ℹ️ This is an archived legacy site for link purposes only.
Author Preeti Chhibber pretty much nails it, in her How I Work interview on Lifehacker:
… I have a very bad habit where I start a lot of projects at the same time, and I end up with four podcasts, several blogs, and all these things.
Me too, Preeti. Me too.
Darius Kazemi calls himself an internet artist, and who am I to disagree? Anyone who can make something as wonderful as the Make someone page deserves whatever moniker they’d like.
So go ahead, make a person. Then make another until the day’s wasted away.
Two sites to link to whenever someone starts talking about deleting their Facebook account, or quitting Google. Talk is cheap, you know. I wish I could get out of both rackets, but it’s not possible because of work. I will, however, move my email from Google soon, possibly to HEY when they support custom domains.
Do you need some extravagant fashion sets in your life? Not much of that going around during a pandemic, and – let’s face it – it’s not like most of us would go to a show anyway. That doesn’t mean that they’re not cool though, like this New York Times gallery of Karl Lagerfeld’s most fabulous Chanel sets. Like it or not, those are some wild sets designed to showcase fashion…
And yes, I might be digging deep in my Pocket reading queue. Still cool though, even if the link is from last year.
A discussion recently led me to send this AV Club link, about going to the movies in a pandemic, to a friend. I figured it should be here too. The quote below is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, talking about what’s so dangerous with going to a movie theatre right now.
I’m a huge fan of movies. I really enjoy them. They’re a great way to have some fun and escape from the world—which we need, especially right now. But going to see a movie in an indoor movie theater, it’s just about the last thing I would do right now. From what we understand, the virus is transmitted through through aerosolized droplets that come out of our mouths, oftentimes when we talk or when we laugh or when we sing. And so, being in a room for two hours with a bunch of folks who are laughing at a movie, and where air is not being circulated in an efficient way, and where you don’t know who has been in there before you, that’s really hazardous exposure. I just don’t think it’s worth it.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed
The whole piece, with quotes from medical professionals, is worth a read.
Remember webrings? Of course not… It was a web 1.0 phenomenon where sites linked to each other in a ring-like fashion, usually with an ugly graphic somewhere. The blogroll was the natural evolution of webrings.
There’s a webring, called the Weird Wide Webring, that I love, and would join if it didn’t mean sticking yet another JavaScript on my site. Do check it out though, it’s made by Jack McDade, known for the Statamic CMS and his own wacky website. Fun times.
Congratulations are in order, because Craig Mod has launched a successful campaign for his new book, Kissa by Kissa. Yes, it’s about walking, as most things seem to be with Craig these days. He created something wonderful, the Craigstarter, for this project. It’s essentially a way to do crowdfunding with Shopify, with proper support for stretch goals and everything. I love the fact that something called Craigstarter exists, and released into the wild for everyone to use too.
Also, this resonated well with me, because Craig’s projects are funded by his Special Projects membership drive:
I see all members as voters, but Yearly Members are like mini-investors. As I wrote in Kickstartup: “I want to share with you a story about books, publishing, fundraising and seed capital.” Yearly Memberships are seed capital. I don’t mean that in the way of crude, spreadsheet driven, emotionless capital deployment, but in the freedom-unlocking, the opportunity-giving way. Obviously, members are not only “seed capital,” but the dollar amount of Yearly Memberships, in aggregate, become a kind of Kalman filter or linear quadratic estimation in a way that Monthly amounts aren’t. Yearly members say: Ya got a year, delight me! And if I fail to do so, the onus is on me. So, as a thanks to Yearly Supporters for that pledge of faith, I see the $50 coupon as a kind of financial dividend (beyond all the cultural dividends I hope the program inherently pays).
Read about the project in Roden 042, which – of course – is a newsletter.
The first two issues of Switch to iPad has been sent to subscribers, both free for all. The first issue, asking the question wether you’re ready to switch to iPad, clocked in at 1,500 words, whereas the second – covering picking the right iPad – was 1,900 words.
The third issue is due on Tuesday, and it’s another long one: the first draft is 1,900 words. Issue 3 is only for paying subscribers though, so you might want to consider subscribing? Pretty please?
Either way, I’m happy with the Switch to iPad project thus far, and I’m looking forward to keeping at this for quite some time.
File this one under how is this news, or maybe arbitrary number that makes headlines because someone said so, but still:
Under the strictest set of assumptions – where, as on Earth, life forms between 4.5bn and 5.5bn years after star formation – there are likely between four and 211 civilisations in the Milky Way today capable of communicating with others, with 36 the most likely figure. But Conselice noted that this figure is conservative, not least as it is based on how long our own civilisation has been sending out signals into space – a period of just 100 years so far.
Want to chat with said alien civilizations? Then we’d look at 6,120 years for a reply… Yeah, technology’s not really there yet.
I’m launching a newsletter early August. It’s called Switch to iPad, and it’s about, well:
Switch to iPad is a journey to going iPad only. That is to say, getting rid of all those pesky (I kid!) Macs and PCs, and relying on the magic piece of glass that is the iPad as my primary (big) computing device. Together we’ll figure out how to work from an iPad, try out all the gadgets that help us along the way, and find the best apps and methods for a better computing life.
Read more about it here, and sign up. There’ll be free letters, but there’s also a paid tier with the standard premium newsletter fare of $5/month or $50/year.
More on this soon. I’m excited!
If you saw Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and more tweet bitcoin scams recently, you saw the result of a social engineering hack targeting verified Twitter accounts primarily. Vice has the full story.
“We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.
I’m amazed and horrified that the scam worked, collecting over $100,000 worth of bitcoin. Please be more careful, and don’t trust so easily, okay?
Things could’ve been worse though. What if a hack like this was used to spread disinformation, rather than just grab cash from gullible suckers that thinks Elon Musk can magically duplicate bitcoins for free? Come election time, get ready to not trust anything, verified badge or not.