skrifa - Rust
"A robust, ergonomic, high performance crate for OpenType fonts." (meant as a replacement for freetype)
What’s the Matter with Abundance? | Malcolm Harris
"Large increases in material output, we are assured, can save liberalism from the civilizational choice between socialism and barbarism. I disagree; refusing to be forthright about society’s structural antagonisms opens the door to demagogues who peddle false conflicts that still ring truer than the liberals’ false peace."
Most Researchers Do Not Believe AGI Is Imminent. Why Do Policymakers Act Otherwise? | TechPolicy.Press
"An engineering problem is solved when the structure works: a bridge bears the weight. However, a bridge bearing weight does not confirm one's hypothesis that bridges possess an understanding of gravity."
I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats | The Walrus
"I am in a position to know and appreciate what a difference education makes to the quality of your life. The vastness of the world it opens up to you while simultaneously instilling in you the curiosity to explore it. The sense of perspective it offers, enabling you to view the events of your life, and the events of whatever historical moment it is yours to live through, in a much larger context, rather than being resigned to viewing them from a standpoint of uncomprehending ignorance, as if they were all happening for the first time and for no discernible reason."
Sondage sur l'obsolescence des smartphones | Limites numériques
"Le remplacement d’un smartphone est ainsi plus souvent motivé par la frustration liée à l’accumulation de dysfonctionnements matériels et logiciels sur l’appareil que par une réelle incapacité d’utilisation." (english: smartphone replacement is more often motivated by frustration linked to accumulating hardware and software problems, not by the phone being actually impossible to use) so... smartphone manufacturers are actually *incentivized* to ship and promote shitty software, because it drives sales of newer models. got it.
Proper decoupling practices, and why you should leave 100nF behind – codeinsecurity
"[G]iven that the cost to use a larger, better capacitor is effectively nil in most cases, you can keep experiencing that exact same level of cognitive load avoidance by just using 1uF or 2.2uF instead, in the smallest capacitor package that is practical for the voltage and assembly constraints you have, and placing it right up against the power pins. It’s free real estate, or something."
How Digital Marketing Broke Society
"Digital marketing is a fundamental threat to human flourishing, cognitive autonomy, and democratic governance. The industry has normalized a state of perpetual surveillance and manipulation that would have been unthinkable just decades ago. Its methodologies have created a world where attention is constantly hijacked, emotions are continuously manipulated, and reality itself is customized in pursuit of extraction value."
ISBN Visualization
very cool visualization/exploratory interface for isbn-space
Makefile Tutorial By Example
okay this is actually the tutorial i needed
Subcutanean: Source Code Release
so cool to see all of this!
Diligence Jones: "I appreciate all the earnest f…" - SFBA.social
"The fight you're in is about segregation. The government is forcing you to choose segregation -- the obstruction of non white people (and white women) -- as well as queer, trans, and disabled people -- from entering or advancing in your industry." honestly "DEI programs" should have been called "anti-segregation programs" since the beginning
MUPS/16 - MMU
implementation of an MMU "from scratch" (i.e. a bunch of 74xx chips and some SRAM)
The hardest working font in Manhattan – Aresluna
"... the imperfections and bad decisions are what makes Gorton come alive. They don’t feel like a profound misunderstandings of typography, typesetting, or Gorton itself. They don’t feel like abuses or aberrations. No, they feel exactly how Gorton was supposed to be used – haphazardly, without much care, to solve a problem and walk away."
The real problem with the AI hype • Wim Vanderbauwhede
"[E]ven if the growth in AI never materialises, the hype has set in motion a chain of events which, if allowed to go unchecked, can only lead to a rise in emissions.... [G]enerators will want to sell [their excess] electricity and therefore push hard to increase consumption... as they need at least to recoup their investment. Data centre operators also want to make a profit... so even if AI would die an ignoble death, they will try to find new workloads, and again push at consumers to use those new services." extrapolating from this: if it wasn't AI, it would be something else. there's nothing in place to meaningfully stop big oil from selling their product and capitalists from using that oil to power whatever new useless scheme they can come up with to make number go up
Building a tiny Linux from scratch
nice little walkthrough of building a bootable linux that runs busybox
The Bishop and the Billionaire
"Convincing everyone isn't the goal; noticing direction is, and noticing who aligns with and against simple declarations of truth and decency will do that. Your practiced indifference to convincing your opponents, meanwhile, will deliver the message that truth and decency are things that will be pursued without first receiving permission from indecent liars."
I Met Paul Graham Once – Phill MV
"[E]ssays like pg’s... create the permission structure for people to discriminate against me. [...] I’m better at my job than most. I’d be a better startup founder today than I was in 2015. None of that will matter. It feels as if people like pg, or at least people he hangs out with, who once upon a time believed in me, who lifted me up, recognized my talent, would now prefer that I be relegated to the sex slave caste."
Tech continues to be political | Miriam Eric Suzanne
"When eugenics-obsessed billionaires try to sell me a new toy, I don’t ask how many keystrokes it will save me at work. It’s impossible for me to discuss the utility of a thing when I fundamentally disagree with the purpose of it."
Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations | Quanta Magazine
"Embedding tricks and chain-of-thought prompting simply extends their ability to do more sophisticated pattern matching. The mathematical results imply that you can always find compositional tasks whose complexity lies beyond a given system’s abilities."
AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism // New Socialist
"Talking about AI’s environmental impact or its implications for the workforce will not work - they like that, it makes them feel dangerous. Instead of talking about taking money from artists, talk about how it makes them look cheap. If hurting and offending people is part of the point, then we can take that fun away from them by refusing to express hurt or offence, even if we feel it."