My new favorite GNOME extension: quake-mode
Guake has long been a favorite application of mine. If you’re new to Guake, it’s a terminal application for Linux that stays out of site until it’s summoned with a hotkey, like the console in Id Software’s Quake games. Hit F12 or whatever combo you set up for it,...
Blacklight: A real-time website privacy inspector
Ever wondered what kind of trackers are on any given site? Check out Blacklight, a web-based tool to reveal specific user-tracking technologies on a site. I stumbled on this via The Markup and thought it might be interesting for privacy minded folks. (See: “How We Built a Real-time Privacy...
Lose the laugh tracks, forever
Two original shows I really enjoyed recently retooled or rebooted, not sure what the proper term is. That ’70s Show and Night Court are back as That ’90s Show and Night Court (again). I get the appeal and motivation of retooling old favorites, and bringing back original cast members...
Loving “The Last of Us”
I have a healthy amount of skepticism about movies and shows adapted from games. Clue was a rare exception, but it’s hard to go wrong with a cast that includes Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, and the amazing Madeline Kahn. The list of bad or aggressively mediocre media spun...
In case your current keyboard is too practical… the Cube Keyboard
To follow up on yesterday’s post about word processors, here’s a new entry for keyboard enthusiasts: The Cube Keyboard. It’s a keyboard that’s… a cube. I don’t think he’s going to win any typing speed contests with this one. Hat tip to Lobste.rs for this one....
My first word processor
This week I took a little trip down memory lane when a friend posted a meme or something about Stephen King’s Wang word processor in the 1980s. That was early for me, but sometime in 1993 or 1994 I bought my first word processor. Not a general purpose computer...
Things they don’t teach, but should: Content review
Writing and editing are taught widely in schools and professional programs, but content review is a neglected and unloved (and rare) skill that I’ve never seen taught or even acknowledged – but it’s widely required in jobs throughout the tech industry. If you’re a product manager, product marketer, comms...
Real browser alternatives on iOS?
Ars and The Register (and probably others) are reporting that Google and Mozilla are working on “browsers that break current App Store rules.” You know, browsers that aren’t dependent on Apple’s rendering engine. Actual full-fledged browsers. For various reasons I use iOS as the least-bad option (for me) between Android...
No, Netflix isn’t chopping down your family
I like Cory Doctorow a lot, and tend to agree with him on most things, but this screed about Netflix changing its “family” settings is not one of them....
Realities of the Fediverse: ActivityPub and Mastodon have room to improve
The fediverse is a grand improvement in many ways over walled gardens like Twitter, but there’s plenty of room to improve. For example, federation does little good for users on a site that unexpectedly shuts down without time for users to migrate....