Links, November 15, 2024

Please Stop Writing Secure Messaging Tools

So, what do people need with this feature set that’s not IM, email, or chat? A lot of things. Here’s twenty-four off the top of my and a few smart people’s heads:

Hear, hear.

I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how.

I’ve read bedtime stories with a kid on one side, scanning my phone on the other side, messing up the words I’m reading aloud because I got distracted by the news.

This is a challenge for many parents, myself included. I had come to similar conclusions a few years back and removed a lot of apps from my phone, which is perhaps the main reason I’m not spending time on Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, or other services that are mobile-first.

The Counterculture Switch: creating in a hostile environment

Unfortunately, we’ve been here before.

Thankfully, we’ve been here before. We can steal earlier ideas for how to survive, as a practice, when the world considers you obscene.

A long read about media, culture, and control

Fake QR code in a car park

Criminals, of course, love the fact that government agencies and public sector institutions also encourage citizens to scan QR codes without verifying where they end up.

No one thinks about how the tool they’re making will exist in the world, exhibit #4,281.

Animated Math | 3blue1brown

I am not generally a person who learns from videos, but their explanations have helped me understand some concepts from Linear Algebra and Calculus that I had had a really hard time with.

Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

Look at your favorite artists, alive or dead, the ones who you have always aspired to be as a professional. Chances are they have had one of three types of musical careers. Every professional musician I’ve met has fallen into one of these macro categories. I know it seems like an overgeneralization, but it continues to prove itself to be tried and true in my experience, so just hear me out.

I wish I could have read this around the time I was finishing or shortly out of college.

Historical Topographic Maps - Preserving the Past | USGS

The goal of The National Map’s Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC) is to provide a digital repository of USGS 1:250,000 scale and larger maps printed between 1884 and 2006

Get ‘em while the getting’s good.