Another digest

Aaand back to our regularly scheduled program. Speaking of programming…

Programming

• Rabbit holes

  TL;DR: how ubuntu generates its motd is weird (and pings their server once every 12 hours)

• Funny quote

  It’s quite simple. PHP was not designed. It evolved, without a predator to remove bad mutations. – The_Sly_Marbo on reddit

Articles

• Black hole “so big it shouldn’t exist”

  Note: the title is quite click-baity. It’s not that the black hole is exceptionally big, it’s just that black holes of this particular size were supposed to be near-impossible to encounter (only smaller or larger ones).

• The Browser Monopoly

  TL;DR: use Firefox

• Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system (pdf)

  (a paper from 1970, from hackernews)

• Are Spies More Trouble Than They’re Worth?

  (TW: New Yorker, paywall)

  I liked the part about LSD and MK ULTRA, and will probably read the book at some point. There’s also a nice idea that when you start to use underhanded techniques you also start to see (or “see”) other people around you use them (or, at least, so it appears to you), thus undermining the profit you might’ve had.

• How to Teach an Iris Scanner That the Eye It’s Looking at Is Dead

  Favorite quote:

  Conventional wisdom has held that the iris begins decaying only minutes after death. Thanks to Maciejewicz’s work, we discovered that wisdom to be wrong: If cadavers are kept cool, the eyes can still be used for identification for up to three weeks postmortem

Useful stuff

• Audio cassette J-card and O-card templates

Art

• Miniature calendar

  This twitter account posts a miniature photo every day. Very cute.

• Very trippy WebGL fluid simulation

• Colorized pictures of Victorian asylum victims patients

  (TW: Daily Mail) (also TW: may cause severe feels)

• Burning oil with half-life SFX

  THIS IS ART IF I SAY IT IS ART