Half Life 2 turns 20 — like Half-Life's 25th anniversary, Valve commemorated it with a two-hour documentary, new commentary, and the games are free until Monday 1pm ET #

Consuming the Bluesky firehose for less than $2.50/month — don't miss Deletion, the "questionable little app" that lets you glimpse deleted Bluesky posts #

The Rise of the Golden Idol sets the standard for point-and-click mysteries — incredible standalone sequel for fans of detective deduction games like Obra Dinn #

Fake AI albums on Spotify are damaging real artists — Elizabeth Lopatto investigates streaming music distributors profiting off royalty fraud by not policing bad metadata #

Andrew Dana Hudson’s “Any Percent” — short sci-fi story about a speedrunner in a game that lets you play through a human lifetime in 25 minutes (via) #

IMG_0416 — crate digging through YouTube for homegrown videos with generic default filenames as titles; see also: astronaut.io (via) #

The Pudding analyzes 65 years of love songs on the Billboard charts — the love song may not be dying, but it's changing #

Tim Maughan’s “Not My Problem” — short fiction about "the near future of art and creative work" #

Sky Follower Bridge — useful Chrome/Firefox add-on that finds your X/Twitter friends on Bluesky (via) #

For the first time, every incumbent party in 10 major countries lost their elections this year — inflation was a painful global phenomenon, and every ruling party was punished for it regardless of political leanings #

Oasis, a playable real-time AI model trained on Minecraft video footage — anything out of frame is immediately forgotten, making it very dream-like and surreal to explore (via) #

NYT Tech Guild goes on strike the day before U.S. election — they're asking people not to access NYT games or cooking apps until it's over, so give up that Wordle streak #

Auto-Texting STOP to unknown numbers — I didn't even realize iOS automations could do this #

Infinite Mac adds native support for the Macintosh Garden — the incredible web-based Mac/NeXT system emulator somehow keeps getting better #

Over the Garden Wall’s 10th anniversary short — Aardman Animation worked with Patrick McHale and the original voice cast for an elaborate stop-motion tribute #

3D Workers Island — short horror story in the form of a series of 1999-era screenshots about a Windows screensaver simulating life on an island (via) #

Moida Mansion — Papers Please/Obra Dinn creator Lucas Pope dropped a surprise spooky free web game inspired by 1980s LCD handhelds #

Cruftbox’s Halloween 2024 costume data — for the last 19 years, Michael Pusateri has tracked children's Halloween costumes at his front door and published the stats online #

Panic announces Playdate season 2 coming next year — a dozen surprise new games released to everyone at the same time on a regular schedule #

PacCam, play multiplayer Pac-Man with your face — look in the direction you want to move, open and close your mouth to go faster #

BLIB’s “Silent Love” — Louie Zong, Worthikids, and Brian David Gilbert formed a supergroup making Steely Dan-inspired music and are playing L.A. next month!? #

When does Instagram decide a nipple becomes female? — Ada Ada Ada is documenting her transition on Instagram, uploading shirtless photos weekly to test their nudity guidelines #

Graham Nash breaks down “Our House” for Song Exploder — he has an extraordinary memory, reliving the stories behind a beautifully simple song #

Google is getting even worse for independent sites — grateful to Mia Sato for staying on this beat, which affects so many smaller sites I care about #

Nintendo Alarmo can run custom code via USB without opening it up — getting it to run DOOM is only a matter of time #

The RIP Off — BRAIN scraped 16 years of Twitter to find the first people to post "RIP" when celebrities died, turning it into a morbid competition #

Boing Boing launches ad-free paid version on Substack, shuttering discussion forums — the BBS goes read-only on Friday, replaced by Substack comments, and the community is not happy #

Ghost founder/CEO John O’Nolan on how they’re structured and funded — a useful case study given the current debacle stemming from WordPress's "benevolent dictator for life" model (via) #

Anti-government militias using Facebook to recruit and organize in plain sight — in some cases, Meta is automatically creating the pages (via) #

Vanishing Culture, the Internet Archive’s “Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record” — research and short essays about cultural loss and the critical importance of preservation and access #

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for school shootings and measles — The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel's clearheaded "endorsement of democracy, solving problems, and Kamala Harris" #

The Pudding’s interactive explainer on Crokinole — like curling meets shuffleboard on a tabletop board #

This Must Be The Place lyric tattoos — Liverpool tattoo artist Rachel Baldwin made charming tattoos for each line of the Talking Heads classic and made it into a music video #

2004 Week on The Verge — a series of articles looking back 20 years, worth exploring just for the playful article design inspired by early Gmail, Digg, Kazaa, and more #

Cabel Sasser’s XOXO 2024 talk — all of this year's XOXO talks were stellar, but this is the only one that comes with a newly-launched archive of nearly-lost artwork #

Who gets shipped and why? — The Pudding's deep analysis of 10 years of fanfic ships on AO3 #

Aftermath’s list of discussion forums — Chris Person compiled a list of active forums, grouped by subject area, hosted outside of the major platforms (via) #

Dookie Demastered — Green Day collaborated with BRAIN to demake their 1994 album in 15 obscure formats, including Game Boy, Teddy Ruxpin, wax cylinder, and player piano roll #

Scripting News turns 30 — there's a nice companion piece for Dave Winer's milestone in The Guardian #

Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival — the creator of A Short Hike relaunched his charming interactive ghost town where players design and share jack-o-lanterns #

31 Days of Halloween — for the tenth year, Laura E. Hall brings back her popup newsletter sending a gently spooky email for each day of October #

Bop Spotter — an Android phone hidden in the Mission is set to Shazam all audio 24/7 and post the roughly 120 songs/day it can identify #

Rest of World’s Digital Divinity — feature package on new ways religious believers are using new technology, from Muslim VR simulators to Buddhist monks on TikTok #

Guided by Vices — Nick Heer on the ever-increasing user-hostile demand for your attention from the biggest social platforms #

Making 8-bit music from scratch at the Commodore 64 BASIC prompt — Linus Åkesson just casually being amazing again #

DOOM in the iOS Photos app — a technically-playable (but just barely) hack using iOS Shortcuts to download remote screenshots compiled into videos #

The data on extreme human ageing is flawed — most "blue zones," concentrated areas of supercentenarians, can be attributed to pension fraud or bad record-keeping #

all text in nyc — a search engine using OCRed text from map imagery across Brooklyn, expanding to all of NYC soon (via) #

How to Monetize a Blog — you'll just have to trust me on this one; recommended for desktop browsers (via) #

Cohost to shut down at the end of the year — very sad to hear this but I'm grateful for their effort, and loved having them at XOXO to talk about their weird and special community #