2024 December

Code and Tech

• Tool: scrcpy -- neat Android screen sharing utility.
• Tool: End of Life -- nice list of EOL dates for various things.
• Demystifying Git Submodules -- a good walkthrough of git submodules and how they work and why they're different from regular Git Stuff(tm).
• awk in 20 minutes -- a very neat walkthrough of awk that takes, you guessed it, 20 minutes.
• API Vocabulary -- good reference material for APIs in general.
• Authors Together -- a bunch of tech books by very good names. (thanks Nathan)
• AI Company That Made Robots For Children Went Bust And Now The Robots Are Dying -- teach 'em young about death, I suppose...
• My Coworker Julius -- a parable with a hidden message.
• udm14 -- Google without the AI bullshit. (thanks Nathan)
• YouTube: IppSec -- hacking walkthroughs of "cyber range" environments, pretty cool.

Nonfiction

• Book: The Rebel
• Book: Gifts Differing
• Book: Managing Humans
• Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars -- bright headlights, why they suck, data, and people who are doing stuff about it (yay!).
• Not the Right Kind of Provocation -- a good Freddie deBoer article about education -- it ties in with the Sold a Story podcast I listened to last month.
• The Rich Are Hoarding Their Wealth Using Charity Funds -- the use of charity funds for tax breaks by the ultrawealthy. Touched a nerve, given something linked in that article is something I committed code to. 😑
• Eat What You Kill -- small towns, sick (and not) humans, power-tripping doctors, political battles.

Fiction

• Book: Pride and Prejudice -- cute and funny, with maddeningly complex etiquette. Watched the 2005 movie at some point last year and thought it was cute.
• Short Story: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream -- very creepy very dark very horror sci-fi. (thanks Nathan)
• Book (Audio): Mistborn: The Hero of Ages -- 10% done in the first sitting, how delicious. Finishing a highly rated trilogy started earlier this year. (thanks Nathan)

Media

• Music: Bad Energy - Whitey -- 🖤 more Whitey! That's three in a year from him, and I am very happy.

2024 November

Code and Tech

• Unicode Confusables -- a new way to confuse and annoy your coworkers, and other some such nefarious behaviors.
• SQL Style Guide -- a cure for sloppy SQL? Good stuff contained herein.
• SS64 -- neat, fast-loading manual for a bunch of different stuff. You can always man and help but sometimes it's neat to just click around and explore.
• Security is a Useless Controls Problem -- good glance at security theater and adjacent frothy uselessness.
• Reverse Engineering APIs -- really neat look at how to get to data that may not be easily accessed to the public. WP Snooper in particular is a very neat (terrifying) tool.
• Cookie Banner Productivity Drain -- interesting data about how much time Europeans collectively waste clicking on cookie banners, which are essentially data security theater.
• Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back -- finally. Buttons and anything with tactile feedback are vastly superior in many areas and the push toward touchscreens makes no sense (e.g., cars).
• Video: The Shell Hater's Handbook -- neat walkthrough of shell related things, and how it works. Took me a really long time to even start with shell things (Windows life problems) but damn has it made life much easier and faster.
• Tool: a11ysupport -- caniuse, but in accessibility flavor.
• Why I Will Always Be Angry About Software Engineering -- more very good from the Ludic blog. Reflects something I've been reading a lot in differerent arenas -- the Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide came to the same conclusion, essentially. Part of reducing the tension to the degree it can be reduced is acting in the world.
• Coding Font -- IBM Plex Mono is apparently my font. I need a slash or a dot in the zero (preferably a dot), unmerged equals signs, slightly fancy brackets, and very clearly differentiated I/l/1. (thanks Nathan)
• Against the Dark Forest -- a good read about the modern Internet, and why it makes more sense to withdraw, hide, and avoid engagement on very open, very public platforms.
  

  The obstacles to these life-sustaining internet forests are fundamentally the same forces that threaten the real forests and our whole living world: unbounded extraction; unaccountable leadership; societal refusal to take on the responsibilities of governing our increasingly complex commons, instead of burying them deeper and deeper in pretenses to action.

• Weaponizing SSO for Profit -- good look at how some companies charging more for SSO is a bit like weaponizing security.
• Bureau of Communication -- cute and funny template letters.

Nonfiction

• Mike Tyson reminds child reporter that she, too, will die -- some good flavored nihilism from Mike Tyson, of all places. Made me laugh.

Fiction

• Book: Crown of Stars -- more highly enjoyable sci-fi short story weirdness. (thanks Nathan, recommendation from a recommendation)
• Book: Warm Worlds and Otherwise -- the last collection book I own by the same author. More will have to be purchased. (same gratitude note as above)

Media

• Book: Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies -- some of the same authors of Peopleware. Seemed a good place to jump after that book, and much like the previous... sticky notes were inserted within the first ten pages!
• Book: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents -- Self-helpy pop psychology... easy, fast read.
• Podcast: Sold a Story -- helps to explain some of the abysmal literacy rates in the US. Turns out, we're teaching reading incorrectly.
• Podcast: The Lazarus Heist -- about North Korean hacking. Really neat intersection of tech, politics, crime. A very big story I've heard in smaller format elsewhere, very cool to get it in deep detail.
• YouTube: Bo Burnham’s Final Warning Before He Disappeared -- a meander through Bo Burnham's career thus far, interspersed with interesting interview clips.
• Movie: Mary and Max -- very cute, very sad, very funny. (thanks Nathan)
• Music: Silently, The Mind Breaks - William Elliott Whitmore 🖤 Bunker Built for Two and A Golden Door to an Empty Place are most delicious ear candy.
• Music: Five Dice, All Threes - Bright Eyes 🖤 Too much good here, will take years to process (as with all Bright Eyes).
• Music: Mental Radio - Whitey 🖤 Only found this artist a year or two ago, top five already.

2024 October

It is apparently a very serious Media Month...

Code and Tech

• Why Are Vulnerabilities Out of Control in 2024? -- a good look at vulnerabilities and why the tooling is a bit broken these days.
• The Beggar Barons about big companies leaning on Open Source labor. (thanks, Nathan)
• A Taxonomy of Tech Debt by Riot Games, about the game League of Legends (which I have never played). Seems a good way to look at and measure technical debt.
• On Being a JavaScript Framework Developer -- seems the tide is turning a bit against the JS heavy frameworks, which is neat. (thanks, Nathan)
• Cognitive Load about how much your brain can handle when doing code stuff, and how to make it better.
• Over-Engineered: Is Your Website So Impressive It Hurts? -- good look at spaghettified modern sites with some points for improvement. (thanks Nathan)
• Identifying Factors Contributing to “Bad Days” for Software Developers: A Mixed-Methods Study 🎯 and good to see it in a scientific study.
• Generally following along various formats of the WordPress vs WP Engine dramatics, with ample and well-buttered popcorn. Watched Primeagen and Theo interview Matt M.

Benevolent

• Federal Trade Commission Announces Final “Click-to-Cancel” Rule Making It Easier for Consumers to End Recurring Subscriptions and Memberships -- hopefully the end of byzantine, friction-laden "offboarding processes."
• The Feds Are Coming for John Deere Over the Right to Repair -- hopefully the beginning of more repairable everything.

Nefarious

• Company forced to change name that could be used to hack websites -- little Bobby Tables, but better.
• Largest Retail Breach in History: 350 Million “Hot Topic” Customers’ Personal & Payment Data Exposed -- when my parents told me "it's just a phase" I probably should have listened.
• Scammers swindle elderly California man out of $25K by using AI voice technology -- look, AI is already contributing to the advancement and betterment of humanity. 🙄
• Redbox easily reverse-engineered to reveal customers’ names, zip codes, rentals -- a lesson in the importance of data scrubbery. (thanks Nathan)

Tools

• DevToys -- ran into it at random, seems a really good replacement for a bunch of copy-paste webapps to format and transform things. Will be giving it a shot.

Nonfiction

• Swearing Is Actually a Sign of More Intelligence – Not Less -- big-brain potty mouth, maybe!
• Women’s gossip disguised as concern harms reputations while protecting the gossiper -- can't say I'm a fan, but good insight.

Fiction

• Book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- I swear I've read this before, but it's been a very long time. Not many books produce actual lols while reading.

Media

Books

• Book: Peopleware. A project/work related book I've been meaning to read for some time. You know it's going to be a darn good read when you're sticking post-it notes into the pages within the first ten pages.
• Book: The Sociopath Next Door. It was okay. I'd already read the seminal Without Conscience a while back, so there wasn't really anything shocking in this one. The parts about what conscience gives to us were probably the best part of this read.
• Book: Contagious. Yet another Goodwill-picked random book. Not sure why I'm slamming my face into the Goodwill bin books, but I'll take it. Should've/could've been a blog post, but was a fast, easy read.
• Book: Anxiety, a Philosophical Guide. Got it, finished it in five days, highly recommended. Four deep perspectives on anxiety and its origins, and how to deal.
• Book: You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier. I put it down for a good few weeks but wrapped it up quickly. Good read, written in 2009 and more than a bit prescient of some of the issues in tech facing us today.
• Book: Paradoxes -- concurrently sort of picking at this one. Also swiped from Goodwill on a whim. It's more fun than anything so I'll probably poke at it off and on for quite a while.

Podcasts

• Podcast: The Fall of Civilizations -- really neat stuff about historical civilization collapse. I require this one at 1.5x though, slow words. (thank you Nathan)
• Podcast: Fur & Loathing -- short traipse through a chemical attack perpetrated against a furry convention. TIL this was the largest chemical/biological weapons attack since the Anthrax stuff in the early 2000s. Interesting and well-done.
• Podcast: Welcome to Paradise -- short look at a relationship that contained violence. Listened in a day, very good and well done. (thanks Nathan)
• Podcast: Shell Game -- short wander through AI generated audio content and "voice butlers." Some freaky uncanny valley type of stuff going on there. (thanks Nathan)
• Podcast: The Coming Storm -- Qanon and political tomfoolery, apparently? Mildly terrifying. (thanks Nathan)

Movies

• Garden State, Doomsday, The Hire (thanks Nathan), Shoot 'Em Up, The Matrix trilogy, Don't Look Up (thanks Nathan)

2024 September

Pretty much ignored media containing words this month, for other pursuits.

Code and Tech

• Greppability as a Code Metric -- Very much yes. Easily searchable and flat codebases are much easier to edit.
• Programming, Motherfucker -- Found a while back, still love it. The table is particularly illuminating.
• Shell Script User Experience -- A good look at how to make shell scripts easier for the user to use. Highly rated, good stuff.

Nonfiction

• Maker Skill Tree -- Some neat RPG-style "skill trees" for learning various things.
• Navigating the Anxiety Vortex -- Yes, good. Or, well, not really good, but yes.
• Descriptive Experience Sampling Codebook Manual of Terminology -- This is a really weird article that tries to establish descriptive terminology for various mechanisms of inner experiences. Some people think in pictures, some in words. Some people have an inner monologue, some people don't. This kind of terminology can help suss that stuff out. For example, I have an inner monologue -- but it is definitely not typically in the format of "Inner Speech." Inflections, pauses, accents, etc. don't happen in my head. Even when I'm engaged in imagining scenarios, the speech is usually more "Partially Worded." I think in images and concepts a lot, but also often "Unsymbolized Thinking" where it's just... a thought, there are no words, pictures, or symbols. I'd venture a guess that a combination of the lack of words and symbols is at least some of why I often struggle to verbalize thoughts. There is most certainly an active translation process going on in my head, and that particular algorithm is painfully slow. Anyway, neat stuff all around.

Fiction

• "Repent, Harlequin!" Cried the Ticktock Man, by Harlan Ellison -- Sent to me a while back, big vibes (thank you Nathan).

Media

• Ring Cycle 1, 2, 3, 4 & Mahler: Complete Symphonies -- New-to-me shiny wordless (or at least... words I can't understand) walls of very pretty noise (thank you Nathan).

2024 August

Code and Tech

• Code Review Antipatterns -- A satirical look at some code review antipatterns. Funny, and painful.
• Object Lesson -- A really, really good read about the use of heavy and poorly-implemented JavaScript frameworks in governmental projects has led to awful performance for the actual users of these sites, which are often benefits and aid-related and intended for people in poverty. There's a ton of data and real-world examples. Most of this blog seems great at first glance; it's on my RSS feed list after finding this article.

The failure to recognise how inappropriate JavaScript-based SPA architectures are for most sites is an industry-wide scandal. In the case of these [governmental benefit/support agency] services, that scandal takes on whole new dimension of reckless irresponsibility.

Nonfiction

• The Last Abortion Doctor -- Written in 2009, provides a good look into the life and mind of the last doctor performing late-term abortions.
• How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained 🤌
• Selfishness and Therapy Culture -- Freddie deBoer on the impact of self-centeredness in the modern world, and how much (or how little) we yield to others while demanding ample space for ourselves.

Media

• Podcast: Lead Balloon -- public relations nightmares, in interview format (thanks Nathan).
• Podcast: Hacker History -- hackers telling their stories, in a semi-interview format.
• Book: Tempo by Venkatesh Guru Rao -- descriptions of decision-making, from mental models to people archetypes to "narrative rationality." Confusing and probably the weakest of Rao's work that I've read, but still neat.
• Book: You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier -- in progress. Grabbed it off the shelf at Goodwill, really enjoying it so far. Written in 2009 and a bit oddly prescient of many of the issues crawling around wrecking havoc today.
• Music: a mix of surreptitiously recorded Good Shit, and very neat very old stuff (thanks Nathan).

2024 July

Code and Tech

• Agile In Their Own Words -- massive comment-dump from developers of various walks of life as to why Agile sucks and is soul-sucking.
• The Emerging Danger of Surveillance Pricing -- hyper-customized price-jacking based on an individual's many data points.
• FTC study finds ‘dark patterns’ used by a majority of subscription apps and websites -- after they've jacked your price up, they make it more difficult to unsubscribe -- I mean, sorry, navigate the uSeR ofFboArDiNG woRKFlOw (thanks Nathan).
• Conventional Comments -- a good system for Pull Request commentary.
• It's All Bullshit -- a good look at how promotions and office politics actually work at Google.

Nonfiction

• Night Owls' Cognitive Function Superior to Early Risers (thanks Nathan)
• Professional Poker Players Know the Optimal Strategy but Don’t Always Use It -- a look at Game Theory Optimal poker play, and how professionals use a mix of GTO and exploitative play.
• ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town -- Bitcoin mines analogous to old-school coal mines, what could go wrong?

Media

• Podcast: EFF - How to Fix the Internet
• YouTube: How Hackers Take Notes (thanks Zane) -- some good Obsidian stuff here, including a good 101 walkthrough, a kanban plugin, and a calendar plugin.
• Music: Intercell Charlie Sparks x Parfait -- more wild computerized club music.

2024 June

Code and Tech

• Dev rejects CVE severity, makes his GitHub repo read-only -- vulnerability reporting goes "resume-driven."
• Rabbit Data Breach: All R1 Responses Ever Given Can Be Downloaded -- an AI device doesn't do security correctly and hard-codes API keys.
• ChatGPT is Bullshit -- contrasting "bullshit" versus "lying" and explaining why ChatGPT does the former. Lying is at least tangentially concerned with the truth; bullshit is made up gobbledegook intended to sound convincing.
• I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again (thanks Nathan) -- wonderful ranting, which does in fact, impart lucidity.

Nonfiction

• Against Slop -- games and wasting time, contrasting the difficult slog of Elden Ring versus feedback-loop driven gaming.
• Stress bragging may make you seem less competent, less likable at work
• Facially expressive people shown to be more likeable and socially successful -- "flat affect" leads to measurably worse social outcomes.
• "Banking-as-a-Service" Firms Can Evaporate Your Life Savings -- tangentially related ChexSystems is a sort of consumer reputation agency that can get people blacklisted from traditional banks, driving them to use these "alt banks."
• The Adderall Epidemic -- turns out, Adderall-addled writers give telltale signs.

Fiction

• An Otherworldly Cat Tells You the Secrets of the Universe -- 😸

Media

• Podcast: Better Offline (thanks Nathan)
• Music: DJ Gigola - Live from Earth (thanks Zane) -- most excellent techno.
• Video: XKCD - What If? (thanks Nathan) -- fun, weird science-y hypotheticals.