Hey geeks, and music with Atrium Carceri, merci Sam.

News

Bobby Fingers: Fabio and the Goose 👏👏👏.

SMBC: Let us together recognize the impermanence inherent in all things.

Software

Asianometry: The birth, boom and bust of the Hard Disk Drive.

Programming mantras are proverbs, not “laws”, via lobste.rs.

Prime: HaskLUL, Strong opinions.

AI

Microsoft’s carbon emissions spike 29% as AI gobbles up resources. HN.

A plea for sober AI, via Simon Willison.

Paul Ford: Generative AI is totally shameless. I want to be it.

GPT-4o, HN and Prime Reacts. About that demo, BBC (2022) Why your voice assistant might be sexist.

Games

GMTK: The 100 games that taught me game design. Dope list, scarily close to my own list of the best video games 😄.

Non-euclidean Doom: what happens to a game when Pi is not 3.14159. HN.

Bonjour bonsoir, and music with Tony Njoku.

News

Gareth Fearn: Liberalism without accountability, via Kottke.

[fr] Clément Viktorovitch décortique la lecture pétée que Rachida Dati fait de l’affaire Meurice.

jwz: Political journey.

SMBC: Frank.

Software

Coding Horror: Your favorite programming quote, via Simon Willison.

AI

“Slop” is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content.

Games

Nerrrel: Recompilation, an incredible new way to keep N64 games alive.

Shitty tech ℹ️

Skill up: The Activision-ing of Xbox, Writing on games: The games industry is broken, MVG: Xbox has lost its way.

Jack Dorsey, Bluesky, decentralised social networks and the very common crowd, via jwz: Blockchain Rasputin over here is mad that moderation exists.

Bonjour bonsoir frendz, and music with new St. Vincent + dl Salo.

News

Not just bikes: What is the “correct” speed limit? and Vox: The reckless policies that helped fill North American streets with ridiculously large cars.

AlphaPhoenix: Entropy.

[fr/qc] Le Devoir - Imposer les gains en capital ?

[fr] Clément Viktorovitch - Sciences Po, Palestine : les sophismes du gouvernement français.

[fr] Linguisticae - Lecture chez les jeunes.

Software

Tomorrow Corporation tech demo 👏👏👏, thx James. A striking reminder of what’s possible for a dev team in control of its “tech stack”, and of how much control we sacrifice when we layer frameworks upon dependencies upon toolkits that look like free lunch, but come at a hefty { weight / performance, flexibility, maintenance } cost.

On that topic, Interview with Senior JS Dev 2024 and Prime Reacts.

AI

Jeremy Howard: SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety. HN.

Prime: Copilot Workspace, Adam Neely: AI is doomed to fail the musical Turing Test. At this point I have officially no idea whether negative stances on AI are realistic or “doomer” takes. AI: global disruption by next year|decade, or confined to limited marginal improvement? Flip a coin for me.

Washed Out: The Hardest Part, “the first official commissioned music video collaboration between a music artist and filmmaker made with OpenAI’s Sora video model”.

Hi geeks, and music with classy new Thom Yorke + new old CocoRosie.

News

Feathers are one of evolution’s cleverest inventions, via Kottke.

Technology connections - Simmerstats: The genius old tech that controls your stovetop.

McSweeney’s: A message from the chancellor on the recent student protest.

Software

Why you need a “WTF Notebook”, via Kottke.

NeoPragma: Random musings on the Agile Manifesto.

The Verge on internet undersea cables.

Drew DeVault: Copyleft licenses are not “restrictive”.

JS naked day, thx Grâg.

Prime reacts: The plight of Cobol mainframe programmers 👏👏👏.

Christmas shopping online in 1996, via waxy.

AI

Molly White: AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?

Daniel Lemire: Large language models (e.g. ChatGPT) as research assistants.

Games

Cold Take: Stop killing games (website).

Shitty tech ℹ️

Ed Zitron: The man who killed Google Search.

Tracker Beeper, 2022 software having your computer makes noise every time it sends data to a surveillance company. Via Nelson.

Wordpress’ “growth hacking”, via jwz.

Rick Perlstein: My dinner with Andreessen, via jwz.

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, The rise of Oracle, 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.