DamnInteresting

I created an extension that flushes all cookies and local storage for the current domain; it then reloads the page so you appear to be a fresh new visitor.

I was a Sprint customer before the merger, and I received this notice via email a few days ago. It included links that were supposed to allow me opt out of my data to be sold, but none of the links worked with my Sprint login, so I seem to have no opt-out option. Blah.

I was previously opted out of such things, and the merger appears to have opted me back in with no functional recourse.

When I read the title of this thread, what I pictured in my mind was an e-ink version of a paper wall calendar or a monthly desk calendar; a grid 7 squares wide and 5 down that can display any month. The user could tap on a day to zoom into it, and hand write some notes/events/etc with a stylus like they would a paper calendar. Perhaps it could have an optional sidebar on the zoomed-in version that shows Google Calendar appointments.

I can imagine someone like my mom using such a device, she still tracks all of her appointments on a paper wall calendar.

I prefer chiclet style keyboards when I am coding, and mechanical keyboards when I am writing. The clack of the keys acts as a sort of white noise to shut out the world and allows me to think about what I'm writing more clearly.

When I was able to write in coffee shops and the like, I didn't want to bother other patrons with a noisy keyboard, so I whipped up my own writing app that simulates loud keys via headphones, and it works almost as well as the real thing.

I have the same shortcoming; when I try to nap I seldom succeed. When I do succeed, I usually awake feeling worse, like I have whole-body morning mouth. I wish I had that napping power, I've seen what it can do for others.

So close...it should be "What is the collective noun for 'programmer'?"

To all those saying that this account should not be suspended because a president's messages should not be blocked, Twitter did not ban @POTUS, only @realDonaldTrump. The office of the president is not silenced, only the personal account of the current president. If something important comes up he can tweet via @POTUS (for another 12 days or so, anyway).

Author of the article here. I see why you drew that conclusion, but in this case, I was not aware of the similarly titled sketch until now. If I had been aware of it, I would have selected a different title for mine, to avoid the appearance of title pilferage. Mine was just a play on the game show title, essentially the same joke independently conceived.

Author of the article here. It's definitely not about ads. On principle, we don't host ads on Damn Interesting, and we never have.

We aim for narrative non-fiction, to tell a true story that keeps the reader intrigued throughout. We've found over the years that stories with a good "hook" or "teaser" seem to be best received by readers. We've also found that people want some background on the people/places they are reading about, and this often requires us to jump back in time after the teaser to fill in the relevant information.

If your goal is just to extract the basic bones of the story rather than to be entertained for a while, you probably won't like this article, nor the others in our catalog. Our approach to storytelling is not for everybody. And that's okay with us--trying to please everyone is the short road to clickbait town.

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.”

—Banksy

Photo of the wreckage from above: https://twitter.com/ruperto1023/status/1333791522269978626/p...

It's a fun mystery that gives the mind something to chew on apart from pandemic, elections, murder hornets, etc.

I wish they had included a video where they knock on it with a knuckle so we can hear the reverberations.

I'm glad someone does! It has been super useful for me, which is why I decided to go to the trouble of making it widely available.

Funny, this didn't get much traction in upvotes, and nothing at all so far in the comments, but I received several emails from folks saying they saw it on HN. What a curious asynchronous civilization we are.

Not that I have any dog in this hunt, but the title is actually "Scientist Believes...". Singular scientist.

Oh, goodness me. Thank you for the unsolicited kind words. You've improved my previously gloomy mood.

Example from the paper, alternate AI lyrics for Can't Touch This:

  Prompt: You cannot touch this
  And and and and should not touch this again
  Do not touch to the tongue
  The person in question
  And no one trying indigestion
  Do it in anger because they
  Should not touch the tongue say it ye and yea.
  I said unto you
  And if anything, uh, you pursue.

This makes me oddly nostalgic for the days of painstakingly creating animated GIFs frame-by-frame. My animated GIF magnum opus, ca. 1996:

https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/globe_spin3.gif

I am usually among the people who are excited about changes and updates in the products I use, but this is a rare exception. Some of these new logos are really hard to tell apart. It doesn't help that I have some red-green color blindness, but that's hardly a rare condition.

To the best of our understanding, the surface of Venus is isothermal, meaning that there is little variability in temperature, whether on the pole or equator, day or night. That 2016 rash of articles about "cold poles" on Venus were rather misleading interpretations of a single scientific paper about a measurement from the upper atmosphere.

I've had a similar experience quite recently. I started getting legit automated emails for someone named "John", some emails regarding an effort to buy a house, others from a doctor's office. Some of the emails looked rather important, such as doctor appointment details, so I engaged in some Internet sleuthing, and in a few days I found the person. They were an elderly gent who had the same Gmail handle as me, but his with a numeral suffix.

I tried emailing the gent to explain, but received no reply. So I've just been forwarding those emails to the fellow's real address when they arrive. Perhaps he never checks email, hence his lack of reply to my earlier note, but I forward just in case.

I have long used Shift-Command-4 to take screenshots, but I only recently discovered Shift-Command-5, which provides finer control (and it's much easier to use when I'm working at my treadmill desk).

Also, Command-K to clear out a terminal window (also often works in similar places, such as the MAMP error log viewer).

This might be helpful:

https://dev.to/steveblue/setup-a-redirect-on-github-pages-1o...

Also, these redirects won't help with your Google results until next time they crawl the site, so you may have to wait a few days.

Well, small electronics such as hard drives and mobile phones are not in direct danger from these sorts of events; the damage is caused by induced current on miles-long cables. Our flash memories and tape backups will not be harmed unless they are burned up in power surges from unprotected power outlets.

We seem to be on similar arcs, you and I: I have a site I've been running for about 15 years now which mostly features long-form detailed articles. Mine (damninteresting.com) is built on blog software, though its not very "bloggy," as it's seldom autobiographical.

I started using Zotero a few months ago when a major Firefox update rendered the Scrapbook extension non-functional. It's nice to be able to take quick snapshots from Chrome or Firefox and save them to the local document repository. I found this guide helpful in getting things set up:

https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-use-zotero-and-scrivener-for-...

The abstract includes this rationale: "Our design is optimized to permit large sale [sic] production in short time and at a limited cost, relying on off-the-shelf components, readily available worldwide from hardware suppliers"

The researchers believe that these could be quickly slapped together in substantial quantities in many parts of the world.

It is possible to load unvetted extensions, but it's inconvenient. If you go to this url in Firefox:

   about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox

You can install a "Temporary Add-On", which is any add-on/extension you have stored on your local disk[1]. So you can download an extension from a third party, rename the .xpi to a .zip (Firefox extensions are just zip files with a different extension), unzip it, and use the "Load Temporary Add-on" button to point to the manifest.json file in the unzipped extension.

Add-ons installed this way will work as though you installed it via normal means, with the caveat that it will not automatically reload when you restart Firefox, it must be added manually again.

I have developed a few extensions, and this is the standard process for testing extensions during development. There is a similar process in Chrome, etc.

1: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

FYI you can still access these options (and more) with the Google Advanced Image Search: https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search

edit: Oh, it no longer has "custom" under the sizes. Hmm.