Clint Smith, from an article in The Atlantic:

The fact that this photo was taken the day after voters in Georgia chose the first Black person and the first Jewish person in the history of that state to serve in the Senate; that it shows a man walking past the portrait of a vice president who urged the country to sustain human bondage and another portrait of a senator who was nearly beaten to death for standing up to the slavocracy; that it portrays a man walking with a Confederate flag while a mob of insurrectionists pushed past police, broke windows, vandalized offices, stole property, and strolled through the halls of Congress for hours, forcing senators and representatives into hiding and stopping the certification of the electoral process—it is almost difficult to believe that so much of our history, and our current moment, was reflected in a single photograph.

For everything I know about this country’s history, it’s still hard to believe I watched a man break into the United States Capitol and walk around with a Confederate flag with the encouragement of the President.

Congratulations to Google workers (employees and contractors) and all the organizers who made this happen.

The MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) Web Docs is by far my most used resource during development. If you do a web search for any web development tech, the top few results will either be from W3Schools (🙄) or MDN.

Back in August, Mozilla made some questionable decisions about how to stay profitable, which included laying off all of the people responsible for maintaining MDN. Web developers in general were definitely very concerned about this.

Mozilla’s plan was to create a new platform for MDN that stores the documentation in GitHub instead of a database they maintain. Contributors can just update the repo to update the documentation on the new system. They just opened up that repo today with their Code of Conduct and information on how to contribute.

Overall, I think this is pretty convenient for maintainers and contributors, so I’m glad it’s moving along the way they planned. I really wish they picked a version control host that doesn’t continue to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but I’m still glad MDN will be around for a while.

Apple just announced their AirPods Max today.

It feels like this announcement is filled with even more marketing speak than normal. The headphones seem very well designed (of course) and have integration with other Apple tech (Siri, the H1 chip, etc) you won’t get on other headphones, but there’s nothing that’s actually revolutionary about these.

I would probably really like them, but I would never spend $549.00 for them.

I am very curious about Apple’s implementation of spatial audio though.

Update: It sounds like Apple rushed this out before the holiday. It’s missing the U1 chip and a few other things that were planned. From Mark Gurman on Twitter:

Looks like they made some changes on these to get them out the door as was deemed likely after several development set backs over the past many months — not seeing swappable bands, and Apple Watch Digital Crown instead of touch panels, and left and right sides aren’t reversible.

This is the original JavaScript announcement on this day 25 years ago.

Coinbase published this blog post yesterday. It has this summary at the top:

Tl;dr: The New York Times is planning to publish a negative story about Coinbase at some point in the next few days online, and it will appear in print on Sunday. Given that this story may be read by your friends, family and professional contacts, we wanted to give everyone a heads-up and provide some important context.

That doesn’t sound suspicious at all considering the drama they’ve been involved in recently. 🙄

Part of the voting line in my part of Astoria, NYC.

So now that Facebook is continuing to tighten their grip on Oculus VR headsets, here are all the circumstances where you might lose access to your Oculus account (and all your purchases).

1. You refuse to create a Facebook account.
2. If you have multiple VR headsets attached to one account.
3. If you decide to delete your Facebook account at any point.
4. If your Facebook account is suspended for any reason, including no reason at all.
   
   

From a Kotaku article published today:

Now combine this knowledge with the words spoken by Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality at Facebook last week, when he said “I think people should continue to make sure their Facebook accounts are in good standing before they buy the headset. They can work through those problems before they do it.”

Are people really still interested in buying these things at this point?

Honestly at this point I don’t even try to understand Google’s messaging app strategy anymore.

From the article:

If you’re having trouble keeping track (understandable considering Google notoriously confusing messaging strategy) Chat is the company’s enterprise chat app originally introduced as part of Google’s business offerings. It has features similar to the original Hangouts experience, but has extra upgrades like reactions and reply suggestions. But starting next year, instead of only being available businesses that use Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite, formerly known as Google Apps) the upgraded “Chat” app will be available to everyone who uses Gmail.

Robinhood was hacked again.

How many major issues will this company continue to have?

Also, how is it in any way acceptable for them to have no customer support phone number after all this time?

The attacks unleashed a torrent of complaints on social media, where investors recounted futile attempts to call the brokerage, which doesn’t have a customer service phone number. Robinhood, which has more than 13 million customer accounts, is now considering whether to add a phone number along with other tools, the person said.

Insider posted an article yesterday about Netflix and their strategy of cancelling shows before they get the chance to find their footing.

I remember seeing another article from Wired last month with more information about Netflix’s thinking:

Shows can have a dedicated fan base, like Altered Carbon and The OA, but they might not have been successful enough to have amassed a Netflix-wide viewership. Tom Harrington, an analyst at Enders Analysis, explains that the ideal show for Netflix is one where the large majority of people who subscribe to Netflix will watch it, and not just one dedicated fan base. Something like Stranger Things can bring in new audiences, and maintain current ones, which is why it keeps getting renewed.

Netflix, like most Silicon Valley companies love gathering and analyzing lots of data and using it to know exactly how to make themselves successful each quarter and keep that stock price looking good.

But what’s good for the quarter isn’t what’s good for long term health. From the Insider article:

TV lovers in these fandoms can only be burned so many times before they stop investing. Why should a Netflix subscriber spend 10 hours watching a new show if there’s a decent chance they’ll never see it end?

It’s definitely interesting watching these companies back themselves into corners over and over chasing short term growth.

David Dao has created a great list of scary/sexist/racist/concerning AI projects to raise awareness of its misuses in society:

Artificial intelligence in its current state is unfair, easily susceptible to attacks and notoriously difficult to control. Often, AI systems and predictions amplify existing systematic biases even when the data is balanced. Nevertheless, more and more concerning the uses of AI technology are appearing in the wild. This list aims to track all of them. We hope that Awful AI can be a platform to spur discussion for the development of possible preventive technology (to fight back!).

We need socially aware, empathetic, well-rounded people from all kinds of backgrounds to get more involved in AI because the projects on this list are showing us that the current path we’re heading down is completely unacceptable.

YO WHAT??

Some devices are better left disconnected from the wonder we call the internet. Case in point: this “smart” chastity sex toy that’s been leaving users’ penises locked up with no method of escape. It’s like something out of a techno-horror film, really.

More information from the penetration testing and security services company that reported the issue: Pen Test Partners.

Yo what??

Since 2013, this user—a self-professed Christian INTP furry living somewhere in North Carolina—has simply written articles that are written in English, riddled with misspellings that mimic a spoken Scottish accent. Many of the articles were written while they were a teenager. AmaryllisGardener is an admin of the Scots Wikipedia, and Wikipedians now have no idea what to do, because their influence over the country’s pages has been so vast that their only options seem to be to delete the Scots language version entirely or revert the entire thing back to 2012.