Bits
https://flipperzero.one/ Flipper Zero is a portable multi-tool for pentesters and geeks in a toy-like body. It loves hacking digital stuff, such as radio protocols, access control systems, hardware and more. It’s fully open-source and customizable, so you can extend it in whatever way you like.
https://www.theverge.com/23513418/bring-back-personal-blogging “Buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you.”
When the makers of electronic implants abandon their projects, people who rely on the devices have everything to lose. https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-022-03810-5/index.html
“If NASA is Amtrak in space, then SpaceX is the Fyre Festival with rockets …” https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm
“.. algorithms do not simply discern what we want and serve it to us; they train us to want what they can serve us.” https://www.noemamag.com/hyperconnected-culture-and-its-discontents/
Like a Reclaim Arcade Living Room .. but in VR https://www.emuvr.net/about/
a set of components for creating math visualizations https://mafs.dev/
Every January, Bruce Sterling @bruces rants, forecasts, and converses with the WELL community in what is known there as the “State of the World” discussion. The rest of the WELL requires membership, but the SOW is readable by anyone. Non WELLites can’t comment, but can read, and forward questions/comments through the hosts. #future #futurism https://tinyurl.com/state-world-2023
“Maybe the most vertiginous “Woodstock-to-Altamont slope” ever built by mankind.” #cryptocurrency https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/522/State-of-the-World-2023-Bruce-St-page02.html#post30
“You thought the first page of Google was bunk before? You haven’t seen Google where SEO optimizer bros pump out billions of perfectly coherent but predictably dull informational articles for every longtail keyword combination under the sun.” https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest
“Here is an informal and incomplete list of things that I think are currently challenging in current “large language models”, including the latest chatGPT, and which hinders them from “fully understanding” language is some real sense.” https://gist.github.com/yoavg/59d174608e92e845c8994ac2e234c8a9
“VALL-E emerges in-context learning capabilities and can be used to synthesize high-quality personalized speech with only a 3-second enrolled recording of an unseen speaker as an acoustic prompt.” https://valle-demo.github.io/
“So what does it mean to drive the cost of bullshit to zero, even as we massively increase the scale and persuasiveness and flexibility at which it can be produced?” https://archive.ph/zyEP1
“If a system gets more valuable as it attracts more users, it also gets less valuable as it sheds users. The less valuable a system is to you, the easier it is to leave.” https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/
“The important thing about the #fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized – it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the “right of exit” into the technical architecture of the system.” https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/09/watch-the-surpluses/#exogenous-shocks
Sound & Music
“16 near-forgotten ballads and dirges, culled from the underbelly of the American record industry.” https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/weird-old-americana
Fabulous interactive resource exploring sound https://ciechanow.ski/sound/
Create microtonal tunings and play them within your web browser https://sevish.com/scaleworkshop/
Create generative music online using a simple Javascript API https://dittytoy.net/?/
one of the most influential works of electronic music in an elegant nineteen kilobytes of Javascript code https://dittytoy.net/ditty/24373308b4
“This study builds upon 20 years of experience from teaching sound and music computing and evaluates howWeb Audio contributes to the learning experience.” https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/journal/?elib=22019
Film
“Every January 6th from the dark of the Nunatsiavut night, the Nalujuit appear on the sea ice. They walk on two legs, yet their faces are animalistic, skeletal, and otherworldly. Snow crunches underfoot as they approach their destination: the Inuit community of Nain.” https://www.nfb.ca/film/nalujuk-night/
Loved Season 2 of Reservation Dogs .. so much heart & humour https://youtu.be/ydsB17rH6SU
Comics
“so .. spare me the lecture, okay?!” https://thenib.com/terms-and-conditions/
Teaching & Learning
“Am I rewarding compliance or am I measuring learning? The key to navigating that divide is to make sure you have a course structure that actually rewards learning, rather than compliance.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1610635805571031042.html
We’re going to have to stop panicking and educate ourselves about the technology and think about what boundaries we’d like to put into place with our use of the tech and our students.” https://archive.ph/T1RAf
Lots of faculty, once they have achieved their level of expertise forget how their disciplinary practice was built over time, via different experiences. Once you reconstruct those things and give students access to them, engagement and rigor increase, more learning happens.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1611371944019955712.html
Ground Rules for the Robot Wars: Defining Our Terms https://digitaldetox.trubox.ca/ground-rules-for-the-robot-wars-defining-our-terms/ via @brennacgray
Politics & Economics
“‘We are neither trapped in inexorable tragedies nor free of moral responsibility ..” #commons https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth