Saturday Morning Coffee
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
It’s been a pretty quiet week in the Fahrni household and at work. I’d say we’re in a steady state at both. Of course it won’t stay that way for long so I’m gonna enjoy it while I can.
Our granddaughter is with us this weekend so let’s see how much writing I’ll get done. 😁
I’ve saved so many interesting links this week. I hope you enjoy them.
Caleb Newton • Bipartisan Report
J. Michael Luttig, a widely consulted former federal judge, is among those harshly condemning the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to give presidents a layer of legal immunity, meaning protection from prosecution, for certain actions taken in office.
Our Supreme Court has done democracy a big disservice. The immunity they’ve granted Presidents basically gives them carte blanche to commit crimes as part of holding the office.
They’re evil idiots.
The real Christina Warren hasn’t been writing these new posts on the zombie TUAW, however. The site’s new owners have stolen her identity, replaced her photo with an AI-generated one, and have been publishing what appear to be AI-generated articles under her byline.
Here’s someone using “AI” in an unethical way. Taking someone else’s work, running it through an LLM to change it, and republishing it under the authors name — with a different author picture — is disgusting.
Victoria Namkung • The Guardian
Whenever Cassie Yoshikawa drives through the Central Valley on the former US Highway 99, she looks for the century-old landmark that symbolizes the midpoint of California: the Palm and the Pine.
You’d think being a lifelong Californian I’d have known about this. I recall passing them but I had no idea they represented the center of California. They’re an official unofficial marker. Folks just did it. Pretty nifty.
Of course they’re going to be ripped out for highway expansion. Goodness knows we need more cars on the road.
Elon Musk is a man with many brands — but for electric vehicle shoppers, his personal brand has become increasingly toxic.
That’s right, folks are not buying Teslas because Space Karen is such a dick.
I’ve given up on The Musk Files. The man is just so toxic and disgusting his crimes against humanity are too many to enumerate.
This is it for Redbox: The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Redbox’s corporate parent Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment granted the debtors request to convert it from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively paving the way for shutting down the company and liquidating its assets.
Wow. BluRay and DVD renters are out of luck it seems. Before streaming became ubiquitous we’d rent from Redbox about once a week. We had one at our local grocery store. It was easy and cheap.
There’s a bit of irony in this whole thing. I’ve gone back purchasing BluRay + digital download movies. We use the digital version all the time but have that BluRay backup should the license for the digital copy be revoked.
Dalia Faheid, Monica Garrett and Brandon Miller • CNN
Death Valley sets a new daily record with a searing 128 degrees as West Coast heat wave drags on
Poor California, poor planet. If this keeps up how long will it be before California can no longer produce the fruits and vegetables that feed the world? That’s not hyperbole. California’s San Joaquin Valley really is the breadbasket of the world.
I’ve been writing about the early development of Warcraft, but a recent blog post I read prompted me to start scribbling furiously, and the result is this three-part, twenty-plus page article about the development of StarCraft, along with my thoughts about writing more reliable game code.
Don’t look at the date this article was published. Yes, it’s from 2012. 😄
You know I love a good discussion about code architecture, especially when presented in the form of an actual product. Not just some sample code to illustrate the point. He links off to another post discussing a linked list implementation and it’s great reading.
Lewis Hamilton’s victory in his last British Grand Prix for Mercedes is “like a little fairytale,” according to team principal Toto Wolff.
It’s really nice to see Lewis Hamilton pick up a win in his final season the Mercedes.
Everyone who has implemented ActivityPub from scratch knows that there are implementation-specific quirks that trip up developers, making compatibility between apps more difficult. Some of these issues are being clarified by the Social Web Community Group. Test suites will help too. Micro.blog has had ActivityPub support for years and we’re still finding edge cases.
So many folks are climbing on the ActivityPub bandwagon and that’s a good thing. Providing more integration with other services and allowing those to be displayed in native clients without changing formats is wonderful.
As much as I’d like to finish writing, my granddaughter is up so I’m gonna hit the publish button now and hang out with her. 😃
The dangerously self-important Roberts insisted that the country is “in the process of the second American Revolution” and further noted that this so-called revolution “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Microsoft is finally rolling out spellcheck and autocorrect for its Notepad app in Windows 11, more than 40 years after the simple text editor was first introduced in Windows in 1983.
Big Tech needs to generate $600 billion in annual revenue to justify AI hardware expenditure
Sarah Kuta • Smithsonian Magazine
While visiting his parents’ recently renovated house in Europe, a man spotted something unusual in one of the floor tiles. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be part of a human jawbone—and it still had a few teeth.
Rodney Childers, a 40-time NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race winning crew chief and one of the sport’s most respected tacticians, will lead Spire Motorsports No. 7 team and driver Corey LaJoie in 2025.
The Slacker generation might have been slacking off when it came to planning for retirement: Gen X consistently ranks in surveys as the least-prepared group for when they stop earning.
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) declared Monday he is advocating for Christian nationalism, a far-right ideology that claims there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, and promotes as a national religion Christian fundamentalism, a hardline, extremist brand of Christianity at odds with the religious beliefs of many Christians across the country
But again, discretion isn’t this car’s job. This is a loud and lonely car for loud and lonely people. And while I enjoyed driving my Cybertruck, I hope I’m never loud and lonely enough to want to buy one.
