Matt Gemmell on the iPad and It’s Failures as a “Laptop Replacement”
Phil Nelson Incredible burn on every tech journalist who has written this.
Hacker Behind Massive Ransomware Outbreak Can’t Get Emails from Victims Who Paid
A very modern situation: Company does spin control without considering the ramifications, ends up screwing over the already victimized:
A German email provider has closed the account of a hacker behind the new ransomware outbreak, meaning victims can’t get decryption keys.
The exploit, unofficially named Petya, uses the same vector as WannaCry.
Kill sticky headers
Like most web trends intended to increase “engagement” (nobody knows what this actually means), sticky bars are overused and poorly used. Kill ’em all with this bookmarklet.
A beginner’s guide to Dungeon Synth
What I Like About Dungeon Synth is, primarily, the music and the wide range of emotions it encompasses; the bombast and the subtlety, the melancholy and the fury, the epic and the transient. It blends genres that are dear to my heart, from medieval airs to black metal malevolence, into something that is neither new nor old but atemporal. By stepping out of time Dungeon Synth can use multiple, opposing streams of influences and styles, to create a single entity and, by doing this, it embodies something that is often deliberately avoided in more mainstream music; conflict.
‘GLOW’ Is the Past and the Future of Women’s Wrestling
An excellent review and historical contextualizing of Netflix’s new Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling show, by Mairead Small Staid for the Ringer.
Police Drag Wheelchair-bound Protestors From Mitch McConnell’s Office
Police drag away protesters, some in wheelchairs, outside of Sen. McConnell’s office after draft of Senate health care bill is revealed pic.twitter.com/uWRR0uJniY
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 22, 2017
The Quintessential Americanness of Juneteenth
Vann Newkirk on the most famous American emancipation holiday, and why it must be celebrated:
Juneteenth, rather, celebrates a belated liberation. Enslaved people in the Confederacy who didn’t manage to escape to Union lines or find themselves in occupied territory were not all made free by Lincoln’s proclamation, and had to await the end of the Civil War to take their first free breaths. In isolated Texas, word of the official end of fighting, the surrenders of generals Lee and Johnston, and the capture of President Davis through May of 1865 arrived late. Freedom finally came to Texas on June 19 of that year, after a proclamation by General Gordon Granger in Galveston solidified the emancipation of the quarter-million enslaved people in the state.
Make it a national holiday. It’s long overdue.
Algorithm designs seven million different jars of Nutella
An article about a cool thing with a goofy lede:
An algorithm has usurped the traditional role of a designer to generate millions of unique packaging designs for Nutella.
Emphasis mine. It’s goofy because nothing usurped anything. A designer created an algorithm to create variations. It’s just a different kind of design.
Traces I
Traces I is the sound of synthesizers wrapped in cheesecloth being broadcast from the last radio tower of a dying world… in the shape of a 5-track pay-what-you-can album on Bandcamp. I’m enjoying it a lot.
You can contribute to the artist’s patreon, too.
Conservatory Of Flowers Live Stream of Amorphophallus Titanum Bloom
The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park is doing a live stream of their Amorphophallus titanum, aka Corpse Flower, blooming. This plant blooms once every 10 years, and during the bloom grows almost two times its normal size and emits a foul stench for two days before shriveling up and starting over. It’s pretty cool. Corpse Flower!
If you’re in the bay area you should go visit.
The Library of Congress is Adding Webcomics
“Dinosaur Comics!” “Hyperbole and a Half” and “xkcd” are among the initial class of now-nationally-archived webcomics I grew up reading.
The library will announce Tuesday that the Webcomics Web Archive is officially launching at loc.gov as part of its growth in “born-digital” collections.
The first phase of the webcomics online collection will include nearly 40 titles, including such long-running works as Josh Lesnick’s “Girly” and Zach Weiner’s “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.”
I’m so happy for all of these folks.
The Verge on Pinboard’s Acquisition of Delicious
Apparently Maciej acquired it for $35,000. Former Delicious community manager (and fellow waferbaby alumni) Britta Gustafson is running the twitter account.
Stop TrumpCare in June: Action Plan
Indivisible has a complete guide to letting your lawmakers know that they need to oppose Trumpcare. Make use of it.
#c0ffee is the color
A beautiful list of valid HTML colors which are also english-language words. There’s a poetry to how some of these match up; “defied / #DEF1ED” for example seems perfect somehow?
Singer IZEK Sewing Machine/Nintendo Game Boy Color Instructional Video VHS
What a zany thing to have existed:
This is the instructional video that was bundled with the Singer IZEK sewing machine/Game Boy Color combo. Hopefully this will help others who may be struggling to set up or operate their IZEKs or for those who just want to enjoy awesome VHS goodness!
You Are Not Google
A longish read which is better summed up at the very top:
[…] if you’re using a technology that originated at a large company, but your use case is very different, it’s unlikely that you arrived there deliberately; no, it’s more likely you got there through a ritualistic belief that imitating the giants would bring the same riches.
I see this a lot, and even sometimes have to fight it myself. The new tool usually isn’t the best one. In fact, it almost never is. One of the reasons we have the old tools is that they worked and still work really well.
Motherboard: The Hidden Stories Lingering in RadioShack’s Bankruptcy Auction
Apparently there are now about 70 Radio Shacks left across America. I’ve scavenged a few closings here in San Francisco. I will cherish those still-overpriced-at-70%-off toggle switches forever:
But buried in the recent news about store closings—which have largely decimated a chain of thousands of locations—is the fact that the company is auctioning off much of its storied history in a Ubid estate auction that’s going on for the next month or so.
And the stories behind some of those objects are better than you think.
The uBid auction has some pretty surreal stuff in it. Did you know Radio Shack produced an LP of trucker jams (such as Convoy), called Put The Hammer Down? And that it was certified gold?
Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Bob Dylan finally delivered his Nobel Prize lecture in the form of a video (you can also listen to it on Soundcloud). Over the course of just 27 minutes, he talks about his influences, both musical and literary, and muses on the differences and similarities between music and literature. Listening to the speech, instead of just reading the transcript, is well-worth your time, if only to experience Dylan’s lyrical delivery while exalting Buddy Holly or explaining Moby Dick.
I grew up listening to a LOT of Bob Dylan. A LOT.
Omni, the Iconic Sci-Fi Magazine, Now Digitized in High-Resolution and Available Online
Open Culture has the rundown. You can buy back issues for $2.99 a pop, or read them all with Kindle Unlimited.
But that’s not all:
Jerrick Media, owners of the Omni brand, have also begun to make available on Vimeo on Demand episodes of Omni: The New Frontier, the 1980s syndicated television series hosted by Peter Ustinov.