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One may observe an axis, or a “spectrum”, along which free and open source software licenses can be organized, where one end is “permissive” and the other end is “copyleft”. It is important to acknowledge, however, that though copyleft can be found at the opposite end of an axis with respect to permissive, it is not synonymous with the linguistic antonym of permissive – that is, copyleft licenses are not …

I've made it a rule not to cover compilations, best of's, greatest hits, etc. as I'd rather introduce you to records released as discrete snapshots of a band or musician at a particular point in time. However, I'm making an exception to that rule today. But, as you can imagine, since this is a collection of tracks that are already considered great, it's gonna to be difficult to pick just …

Last fall and early winter I posted a series of four blogposts (here, here, here, and here) about or related to Ralph Hawtrey as I was trying to gather my thoughts about an essay I wanted to write about Hawtrey as a largely forgotten pioneer of macroeconomics who has received the attention of two recent books by Robert Hetzel and Clara Mattei. After working on and off on the essay …

Film Companion piece on most streamed shows released in India, done in partnership with Ormax Recently, the media criticism platform Film Companion partnered with Ormax on a regular feature which listed the five most viewed Hindi TV shows and movies on Indian streaming for the week.[1] The feature notes that “streaming platforms are notorious for their lack of transparency allowing them to quote numbers that are tough to verify”.[2] They …

Instagram algorithms want people like me dead, so I'm leaving Instagram.

I haven’t written anything since Christmas because, as is so often the case in winter, I didn’t have anything useful to say. Now it’s April: the salmon season is open in Yorkshire; the rivers are full of water; and the first salmon have been caught on the Ure, the earliest catches in a decade. That’s quite enough to perk me up to write, even if the content could be a …

Way, way back in time (2014) I bought a 2007 Audi TT (8J). Fun car, SHIT stereo and satnav. It came with the standard (at the time) RNS-E, which I absolutely hated, and DIY replaced very quickly with a (then brand new) CarPlay capable unit from Pioneer. I wrote more about that at the time.Good things don’t last forever, and new cars become old cars. But it was a fun …

In Greek mythology, dreams were often personified as Óneiroi, black-winged demons that enter our sleeping minds like bats to deliver messages from the gods. Last night I dreamt I drank perfume and had a minor role in a detective show in which none of us could remember the name of the president between Johnson and Ford. This week our previous president went on trial for being sleazy, and I envy …

People often ask me for recommendations for front-end development conferences. Picking my Top 3 would be challenging, but I know that beyond tellerrand in Germany is one of them. Location in Düsseldorf Web developers love the beyond tellerrand conference (BTConf), although the event isn't a typical web dev conf. The organizer, Marc Thiele, a lovely and special person, has a strong web dev background and affiliation. That's why many talks …

Singapore City Map Singapore is unlike any other place in Asia. It’s a city with a lot of unusual rules: littering is illegal here, as is chewing gum, spitting, not flushing the toilet, singing in public, and feeding the pigeons. But as a result, it’s an extremely clean and very wealthy city, so well-maintained that it’s often compared to Disneyland. Singapore was featured in the movie “Crazy Rich Asians,” where …

Do you know those autostereograms with the hidden 3D pictures? Images like the Magic Eye pictures from the 1990s that look like noisy repeating patterns until you defocus your eyes just right?ChatGPT can generate them!At least according to ChatGPT.I've seen people try making Magic Eye-style images with other image generating models, but I hadn't thought to try it with ChatGPT until reader Pippin sent me the suggestion and I generated …

Mid April, and the season is balanced with one foot leaping into spring, and the other (booted) foot still planted firmly in winter. I am absolutely loving these lengthening days though, especially since the clocks went forward into BST at the end of March and we have light evenings back again. All these extra hours of daylight are making me really happy and it goes a long way towards balancing …

The long awaited discussion between Graham Hancock and archaeologist Flint Dibble on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast is now available. Here are my thoughts after listening to the whole four and a half hour thing, and after following many more social media threads on this than I wanted to. First, people are interested in the past, they are interested in using evidence to evaluate claims, and they want to hear …

18 April 2024 Projects by IF new home page You used to be able to confidently predict that the future would look more or less like today: many things getting a bit better, some a bit worse, but all of them essentially recognisable and understandable. Progress was a process of incremental improvement, each step building on the last. But we don’t live in that world any more. AI and new …