Tech

Culture Design Faith Noise Parenting Politics Saturday Night Video Skateboarding Tech Video

  • Down With Podcasts

    At this point, I tend to average 1–2 podcasts a week. I’m in hybrid work mode, which means I drive to an office on a local college campus two days out of the week and work remotely from my home office the other three days. That gives me time for about 90 minutes of podcasts on my commute. My number one selection currently is Not Dead Yet (Apple Podcasts) hosted by Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt. As Ben Sasse undergoes treatment for his pancreatic cancer (and faces his own mortality), he’s been interested in discussing what comprises the good life.

    (more…)

  • The X Return

    It seems more people and organizations that were principally opposed to the X (ex-Twitter) network a few short years ago are now returning. Sometimes, they are doing so with apologies, as if they know it’s a bad look. The latest is the Apple-centric publication Macstories. The move was accompanied by the requisite explanation that they do not support the politics of Elon Musk or the direction he has taken the platform.

    (more…)

  • Jokes From Truth

    Bluesky CEO, Toni Schneider, was interviewed by Nilay Patel on a recent episode of The Decoder podcast. I like Patel’s interview style and thought he brought a good selection of questions to the discussion.

    After much business strategy and technical discussion, Patel asked Schneider about the common perception that the network is full of left-leaning users. Schneider acknowledged that as an issue and mentioned several times that he wanted to expand the user base. It’s certainly true that the social network is home to many emotionally dysregulated political progressives. I know several people who don’t use it primarily for that reason.

    (more…)

  • I’ve been getting car sick when trying to read in a moving car since I was a kid. Little did I know, my favorite computer manufacturer has a solution for that, which was brought to my attention by this piece in The Verge. The technology is called Vehicle Motion Cues.

    According to big-S Science, this type of vehicle motion sickness is caused by the eyes staring at a static display while the inner ear feels the car turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Cues solve this by placing dots around the periphery of the display that move in harmony with the motion of the car. When the car turns right, the dots sweep across the screen to the left; when the car brakes the dots slide forward.

    I can’t wait to try this out, especially on a long trip.

  • Datatapes

    Louie Mantia offers some new drive icons based on the datatapes from Star Wars, and they’re pretty fun.

    The Imperial data vault on Scarif contained thousands of datatapes, one of them being the plans for the Death Star. After the plans were broadcast to the Rebel fleet, they were transferred to a small datacard.

    (more…)

  • Protected: Future Prep

    This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

  • Black Butterflies

    Kupajo warns us to beware of black butterflies.

    Male grayling butterflies prefer to mate with darker female graylings. When caged with a female grayling and a cardboard cutout of a grayling painted black, the male will choose the cardboard cutout over the female. Beyond being an example of bro falling for an unrealistic standard of beauty, such a preference reveals that even in matters fundamental to survival and reproduction, these creatures can be seduced by artificial models they’d never encounter in nature.

    The analogy holds up when you read about people falling in love with LLMs and being rewired by impossible standards of beauty. Basic humanity is now subordinate to machine slick simulacrums.

  • Pocket Computers

    John Burn-Murdoch writes for Financial Times about the single unifying theory around the decline in fertility.

    The number of births fell first and fastest in the areas that received high-speed mobile connectivity earliest. The authors argue that smartphones have transformed how young people spend time with one another, sharply reducing in-person socialising and leading to the collapse in their fertility.

    The reason for population decline is hiding in your pocket.

    This isn’t at all suprising to me. Marital experience has taught me that it’s hard for a spouse to be as interesting an endless supply of short-form videos.

    Fediverse reactions

  • The Intelligence Is Still Artificial

    The opinions on AI that you find on the internet tend to fall in the extremes of the other side. Either AI is the downfall of humanity or its savior. My thoughts on the subject, as on many others, ride in the middle of the road.

    In my professional life, AI has been a great equalizer. If you know the problems you are trying to solve, absent the knowledge of how to actually go about doing that, AI can be the bridge between concept and reality. It would take me many hours to probe the depths of the Azure cloud through labyrinthine Log Analytics workspaces to find the causes of a spike in ingestion costs. With the Azure MCP and Claude Cowork/Code, it’s done in minutes.

    read more…

  • Canvas Attack

    Matt Blaze

    Extremely glad I didn't have students submit their coursework via Canvas, or use it to manage grading, this semester.

    May 8, 2026, 2:23 am 6 boosts 38 favorites

    Hacktivism can sometimes be understandable. Yet it amazes me that some people would think that to attack school teachers and students is to live a meaningful and purposeful life.