Disconnect the World
Lots of interesting content regarding the fallout from tariffs this issue, the death of some infamous legacy technology, and the impact of generative AI on open source projects. In this increasingly divided world I’d love to hear from you on how you keep you’re head above water but out of the sand.
xx Chinch
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When the World Connected on Skype
restofworld.orgMy Wife and I had to migrate our parents from Skype recently, but I am still not sure what i will use on the occasions I need to call an overseas phone number. As this article says, for a period of time, "Skyping" was the term people used to call each other online. It was the defacto solution for remote podcasters. It was a European success story. And then it succumbed to acquisition disorder.
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The Math of Tariffs
stonemaiergames.comWhile relatively small, so easy to forget, the US boardgames industry seems particularly hit by the current US trade tariffs debacle. Some companies have announced their pausing production, some have gone out of business already, while others, like the venerable Jamie Stegmaier has put out a succession of insightful posts on the impact and is planning to sue the president. Yup, you read that right.
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How to Protect Yourself From Phone Searches at the US Border
wired.comMy Wife is going to the US soon, and I cancelled a planned trip, unsure if I wanted to go through the potential hassle at the border. The fact an article with this title even exists is a rather damning statement of the current situation.
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Longtime Writing Community NaNoWriMo Shuts Down After AI Drama
gizmodo.comI wrote my first novel during a NaNoWriMo. At the writing group I co-organise in Berlin, it was just gaining traction in Germany and we used to have focussed writing sprints in November. Then came a rapid succession of internal and external problems and suddenly in a whimper, it shut down.
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“White Light/White Heat” by the Velvet Underground
podcasts.apple.comI make no apology for recommend this excellent podcast over and again. Honestly I always found the actual output of The Velvet Underground a little underwhelming, but the band members individual stories and how they came to the band is fascinating.
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Bending Spoons acquires Komoot
linkedin.comBending spoons must be following me. The Italian technology company has acquired a succession of not-so-successful companies I am/once was a fan of, now adding Komoot to Evernote and Meetup. From reading this LinkedIn post, it doesn’t seem like the original founders were exactly pleasant to work for, but let’s hope they manage to turn the great app for planning and managing outdoor adventures into something financially successful without ruining it. Like Evernote and Meetup…
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9 generations of video game console media: from Magnavox PCBs to modern Blu-rays
xda-developers.comOh squee, retro nerd fun!
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FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
thelibre.newsIf it wasn’t bad enough that LLM scraping was killing creativity and jobs and stealing content, it turns out that process of stealing content costs the provider A LOT.
