NotAwfulTech

Just ran across this and figured I’d link to people, looks interesting

“Not awful” is maybe a bit suspect, but at least they’re entertaining :)

I forgot to post it here earlier but it's revision weekend!

That ain't clickbait, Xe Iaso's personally-made anti-scraping measure (originally made to deal with Amazon overloading their git server) has ended up being used by the literal United Nations.

I recommend reading the full blogpost, its a wild ride.

This video was recommended to me and I found it quite sweet. Ben is a non-verbal quadriplegic who requires 24 hours care. His brother and caretaker created a custom software for him that can be controlled with two buttons. It has quite a lot of features by now, there is a keyboard with text-to-speech, movies and even some simple video games.

in the spirit of this post, but from the other side

I have a shitdroid that I can't root because the vendor sucks, but google can go fuck themselves too. combined with that I haven't androided much for about a decade and know nothing about the current ecosystem.. I'm looking for good alternatives to a few things. free/foss preferred but I'm pragmatic over picky - if there's a good paid option I'm willing to consider it

immediate known requirements include contact sync, calendar (more business than personal but either works if it's good). maybe also other things I should know about?

judicuous preference to things that support open protocols and self-hosting (i.e. anything that has to use their service to operate - no go)

tell me about good apps! I know about syncthing and photosync

For anyone not in the know, EasyRPG is a free and open-source reimplementation of the RPG Maker 2000/2003 engine. Its a pretty cool little community project, I recommend checking it out.

Fun fact: somebody managed to pull off deferred rendering on the Nintendo 64. And its let them show off impressively high-res textures at pretty solid framerates.

I didn't think this is techtakesworthy, nor is it a sneer, more a airing of perspective, as wanky as that sounds

The gist: Software, or generally computation, can be categorised as a type of building material rather than a type of product in itself.

This framing opens up the view that design within the software industry begins with an assumption that software was the best means for the supposed purpose.

Foundationally, design is the deliberation over the best means to satisfy a given purpose. In reality most design projects begin with limitations to the means available.

Regardless, the knowledge that software is one of many possible means should not be ignored.

To accept "software is eating the world" as a positive movement is to skip the most important choice of any design process. The means that best satisfies the given purpose at that point in time.

The same ignorance of that choice led to plastic eating the world as well.

The means for satisfying a purpose are not limited to building materials. It can be any effort that influences a situation rather than building a thing, physical or virtual.

The goal is to have as open a design process as possible to allow for the most appropriate means to be discovered.

Also audio available here: https://pnc.st/s/faster-and-worse/63b3904b/software-as-material

Just a guy making desktop software that solves a problem. Its 2025 and what used to be normal, selling software without subscription that you run locally on your computer, is now a unique feature.

Another banger video from f4mi, showcasing some pretty creative ways to sabotage slop summarisers/scrapers.

Sidenote: I was right - anti-scraping measures would make use of feeding false info to scrapers.

current difficulties

1. Day 21 - Keypad Conundrum: 01h01m23s
2. Day 17 - Chronospatial Computer: 44m39s
3. Day 15 - Warehouse Woes: 30m00s
4. Day 12 - Garden Groups: 17m42s
5. Day 20 - Race Condition: 15m58s
6. Day 14 - Restroom Redoubt: 15m48s
7. Day 09 - Disk Fragmenter: 14m05s
8. Day 16 - Reindeer Maze: 13m47s
9. Day 22 - Monkey Market: 12m15s
10. Day 13 - Claw Contraption: 11m04s
11. Day 06 - Guard Gallivant: 08m53s
12. Day 08 - Resonant Collinearity: 07m12s
13. Day 11 - Plutonian Pebbles: 06m24s
14. Day 18 - RAM Run: 05m55s
15. Day 04 - Ceres Search: 05m41s
16. Day 23 - LAN Party: 05m07s
17. Day 02 - Red Nosed Reports: 04m42s
18. Day 10 - Hoof It: 04m14s
19. Day 07 - Bridge Repair: 03m47s
20. Day 05 - Print Queue: 03m43s
21. Day 03 - Mull It Over: 03m22s
22. Day 19 - Linen Layout: 03m16s
23. Day 01 - Historian Hysteria: 02m31s

Problem difficulty so far (up to day 16)

1. Day 15 - Warehouse Woes: 30m00s
2. Day 12 - Garden Groups: 17m42s
3. Day 14 - Restroom Redoubt: 15m48s
4. Day 09 - Disk Fragmenter: 14m05s
5. Day 16 - Reindeer Maze: 13m47s
6. Day 13 - Claw Contraption: 11m04s
7. Day 06 - Guard Gallivant: 08m53s
8. Day 08 - Resonant Collinearity: 07m12s
9. Day 11 - Plutonian Pebbles: 06m24s
10. Day 04 - Ceres Search: 05m41s
11. Day 02 - Red Nosed Reports: 04m42s
12. Day 10 - Hoof It: 04m14s
13. Day 07 - Bridge Repair: 03m47s
14. Day 05 - Print Queue: 03m43s
15. Day 03 - Mull It Over: 03m22s
16. Day 01 - Historian Hysteria: 02m31s

The previous thread has fallen off the front page, feel free to use this for discussions on current problems

Rules: no spoilers, use the handy dandy spoiler preset to mark discussions as spoilers

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20241206205437/https://www.404media.co/brian-thompson-social-media-reactions-reddit-facebook-twitter/

bonus warm fuzzies: https://www.404media.co/multiple-major-health-insurance-companies-take-down-leadership-pages-following-murder-of-united-healthcare-ceo/

copy pasting the rules from last year's thread:

Rules: no spoilers.

The other rules are made up aswe go along.

Share code by link to a forge, home page, pastebin (Eric Wastl has one here) or code section in a comment.

the precision and clarity are astounding

by the time the hilbert curves got there my mouth was hanging open, and it still gets better

Looks like a local boy did good.

I linked the /r/nashville post since it has a good description of the website. Users can see a history of rent prices for a given property and its neighbors, which gives some leverage in negotiations. For more context, local rent prices are down 6% from highs.

I'm curious to see if it takes off, and how robust it is against adversarial tactics like bogus reports and nuisance lawsuits.

EDIT: Fixed "Blocked" issue by linking to archive

EDIT2: Also linked to the correct archive page