This is a robust, locally hosted web-based PDF manipulation tool using Docker. It enables you to carry out various operations on PDF files, including splitting, merging, converting, reorganizing, adding images, rotating, compressing, and more. This locally hosted web application has evolved to encompass a comprehensive set of...
Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying...
Spain’s High Court has ordered the suspension of messaging app Telegram’s services in the country after media companies complained it was allowing users to upload their content without permission, according to a court source....
The Middlemist’s red belongs to the camellia genus and was imported from China as a luxury item in 1804, but was wiped from its native country. The credit for bringing the flower to Chiswick, West London, goes to a nurseryman from Shepherd’s Bush named John Middlemist, who the flower was named after....
When the Star Wars films aired in Chile, instead of cutting away from the movie for commercial breaks, the TV station “seamlessly” inserted ads for Cerveza Cristal beer. We’re talking Obi-Wan opening a chest to find a lightsaber for Luke and instead it reveals a ice-chest full of beer. Or the Emperor Force-reaching for a...
Dr. Megan Garcia, Medical Director of the Grossman Burn Center at Research Medical in Kansas City, Missouri, recently stated that 70% of patients who have been referred to her center for frostbite now need amputations. Many of these patients attended the Kansas City Chiefs playoff game against the Miami Dolphins at Arrowhead...
The slasher film took advantage of the copyright for AA Milne’s classic tale expiring, and reimagined the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood as vicious serial killers....
Four weeks ago, GPT-4 remained the undisputed champion: consistently at the top of every key benchmark, but more importantly the clear winner in terms of “vibes”. Almost everyone investing serious time exploring LLMs agreed that it was the most capable default model for the majority of tasks—and had been for more than a...
Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim...
While the majority of the world’s reefs are now under threat or even damaged potentially beyond repair, a new study reported in the journal Current Biology on March 8 offers some encouraging news: efforts to restore coral reefs not only increase coral cover, but they can also bring back important ecosystem functions, and...
There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of EA lately, but here’s some: the company just launched a bunch of classic games on Steam. The new (old) releases include nine games in total, spanning franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and SimCity....
THe Great Green Wall being built in Africa to halt the southern progress of the Sahara Desert is a favorite public works project of mine — it’s massive, ambitious, long-term, important, and if it works, the effect will repay the cost many times over. This video takes a quick look at some of the work being done on the wall in...
On June 5, 1981, journalists from around the world gathered at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to watch as the Voyager 2 spacecraft became the first man-made object to reach Saturn. In the aftermath of this historic event, the main attraction wasn’t NASA’s staff. It was fellow journalist Jerry Pournelle. Pournelle...
Supermium is a drop-in replacement for Google Chrome with privacy and usability enhancements, optimized for legacy and modern Windows systems alike. Supermium is developed by Win32 (win32ss on GitHub).
A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they’re in. Here’s a large-scale analysis of 73,921 movies from the last 80 years on how often, when and maybe even why that happens.
What did the year 2000 look like in 1900? Originally commissioned by Armand Gervais, a French toy manufacturer in Lyon, for the 1900 World exhibition in Paris, the first fifty of these paper cards were produced by Jean-Marc Côté, designed to be enclosed in cigarette boxes and, later, sent as postcards. All in all, at least...
Today, almost everything about our lives is digitally recorded and stored somewhere. Each credit card purchase, personal medical diagnosis, and preference about music and books is recorded and then used to predict what we like and dislike, and—ultimately—who we are....
Shrinking the computer chip is one of humanity’s greatest scientific feats. It has enabled the processing power that has digitalised almost every aspect of our lives....
We parents are caught in a paradox. We desperately want to keep our children safe and ensure their success. We are also often terrified that they will get hurt and that they will fail—so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. Yet many of those very efforts to manage our fears have paradoxically reduced our...
Varda Space Industries’ spacecraft, W-1, successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024. This marks the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on United States soil....
TasteAtlas (www.tasteatlas.com)
TasteAtlas is an encyclopedia of flavors, a world atlas of traditional dishes, local ingredients, and authentic restaurants....
Stirling-PDF: Locally hosted web application that allows you to perform various operations on PDF files (github.com)
This is a robust, locally hosted web-based PDF manipulation tool using Docker. It enables you to carry out various operations on PDF files, including splitting, merging, converting, reorganizing, adding images, rotating, compressing, and more. This locally hosted web application has evolved to encompass a comprehensive set of...
Snapdrop: local file sharing in your browser (snapdrop.net)
Inspired by Apple’s Airdrop
This camera captures 156.3 trillion frames per second (www.engadget.com)
Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying...
High Court orders temporary suspension of Telegram's services in Spain (www.reuters.com)
Spain’s High Court has ordered the suspension of messaging app Telegram’s services in the country after media companies complained it was allowing users to upload their content without permission, according to a court source....
The Middlemist’s Red, rarest flower on earth (www.southsideblooms.com)
The Middlemist’s red belongs to the camellia genus and was imported from China as a luxury item in 1804, but was wiped from its native country. The credit for bringing the flower to Chiswick, West London, goes to a nurseryman from Shepherd’s Bush named John Middlemist, who the flower was named after....
Beer Me, Obi-Wan! (kottke.org)
When the Star Wars films aired in Chile, instead of cutting away from the movie for commercial breaks, the TV station “seamlessly” inserted ads for Cerveza Cristal beer. We’re talking Obi-Wan opening a chest to find a lightsaber for Luke and instead it reveals a ice-chest full of beer. Or the Emperor Force-reaching for a...
Fans suffering frostbite after freezing Kansas City Chiefs game may require amputations (boingboing.net)
Dr. Megan Garcia, Medical Director of the Grossman Burn Center at Research Medical in Kansas City, Missouri, recently stated that 70% of patients who have been referred to her center for frostbite now need amputations. Many of these patients attended the Kansas City Chiefs playoff game against the Miami Dolphins at Arrowhead...
Razzie Awards 2024: Winnie the Pooh slasher film and Expend4bles named year's worst (www.bbc.com)
The slasher film took advantage of the copyright for AA Milne’s classic tale expiring, and reimagined the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood as vicious serial killers....
The GPT-4 barrier has finally been broken (simonwillison.net)
Four weeks ago, GPT-4 remained the undisputed champion: consistently at the top of every key benchmark, but more importantly the clear winner in terms of “vibes”. Almost everyone investing serious time exploring LLMs agreed that it was the most capable default model for the majority of tasks—and had been for more than a...
Warner Bros. is now erasing games as it plans to delist Adult Swim-published titles (www.polygon.com)
Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim...
Good news for coral reef restoration efforts: Study finds 'full recovery' of reef growth within four years (phys.org)
While the majority of the world’s reefs are now under threat or even damaged potentially beyond repair, a new study reported in the journal Current Biology on March 8 offers some encouraging news: efforts to restore coral reefs not only increase coral cover, but they can also bring back important ecosystem functions, and...
EA just added classics like Dungeon Keeper, SimCity 3000, and Populous on Steam (www.theverge.com)
There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of EA lately, but here’s some: the company just launched a bunch of classic games on Steam. The new (old) releases include nine games in total, spanning franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and SimCity....
How the Great Green Wall Is Holding Back the Sahara Desert (kottke.org)
THe Great Green Wall being built in Africa to halt the southern progress of the Sahara Desert is a favorite public works project of mine — it’s massive, ambitious, long-term, important, and if it works, the effect will repay the cost many times over. This video takes a quick look at some of the work being done on the wall in...
Detect when your installed Chrome extensions have changed owners (github.com)
Why is this needed?...
The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs’s Greatest Rival (every.to)
On June 5, 1981, journalists from around the world gathered at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to watch as the Voyager 2 spacecraft became the first man-made object to reach Saturn. In the aftermath of this historic event, the main attraction wasn’t NASA’s staff. It was fellow journalist Jerry Pournelle. Pournelle...
Supermium: An up-to-date Chromium-based web browser compatible with Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 8.x, and newer (www.win32subsystem.live)
Supermium is a drop-in replacement for Google Chrome with privacy and usability enhancements, optimized for legacy and modern Windows systems alike. Supermium is developed by Win32 (win32ss on GitHub).
Full Of Themselves: An analysis of title drops in movies (www.titledrops.net)
A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they’re in. Here’s a large-scale analysis of 73,921 movies from the last 80 years on how often, when and maybe even why that happens.
Things Unexpectedly Named After People (notes.rolandcrosby.com)
An incomplete and infuriating list
Lost Futures: A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000 (publicdomainreview.org)
What did the year 2000 look like in 1900? Originally commissioned by Armand Gervais, a French toy manufacturer in Lyon, for the 1900 World exhibition in Paris, the first fifty of these paper cards were produced by Jean-Marc Côté, designed to be enclosed in cigarette boxes and, later, sent as postcards. All in all, at least...
BookPecker.com (www.bookpecker.com)
14509 books in 5 bullet points. Browse summaries of thousands of books and add new items to your reading list.
Debunking the Myth of “Anonymous” Data (www.eff.org)
Today, almost everything about our lives is digitally recorded and stored somewhere. Each credit card purchase, personal medical diagnosis, and preference about music and books is recorded and then used to predict what we like and dislike, and—ultimately—who we are....
Inside the miracle of modern chip manufacturing (ig.ft.com)
Shrinking the computer chip is one of humanity’s greatest scientific feats. It has enabled the processing power that has digitalised almost every aspect of our lives....
Why Children Need Risk, Fear, and Excitement in Play (www.afterbabel.com)
We parents are caught in a paradox. We desperately want to keep our children safe and ensure their success. We are also often terrified that they will get hurt and that they will fail—so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. Yet many of those very efforts to manage our fears have paradoxically reduced our...
Varda Capsule Reentry - Five Minutes from LEO to Earth (www.youtube.com)
Varda Space Industries’ spacecraft, W-1, successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024. This marks the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on United States soil....