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I write this review in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Milton's devastation of parts of Florida. Milton followed Helene, just a week or so earlier. Both hurricanes cut a swathe through parts of North America, leaving death and destruction in their paths. John Vaillant's recent book Fire Weather is subtitled a "true story from a hotter world" and the story of hurricanes Milton and Helene

I pay close attention to the scalability of my actions. This often leads to situations where it seems like I’m acting against my best interests, but I want to make choices my future self will thank me for.Instead of allowing myself a slow morning after a restless night, I go for a run.Instead of relaxing on the couch, I'm teaching myself how to code.Instead of avoiding a difficult conversation, I …

The Geezers and friends enjoy a trip to Eastbourne

Design for Real Life is now available, for free, in its entirety, at dfrlbook.com. If you like what you read and want a personal copy, or just to support Sara and me, print-on-demand and ePub versions are also available from a number of sources. There are some countries where the book is not yet available, which we hope will be fixed soon. We’ll update the “Buy the book” page as …

Wikipedia has created a task force to identity instances of poor quality, unsourced content, being generated by AI chatbots. The online encyclopaedia will still allow AI apps to compose articles, provided they do so in accordance with their policies: The purpose of this project is not to restrict or ban the use of AI in articles, but to verify that its output is acceptable and constructive, and to fix or …

What to make of Chemistry Set? This is the second tabletop design by Zach Barth — not counting his many digital cribbages and solitaires — and after such a strong inaugural outing with The Lucky Seven and its depot expansion, its blandness is all the more baffling. It would be unfair to compare this to Barth’s video games SpaceChem or MOLEK-SYNTEZ; apart from their shared affection for molecular arrangements, they’re …

Modrons have always been silly, but at least lower-ranking ones had lower challenge ratings. Planescape throws even that shred of logic out the window. The post Modron Hierarch Tactics appeared first on The Monsters Know What They’re Doing.

You think you're so great because you have boats! A biopic of the French emperor (Joaquin Phoenix), focusing on his battles at war and his relationship with his wife Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby). This is somehow too long (I watched the 3½ hour director’s cut) and not broad enough in its scope. A whole load of shit went down in Napoleon’s life and here we have a Wikipedia summary of some …

SWEYET(etc.) (DEMO!) by SHMIAM, SWEYET, SSSSSSS! A demo of a game focused on exploring dreamscapes with absurd yet deeply funny premises, all linked by the peculiar characters you encounter. It also features a fun blinking-based mechanic that alters the world around you, optionally using your webcam. A promising taste of things to come. Download on itch.io The post SWEYET appeared first on Weird Fucking Games.

Oddleaf debuts with an infectious and impressive album.

DeskPad creates a virtual display that is mirrored within its application window so that you can create a dedicated, easily shareable workspace.

It's difficult to imagine a world full of people who have yet to form an opinion about Donald Trump. Few public figures have so rampantly flaunted themselves as the Queens, N.Y.-born 45th president. In The Apprentice, director Ali Abbasi tries to explain how Trump became what the filmmaker has called an icon of American culture. Abbasi returns to the 1970s and 80s, focusing on what the movie regards as Trump's …

Deno 2.0 launched with an announcement video that opens like an episode of Silicon Valley. I have to admit I do enjoy a bit of cringe acting. Following the intro is an Apple-esque keynote that I skipped through, like an Apple keynote. Bun 1.0 did it better and kept it shorter.I’ve criticised Deno extensively this year. The packaging mess and packaging “solution” is objective worse than NPM and Node. Maybe …

Summer 2024 will live long in the memory after my visit to an extraordinary exhibition: George Biles: King of Signwriters. It was mounted in Bridport, Dorset, across three venues—The British Legion Hall, Bridport Arts Centre, and the Bridport Museum—with material drawn from numerous sources.In addition to signs from Palmers Brewery, there were theatrical backdrops from the local dramatic society, and a sampling of the vast collection of drawings, photographs, press …

(One of my summaries of the one-day Pycon NL conference in Utrecht, NL). Full title: Events in fintech: from state machines to event-sourced systems. He works at kiwi.com, a payment processor. They recently refactored their systems to be more event-based. Previously, they used state machines. A payment/customer/whatever can be in several well-defined states. Between states (but not necessarily between all states) there are transitions. Advantages of state machines: they're simple. …