Whenever you see someone recommend Cloudflare or something else that decrypts and re-encrypts TLS for something, esp. for something related to open social media or media storage etc., reply with this picture from the Snowden leaks
The year is 2025
There are five browser cores:
- webkit
- chromium
- gecko
- servo
- youtube-dl, which ended up implementing a full-fledged browser in python to keep successfully downloading videos
Apple's Assault on Standards: Alex Russell dives deep into Apple's decade of harm and sabotage of the web and web standards.
https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-crimes-against-the-internet-community/
Computational Public Space. A talk about a values-driven approach to integrating computation into cities. (40 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PixPSNRDNMU
I've said in multiple places that LLMs are "just" Markov Chains. but what do I mean by this?
first lets talk about what Markov Chains are, or more precisely, what Discrete Time Markov Chains are
A reminder: The reason so many firms on their websites constantly urge you to install and use their apps instead of their websites is that the apps typically give them access to VASTLY more data about you and your activities. Don't fall for it.
Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about
The battle is against vampires
Their battles against vampires are basically the same as your own battles against vampires
If only it wasn't considered rude to talk about vampires,
Then maybe we'd realize we're all fighting the same goddamn vampires
blood, sweat and tears but it works! Finally I can boot my phone from a USB stick
This is absurdly great, but I haven't read a single blog post or news article about it. A fully open source, offline-first alternative to Notion that's a collab between the French and German governments because they want to host documentation securely and on their own terms. THIS is what Europe should be doing. https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/ #opensource
holding the website down with my foot & pointing my sword at them as I check this box:
one of the things i like the most is being able to see all the stuff. just whatever i'm doing, in real life, on a computer, consuming something, making something, if i can see the entire thing somehow? that's what makes me happy. i think a major source of difficulty i have in life is just not being able to see the whole of something, either because somebody hasn't provided a way for me to do it, or the thing is multidimensional or ill-defined in a way that makes it difficult or impossible
We're losing computing history at an incredible rate, but there are people doing just amazing work out there collecting not only information about the technologies, but also the people and processes that brought them to be. If you're interested in that kind of thing but not sure where to start, let me recommend some sites that have some great stories (in no particular order):
https://folklore.org/0-index.html
https://multicians.org/
http://www.tuhs.org/
There are others, of course! #ComputerHistory