Janelle Shane teaches an AI to begin a novel
— she trained GPT-2 on over 10k opening lines with incredible results (via) #
The Digital Antiquarian looks back at Graham Nelson’s “Curses”
— the final article in his fascinating series on the roots of the post-Infocom interactive fiction renaissance #
Descript adds um detection, full-text search
— the powerful podcast/video editor continues to evolve in interesting ways #
The Verge on Syniverse, the company responsible for the Valentine’s Day SMS debacle
— the missing 168,000 texts were roughly 0.5 seconds of activity #
The Final Days of Japan’s Most Incredible Arcade
— Anata no Warehouse was inspired by the Kowloon Walled City (via) #
Hit the High Notes
— sing into your browser to test your vocal range against 27 famous voices (via) #
Typologies of New York City: A Crowdsourced Hyperlapse
— cw: seizure warning; 1,272 photos from Instagram, 200+ hours of work (via) #
LegraJS, JS library to draw with LEGO-like brick shapes
— for example, render any image in LEGO-like bricks (via) #
Typora, a minimalist Markdown editor
— glowing recommendation from Darius Kazemi, who has good taste in software (via) #
Half-Life: Alyx trailer
— surprisingly, supports the Oculus Rift/Windows Mixed Reality in addition to Valve VR headsets #
Chrome/Firefox extension detects AI-generated text
— Janelle Shane is testing it out and it seems like it works (via) #
8chan is still using Cloudflare
— three months later, the sneaky assholes are working around the ban #
IFComp 2019 winners announced
— only 4 of the top 10 were parser-based games, continuing the trend of recent years #
How the Deaf community is adapting ASL in VRChat
— I recommend subscribing to Syrmor's wonderful Humans of VR series #
YACHT’s GAN-generated music video by Mario Klingemann
— the lyrics and music for their new album were written with the help of an AI trained on their back catalog (via) #
Teens posting cursed images to school pages on Google Maps
— creative choice for shitposting (via) #
The Verge on the repercussions of YouTube’s new kids’ content flagging
— videos perceived as targeting kids lose ads and community features, impacting game streamers among others #
Pitchfork’s Anatomy of a TikTok Hit
— like on Instagram and YouTube, a less polished vibe is more real and relatable (via) #
Oscar-winning actor Mary Steenburgen went in for routine surgery, and woke up a songwriter
— prime Oliver Sacks material here (via) #
Gochi Gang explores Brooklyn’s Japan Village with Claire Saffitz and Mike Chen
— first episode from Reina Scully's new webseries for First We Feast #
PayPal drops payments to Pornhub performers
— according to Pornhub, their reversal will affect the livelihoods of over 100k people #
The Verge on the cottage industry of Amazon “preppers”
— a competitive industry appears in the middle of nowhere (via) #
Baking and cooking simulations with mixture theory
— I understand none of this math, but it's nice to know we'll have fresh baked bread and cookies in the Matrix (via) #
The Comics Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon, dead at 51
— a tireless advocate for the comics medium, everyone I know in comics is mourning #
Private equity company acquires .org registry
— in June, ICANN removed price caps for .org domains #
The Daily chats with Leo, a 3rd grader, about Trump’s impeachment
— incredibly charming, and surprisingly insightful, to see it through a child's eyes (via) #
The new 16″ MacBook Pro has a good keyboard
— scissor switches, a real Esc key, and old arrow keys; the least important news today, but I'm still happy about it #
The Blue Donkey
— MSCHF created a fake Seamless restaurant to secretly funnel corporate perks to political candidates who oppose big corporations #
BBC Radio 4 on the work and tragic death of TempleOS creator Terry A. Davis
— I missed the news of his passing last year; his mental illness inspired fascinating work, along with a history of racist, homophobic paranoia #
Little Runmo
— two years in development, a surreal animated short inspired by side-scrolling platformers (via) #
Unmixer, extract and remix loops from any song
— just announced and slow right now, but read about how it works while you wait (via) #
NYT’s Caity Weaver digs into the Valentine’s Day text message mystery
— a third-party named Syniverse was responsible for firing off 168,149 messages, 265 days late (via) #
Sanam Maher on TikTok in Pakistan
— while some are trying to ban it, TikTok is giving some Pakistani users an audience and new source of income (via) #
The Size of Space
— from Neal Agarwal's excellent Neal.fun, a reliable source of joyful internet (via) #