It's A Binary World 2.0

Category: Internet

  • A Couple Recent Interesting Podcast Episodes

    First off, I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy listening to the science fiction short story podcast Escape Pod. Today I listened to episode 949, A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls. Large Language Models (LLMs), what we have colloquially called AI for the past few years, have been a giant source of wonder and consternation…

  • The Algorithm

    I sometimes forget that most of social media is governed by an attention span algorithm instead of a reverse chronological algorithm. There are at least a couple times, however, when I’m reminded of that fact:

  • Web Browsers: Vivaldi Features and Firefox News

    This post continues a series on exploring new browsers (last few posts): Vivaldi About 4 years ago I decided to start exploring various web browsers. Eventually I settled on Vivaldi as my main browser both on Windows and Linux. When I first installed Vivaldi, I mentioned that vertical tabs are very helpful on a wide…

  • Miscellanea: D&D, Disney, and French Browser Proposals

    Miscellanea: D&D, Disney, and French Browser Proposals

    This post contains my thoughts on a few stories I’ve been saving up that don’t merit a post on their own. D&D Romance Just a day after posting about my kids getting into D&D, I came across this article on Tor.com about The Golden Age of D&D Romance. I had no idea it was a…

  • Podcasts I’m Listening to In 2023

    Podcasts I’m Listening to In 2023

    Once again I used a script to pull out the official descriptions of the podcasts as well as the URL where I access the feed. After the official description you’ll see my commentary about the podcast. Politics 5-4 Pod – Official Description:5-4 is a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. It’s a progressive…

  • TIL: mIRC is still a thing

    TIL: mIRC is still a thing

    Back when I first started getting into the internet and hadn’t started using Linux yet, I needed a way to get onto the chat protocol known as IRC. Back then I used mIRC. Later on I started using Linux and used all kinds of IRC programs including XChat, BitchX, and Konversation. But recently most open…

  • Is there a replacement in the Fediverse for the Creative Class?

    I was on Identi.ca back when it first launched and I joined Mastodon a few years ago. Identi.ca had a decent number of FLOSS devs at the time, but by the time of Mastodon, Twitter was ascendant. So “no one” was on Mastodon. Even a few of the FLOSS developers I followed on Mastodon never…

  • Web Browsers: Brave on Linux and Brave in the News

    Web Browsers: Brave on Linux and Brave in the News

    As I did last time, I wanted my web browser post to contain both news stories about browsers that have caught my attention and my thoughts on the newest web browser I’m trying out. Let’s start with the news. As you probably have heard if you’re paying any attention to browsers, one of the selling…

  • Web Browsers: Linux Update; Firefox mistakes

    It’s been seven months since I last wrote about testing out new browsers on my computers. In addition to talking about what I’m doing, I wanted to muse about whether Mozilla really missed the mark with Firefox.  I’m going to start with the second point first. I forgot what brought them to my attention, but…

  • Podcasts I’m Listening to in 2022

    Podcasts I’m Listening to in 2022

    This time around I’ve written a Python script to take the OPML file from Podcast Republic and generate the list along with URLs and official descriptions for all the podcasts. If I have additional thoughts I’ll add them after the official description. The World Around Us 99% Invisible – Official Description: Design is everywhere in…

  • Examining Web Browsers: Microsoft Edge on Windows; Linux Browser Update

    This post continues a series on exploring new browsers: Are Web Browsers getting exciting again? Vivaldi Part 1 Vivaldi Part 2 Vivaldi Part 3 Brave on Windows Part 1 Vivaldi Part 4, Brave Part 2, Qutebrowser Part 1 Quite a bit has changed since I first started this series about 18 months ago. Back then…

  • Mozilla’s Legacy

    A few days ago I read this article over at Tech Republic about how, Mozilla’s greatest achievement is not Firefox, but the Rust programming language. They point to Firefox’s declining numbers in the face of Chrome and Chromium-based browsers and I’m inclined to agree with the author. There is, of course, a kind of poetry…

  • OMG: All Your Base is 20 Years Old

    As I was going through my feed reader recently, I came across an article from Ars Technica, that I’d skipped over when it first came out, which announced that the All Your Base Meme is now 20 years old. I couldn’t believe it. It was my first meme, a few years before Numa Numa would…

  • Vivaldi Part 4, Brave Part 2, Qutebrowser Part 1

    Vivaldi Part 4, Brave Part 2, Qutebrowser Part 1

    This post continues a series on exploring new browsers: Are Web Browsers getting exciting again? Vivaldi Part 1 Vivaldi Part 2 Vivaldi Part 3 Brave on Windows Part 1 Vivaldi vs Brave on Windows Brave didn’t last very long for me on Windows. I just don’t do enough on there to make use of their…

  • First 24 Hours with Podcast Republic

    First 24 Hours with Podcast Republic

    It took me a while to get the hang of the many, many options within Podcast Republic so that I could get it to work the way I wanted – automatically downloading episodes on WiFi. Unlike Doggcatcher, but more like other modern pod catchers, you can stream a podcast instead of always having to download…