December 18, 2019
The Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in HyperCard
— Voyager created this expanded version for the Mac in 1991, emulated in browser on the Internet Archive (via) #
The Far Side relaunches official site
— with classic comics posted daily, sketchbooks, and a letter from Gary Larson about why now #
Endless Jingling
— hilariously bad generative Christmas carol mashups, click on the window to hear the audio #
AI Dungeon released for iOS/Android
— if the Google Colab version scared you off, this is a simple way to try one the most interesting projects of the year #
The Verge reviews Wattam, the new game from Katamari creator Keita Takahashi
— out tomorrow for PC/PS4, so excited to finally play it #
Bee videogames reviewed for accuracy
— "the Citizen Kane of beekeeping games" is available for free on Itch.io #
Ars Technica’s Timothy B. Lee on making his own deepfake
— good video cards are expensive, but cloud GPU fees add up quick #
Creators of “virtual influencer” Lil Miquela criticized for fictional sexual assault vlog
— reminder that the agency behind it, Brud, raised $6M of venture capital from Sequoia #
The Verge’s Casey Newton talks to moderators responsible for removing violent extremism from Google/YouTube
— there are serious mental health consequences to reviewing a high volume of disturbing and graphic content #
Dual Axis Rotation Illusion
— JS version of this year's winner of the annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest #
100 Memes That Defined the 2010s
— Katie Notopoulos, Julia Reinstein, and Ryan Broderick turn in the definitive list with useful context #
Why Nukemap isn’t on Google Maps anymore
— Google's interest in small developers is fickle, shifting over time as products evolve #
NYT uses infrared cameras to show industrial methane leaks in Texas
— great mix of investigative reporting and undeniable visual evidence #
Postlight launches Yap, an ephemeral free chat room for small groups
— Rich Ziade explains more on their blog #
Urban Archive
— newly out-of-beta platform for uncovering local history, like this building that's still very special to me #
The Age of Instagram Face
— Jia Tolentino on the increasing use of plastic surgery to resemble FaceTune-filtered photos in real life #
Nvidia releases StyleGAN2, state-of-the-art generative image modeling
— clears up many of the visual artifacts of StyleGAN, see it in action on This Person Does Not Exist #
“They” is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year 2019
— nice to see the continued mainstream acceptance of singular they #
Pico-8 Advent Calendar 2019
— a new game for the fantasy console every day until Christmas, don't miss the flawless Snowcraft demake #
YouTube expands anti-harassment policies
— a clear reaction to their failure to act in the Carlos Maza/Steven Crowder incident #
Twitter announces Bluesky project to develop (another) decentralized open standard for social media
— ActivityPub was tailor-made for this use, but they seem committed to reinventing it on the blockchain #
Vulfpeck Live at Madison Square Garden
— I watched them play for a small crowd at XOXO, and four years later, they're selling out MSG with no label, manager, or advertising #
XOXO’s Worldbuilders fundraiser for Heifer International
— we're giving away prizes from our own collection of XOXO history, and would love your help hitting the goal by December 17 #
Wired Magazine’s cover story on Simone Giertz
— after surviving her brain tumor, she hopes to move on from shitty robots to space exploration (via) #
“Link In Bio” is a subtle undermining of the web
— Anil Dash on how links represent a threat to closed systems #
Bloomberg Businessweek’s Jealousy List
— this year's articles their editorial staff most wish they'd written #
Choose Your Own Adventure publishers try to get phrase banned from Itch.io
— Chooseco has only owned the trademark since 1999, after Random House let it lapse #
The Universal LEGO Sorting Machine
— made from 10,000 LEGOs, the AI-powered sorting machine can recognize and sort every LEGO part ever made #
Verizon blocks Archive Team from preserving 20 years of Yahoo Groups history
— days before mass deletion, they banned Archive Team's volunteer email addresses (via) #
TikTok’s Top 100 of 2019
— related: Taylor Lorenz interviewed Vanessa Pappas, TikTok's most accessible executive in the West #
Natural History Museum
— delightfully weird short from Kirsten Lepore, who's currently directing an indie feature film #
Recovering hidden video from lighting changes
— reconstructing the shadows in Plato's cave with deep matrix factorization (via) #