Posts tagged “SMS”

• Take a minute today to read this tribute to Dan Jezek and the story of his website, bricklink, the world’s largest online LEGO marketplace.
• A Guide to Using Signal for Government Workers – via kottke, who is doing a great job reporting on the ongoing coup
• In less than eight years the NCAA went from banning North Carolina from hosting championships due to its bathroom bill to [kowtowing to a cartoonishly evil conman]. – via @bubbaprog.lol
• The universe could undergo a ‘catastrophic change’ that could alter absolutely everything, quantum machine shows.
• Hopefully reading this will help convince you to dump Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter. The Technological Poison Pill: How the ATProtocol Baked into Bluesky Encourages Competition, Resists Evil Billionaires, Lock-In & Enshittification – via Jodi Ettenberg
• The President’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education could prove more costly for red states than blue.
• Incompetence and desperation are a bad combination. The important thing to remember is that [the “DOGE” attempt to get employees to resign] isn’t about economic efficiency, despite what the billionaire at the helm may say. It’s about efficiently breaking morale within the federal government to make it easier to dismantle from the inside.
• Related: “DOGE” staffer steps down after racist posts emerge
• “NOAA workers ordered to stop all communications with foreign nationals. Workers covering things like air transportation safety, drought, monitor coral reef destruction, and guarding railway shipping carriers against dangerous weather affected.” – via @timmarchman.bsky.social
• “Twenty years ago, when Jeremiah Trotter, Sr won an NFC championship with the Eagles, baby Trotter Jr. was on the field, in his father’s arms. Now he’s playing for the Eagles in this year’s Super Bowl.” – via @npr.org

• Tarnschriften (“hidden writings”) were pocket-sized anti-fascist essays, news updates, and how-tos – hidden inside the covers of mundane, everyday materials – which were circulated in Germany after Hitler’s rise to power.
• California has become a vivid example of a global phenomenon known as “hydroclimate whiplash,” which involves sudden and dramatic swings between extreme wet and dry conditions. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• Health and climate information is already disappearing from federal websites.
• The estate of Superman creator Joseph Schuster is suing Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Comics, claiming they lack the rights to release the upcoming summer movie in a handful of key territories.
• “We’ve seen this happen with brittle governments all over the world for the past century – it’s not a novel situation – and Republicans have decided that now is the moment to strike our teetering democracy. (More)
• Four Easy Ways to Make Sure No One Can Read Your Text Messages, just in case you are (justifiably) a little paranoid that you might get in trouble someday for talking about those two chuckleheads
• Related: This Military Packing Technique Can Save Space in Your Bug-Out Bag (You do have a bug-out bag, right?)
• 13 Xcode Shortcuts to Boost Your Productivity
• Saquon Barkley is a superhero for the Eagles. His origin story is straight out of a comic book, too.

• I watched Conclave over the holiday break and thought it was pretty good. The acting was great, of course, but I’d expect nothing less from a film featuring John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Ralph Fiennes. If you dig Roman Catholic esoterica, I’d also suggest reading this deep dive into the Vatican’s secret saint-making process.
• Ozempic is a modified, synthetic version of a protein discovered in the venomous saliva of the Gila monster, a large, sluggish lizard native to the United States. – via Tom Whitwell’s 52 Things I Learned in 2024, not to be confused with Kent Hendricks’ equally-awesome list of 52 Things I Learned in 2024
• Some of the 77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024 (from The Atlantic Science Desk) are really pretty wild! – via kottke
• The Ghosts in the Machine is a great explainer on the current kerfuffle over Spotify’s nefarious fake music.
• Please don’t say just, “hello,” via text. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter, where I also found this awesome food map of Italy
• I enjoyed reading this quick essay on how to write readable sentences.
• What happens when websites start to vanish at random?
• An average of about 900 people per week have died of COVID-19 over the past year in the USA, according to the CDC. – via PBS

I wish I could toggle whether read receipts are enabled in Messages on a per conversation basis.

• The sketches on Funny Or Die keep getting better. This week Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes / Spock from the new Star Trek) appears as a convenience store robber who manages to get his life on track… sorta.
• Here’s the feel-good story of the day: A Portland couple — and their ’57 Chrysler — are still going strong after 50 years.
• Slate has published an interesting article on how the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting, and why that’s dangerous.
• I work with a developer in India who frequently complains that Outlook does not display messages from me correctly. He insists that it’s because my mail program — Apple’s Mail.app — doesn’t compose messages properly. I insist that it’s because Outlook sucks. (See also: Windows crashes displays at new Cowboys stadium during Oklahoma / BYU game.)
• When is it not cool to see recently-declassified video of decades-old nuclear weapons tests?
• Make sure to read TMQ’s all-haiku 2009 NFL preview.
• Daring Fireball mentioned that he hasn’t actually ever seen a Palm Pre in the wild, which might explain why its sales numbers are well below their projections. A guy in my office has one. Every time I see it I wonder what would possess someone to get anything other than an iPhone.
• AT&T says MMS for iPhones will launch on 9/25. I really don’t see why everyone is freaking about this. I don’t really like MMS. It’s simple enough to email something from an iPhone; why not just do that? Everyone was freaking about copy and paste and I didn’t understand that either. Sure C&P is a great feature, but I’ve probably used it ten times in the last 3 months… Three years ago I had a BlackBerry Pearl and before that a RAZR and I was always thrilled just to be able to actually receive telephone calls on them. As far as I’m concerned the iPhone is the best American invention since… well… the iPod.
• I completely agree with Chris Coyier: It would be brilliant to invest in Red Box… if this was 1997.
• DirecTV NFL Mobile: The most expensive free app in the world
• It took forever, but there is finally an official Flickr app for the iPhone.

I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon when someone mentioned it to me at SXSW2006, but immediately forgot all about it. I’m starting just now to pay attention to it. It’s nifty. What are you doing now?