Trump wanted to contest the election results, the president’s internal campaign lawyers would hav…

An Owl’s Eye Color is Related to When It likes to Hunt.

Dark Brown or Black: Nocturnal (helps with camouflage.) Orange: Dawn and Dusk. Yellow: Daytime. There are no Blue-Eyed Owls.…

Tesseract is an Open-Source OCR Engine

Here’s a short overview but I found it as easy as brew install tesseract # See output.txt tesseract -l eng input.png output…

“Elite Strike-Force Team” Client Leaves Office with his Lowest Ever Approval Rating at 29%

Nicely played, team. I’d say Mission Accomplished 🍾 That being said, I really hope I don’t have to collect Shitkraken stories anymore (for “completeness.”)…

Stable Genius Client Halts Payments to Fearless Leader of his “Elite Strike-Force” Legal Team.

Not sure if this has to do with The Client’s legendary ethics and history of non-payment (one, two, three, four, five, and many, many more) or the Strike Force’s whopping 1.5% success rate. Or maybe The Genius finally realized: “Your typical role as legal counselor is to tell your client the hard…

“Elite Strike Force Team” Vanishes from State Television.

Surely can’t the bad-for-ratings hair dye, the insane and casually racist witnesses, or the amazing 1.5% success rate?…

This is the best octopus fossil ever found.

It was found in 1982 in France. It’s 165M years old. Researchers reconstructed it in 3D using “synchrotron microtomography.” I was unable this reconstruction because the system of scientific journals is a money-grubbing bullshit system run by greedy people. Here she is though ♥️…

The Elite Strike-Force Team is at 1-64 a week before inauguration.

This is a success rate of ~1.5% 🥇 The Best People folks, lemmetellya.…

Twitter permanently suspends account of Sidney Powell, ex-member of the “Elite Strike-Force Team”.

I’m really tired of this saga of ineptitude and batshittery but will continue to scrapbook these stories for ‘completeness’.…

A Custom “Linux Router, Firewall and IDS Appliance”

The focus of this project is to build a super reliable, durable, and stable network device from tried and tested tech. This is not a project for pushing the limits or testing out flashy new stacks. This affinity for ‘boring’ technology will reflect on most of the choices made here, from the hardwar…

Hazel for macOS is an automation tool that lets you watch folders and apply all sorts of rules to them.

By a single dev. At $42, an absolute steal for all the things you can do with it. Perpetual license, no bullshit subscription model. 😍…

Conversion Table

A B No one could have predicted this would happen Many people have been saying something like this would happen I never thought I’d live to see this day I have been asleep for the past five years Anarchists Trump Supporters This is not who we are This is exactly who we are Our 250 yea…

Decoding the flags and banners seen at the Capitol Hill insurrection

Confirmation that I did, indeed, see a “No, Georgia the country, idiot” flag. And then there’s this surprising tidbit: The flags of Canada, Cuba, Georgia, India, Israel, South Korea, and South Vietnam were spotted in the mob. It’s unclear why many of these flags appeared, though a number of the whi…

“He was delighted.”

“And I’m sure you’ve also had conversations with other senior White House officials, as I have,” Sasse continued. “As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushin…

“Dominion sues pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, seeking more than $1.3 billion”

In a 124-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Dominion said its reputation and resale value have been deeply damaged by a “viral disinformation campaign” that Powell mounted “to financially enrich herself, to raise her public profile, and to ingratiate herse…

“Stump the Bookseller” is a lovely, crowd-sourced book-sleuthing service.

It’s run by the fine folk at Loganberry Books, costs a nominal $4 per submission, and has a very admirable 50%+ success rate. Here’s my submission 🤞 Via CK ♥️…

TIL that the US Department of Defense is the largest employer in the World (3.2M)

Followed by the Chinese Army (2.3M), Walmart (2.1M), McDonald’s (1.9M), and the NHS (1.7M). The Indian Railways comes in eighth with 1.4M people.…

How to Tell a Raven From a Crow.

By the Audubon Society. Ravens are beefier, gauche, and less ‘refined’. They’re also relatively solitary. They have curvier beaks, wedge-like tails, and soar instead of flap. Here’s what a raven and a crow sound like.…

Indian man wears gold face mask to ward off coronavirus

And here’s our man, Shankar Kurhade, modeling my 2021 strategy given how confident I am in my state’s government fucking up vaccine distribution.…

Benjamin Button Reviews The New MacBook Pro

Gone is the gimmicky TouchBar, gone are the four USB-C ports that forced power users to carry a suitcase full of dongles. In their place we get a cornucopia of developer-friendly ports: two USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports, a redesigned power connector, and a long-awaited HDMI port. Photographers wi…

How Audemars Piguet makes their lovely ‘tapisserie’ pattern.

They use a pantograph to etch things out, after which they ‘tampograph’ the logo (at 1:45.)…

A List of Hacker News ‘Classics’

When you’re following a bunch of feeds, it’s easy to forget that the web is the greatest library in the history of the world—and that a good library doesn’t just have a rack of newspapers, it has a vast collection of books and archives: the stacks. These are stories that get reposted a lot. Many o…

EXPOSURE is a publishing platform for photographers.

Bit pricey but appears to generate lovely layouts. Via Ash Furrow’s photography site.…

Build Your Own Lisp.

Learn C and build a basic Lisp #VALUE 😍…

How to Drive in Iowan Winters

If you rarely drive on snow, just pretend you’re taking your grandma to church. There’s a platter of biscuits and 2 gallons of sweet tea in glass jars in the back seat. She’s wearing a new dress and holding a crock pot full of gravy. @Chadsu42…

The First Thing Ever Bought Online was Weed.

Of course. Well, the transaction was in person and in cash (of course.) It was just a little bag of weed sold through an Arpanet account in Stanford’s artificial intelligence lab in 1972. It’s not clear who was in on the sale aside from the students, but despite the underhanded nature of the deal,…

The Slap - Part II.

I must have watched this 14,221 times. A parody of this (real) miniseries. There’s a Part III too.…

Patriots supplement Elite Strike Force Team’s efforts by posing as Fake Electors.

In another sign of the lingering unrest over President Donald Trump’s election loss, an Arizona group sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents last week intended to deliver, wrongly, the state’s 11 electoral votes for him. Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, 62, helped created…

The Elite Strike-Force Team loses 59 cases since November 3.

This includes a one paragraph “Dude… really?” from the Supreme Court over the “bid to invalidate more than 20 million votes.” So. Much. Winning.…

“Detroit Is Trying to Get Sidney Powell Fined, Banned from Court, and Referred to the Bar for Filing the ‘Kraken’”

“It’s time for this nonsense to end,” Detroit’s lawyer David Fink told Law&Crime in a phone interview. “The lawyers filing these frivolous cases that undermine democracy must pay a price,” Fink added. but Asked about the sanctions motion, Powell replied cryptically: “We are clearly over the t…

“Pennsylvania AG calls Texas’ Ted Cruz a ‘sad sack’ after Trump asks the senator to argue election case”

“[Cruz] has proven himself neither to be a genius in terms of the law nor a genius, frankly, in terms of [emotional intelligence]. He is a sad sack,” Shapiro, a Democrat, told CNN. “I would say to him — and, frankly, I’d say to my 17 colleagues who have gone along with this circus — I don’t know wh…

A Brief History of People Thinking Piers Morgan Is the Pigeon Lady From ‘Home Alone 2’.

Had to cache it because this is just lovely stuff. Pretty sure I had a mini-blackout when I read the Trainspotting part 💯…

“Someone is going to get killed’ if Republicans don’t tone down their incitement”

“It has to stop,” Sterling said. Directing his remarks to Trump, he added, “Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed. And it’s not right.” Lest any members of the public fail to understand:…

More than 1,000 lawyers call for Giuliani’s ‘strike force’ to be disbarred for election fraud conspiracies.

“It is indefensible for lawyers to falsely proclaim widespread voting fraud, submit a pattern of frivolous court claims and actively seek to undermine citizens’ faith in our election’s integrity. We condemn this conduct without reservation.” said the letter.…

Elite Strike Force Team Sidekick tests positive for COVID.

She then proceeded to attend a WH Party, of course. President Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis has informed associates she tested positive for the coronavirus, multiple sources tell Axios, stirring West Wing fears after she attended a senior staff Christmas party on Friday. “She had the nerve to show u…

“The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”

In other words, of which there are many, since the Supreme Court needed only 18 to hurl this nonsense into the Tidal Basin, Rep. Mike Kelly handed the Supreme Court of the United States a reeking dead fish and the Court refused delivery. And the Kelly suit looked like it was drafted by Clarence Dar…

The Strike-Force Leader’s Emissions, Remixed.

A channel name is LEAD SYNTH FART 💯 I am a child and am fine with this.…

Fearless Leader of the Elite Strike Force Team tests positive for COVID.

Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News earlier on Sunday. Speaking with the host Maria Bartiromo via satellite, Mr. Giuliani repeated baseless claims about fraud in Georgia and Wisconsin on “Sunday Morning Futures.” When asked if he believed Mr. Trump still had a path to victory, he said, “We do.” On Mo…

Behold the Elite Strike-Force Team’s Star Witness.

Operation #shitkraken appears to limping along quite well. /misc/r/rudy-carrone.mp4 A living caricature who could’ve been drunk, who was likened to an SNL character, who put out so much Can-I-See-Your-Manager Conspiracy Karen Energy she had to be shushed by the flatulent Leader of the Elite Strike-F…

“I think Chinese all look alike. How can you tell? If some Chow shows up, you can be anybody and you can vote.”

That would be a real, casually racist quote from one of Mr. Giuliani’s witnesses testifying in Michigan as part of Operation Shitkraken. I had to save this one. /misc/r/rudy-chow.mp4 And: Naturalized Indian people supporting politicians who vilify new immigrants and want to keep them out is kinda on…

This is a very handy psql cheatsheet.

One should be good 80%+ of time between that and the awesome pgcli.…

YouVotedForThis.com is a lovely collection of Brexit repercussions.

I created YVFT site after my Conservative voting aunt complained on Facebook that there weren’t enough police to deal with disruptive teenagers in her town. I wanted to scream, “But you voted for this!” without looking like a lunatic.…

Studio Ghibli is named after this plane.

Turns out Miyazaki’s dad was an aeronautical engineer.…

Idiots Out Walking Around

Reynolds said election victories for Republicans in the state this week show Iowans support her approach. “It was a validation of our balanced response to COVID-19, one that is mindful of both public health and economic health,” Reynolds said. Because political victories, not cases or deaths, shou…

gron is a JSON grepper

Woo! Covers the biggest reason why I use jq (grep for fields) which, as the gron author notes, is more general-purpose and takes a little more effort to understand and use.…

That material between a speaker and their microphone is called a “pop filter”.

It helps minimize or eliminate popping sounds (“aspirated plosives”) like when you say ‘pop’ or ‘pepper’ or ‘pots’!…

On Mutually Assured Destruction

“Hum toh doobe hain sanam, tujhe bhi leke doobenge.” Afghan Cricket Team Captain Gulbadin Naib warning Bangladesh…

AxiDraw is a portable ‘Drawing Machine’.

It’s priced at $475 for the basic model and $800 for a deluxe version. The video is very satisfying to watch (I couldn’t have picked better background music.) One could start with a Brachiograph for around $20 (basic Raspberry Pi setup, soldering skills, and assembly required.)…

“Haiyaa is the MSG of Word.”

So saith Uncle Roger, who finally approved someone’s egg-fried rice. Via KP.…

Tim Kendall testifies

to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Facebook’s engagement practices and likens them to time-tested strategies used by Big Tobacco before they were somewhat regulated. And he would know. Kendall was the former “Director of Monetization” at Facebook and is currently the CEO of Moment, a c…

Should I Be Worried

is a simple and aptly-named COVID tracker that uses data from Johns Hopkins. As of September 1st 2020, my state of Iowa is #1 (woohoo!) with a 7-day infection rate of 261/100,000 people (“there might be 2 to 6 times as many recent infections”) and an R0 rate of 1.7. “Over the past 30 days, 246 peopl…