AIM, Aol's instant messaging service, is to shut down December 15 after 20 years of operation. Once a near-universal form of communication for a certain generation of internet users--even those who wouldn't be caught dead paying for Aol's internet service!--AIM slowly faded in the age of Google and Slack and ultimately died of corporate abuse and neglect. They are, however, collecting "Aimemories" to remember the good times by.
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CueCat, a barcode reader that they hoped we would excitedly use to scan barcodes on ads so we could watch more ads, is one of the classic crap gadgets. When I suggested a book called "Crap Gadgets" to someone in the trade, about the wonderful world of crap gadgets, she said, "It'll have CueCat in it, right?" and I said "Yes, ma'am. Yes it will."
Well, you can not only still buy CueCat, but you can have it overnighted to your fucking door with Amazon Prime! And if you buy it with the following link, I will get a fucking commission (just like a Radioshack salesman in 2000) for getting you to buy it!
CueCat PS/2 Barcode Scanner [Amazon]
CueCat was not merely a terrible product reflecting the greed and cynicism of its creators. It had everything! obnoxious branding (":CueCat", with a colon); the first large-scale attempt at aggregating usage data to build a social graph to sell to advertisers; the first major security vulnerability leading to the exposure of this data (140k users doxxed); and the first front-page use of copyright law to threaten customers who used the gadget for anything but the desired consumer-zombie purposes.
It's been so long that there isn't much point hacking them, beyond the simple pleasure of doing so, but I think everyone should own and customize a CueCat in honor of the vile dystopian nightmare that modern computer and internet use has become. CueCat appears to us as a mirage, a failure, a loser, but unlike all the other crap gadgets, the future it dreamed of came into being. Read the rest
I shalln't spoil it for you. [via] Read the rest
Dami Lee on the
Qoobo:
"Do you enjoy the sensation of petting a cat or dog, but hate the unconditional love and the fact that they have heads and limbs?"
I'm looking forward to hacking one of these so that whenever it is petted, it emits a man's muffled screams.
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Sadly, this reboot cycle was one infinite loop. Mercifully, restoring to a Time Machine backup:
I'll guess I'll give it another try a couple of point releases in.
Update:
Let it not be said I'm playing favorites! Read the rest
"It's an algorithm" was never a good excuse, but YouTube's had plenty of time to fix this one, and they don't even pretend to care anymore, even after media began to set quotes from anguished victims against those of smugly indifferent anonymous spokespeople.
The Guardian:
YouTube is promoting conspiracy theory videos claiming that the Las Vegas mass shooting was a hoax, outraging survivors and victims’ families, in the latest case of tech companies spreading offensive propaganda. ... YouTube told the Guardian that this footage and other specific conspiracy videos that appeared after a generic search did not violate its standards.
It is a sewer, the search results a fatberg of fake news and fury.
We can only suppose why Google (and Facebook, for that matter) refuse to deal with the problem, but it looks like they want their tracking and interaction-optimizing bullshit to do its work with the absolute minimum of dataset-polluting editorial moderation. They will only interrupt it when force--legal, regulatory, media, and public protest--is applied. And, frankly, the first three aren't working. Which leaves it to... you?
UPDATE: YouTube "tweaked" the search results to remove the high-ranking conspiracy videos, reports the WSJ.
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Como identificar um comunista.
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Japan-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go and A Pale View of Hills, is 2017's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The novelist was praised by the Swedish Academy as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
On living on cultural peripheries:
Ishiguro left Japan in 1960 at the age of 5 and did not return to visit until 1989, nearly 30 years later, as a participant in the Japan Foundation Short-Term Visitors Program. In an interview with Kenzaburō Ōe, Ishiguro acknowledged that the Japanese settings of his first two novels were imaginary: "I grew up with a very strong image in my head of this other country, a very important other country to which I had a strong emotional tie ... In England I was all the time building up this picture in my head, an imaginary Japan."
When discussing his Japanese heritage and its influence on his upbringing, the author has stated, "I'm not entirely like English people because I've been brought up by Japanese parents in a Japanese-speaking home. My parents didn't realize that we were going to stay in this country for so long, they felt responsible for keeping me in touch with Japanese values. I do have a distinct background. I think differently, my perspectives are slightly different." When asked to what extent he identifies as either Japanese or English the author insists, "People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else.
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Hell is a ghost of a game, completed in a rush for a game jam, but what's there is a perfectly dark revisiting of those lighthearted 1980s Mac OS exploration games from the age before
Myst. Waking up dead, you find yourself exploring a series of surreal but oddly tangible places, many containing seemingly trivial decisions that will affect later events. You can zip through it in a few minutes, and there are tantalizing hints -- the operating system "frame", the symbolic references to a life left behind, the shadowy figures here and there -- that never converge to mean much of anything. But it's quite evocative and the author,
ahintoflime, says they're planning on expanding it into a more complete experience. And the monochrome artwork is beautifully bitty.
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Trump might be a moron, as far as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is concerned, but the pay's good enough for him. In a hastily-arranged press conference following NBC News' morning report about Tillerson-Trump friction, he denied one key claim--that he had to be talked out of quitting--but did not deny calling his boss a "moron" in front of others.
Tillerson, after denying the report, vaulted into a round of obsequious praise aimed at an audience of one.
He loves this country. He puts Americans and America first. He's smart. He demands results wherever he goes and he holds those around him accountable for whether they've done the job he asked them to do. Accountability is one of the bedrock values the president and I share.
Pretty humiliating, but you don't get where Rex got by having self-respect.
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Before structured shoes became prevalent in the 16th century (and apparently in those places where they never have) people walked with a different gait, pushing onto the balls of our feet instead of rocking forward on our heels. It looks a little affected -- like a gymnast or ballet dancer -- but is apparently much healthier. I'm going to master it!
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Colorspike is a programmable LED wand a yard or so long, designed to create lighting moods for filmmakers. A crackling fire just out of shot, for example, or the suggestion of a computer scanning a body for life signs — all easily accomplished with a small battery-powered gadget. It seems incredibly versatile and a must for anyone who wants to shoot narrative on a budget, but we won't know if it lives up to the demos until it Kickstarts. At $300, it seems reasonably-priced, too — compare to
Ice Light [Amazon], a similar light that only does unprogrammed 5500° and has found its way into just about everyone's bag in the last few years.
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Rex Tillerson wanted to quit as Secretary of State and openly called Trump a moron at a high-level meeting where the president was not in attendance. He was talked into staying on, according to reports, by other cabinet members including Vice President Mike Pence.
NBC News:
The tensions came to a head around the time President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the officials said.
Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a “moron,” after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident.
While it's unclear if he was aware of the incident, Vice President Mike Pence counseled Tillerson, who is fourth in line to the presidency, on ways to ease tensions with Trump, and other top administration officials urged him to remain in the job at least until the end of the year, officials said.
The petty humiliations they inflict on each other will, one day, be quite funny. Read the rest
Cuphead is a strange and stunning video game (see the trailer below) that perfectly resembles a pre-war Grim Natwick cartoon. But seeing it in black and white on an old cathode ray tube (above) takes it to another level entirely.
Running a new console to an old monochrome TV requires a serious chain of dongles. First the composite HDMI adapter you know you need, but then an coax composite RF modulator because these things are so old they don't even have composite inputs, then maybe a twin-lead flat antenna plugs coax transformer as well, because these things are so old they don't even have coax.
P.S. black and white and technicolor filters are both available as in-game options, but you've got to beat it, and it's a very difficult game:
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The British Half Pint Beer Glass [Amazon] is the perfect all-purpose drinking glass, and a set of 12 should immediately replace all other small- to medium-sized glasses in your cupboards.
It's like a traditional nonik pint glass, complete with elegant bulge for gripping and safe stacking, but miniaturized to contain only half a pint. It's adorable and is the perfect measure for just about any drink other than weak beer: wine, mixed drinks and decent ale are only the beginning, as they're an excellent vessel for nonalcoholic beverages and even hot drinks. (The wide, accessible character makes them good for experimenting with cocktails, too.)
Since I got a set, they've become my daily driver for my favorite sawbuck reds, both expanding their influence on my palate even as they moderate my consumption. Yes, Orwell would be displeased, but such is life, and life is not much for the opinions of the dead.
There are a few cheaper sets you can find, but most are trash, either merch for Britishy franchises or cheap, thin glass that's liable to chip or crack quickly. Get the high-quality tempered-glass set here. You won't regret it.
British Half Pint Beer Glass [Amazon]
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The court battle between Waymo and Uber took a revealing turn this week, after unsealed court documents exposed "damning evidence" of efforts to hide what is now obvious.
At this point it’s not terribly surprising that the summary report of the investigation — apparently codenamed “Project Unicorn” by Stroz Friedberg — casts Levandowski and Uber’s then-CEO Travis Kalanick in a particularly bad light. ... The report describes, for instance, employees caught in lies in their interviews with Stroz investigators, an elaborate saga around the surreptitious destruction of five disks of confidential information belonging to Google, furtive text messages advising each other to delete message logs, and search engine queries regarding “how to secretly delete files mac” or “can a MacBook be recovered after formatting the OS.”
Today's beautiful sunrise is tech executives thinking they can hide what they do by googling how to hide what they do.
On that note, it's always a surprise how computer-illiterate many successful "tech" executives are. They're representatives of something bigger than themselves, you might say, and their understanding is immaterial to their undertaking.
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Right-wing clones of mainstream social media are ten-a-penny. But now the left's getting in on the action, too. Behold
Raddle, a "leftist alternative to Reddit" founded after some
intra-left drama spiralled out of control (
plus ca change) and ended with site-wide bans. [via
Metafilter]
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