TL;DR summary of stories on the internet
The author recounts their experience making iron gall ink from oak galls found on a valley oak tree. They detail the historical process of creating ink using galls, water, iron sulfate, and gum arabic. The author describes their own trial and error in preparing the ink, noting challenges with dissolving the components and achieving a […]
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The Gruen transfer, also known as the Gruen effect, is a psychological phenomenon in shopping malls where consumers become disoriented by intentional confusing layouts, leading to impulse buying. Named after architect Victor Gruen, who opposed such manipulative tactics. The idea was initially realized in Southdale Center in 1956, the first indoor shopping mall in Edina, […]
Krista DeWeese, a marketing professional in the Bay Area, has been laid off four times in eight years, leaving her anxious and struggling to find secure work. Tech companies have slashed roughly 40,000 jobs since 2022, with Silicon Valley experiencing a 15% drop in pay from 2022 to 2023. This decline hits women especially hard […]
T-Mobile recently announced price hikes on older smartphone plans, shocking customers who believed in the Un-contract promise made back in 2017. The promise stated that only customers could decide to change what they paid, and if T-Mobile increased prices, they would cover the final month’s bill if customers chose to cancel within 60 days. Despite […]
The author introduces a collaborative ASCII drawing project using Telnet, allowing users to draw on a shared canvas by connecting to `telnet bram.town`. They provide details on user input with xterm terminals and how to render output. The author shares their experience of debugging and the importance of setting certain parameters correctly to prevent client […]
Caltech’s Edward C. Stone, a giant in space physics and planetary astronomy, passed away at 88 after six decades at Caltech. Best known for leading NASA’s Voyager project for 50 years, Stone led the twin spacecraft to explore the outer planets and interstellar space. His legacy includes overseeing 21 JPL missions, the Mars Pathfinder, and […]
A $1,000,000+ competition has been launched to push forward progress in open artificial general intelligence (AGI). Current AI systems such as LLMs excel at memorization but lack the ability to truly reason or adapt to novel situations. The ARC-AGI evaluation is a groundbreaking measure of general intelligence, challenging even the most advanced AI systems. Despite […]
Summary: Learn about upgrading password-based accounts to passkeys in this video series. Discover the benefits of improved security and ease of sign-in, along with new features for credential manager apps. Chapters cover automatic passkey upgrades, shipping and deploying passkey support, improvements for credential managers, and updating appearance in the new Passwords app. Surprising content includes […]
Lynn Conway, an American computer scientist and electrical engineer, was known for her contributions to the Mead-Conway VLSI chip design revolution. She invented dynamic instruction handling and worked at IBM in the 1960s. She later joined Xerox PARC and DARPA, where she helped develop new technologies. Conway faced challenges as a transgender woman, which led […]
Founders in Silicon Valley often justify their significantly larger equity stakes compared to early employees by citing the risk they took in starting a company. However, a lesser-known practice called founder liquidity allows founders to sell shares during new funding rounds to secure financial stability while employees remain all-in. This lack of transparency leads to […]