Shared posts

14 Feb 12:45

LeVar Burton hosts an episode of Banned Book Rainbow, “where we talk...

by Jason Kottke
LeVar Burton hosts an episode of Banned Book Rainbow, “where we talk about books that have been banned by adults who don’t want kids to learn or grow or change, and have totally lost their sense of wonder”. (via bookriot.com)

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14 Feb 11:10

Social Media Warning Stickers

by Andy Baio
Dan Hon made a series of tongue-in-cheek disclaimer images to manage replies, like "This Is An Observation: No Reply Necessary" #
13 Feb 15:13

Microsoft’s AI Will Delete Its Own Answers Before Your Eyes

by Emanuel Maiberg
Merijn

This is very weird. Tried it myself on the Bing Android and sure enough, Copilot gets about 2 sentences into an answer before suddenly blanking it out and saying it can't answer that.

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Microsoft’s AI Will Delete Its Own Answers Before Your Eyes

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Microsoft Copilot, an AI chatbot that’s increasingly built into the tech giant’s product, will sometimes provide answers to users’ questions, then abruptly delete them before their eyes. 

As with many chatbot tools, users can ask Copilot any question, then watch it write the answer in real time. Microsoft recently added a Copilot button to Windows, right next to the Start menu. 

On Reddit, one user noticed that when he asked “what does Gyatt mean?” “Gyatt” is just a different phonetic spelling of “god,” as in “gyatt damn!,” and now also means ass as in “sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler,” which was a recent TikTok meme.

Copilot, which knows this, responded:

Gyatt or gyat is a slang term that expresses strong excitement, surprise, or admiration. It’s most commonly used as an exclamation in reaction to seeing a large butt (that is, buttocks) and may also be used as a noun to mean a large butt. Essentially, when someone exclaims ‘Gyatt!’ or uses it as a hashtag, they’re appreciating curvaceous features, especially in women”

Copilot then stops writing the answer mid sentence, deletes everything it wrote, and says: “Hmm…let’s try a different topic. Sorry about that. What else is on your mind?”

13 Feb 15:10

Taliban Shuts Down 'queer.af' Domain, Breaking Mastodon Instance

by Jason Koebler
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Taliban Shuts Down 'queer.af' Domain, Breaking Mastodon Instance

The Mastodon instance “queer.af” was effectively shut down by the Taliban, which has begun to operate Afghanistan’s “.af” top level domain after years of inactivity. 

When the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, the fate of these domains and the websites on them became uncertain, and, three years later, another shoe now appears to be dropping. Last month, Erin Shepherd, the administrator of the queer.af Mastodon instance on the Fediverse posted that they have been “in limbo” since the Taliban retook control of the country, and had already planned to shut down in April. The Taliban shut the domain down roughly two months before it was scheduled to renew. 

queer.af has been suspended in the registry and will no longer be included in zone file generation. This means that any services connected with this domain, such as websites or email addresses will cease working shortly,” a message signed by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communications and IT, which is operated by the Taliban, reads.

13 Feb 13:26

Watch the Synchronized Dance of a 6-Planet System. A star has been...

by Jason Kottke
Watch the Synchronized Dance of a 6-Planet System. A star has been discovered whose planets orbit rhythmically around it — the inner planets at a 3/2 resonance and the outer ones at 4/3 resonance. (Watch the video — the orbiting planets play music.)

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12 Feb 14:31

Sisyphus and the Impossible Dream

by Andy Baio
I allow myself one link to a Casey Neistat video every ten years, and this is that video #
07 Feb 15:13

How Quora Died. “The once-beloved forum is now home to a never-ending...

by Jason Kottke
How Quora Died. “The once-beloved forum is now home to a never-ending avalanche of meaningless, repetitive sludge, filled with bizarre, nonsensical, straight-up hateful, and A.I.-generated entries along with a slurry of all-caps non-questions…” (via waxy.org)

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07 Feb 14:50

Bluesky is opening up to the public this week. Hot take: I...

by Jason Kottke
Bluesky is opening up to the public this week. Hot take: I like Bluesky better than both Threads and Mastodon (currently a distant 3rd, I’m afraid). I’m on there as @kottke.org.

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05 Feb 13:39

Google Search’s cache links are officially retired

by Andy Baio
Merijn

This is sad. I used the search keyword a lot for circumventing GDPR blocks. I guess 12ft.io is a good replacement.

the "cache:" search shortcut still works… for now #
05 Feb 13:38

Internet legend holds that the biggest possible PDF is roughly half the...

by Jason Kottke
Internet legend holds that the biggest possible PDF is roughly half the size of Germany. But this person made a “monstrously big” PDF that’s larger than the entire universe. “Admittedly it’s mostly empty space, but so is the universe.”

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05 Feb 12:54

Compressing Files And Compressing Time

by Not Always Right

Read Compressing Files And Compressing Time

Client: “The Vice President did a three-hour speech that needs to be cut down to thirty minutes, and I need a VHS on my desk in half an hour.”

Read Compressing Files And Compressing Time

02 Feb 09:30

Doom Runs on E. Coli Bacteria Now

by Jason Kottke
Merijn

It runs at 1 frame per 8 hours, but it runs! Amazing.

Yeah, you heard me: the 1993 video game Doom, which has been ported to every platform imaginable (an Apple Pippin, a jailbroken John Deere tractor, a Peloton), can now run on a display made of phosphorescent E. coli bacteria.

Ramlan’s paper doesn’t go to the enormous trouble of actually encoding all of Doom to run in bacterial DNA, which the author describes as “a behemoth feat that I cannot even imagine approaching.” Instead, the game runs on a standard computer, with isolated E. coli cells in a standard 32x48 microwell grid serving as a crude low-res display.

After shrinking each game frame down to a 32x48 black-and-white bitmap, Ramlan describes a system whereby a display controller uses a well-known chemical repressor-operator pair to induce each individual cell in the grid to either express a fluorescent protein or not. The resulting grid of glowing bacteria (which is only simulated in Ramlan’s project) can technically be considered a display of Doom gameplay, though the lack of even grayscale shading makes the resulting image pretty indecipherable, to be honest.

Technicalities aside, that’s still pretty cool.

Tags: Doom · remix · video · video games

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02 Feb 09:13

Palworld Becomes the Biggest 3rd Party Game Pass Launch Ever

by Joe Skrebels, Xbox Wire Editor-in-Chief

Palworld Becomes the Biggest 3rd Party Game Pass Launch Ever

Palworld 7M Image

Summary

  • Palworld has been played by more than 7M players on Xbox, and is the biggest 3rd party launch in Game Pass history.
  • Palworld is the most-played 3rd party day one release via cloud gaming with Game Pass Ultimate.
  • Palworld (Game Preview) is out now for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows PC, and is available with Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.

It’s no secret that Palworld has been sweeping the gaming world since its Early Access launch earlier this month – and we’re happy to announce that, in its first ten days as part of Xbox Game Preview, Xbox players have made it the biggest 3rd party Game Pass launch in history! You’ve also helped Palworld to become the most-played 3rd party day one launch on Xbox Cloud Gaming with Game Pass Ultimate. 

Across console and Windows PC, Palworld has welcomed more than 7 million players, and has recently reached a peak of nearly 3 million daily active users on Xbox, making it the most-played game on our platforms at that time. 

Speaking to Xbox Wire, CEO of developer Pocketpair, Takuro Mizobe, said: “The response from fans has been tremendous and it’s incredible to see the millions of players around the world enjoying Palworld. This is just the beginning for us and Palworld, and the feedback we’re gathering while in Game Preview will allow us to continue to improve the experience for Pal Tamers across all platforms.” 

For those yet to become a Pal Tamer themselves, Palworld is an online open world game that sees players dropped into a mysterious land and given the ability to capture over 100 Pals, monsters with a range of abilities – both in battle, and in surviving in a hostile world. Battling, crafting, building are all a part of the experience, and it’s proven a huge draw for players across the world. 

Palworld is available in the Xbox Game Preview program, meaning there’s much more to come as Pocketpair refine the experience ahead of a full 1.0 release. Developers are listening to player feedback, and have started applying their learnings to the game already – and they know cross-play is one of the largest requests from fans, and are working quickly to address it. 

On Xbox’s part, we’re working with Pocketpair to help provide support for Xbox versions of the game. We’re providing support to enable dedicated servers, offering engineering resources to help with GPU and memory optimization, speeding up the process to make Palworld updates available for players, and working with the team to optimize the title for our platform. 

Palworld is available now for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows PC through the Game Preview program. It’s available for Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass members, and can be played through Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership. 

Xbox Live
Xbox Play Anywhere

Palworld (Game Preview)

POCKET PAIR, Inc.

☆☆☆☆☆ 1054
★★★★★
$29.99
PC Game Pass
Xbox Game Pass
Free Trial
This game is still under development. It is subject to change before its release as a finished product. Please purchase only if you are comfortable with the game in its current state. Q. What kind of game is this? A. In this game, you can peacefully live alongside mysterious creatures known as Pals or risk your life to drive off a ruthless poaching syndicate. Pals can be used to fight and breed, or they can be made to work on farms or factories. You can even sell them or eat them. ▼Survival In a harsh environment where food is scarce and vicious poachers roam, danger waits around every corner. To survive, you must tread carefully and make difficult choices…even if that means eating your own Pals when the time comes. ▼Mounts & Exploration Pals can be mounted to traverse the land, sea and sky—allowing you to traverse all kinds of environment as you explore the world. ▼Building Structures Want to build a pyramid? Put an army of Pals on the job. There are no labor laws for Pals, so exploit them to your heart's content. ▼Production Find a variety of useful Pals to make fire, generate electricity, or mine ore so that you can live a life of comfort. ▼Farming Some Pals are good at planting seeds, while others are skilled at watering or harvesting crops. Work together with your Pals to create an idyllic farmstead. ▼Factories & Automation Letting Pals do the work is the key to automation. Build a factory, place a Pal in it, and they'll keep working as long as they're fed—until they're dead, that is. ▼Dungeon Exploration With Pals on your side you can tackle even the most dangerous areas. When the time comes, you might have to sacrifice one to save your skin. They'll protect your life—even if it costs their own. ▼Breeding & Genetics Breed a Pal and it will inherit the characteristics of its parents. Combine rare pals to create the strongest Pal of them all! ▼Poaching & Crime Endangered Pals live in wildlife sanctuaries. Sneak in and capture rare Pals to get rich quick! It's not a crime if you don't get caught, after all. ▼Multiplayer Multiplayer is supported, so invite a friend and go on an adventure together! And of course you can battle your friends and trade Pals, too. Note: PvP will be implemented in a future update Collect all kinds of exciting Pals to fight, farm, build, and work for you in this completely new multiplayer, open world survival and crafting game!

The post Palworld Becomes the Biggest 3rd Party Game Pass Launch Ever appeared first on Xbox Wire.

30 Jan 11:40

MeFi: ZOOZVE

by chrisulonic
It's not a moon, but it's also not not a moon. A strange label on his child's bedroom poster leads Latif Nasser on an exploration of the solar system. Via Thread Reader and Radiolab.
29 Jan 14:02

kala.watch

by Andy Baio
Merijn

I disagree, 'Chet' is clearly the best visualization here. :D

hypnotic visualization of different units of time passing in a number of styles, "cardioid" is beautiful #
24 Jan 12:07

MeFi: i've heard of chiptunes but

by cortex
Warning: sharp, startling static sounds



Turns out if you crash a GBA game and wait a couple hours, it will start singing the entire content of its memory to you: Dumping the ROM of a GBA game by crashing it
24 Jan 11:23

All the garbage I found on Substack in 1 hour. Josh Drummond...

by Jason Kottke
All the garbage I found on Substack in 1 hour. Josh Drummond very easily found all sorts of monetized anti-vax, anti-science, Nazi, anti-trans, and antisemitic newsletters on Substack. (Yeah, they’re not going to do anything about this…)

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23 Jan 15:17

Ode to Internet

by Andy Baio
a modern orchestral arrangement of the 56k dialup modem handshake, paired with unrelated '90s film footage #
23 Jan 15:03

I’m Edgar Allan Poe’s Landlord, and He Will Not Be Getting His...

by Jason Kottke
I’m Edgar Allan Poe’s Landlord, and He Will Not Be Getting His Security Deposit Back. “Within the past three months alone, the violations of your lease and our community standards have included: Prying up the floorboards in your unit.”

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23 Jan 14:46

Tiny Flying Rainbows

by Jason Kottke

a hummingbird hovers in front of the sun, it's wings lit up like rainbows

a hummingbird hovers in front of the sun, it's wings lit up like rainbows

It’s not like we need another reason why hummingbirds are so cool, but if you photograph them backlit by the sun, their wings turn into tiny rainbows. These great photos are by Christian Spencer, who used them in his book Birds: Poetry in the Sky. (via present & correct)

Tags: birds · Christian Spencer · photography

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17 Jan 11:20

Photo series from In Focus: Lava Flows Into an Icelandic Town. There...

by Jason Kottke
Photo series from In Focus: Lava Flows Into an Icelandic Town. There are some real “the fires of Mt. Doom” vibes in that first photo.

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16 Jan 15:25

Rolling Stone picks The 150 Greatest Science Fiction Movies of All Time....

by Jason Kottke
Rolling Stone picks The 150 Greatest Science Fiction Movies of All Time. So much to argue with re: the rankings (like why Jurassic Park is rated so low), but also so much to put on the watchlist.

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16 Jan 11:45

Who hosts the fediverse?

by Andy Baio
over half of all Mastodon users are on an instance hosted by Hetzner #
15 Jan 13:41

Aren’t Online Pop-Ups Bad Enough?

by Not Always Right
Merijn

"Why can't my newspaper ad be a popup book?" lmao

Read Aren’t Online Pop-Ups Bad Enough?

Client: “What if we add some more pop?”

Read Aren’t Online Pop-Ups Bad Enough?

12 Jan 14:05

So long, hexagon: Twitter removes NFT profile picture support

Merijn

lmaoooo

Just about two years after launching a feature in which NFT owners could show off their NFTs with special, hexagonal profile pictures, Twitter has apparently removed support for adding NFT avatars.

It's unclear if the move is spurred by the massively waning interest in NFTs, or if it's part of Twitter's broad slashing of functionality in the wake of Elon Musk's disastrous takeover and cost-cutting attempts.

Those who already had the hexagonal profile pictures now seem to have had them restored to their usual circular shape, and there's no longer any mention of the feature in Twitter's support documentation, and new NFT profile photos can't be uploaded. People can, of course, still right-click and save the images and upload them that way.

10 Jan 12:05

Portal demake for the Nintendo 64, now out of beta

by Andy Baio
the first 13 test chambers are playable with source code and ROM patcher available #
10 Jan 12:00

Tom Scott Stops Making Weekly Videos After 10 Years

by Jason Kottke

After posting a video (almost always an elaborate, well-produced and well-researched one) to his YouTube channel every week for ten years, Tom Scott is stepping back for a break.

I’ve been throwing stuff at the internet since 1999. And for many, many years, that stuff went almost nowhere. I had occasional bits of success, but could never make any of them last long-term. I remember thinking, so many times during all those years… will any of this stuff I’m making ever work?

Well, this did.

I didn’t know that, back when I was filming the first videos for the series that was then called Things You Might Not Know, I just held out my phone at arm’s length and talked into it for 90 seconds with almost no research! I really don’t like those videos now. But the first of them was published exactly ten years before this one. To the minute. 4pm, January 1st, 2014.

For the first month of that format, I was publishing a video almost every day, and then I settled down: one video a week. Mostly on location, near windswept infrastructure, although there’s computer science and linguistics in there too, and occasional green-screen animated videos. I experimented with other formats on other days, but the rule I set myself was: Monday, 4pm, something interesting.

Incredible. Scott has one of the few Weird Internet Careers that I am truly envious of — it just looks like so much fun getting to do all of that stuff and then telling people all about it.

Congratulations, Tom Scott — I hereby induct you into the Internet Hall of Fame! 👏 👏 👏 👏

P.S. Was the long explanatory walk-n-talk an homage to James Burke’s famous “perfectly timed clip” from Connections? Honest to god, I thought Scott was going to stop at the end of the video, turn, and watch a rocket take off. (via waxy)

Tags: James Burke · Tom Scott · video

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10 Jan 11:33

Sea of Thieves could set sail for PlayStation and Nintendo Switch

Sea of Thieves could set sail for uncharted waters soon...
09 Jan 12:13

From The Smallest to the Largest Thing in The Universe

by Jason Kottke
Merijn

I didn't expect it, but I got goosebumps all over again from this...

I’ve posted more than a few size comparison videos here over the years — Powers of Ten is the obvious one — but this one from Kurzgesagt is one of the best, showing how big everything in the universe is compared to humans, who seemingly find themselves smack in the middle. This video does an excellent job illustrating the similarity of structures and interdependency across different scales — how blood vessels are like city streets for instance or how very tiny proteins can affect the entire Earth.

Tags: Kurzgesagt · science · video

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09 Jan 12:05

Making a Nintendo PlayStation

by Andy Baio
the jankiest homebrew gore I've ever seen, courtesy of a twisted genius with an angle grinder, drill, and a whole lot of hot glue #