Published
Weekend Reading — Our traffic light-identifying overlords
How to respond to your weird neighbor’s Drumph sign.
Tech Stuff
Mac Firewall Apps When you don't want apps broadcasting your every move out to the world: Little Snitch, LuLu, Radio Silence, and Lockdown Privacy Desktop.
ben-n93/SQL-tips-and-tricks These are really good tricks if you don't use a good SQL visual editor: use comma first, WHERE 1=1, smart indentation, etc.
Our stopped clock technology is still in its infancy, but it's already reached an accuracy rate of two or more times per day, and there's no reason for us to believe that won't improve dramatically in the future
jehna/humanify HumanifyJS will deobfuscate, unminify, transpile, decompile and unpack Javascript code with the help of an LLM because readable code is sometimes a good thing.
sliiidea If you're one of these people who come up with a ton of ideas all the time, but you need to pick the few that you actually have the time to do, this app might be for you. “Plant your ideas and let them grow.”
New "fair source" movement aims to bridge the gap between open source and proprietary licensing So now it’s just a matter of what counts as "minimal restrictions" …?
Key principles of the model include publicly available source code, allowing third-party use and modification with "minimal restrictions," and a delayed open-source publication clause, where the software transitions to a true open-source license after a predefined period (two years under Sentry's Functional Source License).
(I think this is good, there are some use cases to have the source code — eg threat analysis, troubleshooting — but still paying to use the product, I’m just not sure how this will be used in the real world)
Effect This is a fantastic library. Instead of writing the just-not-very-good code (shown in left side image) you can write it as much shorter and absolutely unreadable code (shown in right side image). And by fantastic I mean "no thank you, I'll pass” — why do people think making code shorter and terser somehow makes it better?
Effect is a powerful TypeScript library designed to help developers easily create complex, synchronous, and asynchronous programs.
Corey Quinn “Oh, so that’s what happens to them.”
Business Side
Our Android App is Frozen in Carbonite Google takes application security seriously. Or just plain ripping off app developers:
The cost, including all internal hours, amounts to about one to two months of revenue that we would have to pay to one of Google’s corporate amigos. An indie company handing over a month’s worth of revenue to a “Big Four” firm like KPMG for a pretty much meaningless scan. And, of course, this would be a recurring annual expense. More cash for Google’s partners, while small developers like us foot the bill for Android’s deeply ingrained security shortcomings.
I've got some news about office environments. The absolute worst part for me was dealing with the rampant gossip and laziness. People would chat all day, accomplish next to nothing, and then pretend they were some kind of heroes for staying late. People walk around, take lunch or bathroom breaks, attend meetings, etc. Office or Home people will walk around. Stop writing stupid stories to promote back-to-office culture and risk everyone’s health.
Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t forget your caffeine pill I love reading the SF Standard because I love to discover some of the “really bizarre only in the Bay Area would these even pass for a product” products. It calls itself “Bay Area’s fastest growing source for news and information” but I think it should be more understood as “Bay Area’s leading Public Relations machine”. Because so many of their articles are just ads in disguise.
For example, this article is about a caffeine pill that only kicks in after 7 hours, so you can take it at 1am and wake up at 8am. Sounds like a good idea. And it starts with a nice story about one of the beta testers who currently runs an AI company. That’s not the bad part.
They mention with zero scrutiny that the pill was developed and is sold by one CEO of Crescent Health which got acquired by BetterUp. Yes, this BetterUp. I have no idea how Trust Pilot calculated 2.4 stars, seems to me that 128 stars over 100 is 1.28, but math is not my strong suit. Anyway, I’m not saying you shouldn’t get this pill, I’m just showing why journalism is 100% dead. The reporter claims they previously worked for The Atlantic, Fortune, The New York Times, Fast Company, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, The Information, OneZero and more. So it's not just one commercial newspaper :(
Related, Paul Carr on why he left The SF Standard:
But for goodness sake. Not a single critical word about tech billionaires since the Horowitz-Moritz shit fit?
Roblox wants your kids to spend as much time as possible in their virtual world but they're anti-remote working because “physical spaces are better”
Machine Intelligence
Prompt engineer? No, actually, I prefer to take my time
AI bots now beat 100% of those traffic-image CAPTCHAs “I, for one, welcome our traffic light-identifying overlords.”
Some advice and good practices when integrating an LLM in your application These are some good ideas for building apps that use LLMs. I’ve used a bunch of these ideas myself over the years, great to see them collected in one place.
'Lazy and Mediocre' HR Team Fired After Manager's Own CV Gets Auto-Rejected in Seconds, Exposing System Failure AI applicant tracking system is the thing we didn’t know we didn’t need:
An HR team was fired after their manager discovered their ATS system was auto-rejecting all candidates, including his own resume.
The Department of Energy Wants You to Know Your Conservation Efforts Are Making a Difference 🤣
By switching all the lightbulbs in your house to LED, you saved enough energy for a self-driving car to make an unprotected lefthand turn across three lanes of traffic.
Security Writer “What fresh hell is this?”
Insecurity
"A clever warrior leaves no trace; a smart one just deletes the cookies." - The Art of Cyber War
I really hate "two factor" auth. Like, cool, I get it, it let's you pretend you can divest responsibility for security and recovery, but also it means dropping my phone too hard could be a life disrupting event so somehow I don't really feel like this is for my benefit.
Free tip. The point of “two factor” auth is to prevent you from accidentally entering your password on some page that is trying to steal it. Because checking that the URL is correct is helpful advice but unfortunately quite difficult to do in the real world (mobile devices, easy to hack URLs, etc). But if you’re using a password manager, you don’t have to worry about it – the password manager will never enter your password in the wrong place. So get yourself a solid password manager and you too can forget about the unnecessary and time wasting two factor.
(* There are a few cases where you need to enter the password for site A on site B, but they're all using ancient technology, so maybe just avoid using these services?)
devopscats “Apparently new saner NIST CSP password recommendations are in…”
Everything Else
You can always tell when an online review was written by a cat. They're all
ARRIVED IN BOX ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When life gives you lemonade leave a shitty tip because you ordered a Coke Zero.
Global Museum “When you've got to go, you've got to go.... or maybe not?”
I think my car has elected a new Pope. That would explain the White smoke from under the bonnet.
They don’t teach this in school, but if you stick one finger in your belly button and one finger in your ear, it takes you back to factory settings.
Cuteness Overload Bundle I have zero interest in learning how to crochet, but if I did, I’d start with this bundle of cuteness.
You say "wanted fugitive", I say "very popular with the law enforcement community".
Just seen something referring to academics as "unpaid content creators for Elsevier" and I am dead ⚰️.
Colin Dunn “Now, that is funny.”
Most people are shocked when they find out how bad I am as an electrician.
The 'median' is a well-known statistic that tells you where the half-way point of your data is.
Its lesser-known dual statistic, the 'comedian', is a statistic that tells you when there's something funny about your data.
Dickens: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Schrödinger: Nice.
My dream job would be to work the only bar at a Health Insurance industry conference.
I’d let the attendees order a drink and then half way through making it I’d stop and be like, “oh sorry this request has been denied.”
And then I’d be all like, “perhaps you could try another bar, one that’s in network.”
And then they’d be all “but this is the only bar!”
And I’d be like “ugh have a word with your employer then.”
lcamtuf “Most of life's wisdom can be found in chainsaw manuals”
DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says FTC is on the ball! (For those who don’t know, DoNotPay is scammy, but they do have a very catchy name and too many people still fall into this trap)
I had a friend in highschool who needed support and a place to live if he was to complete highschool. I asked my parents if we might be able to offer that support and it happened without hesitation.
We were definitely not wealthy.Looking back on this years later, I realized how much that cost, but more importantly how much it taught both my friend and I about looking out for others and being kind.
It has shaped and guided much of my life.
Jcrabapple “The world needs more of this.”
OPD is spending $800K on lie detectors to screen applicants. Experts say they don’t work The good news is that in Oakland we are now fully paying our school teachers, so that we can finally spend $800,000 on improving our police force! Let them buy junk science polygraph machines, and don’t say nobody is going to benefit from this grift:
Get Polygraphed! is owned by Mercedes Orozco, who appears to be related to former OPD Captain Ricardo Orozco. Retired San Francisco Police Officer Wesley Villaruel runs Pacific Coast Polygraph & Investigations.
Striking union says Boeing's 'final offer' not good enough Boeing makes their last and final offer to striking employees. Or they could just raise their airplane prices so they can afford to pay their workforce better. But that would increase the cost of flights, and so fewer people will choose to travel by air, which in turn would lead to burning less fossil fuel, which we all know is a problem for Exxon … I see.
Zillow will now show climate risks for property listings in the US Yes theres’a a major hurricane in the US this week that’s flooding whole states. And yet many people in those states don’t believe that climate change is a real thing. On the plus side, maybe they’ll be more responsive when they decide to buy their next house. One can hope.
Zillow has announced that its real estate property listings in the US will soon feature details about climate risks, including the potential for wildfires, flooding, extreme temperatures, high winds, and poor air quality. Buyers will also see what types of insurance are required or recommended for a property.
California governor signs law banning all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores CA finally realized that those thick “reusable and recyclable" plastic bags they give out at grocery stores are not being reused or recycled and will put a stop to this shady practice:
She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) per year in 2004 to 11 pounds (5 kilograms) per year in 2021.
Related, California sues ExxonMobil over plastic recycling claims:
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has filed a first-of-its kind lawsuit aimed at Exxon Mobil Corp. — one of the largest producers of petroleum-based polymers — for allegedly deceiving the public about the potential for plastic recycling and creating an environmental blight that has cost the state billions of dollars to clean.
2024's Funniest Wildlife Photos Are Here. It's Comedy Break Time.
