Hacking Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Yelp, Uber, and others with package dependencies — replacing private npm/PyPI/RubyGem dependencies with malicious public ones using the same name #

Bird Folder, name new folders after random birds in macOS — inspired by Emily Yoon's story about a Korean ZIP utility #

Chessformer — clever grid-based puzzle platformer with chess pieces (via) #

Vole’s public domain “Happy Birthday to You” covers — for people missing offices, try the "Unenthusiastic Colleagues Who Can’t Remember Your Name" version (via) #

Same Energy — a minimalist visual search engine built on deep learning (via) #

The mysterious Wikimedia photo of a purple flower getting 78 million hits daily — 20% of all requests were for one photo, starting when India banned TikTok (via) #

A Heart from Space — a web-based tool allowing a group of people to draw shapes with GPS, inspired by a conversation with Yo-Yo Ma (via) #

Paul Ford on the secret, essential geography of the office — I'm not nostalgic for offices, I just miss a change of scenery for working and spending time with people outside my house (via) #

Twitter’s Trump ban is permanent even if he runs again — he'll likely be acquitted in his second impeachment, but at least we won't have to see his fascistic tweets anymore #

MetaHuman Creator — Epic's upcoming browser-based, cloud-streamed tool to craft highly-realistic 3D human faces, backed by Unreal Engine (via) #

Is this cop playing copyrighted music to avoid being livestreamed? — he later plays a Beatles song, an even safer bet to trigger automated content blocking #

David Friedman explores the “Everybody Hurts” YouTube comments — a micro-community expressing messages of grief, loss, and support; CW: suicide #

Rabbit Rabbit: A Game of Superstitions — I helped with editing/production on Ami's new 350-card trivia game that just launched on Kickstarter #

The Live Music Project — incredible analysis from The Pudding of the characteristics of live vs. studio recordings #

Adi Robertson on the 25th anniversary of Section 230 — experts warn the Democrats' proposed Section 230 reform bill could have major side effects and devastate the internet #

Chin Masker — masks that look like you're wearing masks wrong, but you're actually wearing it right #

Super Mario World Restored — reconstructed from the original source samples, smooth as silk (via) #

Robin Sloan on the strange world of NFTs and crypto art — I'm a fan of weird internet and artists getting paid, but it all seems kind of silly and unsustainable #

Reply All on the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen’s online reckoning — the powerful first part of a four-part series from Sruthi Pinnamaneni #

How misinformation fueled a coup in Myanmar — “People can’t get real information… They restored the internet but not the television." #

Smac McCreanor’s Hydraulic Press dance videos — even more on her TikTok #

Danielle Baskin shares the story behind her satirical Blue Check Homes site — "not everyone understands your commentary and will share your jokes as fact" #

Inside China’s police state tactics against Muslims — The Intercept obtained millions of leaked police files detailing the oppressive surveillance of the Uyghur people #

Sonification of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. — grim conversion of the NYT's visualization of 425,000 deaths as audio (via) #

Audrey Hepburn’s Favorite Song — a short comic of a true story; watch the quartet perform "Audrey" live in this 1954 short by photographer Gjon Mili #

Wikipedia introduces Universal Code of Conduct — collaboratively written by 1,500 editors (via) #

After 27 years, Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon CEO later this year — breaking: the new CEO's favorite band is Dave Matthews Band #

NYT report on Trump’s campaign to subvert the election — Times examination of how lies about election fraud spread in the 77 days between election and inauguration (via) #

The COVID Tracking Project will end on March 7 — this work should be the responsibility of federal public health agencies, and they're finally meeting the challenge (via) #

Cab Ride — drive a procedurally-generated train in an 8-bit PICO-8 world (via) #

Janelle Shane gets GPT-3 to make candy hearts — "WHY GGOD" #

Everything’s a Joke Until It’s Not — John Herrman on WallStreetBets and The_Donald; "a potent mixture of nihilism, obfuscating humor and a clear common goal" (via) #

tree.fm — listen to a random forest (via) #

LEGO White Noise — ASMR for the AFOL set #

The Princess Bride remade in lockdown by all-star cast — originally running on Quibi, a delightful series compiled here as a YouTube bootleg #

WSJ reports Facebook knew calls for violence plagued Groups — an internal report from August found 70% of top civic groups too toxic to recommend #

archives.design — organized collection of graphic design-related items available in the Internet Archive (via) #

Black Bart, the unaired TV sequel to Blazing Saddles — correction: there was a pilot that aired, but four seasons weren't made (via) #

Lessons from A Pandemic Anniversary — Zeynep Tufekci looks back at what we knew and didn't yet know in January 2020 #

Mini Modern House — absurdly detailed miniature house, don't miss the needlepoint rugs #

NYT’s Kashmir Hill on how one woman destroyed the online reputations of more than 145 people — during the reporting process, the same woman started defaming the writer, her husband, and editor #

OKO — hypnotic puzzle game made from NASA imagery, best played full-screen #

Shaderworlds — a collection of open source VR-enabled shader worlds (via) #

NYT Mag’s Yudhijit Bhattacharjee confronts an Indian phone scammer — assisted by Jim Browning, who made his own video on finding the guy #

Ben Zotto reconstructs a corrupted Apple II game he made in elementary school — interesting look at 30-year-old data recovery #

Casey Newton on the battle inside Signal — Signal's exploding in popularity after WhatsApp's fumble, but very vulnerable to abuse #

Twitter introduces Birdwatch, community reporting of misinformation — starting to address an obvious gap in their reporting tools #

How Reddit traders pushed GameStop’s struggling stock to the moon — one trader turned $53k into more than $11 million, while short-sellers lost $1.6 billion in a day #

Garbage Day on Reddit manipulating GameStop stock — r/WallStreetBets pushed the stock to an all-time high, making it the most actively-traded U.S. company for a time #

Turning random internet drama into songs pt. 4 — this series blew up pretty quickly #