Previous iterations:
Serious Reads
The Superyacht, the Billionaire, and a Wildly Improbable Disaster at Sea
Note: Wired has a limited amount of free articles for non-subscribers. If you have any issues with the above link, use a link like Remove Paywall.What has emerged through the various investigations, and through press accounts, is a critical flaw in the Bayesian’s design. The single-mast configuration that gave the yacht her elegant lines—unique among the boat designer’s sought-after series of similar vessels—also dangerously affected her center of gravity. The MAIB analysis, conducted by the Wolfson Unit at Southampton, found that with the keel raised and no sails set, the yacht became vulnerable to capsizing in winds exceeding 60 knots—a threshold crossed in seconds when the downburst struck. The other yachts in the same series as the Bayesian had two masts, not one. This problem might have been noticed earlier except for one other factor: Elite luxury yachts don’t have to comply with the same robust safety rules as commercial ones. The International Safety Management Code is voluntary for boats registered for private use.I may have skipped some of the sections about corporate bag-slinging. The yacht disaster is interesting though.
The Last Days Of Social Media
Social media’s current logic is designed to reduce friction, to give users infinite content for instant gratification, or at the very least, the anticipation of such. The antidote to this compulsive, numbing overload will be found in deliberative friction, design patterns that introduce pause and reflection into digital interaction, or platforms and algorithms that create space for intention.It hasn't gone unnoticed that I could consume the ever-swelling number of articles on this subject for far too long. And the perceived benefit of reading and recirculating them remains questionable.
This article does go into some interesting depth as to a possible new future of decentralised web development. And it also reminded me to check back up on the Solid project led by a certain Tim Berners-Lee.
The gentrification of Mexican wrestling
Seven years ago, the Mexican Wrestling Council (CMLL) managed to have its sport declared an intangible cultural heritage of Mexico City, which turned it into a tourist attraction. Ernesto Ocampo, editor-in-chief of the specialized portal Superluchas, explains that lucha libre emerged as entertainment for the lower classes in neighborhoods where there were no cinemas or theaters, but that today it is recognized as a national symbol “on a par with mariachi or tequila.”Lucha Libre is enormously encoded in Mexican culture, in a way that isn't reflected in its presentation to international audiences. The incorporation of the (Lucha Libre) AAA brand into (USA) WWE this year has already resulted in a watering-down and ironing-out of the sport's core. This is also seen somewhat in the collaboration between (Lucha Libre) CMLL and (USA) AEW.
WWE and AEW stars will make appearances in Lucha Libre events[1], and the style of wrestling will shape itself to show off the skill of the visiting star. CMLL and AAA stars will also attend USA-based events, but their finesse is muted.
The larger entity inevitably consumes the smaller one, forcing it to fit within its mould. Many such cases.
Never steal a hacker’s girlfriend’s phone: How an expert exposed a global network of thieves
But there are cities in China where that IMEI can be changed, says Vigo. “It’s the hardest part, when it arrives in China and they change certain components and the IMEI. It requires a certain level of sophistication: opening the phone, changing the chip... you have to know what you’re doing because Apple detects if there are non-original components.” The goal is to be able to resell the stolen phone with a different IMEI so that it can’t be traced.Interesting evidence here to show that the security on modern phones is rather impressive, when criminals often go to these lengths.
It also exposes, once again, that the end user remains the most vulnerable area of an attack surface.
'You just can't recreate that glow': The people who hunt old TVs
Byron McDanold is one of the moderators for a Facebook group called The CRT Collective, which at the time of writing has more than 240,000 members. McDanold says that CRT technology has appealing quirks that are impossible to replicate with other technology. "You push the button on the front and it makes that zap, pop noise as it turns on," he says. He argues that many CRT hunters are on an epic quest to recreate specific memories or feelings from their childhoods – they end up obsessing over picture quality in their pursuit of the past.
If you love it, download it
I have written a few short guides and notes about ways you can help contribute to media preservation by doing it your damn self. Most of the guides lean very technical, but I try to give appropriate explanations and links to the tools and documentation where I can.Despite reassurances from other sites that I have almost certainly seen this somewhere before, I had not in fact seen this somewhere before. Neat little guide for preserving various forms of media.
Line scan camera image processing
Line scan cameras are very suitable for capturing trains, since I can capture the full length of the train with minimal perspective distortion. This is super nice for train nerds who want to make models of the trains. Also, as you keep the camera running, you can get incredibly high resolution photos that span over 100,000 pixels wide.A fascinating look at how line scan cameras operate and how they're utilised. Some of the technical aspects did go over my head though.
Deep in Mordor where the shadows lie: Dystopian tales of that time when I sold out to Google
I will be honest and say that most of my fellow programmers ate that shit up, we had all been gold-star kids and here was the hottest company in the world constantly massaging our egos, telling us we were better than everyone for being geniuses. I would have loved to feel the same, I tried to feel the same, but I came from poverty and I could not stop noticing the precariat: temps, part-timers, and contractors, an entire layer of the company who did the brunt of work without being Googlers. No toy budget for kitchen staff.I've visited Big Tech main headquarters a few times. In the shadow of the Olympic-sized swimming pool, the cleaning staff never spoke.
It's the little things that bugged me, how people would eat the free candy or have a bowl of cereal and just leave trash and dirty dishes everywhere for the cleaning ladies (contractors) to deal with; more than that the way nobody looked at them or said “thank you”. We Brazilians have a social class for that, a social code underlying that studied invisibility, I knew what this was: these were maids. Servants. The women in my family, my friends at school. The “campus” was pretty open and my then-wife visited it a few times; it creeped the Fuck out of her, the distinction between people and non-people.
Otherwise this article offers another interesting view on life within Big Tech, with a perspective of someone from the "Global South". The perk-slinging days of the 2010s must have stung even harder with the author's background.
Light Reads
Every Pikmin Type Ranked by How Much I Had to Pay an Exterminator to Get Them Out of My Kitchen
I have never played a Pikmin game, but enjoy the thought of oppressing these silly little dudes.Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape
Over the past year I have collected quite a few of these PY32 based vapes, all of them from different models of vape from the same manufacturer. It’s not my place to do free advertising for big tobacco, so I won’t mention the brand I got it from, but if anyone who worked on designing them reads this, thanks for labeling the debug pins!Here is the direct link to the vape-hosted site. Took about 20 seconds to load for me. Pretty neat!
Wikipedia: Unusual Articles
I think it'd be cheating if I posted one of these articles on every single What I'm Reading post. So here you go.David Walker's Paper Clip Collection
It's exactly what you think it is.-
Or Lucha Libre-styled events, and there is a significant difference.↩