1980s arcade game designers hid their names in high score tables
— a long growing list of classic high score screens and their known credits via b3ta #Gandalf, a game of prompt injection
— convince an increasingly annoying chatbot to reveal a secret password via b3ta #Why Has a Group of Orcas Suddenly Started Attacking Boats?
— the behavior appears to be learned but may be a fad, like the Puget Sound orcas who spent the summer of 1987 wearing dead salmon as hats #Arc’s new Boosts feature lets you change the way any website looks
— like a visual Stylish without touching CSS, with built-in sharing options #Conner Griffith’s “Still Life”
— animated short made from over 1,000 historic engravings of objects #Better Living Through Algorithms
— Naomi Kritzer’s short sci-fi story about a helpful AI, not unlike the one in Mrs. Davis via MetaFilter #Mel’s Loop
— finding the identity of the programmer behind “The Story of Mel,” a classic piece of hacker lore that just turned 40 via MetaFilter #Kenny Log-Ins
— “generate a secure password from the lyrics of America’s greatest singer-songwriter” via @mattround #The Nib is shutting down
— after ten years and multiple near-death experiences, the award-winning comics publisher is closing in August #Visualization of data breaches that have exposed your identity over time
— built on top of data from Have I Been Pwned?, I haven’t heard of many of the companies that leaked my info #Hank Green talks about his cancer diagnosis
— his thoughts about his favorable prognosis and how the treatment he starts today may affect his life and work #TikTok users sue Montana, calling state ban unconstitutional
— each of the five plaintiffs talk about their experiences in the complaint #Supreme Court rules against Andy Warhol in copyright dispute over Prince portrait
— Kagan’s dissent is worth reading, arguing the opinion will “stifle creativity of every sort” #Montana governor signs total ban of TikTok in the state
— the unconstitutional and dangerous law goes into effect on January 1, though it’s likely to be challenged #The Last Recording Artist
— Jaime Brooks contextualizes deepfaked vocals to the history of virtual pop stars, Vocaloid software, and minstrelsy via MetaFilter #How readers asked Platformer to cover artificial intelligence
— a useful set of guidelines for technology journalists #The Dangers of Google’s .zip TLD
— related: badidea.zip links to a ZIP file called badidea.zip containing a QR code that points to badidea.zip #Google to start deleting accounts that haven’t logged on in two years
— a Google spokesperson said they won’t be removing accounts with YouTube videos “at this time.” #50 years after release, Disney’s Robin Hood is still a life-changing furry phenomenon
— “Love for this movie showed me a community of people like me.” #Question Mark, Ohio
— an immersive mystery with Night Vale vibes, I recommend starting with Violet’s Instagram or the town’s announcements #Anna’s Archive
— launched last November, a massive open-source search engine for shadow libraries like Sci-Hub, Libgen, and Z-Library, with a takedown-resistant architecture #IRS tests free e-filing system to compete with tax prep giants
— the pilot program developed with U.S. Digital Service will begin in January, if Intuit’s lobbying doesn’t kill it first #Early Computer Art in the ’50s and ’60s
— another brilliant Amy Goodchild post; don’t miss her attempts to recreate Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings with Midjourney and ChatGPT #Sing A Note
— Louie Zong turned over 200 clips of fans singing a single note into a musical keyboard to make songs with #Moderator Mayhem
— Techdirt made a free web game, best played on mobile, that demonstrates some of the challenges moderating social networks #The Oral History of MTV News
— it’s permanently shuttered after 36 years; Doug Herzog casually revealed Clinton’s infamous Boxers vs. Briefs question that I wrote about was planted! #The Unhinged Miniature World of Bobby Fingers
The pseudonymous Irishman known as “Bobby Fingers” has only made three videos since launching on YouTube last August, but each one is an unhinged masterpiece.
If you haven’t seen them before, Bobby Fingers makes elaborate 1:9 scale dioramas depicting embarrassing moments in the lives of famous men, showing off his talents in model-making with a range of techniques from Bronze Age wax casting to modern 3D laser scanning.
But each video veers off wildly in different directions, interspersed with field trips, interviews, deadpan commentary, surrealist humor, and inevitably, a musical number.
Goodbye, Dooce
This morning, I was shaken to learn Heather B. Hamilton (formerly Heather Armstrong) aka Dooce is no longer with us. I learned the news from a post to her Instagram, confirmed by several friends after and then the Associated Press, announcing the tragic news that she died yesterday at the age of 47.
I’m shaken and sad, and my heart goes out to all her family and friends feeling her loss right now, but especially her two children.
We weren’t close friends, but as part of the same old-school blogging cohort, we hung out over the years at conferences and meetups, getting together whenever she was in town.