malvasian links

David Carlton's link blog; my main blog is at Malvasia Bianca. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17626903-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[davidcarlton]

Blend modes in SwiftUI

Explore every SwiftUI blend mode through focused visuals and practical use cases, and learn how to control which views participate in each operation.

Neat explanation (with examples) of various algorithms for mixing together two images to produce a third.

[davidcarlton]

There's a particular kind of hollowness that visits me when someone asks what I've been learning lately. I pause. I know I've been learning something. I listen to podcasts constantly. Good ones, long conversations between people smarter than me about things that matter. I listen on walks and commutes and while doing dishes. I pay attention. And yet when I reach for specifics, there's almost nothing to hold. A vague shape. The feeling that something important was said around minute forty. The memory of engagement without anything to show for it.

Phantom Fluency | Terry Godier

Hmm.

[davidcarlton]

Surely there must be a way to set up an iPhone as the perfect dumb phone for children—one with access to only the apps you deem appropriate, no internet browser, but with all-important tracking and navigation abilities—without having to pay another company to make it work? Well, there is. It's been hiding in the iOS Accessibility menu the whole time. And, inexplicably, it's a feature Apple barely talks about.

This Buried Apple Feature Turns an iPhone Into the Perfect Kids’ Dumb Phone | WIRED

Huh.

[davidcarlton]

AI companies are racing to build AIs that are smarter than humans in every way. In AI 2027, we predicted that this would result in either extinction or irreversible concentration of power. Plan A is our positive vision for what should happen instead.

AI 2040: Plan A

[davidcarlton]

A Short History of Saving The World

Every generation thinks it’s living through the end of the world. A Short History of Saving the World is a monthly history podcast hosted by political economist Angus Hervey, and historian Ada Palmer, that explores world history through a new lens - zooming out to uncover the hidden patterns inside humanity’s biggest crises and turning points. From ancient civilisations to modern global events, each episode revisits the moments where everything could have collapsed … but didn’t. Part conversation, part historical detective work, the series reveals history not as a timeline of collapse, but as an ongoing story of human ingenuity, adaptation, and resilience. It’s a history podcast about how the world has been saved - again and again - and what that might mean for the future we’re building now.

This is a good podcast.  (And I continue to be a fan of basically everything Ada Palmer does.)

[davidcarlton]

How Kent Beck shapes the tech industry

Kent Beck reflects on Agile, TDD, and why building trust—not just generating code—will define the future of software engineering in the AI era.

Good interview.

[davidcarlton]

Sam Ruby’s been writing a lot of interesting posts about using AI to write a Rails transpiler, this post links to several of them.

[davidcarlton]

We Are Living in Pinocchio’s World

I have always wanted to own a Montblanc Writers Edition dedicated to Carlo Collodi, the Italian author whose real name was Carlo Lorenzini. He took his pen name from the Tuscan village where his mo…

When I read Pinocchio a few years back I wasn't too impressed by it but this post makes me think I was reading it wrong.

[davidcarlton]

The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen once told me that games can have both a goal and a purpose. The goal of a game is a win; the purpose of a game is to have fun. In toxic games, the goals overwhelm the purpose. You can win a game by mastering its rules, but also feel miserable by failing to see that there is a larger game of well-being whose rules you have broken in order to feel like a winner. I’ve come to believe that something similar has happened in pop culture. Entertainment and tech companies have gotten smarter about putting consumers into bastardized flow states that leaves people feeling drained and sad rather than challenged and enlarged as selves. Modern leisure recapitulates the goal of flow while evacuating the purpose, which Csikszentmihalyi summarized as “to make life more rich, intense, and meaningful.” Algorithmic flow is flow without achievement, flow without challenge, flow without even volition. What Wu calls “passive flow” and Bloom calls “shitty flow” deserves a harsher and more specific label. To be lost in the lazy river of algorithmic media is to be lost the current of life without a mind. Zombie flow.

How ‘Zombie Flow’ Took Over Culture - Derek Thompson

[davidcarlton]

I wish I’d had an excuse to work with Erlang at some point in my life.

[davidcarlton]

Interesting report from Knuth about somebody using Claude to solve one of his problems.

[davidcarlton]

Going into the Nuts and Bolts of Zhan Zhuang

After many years of people asking me to, some great people are helping me put together a book of these essays.

The advice here looks good. (And I need to get better at having my upper body float.)

[davidcarlton]

A business that occupies a space of 4,000 square feet or less in a commercial zoning district would no longer be required to obtain a planning permit, Hagan said. Instead, the business owner could apply directly for a building permit as long as they meet certain land use and operational standards, like those relating to deliveries, waste disposal and noise standards. “That would save anywhere from six months or more of time as well as $10,000 or more in permanent fees or other carrying costs on the unoccupied leased space,” Hagan said. The city also plans to remove “change of use” permit requirements, meaning that business owners do not need to apply for a permit when changing a rented commercial space from one permitted use to another permitted use. Hagan described the current process as confusing and burdensome for applicants.

Mountain View streamlines zoning rules to attract small businesses - Mountain View Voice

Yay.

[davidcarlton]

runjak.codes: An adversarial coding test

Sometimes the job interview just wants to gain code exec on your machine.

Oof.

[davidcarlton]

ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering

A look at how I used shape vectors to achieve sharp, high-quality ASCII rendering.

Neat renderer, neat explanation.

[davidcarlton]

Renaissance historian and sci-fi author Ada Palmer joins Nadine Smith to break down what we’ve gotten wrong about the Renaissance, and what it means for the fights we’re in now. They unpack how the idea of the Renaissance as a golden age was invented to serve political agendas, why liberal arts education was a survival strategy, not a luxury, and how real progress requires trusting future generations to challenge us, not copy us.

Rethinking the Renaissance: Ada Palmer on myths, power, and the future we’re fighting for - WMNF 88.5 FM

I really like interviews with Ada Palmer: aside from just being interesting, she does a great job of using her knowledge as a historian to fight against the excesses of doomerism.

[davidcarlton]

And then I discovered something even more alarming - a tiny built-in microphone that isn’t clearly mentioned in the official documentation. It’s a miniature SMD component, measuring just 2 x 1 mm, yet capable of recording surprisingly high-quality audio. What’s even more concerning is that all the necessary recording tools are already installed on the device! By simply connecting via SSH (remember, the device initially used default passwords!), I was able to start recording audio using the amixer and arecord tools. Once recorded, the audio file could be easily copied to another computer. With a little extra effort, it would even be possible to stream the audio over a network, allowing an attacker to eavesdrop in real time.

How I discovered a hidden microphone on a Chinese NanoKVM