Posts in "Notes"

Oh, man, now I want to find an old knitting machine and start hacking on it. This is just marvelous! 🧶

Retreat is an independent electronic machine knitting practice based in Berlin. All items are crafted by a real human with the help of a hacked domestic knitting machine from the 90s.

These 40 hats by Anders are stunning! I think I know LeChuck’s hat, Ash’s cap, Samus' helmet, and about two dozen more. How many can you place? 🤠

The history of video game hats - One "hat" per year from the past 40 years.. see if you can guess them all #pixelart

A pixelart poster showing 40 different video game "hats" from various games from the past 40 years.

I’m on my way to see Oppenheimer. 20 meters away, my niece exit from the cinema. She’s just seen Barbie with two of her friends. I’m not aware of her at first. But then I hear her. Loud and clear. Shouting. 

Svampen!

That’s what she calls me. She runs towards me and jumps into my arms. I do my best to catch her and keep her there for a long hug. It feels fucking great. And I savor the moment because I know it won’t be long before she’s way too cool to greet her old uncle like that.

And maybe it’s for the best; I won’t be able to catch her without falling backwards for much longer.

I’m working on a little something that will make building Micro.blog compatible themes a little easier. Instead of having to manually copy required <head> elements into their themes, third-party developers will be able to just include a partial. Curious people can follow this pull request.

Does it make me nervous? Do I feel my territory encroached upon? Not yet, probably because I’ve reached a fairly advanced age. But I will tell you that this subject always makes me think of that most prescient novel, Colossus, by D. F. Jones. In it, the world-spanning computer does become sentient and tells its creator, Forbin, that in time, humanity will come to love and respect it. … Forbin cries, "Never!" But the narrator has the last word, and a single word is all it takes:

"Never?"

So, remember my idea of posting photos snapped by a human and conceptions dreamed up by text-to-image models and letting you all guess whether they’re real or not?

Well, getting it right is probably not going to be that hard, judging by my results so far. 😅

Photo of a cat with its tail missing. It has fallen off and is lying on the ground behind the cat. The photo has some artifacts, and it's pretty obvious that it was dreamed up by a generative AI or heavily manipulated by a human.

We wrote this week’s newsletter from the Norrmans Castle (Häckeberga slott). An out of the ordinary but/and cozy hotel. Worth a visit!

The newsletter issue features the cover of Butts – A Backstory and a couple of reading tips. Check it out if you love books and understand Swedish.

A room and corridor in a hotell. The room is decorated with flowers, lots of color, a photo wall and a couple of comfy looking armchairs. The hallway is murky with red walls and carpet.

404 Media was an instant add to my feed reader. First read: Inside the AI Porn Marketplace Where Everything and Everyone Is for Sale.

404 Media is a journalist-founded digital media company exploring the ways technology is shaping–and is shaped by–our world.

We’re focused on investigative reports, longform features, blogs, and scoops about topics including: hacking, cybersecurity, cybercrime, sex, artificial intelligence, consumer rights, surveillance, privacy, and the democratization of the internet.

Thinking about doing the Micro.blog photo challenge with a twist this time. I post a pic every day, you guess whether it’s snapped by me 🧔‍♀️ or dreamed up by a text-to-image model 🤖.

It might be fun! And, hopefully, at the end of the challenge, we will all be able to spot fakes more easily.

To block OpenAI and ChatGPT from training on your Micro.blog’s data, paste the following into the robots.txt file.

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

The easiest way to do that is by installing my plug-in Custom Robots, tap the Settings button and paste the snippet above in the text area named robots.txt Content.

the coolness of the url is inversely proportional to the coolness of the web project. the best website you'll ever find is gonna be something like libra.v2.progrecali.​edu/oct2023/dept/manifesto.html, but going to etherzone​.ooo or, say, x.​com will be the worst experience of your life

It’s amazing how creative two-year-olds Balder and Haakon are when it comes to coming up with insults! I wish I had their imagination. 🥰

I’ll fire you up! I’ll poop on you and sit on you!

From the documentary Store små mennesker.

Still from a documentary. Two kids at foot screaming insults and chasing a slightly older kid on a bike. The caption, in Swedish, says: Jag eldar upp dig! Jag bajsar på dig och sätter mig på dig!

Kräftfiske och poddinspelning, är det en bra kombo? Japp! I senaste avsnittet av Hej (resten av) internet! följer upp @sannalund och jag upp Tiny Awards, pratar mysig UFO-blogg, Barbie-kaninhål och fiskar kräftor, förstås. 🦞 🎙️

We woke up early to go catch some crayfish and were met with this foggy morning. I was in charge of propelling the boat forward while @sannalund captured the magic vibe on video.

It’s not every day that your to-do list is filled with items like “put the secret message in a bottle” and “row out to the island and bury the treasure”. 🏴‍☠️

The cutest, tiniest island on a nice summer day. Perfect for a treasure hunt.

Tänk om det fanns en podd där två vänner delade surftips med varandra till tonerna av ett stilla (?!) sommarregn… Det gör det! Podden heter Hej (resten av) internet! och i det rykande färska avsnittet Sommarvykort #1 bjussar @sannalund och jag på länkar från vår balkong. 🌧️

I helped snap photos today for @sannalund’s upcoming online course. It’s pretty neat how moving furniture around transforms our study into a makeshift studio.

A behind the scenes look of camera, rigged to shoot a view of a desk with a laptop.Photo of a woman working with the laptop behind said desk.

I just put up my Super Game Boy 2 for sale. I love how the translucent blue shell exposes the PCB. As a kid growing up in the 90s, a fair share of my electronics and toys looked like this. Do you remember the clear craze? 👻

A Super Game Boy 2 accessory, original box, and instruction booklet lay on a wooden table. The cartridge is transparent blue, exposing the electronics inside.

Tiny Awards is my kind of award. 🥰 Looking forward to the finalist reveal next week. Voting opens June 22.

Tiny Awards is a small prize awarded by an equally-small selection committee of online makers to the website which we feel best embodies the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.

The award will take the form of an actual, physical trophy and a small cash prize thanks to ZINE, and will almost certainly result in literally no additional accolades or fame or fortune whatsoever.

It was inevitable. I’ve orbited around @neauoire@merveilles.town’s Uxn project for a while, knowing I would fall down the rabbit hole sooner or later. Today, I wrote my first lines of Uxntal, probably not my last. Uxn is an ecosystem (assembler, emulator, etc.) around a little fantasy computer.

Two windows on a macOS desktop. A text editor with assembly source code, mentioning &ldquo;alien art formula&rdquo; in the comments, and generated graphics. The graphics resemble the fractal Sierpiński triangle rendered in light-on-dark green.

Thanks to Veronique and Manu for letting me know about CtrI-ZINE. I plan to catch up on all four issues from the hammock this summer.

[T]hese are the stories and entries of those who love the Web. … We want “what’s best” for us. The Netizens at-large. Be it a digital native, a mobile-first upbringing, oldcore BBS’ers from the last century, or those who will get help with their homework from AI. It (the Web) is BY and FOR us - let’s do our damnedest to have it serve us well!

Love Hultén’s creations always put a smile on my face. Here’s TEGEL, a sound sculpture based on biodata. 🪴

An intricate sculpture, crafted from miniature bricks, that doubles as a synthesizer, exuding an aura of vintage industrial charm. It features an array of buttons and an authentic analog meter. Encased in a glass dome, a tiny tree plant is ingeniously connected to the synthesizer, adding an organic touch to the mechanical marvel.

Apple devices will be getting on-device voice cloning later this year, and I’m pretty excited to give it a whirl, even though it’s only available in English for now. Among the Big Five, I have a hunch that Apple might be the one to offer machine learning features in a way that respects our privacy.

Users can create a Personal Voice by reading along with a randomized set of text prompts to record 15 minutes of audio on iPhone or iPad. … [It] integrates seamlessly with Live Speech so users can speak with their Personal Voice when connecting with loved ones.

I just updated my now page! I’m deep into the new Zelda game, almost done with Aurora, still figuring out large language models, and preparing for a party. What are you up to?

Link stands before a stone ruin amidst a field of golden grass. Trees, their leaves echoing the same autumnal hue, dot the landscape. In the distance, an island appears to be floating in the sky. Link, armed with a shield and an axe, readies for adventure. This is a screenshot from the early stages of Tears of the Kingdom.

The release date of Tears of the Kingdom has never been closer and yet so far away. I’m struggling with the urge to just download the leaked version rather than wait for seven more days for my preloaded copy to unlock. 🫠 🎮

Nintendo Switch with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom preloaded – but not playable.

New sci-fi concept album from The Cotton Modules is out today. 🎵 Of course, it comes with a tappable short story because… Robin Sloan. 🥰

The Deep Space Sloop John Bethel was leaving Earth because culture had stopped.

It was an age of paranoia and boredom.

Politics and entertainment ran in a dumb, dark loop — the regurgitations of banal AIs that were, apparently, good enough.

Album art. Some kind of vessel floating around in space. Probably the deep space sloop John Bethel. It says The Cotton Modules: The Greatest Remaining Hits.

Exclusive: unveiling the elusive sight of my foot after a delightful strut through the enchanting Tiveden! 🌲

I love the woods of Tiveden, which lie just half an hour from our cabin. It’s like entering the world of John Bauer. You expect to see a magical being around every giant stone.

@sod and I walked for hours and relished the April sun. A fabulous Friday. A great start to the weekend.

A couple sitting outdoors, sipping coffee from thermos mugs. Only their arms and legs are visible in the frame. The view over a lake is magnificent.

It’s #FeedReaderFriday again! 🥳 Rachel Simone Weil makes wonderful art like Hello Kitty Land (a Super Mario Bros. ROM-hack) and connectedNES (a Wi-Fi “modem” for the NES). She also curates the FEMICOM Museum. Follow her blog and Mastodon feed (they are RSS too).

Six years ago, I built a WiFi "modem" and live Twitter feed cartridge for the Nintendo NES. With Twitter's relevance on the decline, what other kind of live text feed would you like to see on the NES? Reply here with your ideas—maybe I'll port one of them to ConnectedNES!

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