Now that's how you properly comment numeric code with magic constants - scare the living bejeezus out of anyone even thinking about rewriting it by using FACTS YOU HAVEN'T EVEN CONSIDERED.

Maximilian Tarpini@maxtarpini.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Never ever use hashes you find around .. and for this matter .. don't roll your own hash functions either .. refer to your quality dealer eventually :) or to SplitMix64-based hashes. Here with some commenting about.

Ever wondered what a test card is for? TV signals are encoded in the YUV or YCbCr color spaces. A vectorscope is just the CbCr or UV part of the signal in 2D. Running a SMTPE test card through the scope gives you a zigzag pattern where it visits the center of each primary box in a specific order.

"Some harm reduction advocates are annoying" isn't a serious policy analysis or prescription. Everyone wants to get homeless people off the streets. Harm reduction advocates want to get them into shelters and treatment, which works. Their opponents want incarceration, which doesn't.

Really interesting story here. You know how the hyperscaler cowboys are powering their data centers with gas turbines? It turns out the demands of AI are not very friendly to those turbines. They're supposed to last 5+ years & instead they're wearing out in under 12 months!

Harriet Weber@harri.bsky.social · last wk.

Here's the deal with the pre-review study Tesla funded on turbine carnage. This is my first piece on the Data Centers Breaking Things beat. TLDR; AI training is wearing out, even breaking, a critical source of energy for AI training www.investors.com/news/turbine...

The guy who taught me A* on how to improve your A* implementations. Also, respect for tutorials that take a decade to write.

Red Blob Games@redblobgames.com · last wk.

I've been trying to write this page since … 2015! Each time I try, get frustrated, quit, start over. But this time I think I might have gotten the page to a good state … www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/...

A Scottish audio company, famous for their turntables, once invented a CPU architecture.

 Their internal software kind of sucked. Somehow along the way, the company became convinced that the problem was that all Von Neumann-style computers were WRONG.

Been really enjoying Pig & Dan's downtempo album "Destination Unknown III", a couple of cracking tracks on there. www.youtube.com/watch?v=asQ3...

Pig&Dan - The Weight of Expectations

YouTube video by John Digweed

youtube.com

I love this movie, it's a healing nerd-movie without requiring cowboy wisdom.

Jimmy Detroit@jimmydetroit.bsky.social · last mo.

The Way, Way Back is a good one. Coming age story, Liam James is Duncan, a shy 14-year-old kid Steve Carell is the heal, Duncan's manipulative, emotionally abusive would-be stepfather. Also has: Toni Collette Sam Rockwell Maya Rudolph Amanda Peet Allison Janney It's a great movie - pretty real

28 yo son: There's this song I heard that is SO good. It's from your time but I'm not sure you've heard it before. He then played Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads.

Narnia's Deep Magic Lion Quote

Alt: Narnia's Deep Magic Lion Quote "Do not recite the Deep Magic to me, witch. I was there when it was written"

static.klipy.com

Replaced a single cat5e cable with a cat6e and got a 4x bandwidth increase to that port. Lesson learned, looks like I'm going shopping and replace me some patch cables and bin the old ones.

So Brian McClendon is selling Niantic Spatial data collected from Pokemon Go and Ingress players, and are selling it to military contractor Vanator for GPS free navigation. And people wondered why there are ethics sections in their Software Engineering degrees. It didn't take.

Schera Wyss 💀 SLUG WORLD 2026@scherawyss.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This might be one of the most insane scandals in game history When Pokemon Go players scan PokeStops, theyve been unknowingly building a detailed visual model of the world which is being sold to a military contractor to build a no-GPS positioning for the new generation of unmanned killing machines

Incredible! Scientists receive a rare standing ovation after announcing that a new treatment can double the survival time for pancreatic cancer, the deadliest cancer which was once considered “undruggable.” When we fund and support science, we can achieve anything! (Video: Dr. Wish Dhillon)

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

Chimney Stack (2025) by British artist, illustrator, and art educator Rob Pointon (born in 1982). Oil on board 121 x 101 cm #art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

if you have a qa person or buddy in your world who can write great bugs, crisply described, with repro steps, useful context, & no useless speculation, cherish them. they are blessed valuable cherubs who deserve to be wrapped in fluff & showered with rewards. i often stew on how rare this skill is.

For Christmas you ask for a sickle, s.o. finds you a hybrid bill hook of sorts on Amazon. It's all good, the weeds still don't stand a chance.

Every explanation at school where they dissect a human brain, they skip telling you that this is not how a brain looks - that's a fixed sample, drained of blood, bathed in formaldehyde turning it from soft red jelly into brown modelling clay, and slightly reducing the size in the process. Lies!

Finally, after ~10 years of asking, we have fiber to the home and a reason to go beyond 1000BASE-T, at least at the router.

Amazing. Been a proud member of the Cloud Appreciation Society since 2015 for things like this. And also correct identification of altocumulus asperitas.

Christopher Webb@cwebbonline.com · 3mo ago

Wow 🤩 The Weather Channel posted this.

This is the ideal user interface. You may not like it, but this is what peak UX looks like.

Just got up and emotional in front of the class talking about crunch. I have crunched myself into mental illness before and anything I can do to warn people of the long term effects early, the better. But it's hard to talk about.

How do you kill a Supercomputer?

 (Accidentally) using radioactive solder is a good way.

 IBM’s Blue Gene/L frequently crashed when running simulations at LLNL.

 Turned out that alpha particles from the lead solder in the board carrier were slamming the L1 cache with bit flips.

GossipGoblin has been using AI to build visuals for his cyberpunk stories for a while. Now he's graduated from reels to a short film. Unapologetic slop for slop's sake. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rzl...

THE PATCHWRIGHT | Cyberpunk Short Film

YouTube video by Gossip Goblin

youtube.com

INTRODUCTION TO SPHERICAL HARMONICS FOR GRAPHICS PROGRAMMERS finally done. gpfault.net/posts/sph.html

NASA recently released a breathtaking image of Earth, as seen from Space.

Day Counter xkcd.com/3228/

Rebel MC is still recording under the name Congo Natty and has been happily married for many years to Page 3 stunna Maria Whittaker