RootMyTV (RootMyTV.github.io)

A user-friendly exploit for rooting/jailbreaking LG webOS smart TVs.

Has The Zodiac Killer Mystery Been Solved (Again) (www.lamag.com)

examples/stable-diffusion-finetuning at main · LambdaLabsML/examples (github.com)

Fine tune Stable Diffusion to generate pokemon images

Brickit (brickit.app)

App scans a pile of your legos and gives you ideas to create, complete with detailed instructions.

Twofer Goofer (twofergoofer.com)

Guess a pair of rhyming words based on their fictional definition.

Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs (experimentalhistory.substack.com)

Productivity hacks imply that you can trick yourself into doing things you don't want to do, in favor of things you'd rather be doing. The author suggests that maybe you should instead stop forcing yourself to do so many unpleasant things.

My family's unlikely homeschooling journey · fast.ai (www.fast.ai)

The pandemic forced this family into experimenting with homeschooling. With good resources and a strong local support system, they found that their new arrangement seemed to work better for their kids than traditional schools do.

Stable Diffusion install guide (rentry.org)

Install and run Stable Diffusion locally

The Church of Interruption (sambleckley.com)

There are four conversational styles, divided on two axes. Most people who interrupt others are willing to be interrupted themselves, while other people dislike interrupting and being interrupted. These fundamental differences can cause awkwardness in conversation.

Diagrams: A Native Diagram Editor for Mac (diagrams.app)

I was just looking for a good way to create flowcharts, and this looks just right

Magic mirror': Hidden image revealed in reflection of centuries-old artifact at Cincinnati Art Museum (edition.cnn.com)

A seemingly blank bronze mirror reflects an image of Buddha when shining a bright light onto it. Aside from how amazing it is that this was discovered, the craftsmanship is incredible.

Compare Webb's Images to Hubble's (johnedchristensen.github.io)

Yes the images from the Webb telescope are beautiful, but direct comparisons like this really put it into perspective. And this shows the galaxy cluster as it was 4.6 billion years ago? I don't even know what to think about that.

Mendon, Missouri - Sean of the South (seandietrich.com)

A short telling of how residents of a small town came together to help the victims of a rail road accident.

Compound pejoratives on Reddit – from buttface to wankpuffin (colinmorris.github.io)

A thorough analysis of the distribution of derogatory terms used on Reddit. Fascinating and hilarious.

My Out-of-Body Experience - Nautilus (nautil.us)

Reflections on the author's experience in a sensory deprivation tank.

prompt.press - AI generated artwork inspired by current events (prompt.press)

The author mentioned that these are heavily curated, but nonetheless they are extremely compelling.

Grumpy Gamer - Return to Monkey Island Trailer (www.grumpygamer.com)

Serendeputy: Newsfeed Engine for the open web (serendeputy.com)

I've been thinking about a product like this for a very long time, so it must be a good idea. Depends heavily on who you follow though, so I would probably end up creating a separate account.

She Spent a Decade Writing Fake Russian History. Wikipedia Just Noticed. (www.sixthtone.com)

The elevator in our office building has a small LCD panel that shows information like the current floor, but when the total weight of passengers crosses a certain threshold it also adds a short note: “Sorry the elevator is crowded”.

It struck me – of all possible features for an elevator display, how did they decide that they needed this one? It has no impact on the elevator’s function of moving people vertically. And a crowded elevator is not the elevator’s fault (although this is most likely just an example of Japan’s self-deprecating approach to hospitality). So why was this message deemed necessary?

The answer, of course, is that when designing an elevator your customer is not the people riding the elevator. It’s the people buying the elevator, such as the owners of an office building. When they compare your elevator to competitors, “Ours will make your building more pleasant to visit” must be a key selling point.

This was a little reminder for me that it’s crucial to identify your true customer because it will have an enormous effect on your product’s direction.

I tend to procrastinate if I let myself, so I’ve tried my share of techniques to keep it in check. At some point, I read that a fear of failure can cause procrastination, and this really resonated with me. Realizing this has helped me understand where my urge to put things off is coming from.

If I have a large task in front of me, my mind rushes through everything that needs to be done and affirms how difficult it will be. I imagine (mostly subconsciously) all the ways that my output will be less than ideal, and that is what keeps me from taking action.

So as a quick mental technique, I recognize that this fear of failure is acting as a roadblock and tell myself that I’ll just bang out a first effort that will definitely be of poor quality. I know it will be bad, and that will be OK. Polishing that will be a task left for future me.

In reality, it won’t be perfect, but neither will it be terrible. Polishing it into something that I can be proud of will not be as hard as it seems now, especially once I have a first draft to work with.

I’ve had an idea for a fun art project in my head for many years now, and I don’t see myself going through with it any time soon, so I’ll compromise by just writing about it.

The idea is to photograph people (with permission) who are wearing headphones in the city. Their photo will be shown along with the song they happened to be listening to. It would be interesting to see if a viewer would see any correlation between a person’s visual appearance and their taste in music. The prompt “What song was playing right now” is much more interesting than “What is your favorite music,” and some people might think that I caught them at just the wrong time, making things more fun for me.

Since the subjects will generally be preoccupied, I imagine I’d design a small pamphlet that quickly describes the project and hand that out to people who don’t look too busy.

Maybe one day.

A very relaxing video by Russell Houghten showing skateboarders riding around L.A. with all of the cars edited out. It’s executed wonderfully. How much effort goes into something like this?

For a long time, I’ve avoided collecting too much stuff. I buy Kindle versions of books whenever possible, but there is a small shelf for the few books I have carried around with me over the years. My son, who is not quite two years old, will sometimes rummage through my books and leave them in a heap once he realizes there are no pictures, but it made me remember what my own father’s bookshelf was like for me.

I’m pretty sure I found Calvin and Hobbes on his bookshelf, and I ended up reading it countless times as I grew up. I found The Hobbit, which led to The Lord of the Rings, and then whatever other high fantasy I could get my hands on. I found The Royal Road to Card Magic, and my interest in card magic ended up being a pretty big part of my life after that. I didn’t read Gödel, Escher, Bach, but I recognized it from that bookshelf when I was introduced to it many years later.

A bookshelf creates serendipity. I encountered those books early, before anybody would have thought, “Ah, I know just the book that would interest this young man.” And discovering something of my dad’s and taking it for myself was much more exciting than being told, “Hey come look at this thing I liked when I was your age.”

So, since I’m the father now, I went and bought a big bookshelf for myself. I want to go through my parents’ storage to reclaim my favorite books, and I’ll slowly fill out my own bookshelf with books I think are worth keeping around – just in reach for my kids to discover on their own.

Modern chess is the culmination of centuries of experience, as well as an evolutionary sequence of rule adjustments from its inception in the 6th century to the modern rules we know today. While classical chess still captivates the minds of millions of players worldwide, the game is anything but static. Many variants have been proposed and played over the years by enthusiasts and theorists. They continue the evolutionary cycle by altering the board, piece placement, or the rules—offering players “something subtle, sparkling, or amusing which cannot be done in ordinary chess.”

Using AlphaZero to evaluate modified rules, to see which would be the most productive is a really interesting application of the AI. You can evaluate beforehand whether a certain rule change would make the game less or more balanced.