FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

one big difference between the US and the EU is the latter has a more functional regulatory state and i really have to wonder if this is related to the other big difference, that the average EU citizen has no idea how the EU works

reddit moment

interesting game using magnets

it's Monopoly Mermaid Monday!

(original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk8XGnKLhfU)

page 21 of part 4 of ICAO's document 9303, one of my favourite documents (it's the specification for passports, identity cards, and more)

https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p4_cons_en.pdf

the X gender marker on passports is cool, but here's what actually rules: if you get one, the machine-readable zone doesn't contain an X, it contains no gender at all. the space is filled by > which is used as a filler/spacer (e.g. names are written like NO>YUME>>HIKARI>>>>>>>)

people stealing shit from cars in san francisco are actually based because they provide an extra deterrent to driving

there is no future in hopelessness. the future starts with the belief that things can be good, will be good, must be good. and that we'll get there by our efforts.

Super mad at Apple again tonight as I realize that you cannot have the Music app without Radio, the TV app without trailers for TV+, the or the Podcasts app without an un-hideable screen full of hideous murder-related content or the app store without exploitative IAP gambling-for-kids garbage. I can lock down a device so that a child can't listen to songs with the F-word in them but there is *no* way to say DO NOT SHOW THEM ENCOURAGEMENTS TO GAMBLING ADDICTION.

I do not want to be given iron-fisted control over my child's media habits, particularly as they grow up, but every "parental controls" app and setting is based on the idea that I need a way to prevent my kid from learning that trans people exist or that people say "shit" sometimes, not that I want to just give them a device which has the stuff that we have put on it that does not *advertise* other things to them constantly. I have no interest in preventing them from seeking out information.

today’s find: forbidden happiness butter (4x the butter) chips

#wikifinds “After the death of his younger brother Emil in an 1864 nitroglycerin explosion at the family's armaments factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, Nobel founded Nitroglycerin AB in Vinterviken, Stockholm.”

I wrote a blog post about how it's hard to learn things on the internet, wait no actually it's about programming and math:
https://wareya.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/canonical-huffman-codes-are-a-speed-optimization-not-a-space-optimization/

they need to invent e-paper but for LEDs. so many devices use an LED to indicate that they are switched on, and this is necessary, but any brightness is too much brightness. if only they could indicate being on in a way that would never distract and never light up a dark room…

apparently this trick has fallen out of rust programmer folklore so PSA rust allows you to delay initialization of variables, and even Conditionally Initialize them

(it statically prevents you from messing up and will dynamically track whether they were initialized for cleanup)

this allows you to write things like this:

https://github.com/Gankra/socc-pair/blob/main/src/main.rs#L403-L411

How the first gen ipod that was reverse engineered to run #Rockbox:

1. Someone figured out that when loading a particular HTML page (for viewing on the device), the device would reboot. It crashed. A buffer overflow in the HTML viewer!

2. The device remembered what it did before the crash, so it would reload the HTML page again after boot. Unless you connected to it over USB and removed the HTML file it would stick in this cycle.

(continues...)