@jwz@mastodon.social
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jwz

@jwz@mastodon.social

I write screen savers and sell beer. Impresario of DNA Lounge, the world's greatest nightclub. Also wrote your parents' web browser and stuff.

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jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzhT3vYPGns

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

XScreenSaver 6.09 is out now, including iOS and (maybe someday) Android. Please see Previously: "Your personal information is very important to us."

Two and a half new hacks this time, by me: Kallisti, High Voltage, and Headroom now has a suit.

After...
https://jwz.org/b/ykUj

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Great news, everybody! Google has approved the updated XScreenSaver Privacy Policy. I assume that this means that they find it 100% factual and endorse it entirely.

https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/google.html

jwz, (edited ) to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Before they will let me publish a new release of XScreenSaver on the "Play" [sic] store, Google, the most rapacious privacy violator ever, insists that a screensaver have a privacy policy.

This is where you come in!

I'd like this policy to be a series of bullet points: "Unlike Google, XScreenSaver will not [Thing.] An endless, concise catalog of their sins.

I need both your snark AND a link supporting your snark. It's critical for the joke to land. Include both.

GO!!

https://jwz.org/b/ykUc

jwz,
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jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GAaH7gpSA

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

OH: "Ok grandma, let's get you to the bar."

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

To this day I swear he's saying "a lot like birds" instead of "a love like blood".

kissane, to random
@kissane@mas.to avatar

Is there a canonical essay about (the problems with and complexities of) social media aggregation as journalism that I can just link to so I don't have to break down the angles and weirdnesses myself?

There has to be, right?

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@kissane I object to calling those people journalists! Burn it with fire.

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Fun with the Electoral College.

If These 3 Counties Did Not Exist, Trump Would Have Beaten Biden:

Overall, Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump in 2020 (81,283,501 vs 74,223,975). The most of any President in history. [...]

If we remove just 1...
https://jwz.org/b/ykUa

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Slow clap for this shade: "For the record, Bottom of the Hill still appears to be intact." https://sf.streetsblog.org/2024/06/03/eyes-on-the-street-17th-street-quick-build-taking-shape

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

More Teeth Means More Human.

Tooth regeneration drug starts human trials:

The trial [...] will treat 30 males aged 30-64 who are missing at least one molar. The intravenous treatment will be tested for its efficacy on human dentition, after it...
https://jwz.org/b/ykUY

cstross, (edited ) to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Business meetings exist to share information and coordinate activity: this shit enables you to be apparently present in all but actually not engaged with any. If your calendar is triple-booked then your organization is under-resourced and needs more people, not more AI. Or it's holding unnecessary meetings to make management feel better about being surrounded by minions, in which case it needs to fire the executives responsible.
https://mastodon.social/@kjhealy/112553850995965423

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@cstross Back in 1993, I talked to a team at SGI who were building one of the first multi-person video chat apps. Since they were building it, they used it constantly. And the FIRST TWO THINGS THEY DID were: 1) a plugin that played a 5 second loop of you looking like you were still there; and 2) a plugin that would detect lulls in conversation and say "Mmm hmmm" in your voice.

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

Oh, joy, and now something inside Meta is crawling me. This makes me think that tthe overlords are watching YCombinator and crawling everything that gets on the front page. Meta User-Agent: "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@michaelrussell @timbray Yes, I believe "facebookexternalhit" is for link previews of shares on FB. Their AI scraper uses the UA "FacebookBot".

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@timbray "Their bot sucks" is always a strong contender.

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@timbray E.g. any time someone makes a post on FB that has a URL in it followed by whitespace and text -- like "http.../something.html \n\n Coming up..." -- the FB bot will gift me with a 404 of the URL "something.htmlComing". They are terrible at their job.

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@timbray @me @michaelrussell Their API would allow someone to automatically post every link on your site to FB, and that would trigger the link previewer. Why someone would do that is a mystery. Maybe the bot writer is also incompetent? I get so many hits on my site that are clearly from "Baby's First Bot". Like loading URLs with their code's $variable_names non-expanded.

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

.DS_Store.
https://jwz.org/b/ykUV

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

Bulk Song-ID?

I ask this question every five years; hope springs eternal.

Let's say there's someone with 35,000 hours of DJ sets and live performances spanning 23 years and they would like to run a batch-mode Shazam on them to extract the song names. Is that yet an achievable goal?

If you are about to recommend a tool that you have never used, I implore you to refrain.

https://jwz.org/b/ykUT

mjg59, to random
@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer avatar

Hackers Q&A reveals that Cyberdelia was originally supposed to be a McDonalds (meanwhile Iain Softly shows off the original Kate motorcycle jacket and Dade's denim thing)

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@mjg59 How is that even a question?

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@mjg59 Everyone knows that Cyberdelia was turned into a Pottery Barn in 2007!

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Given the Trumpenführer's reported incontinence and burger-heavy diet, I'd hate to be the prison officer tapped to give him an intimate body search. They'd probably end up drawing lots then issuing the loser with rubber gloves, waders, and a gas mask.

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@cstross

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgVwsA772Xw

jwz, to random
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein DOJ finally has the knives out for multinational superpredator Live Nation / Ticketmaster.
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2024/05/30.html

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@cfriedt Ticketmaster does not own StubHub (eBay did briefly) though they are occasionally a Ticketmaster "resale partner". They have acquired quite a few ticketing vendors over the years, though.

Reading about Ticketmaster's involvement in the "resale market" (AKA "scalping") will make your blood boil.

As an analogy: Live Nation owns the mall; every store in the mall; runs the shoplifting ring that robs the mall and sells stolen product back to the stores' vendor... who is also Live Nation.

jwz,
@jwz@mastodon.social avatar

@merc @cfriedt
They do that, but it's not just about customer perception, it can also be an attempt to rip off artists. A typical booking contract will say e.g.: artist gets $A + B% after $C.

Ticket vendor secretly pays promoter a part of the "service fee" so effectively the ticket price is higher, but that higher price doesn't contribute to reaching the negotiated split point or to the backend.

But most booking agents are aware of these shenanigans and factor it in, so it's an arms race.

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