Link dump: softporn, the secret of life & much more
Hey there,
Hope you’re all having a nice week. I asked the GPT-3 A.I. to write this brief introduction, but it was not only boring as hell, it was lying too. I’m not going to teach you how to make a cup of coffee.
Here’s your weekly dose of internet goodness! This week, we’ve got articles on everything from learning to code to the best way to make a perfect cup of coffee.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy the links! And don’t forget, you can subscribe to get these delivered straight to your inbox every week. Just fill out the form at the bottom of the page.
The intro A.I. wanted you to see.
But what’s true is that you can subscribe to get this newsletter straight in your mailbox every week. The form is down below!
A slice of the pie
Usually, I don’t like to link to crypto projects because, well, we all know that it’s just a pyramid scheme ????
A Slice of the pie is an artwork, that’s currently being exhibited at an exposition in Zürich. It’s basically a pizza shared screen with six slices. For a Tezo (around 1 euro) a piece, you can buy one or more slices and upload an image, which will then be displayed live in Zürich. Every few hours, the current slice will be minted into an NFT.
My Trip to Space Filled Me With ‘Overwhelming Sadness’
A year ago, William Shatner, who you might know from Star Trek, went to space aboard the Blue Origin space shuttle. Contrary to what he expected, he was filled with grief and sadness when he looked at our tiny blue planet. This article is a prepublication of his book Boldy Go, which I added to my Kindle straight away.
“Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
Variety.com
Softporn
The very first video game I ever got addicted to was called King’s Quest III. It was this low resolution graphical adventure game, where you played this boy who was held captive by an evil wizard. You could use the arrow keys to go to a door, and then you’d have to type “open door”.
King’s Quest was made by this couple called Ken and Roberta Williams, whose company Sierra made and published countless iconic games such as Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, Police Quest and even Half-Life. Little did I know (probably because I was only 7 years old) that before graphical adventures, they took a shot at text-only adult games. This article tells the backstory of that endeavor called Softporn Adventure.
Self-parking car evolution
Explaining machine learning can be hard. The same is true for parking your car. Oleksii Trekhleb made a website where a car is being taught to park itself through machine learning, and it’s all being done in your browser. There’s also a great explanation on how it all works.
Jobs
Last week marked the 11th anniversary of the passing of Steve Jobs. He was no saint, but he undeniably made the world a better place. His speeches were among the best, most inspirational out there. Personally, I think this is the best advice he’s ever given:
“Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”
Steve Jobs
IDLES – live at AB
If you need some extra energy today, watch this recording of the best concert I’ve seen this year. It’s mental.
More linkdump
Coding
▶️ Make Web Components great with Lit
A quick look at Lit.
Introducing OG Image Generation: Fast, dynamic social card images at the Edge – Vercel
Announcing Vercel OG Image Generation, a new library for generating dynamic social card images.
Day.js · 2kB JavaScript date utility library
2kB JavaScript date utility library
Delightful UI Animations With Shared Element Transitions API (Part 1) — Smashing Magazine
Shared Element Transitions API is a game-changing feature that will enable us to create impressive and elaborate UI animations easily. I…
GitHub – sqshq/sampler: Tool for shell commands execution, visualization and alerting. Configured with a simple YAML file.
Tool for shell commands execution, visualization and alerting. Configured with a simple YAML file. – GitHub – sqshq/sampler: Tool for sh…
Optimize long tasks
You’ve been told to “don’t block the main thread” and “break up your long tasks”, but what does it mean to do those things?
Tech
Ask HN: Is Substack the new Medium? | Hacker News
Lufthansa “bans AirTags in luggage” after passengers publicly shame it with location of lost bags | Boing Boing
Apple’s AirTags are an excellent way to know where your luggage is—and a snitch on airlines who don’t know where your luggage is. Luftha…
Cover Your Tracks
See how trackers view your browser
Misc
▶️ Flying in 4 Classes On The Same British Airways Flight…AGAIN | Including First Class & Club Suite!
We recreated our first ever all-class comparison and put British Airways’ 777-200 to the test! We flew from London to Washington DC in f…
Member discussion