March 4, 2020
Google cancels I/O conference
— despite TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Intel, and Mashable dropping out, SXSW is continuing as planned #
Malcolm Harris reports on Shell’s private climate change conference
— disturbing glimpse into how fossil fuel companies will capitalize on, while subverting, clean energy efforts #
Vox on the Oregon GOP’s subversion of democracy
— today's day five of their fourth walkout to prevent the Democratic majority from doing literally anything #
Detailed tutorial on making and releasing a PICO-8 game
— the constraints of the 8-bit fantasy console make it a great playground for learning and experimentation (via) #
Adi Robertson imagines a world without YouTube
— what if copyright lawsuits sank YouTube before the Google acquisition? (via) #
China blocks Archive of Our Own
— China's expanding the scope of internet censorship with new rules going into effect tomorrow (via) #
GDC 2020 canceled over coronavirus fears
— SXSW is 14 days away, and they insist it's going on as planned #
17th Century Death Roulette
— see what you might've died from in 1665 based on real mortality records (via) #
Clearview AI client list revealed
— the DEA, ICE, FBI, Walmart, Wells Fargo, and 2,200 more using privacy-invading facial recognition search (via) #
Sony, EA, Microsoft, and others pull out of GDC over coronavirus fears
— also, Facebook/Oculus, Kojima Productions, and this morning, Unity #
Recreating the Parasite house in Sims 4
— turn on the captions and watch this absurdly detailed, and well-directed, build video (via) #
Smithsonian releases 2.8 Million high-res images into the public domain
— incredible resource, with an API and metadata dumps on GitHub #
sok-worlds
— a new tool for making weird 3d collage worlds from the amazing Sokpop Collective (via) #
Rian Johnson breaks down a scene from Knives Out
— fascinating in-depth commentary, including the tidbit that Apple won't approve the use of iPhones by villains #
Fraidycat 1.1 released
— Kicks Condor's open-source app lets you follow accounts anywhere, now supporting for Twitch, Kickstarter, Pinterest, Github, and more (via) #
Jason Kottke on 15 years of doing Kottke.org full-time
— I'm on the Superstar member level, and will continue to be for as long as he keeps doing it #
Firefox enables Cloudflare’s DNS over HTTPS by default for US users
— you can switch to NextDNS or disable it entirely in Network Settings (via) #
The Atlantic on the challenges of containing coronavirus
— "widely banning travel, closing down cities, and hoarding resources are not realistic solutions for an outbreak that lasts years" #
What does T5 know?
— brilliant and playful use of Glitch to demonstrate Google AI's new transfer learning technique (via) #
The Markup officially launches
— the NYT wrote about the challenges launching the nonprofit newsroom investigating technology news #
Web series successfully appeals YouTube copyright claims
— they only won after two months because the claimants let the appeals expire; YouTube holds ad revenue until disputes are resolved #
The Economics of 24/7 Lo-Fi Hip-Hop YouTube Livestreams
— artists don't get paid directly, granting permission for exposure and making money elsewhere #
My 72 Hours in a Viral Tweet Vortex
— I tweeted a joke that got 100k+ likes a while back and it sucked, 800k+ sounds horrifying (via) #
Songs That Sound the Same
— dozens of examples of why these music copyright lawsuits are a horrible precedent #
The virtual production of The Mandalorian
— astounding use of Unreal Engine for real-time environments and lighting with 360-degree LED walls (via) #
Condé Nast ends use of NDAs to silence harassed and discriminated employees
— good riddance, NDAs fundamentally allow toxic workplaces to persist by silencing victims #
Study finds 25% of climate-related tweets are from bots
— a massive concerted effort to amplify climate denialism #
BBC Micro Bot runs Conway’s Game of Life
— embedded 6502 machine code running on a simulation of a BBC Micro in 266 characters (via) #
Nathalie Lawhead’s roundup of small, wonderful digital art tools
— most made by a solo dev with a distinct voice, which then impacts your own creative expression (via) #
Commodore 64 plays Huey Lewis
— a teenage fan made these songs with Music Construction Set in 1985 and rediscovered the floppies this month (via) #
STAFFcirc’s WINDOWS VARIAT~1
— amazing remix album of arrangements of old MIDI files that shipped with Windows (via) #