In 1964, mathematician and computer scientist Woodrow Bledsoe first attempted the task of matching suspects’ faces to mugshots. He measured out the distances between different facial features in printed photographs and fed them into a computer program. His rudimentary successes would set off decades of research into teaching machines to recognize human faces.

Now a new study shows just how much this enterprise has eroded our privacy. It hasn’t just fueled an increasingly powerful tool of surveillance. The latest generation of deep-learning-based facial recognition has completely disrupted our norms of consent.

We love the nostalgia and sense of discovery in this story of found paper airplanes. From the New Yorker Magazine, we read about Harry Everett Smith, a painter, filmmaker and collector. His paper airplane collection became thing of legend over the years, particularly because of his passion and interest in tracking down new ones. Jumping out into moving traffic, grabbing an airplane before it dived into a gutter, Smith put pride into his saving of these throwaway relics.

Collected between 1961 and 1983, a box of 250 planes was donated to the Smithsonian after his death, just a fraction of his total collection, but a fascinating time capsule nonetheless.

Today, the LEGO Group is launching LEGO® White Noise, a new playlist designed to help listeners find a moment of relaxation in their busy lives. The playlist is composed of a series of audio tracks created using nothing but the iconic sounds that the LEGO brick makes, sounds that are recognised by generations all over the world.

Each LEGO element makes a unique noise, which is why designers experimented with over 10,000 in their quest for the perfect soothing sounds. The result is a soundscape that includes tracks such as ‘It All Clicks’ which perfectly captures the joyous sound of two LEGO elements joining together, and ‘The Waterfall’ created by pouring thousands of LEGO bricks on top of each other.

In 2017, somewhere between getting my office and my website off-the-grid, I decided not to buy any more new laptops. Instead, I switched to a 2006 second-hand machine that I purchased online for 50 euros and which does everything that I want and need. Including a new battery and a simple hardware upgrade, I invested less than 150 euros.

If my 2006 laptop lasts as long as my other machines – if it runs for another 1.7 years – it will have cost me only 26 euros per year. That’s more than 10 times less than the cost of my previous laptops. In this article, I explain my motivations for not buying new laptops, and how you could do the same.

A new report in MIT Technology Review looks at why, almost a year into the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seemed totally unprepared for actually getting shots into people’s arms.

According to Technology Review, the agency knew it needed a robust, one-stop shop that could be used by patients, clinics, employers, and government officials. But instead, the CDC spent $44 million on something called the Vaccine Administration Management System —-VAMS— built by consulting firm Deloitte (via no-bid contracts) which was so inadequate that it has driven some states to try to patch together their own vaccine distribution systems instead.

Dark Patterns at Scale is a thorough collection of the high-pressure and deceptive tricks used on websites to get you to do things you didn't intend.

During the pandemic, musical artists have raised the bar on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts. Because they can't actually perform from Bob Boilen's "tiny desk" in NPR's music office, they've been given carte blanche to imagine outside the box. The performances themselves are what you'd expect from these artists — terrific — it's the sets that they're having fun with.

Back in August, Billie Eilish and FINNEAS performed in front of a realistic cardboard cutout of Bob Boilen's desk. Then, in September, Phoebe Bridgers used a green-screen to make it out like she and her band were playing from the Oval Office.

Enter Miley Cyrus. For her concert, she not only embraces the concept of "tiny" but makes her backdrop a personal statement.

I check the v4.1 manpage: "Ranges or lists of names are not allowed."

And the crontab entry parsing source sports a familiar phrase:

/ no numbers, look for a string if we have any /

So vixie-cron v4.1 seems to support named weekday & month ranges & lists, same as cronie.

But then I vaguely seemed to remember seeing Paul Vixie's name on #techtwitter somewhere... and sure enough: @paulvixie
.

So... let's DM him. (Why not? Maybe he's as bored as I am.)

dyff is inspired by the way the old BOSH v1 deployment output reported changes from one version to another by only showing the parts of a YAML file that change.

Each difference is referenced by its location in the YAML document by using either the Spruce or go-patch path syntax. The output report aims to be as compact as possible to give a clear and simple overview of the change.

I wanted to share a little trick some proofreading pros use. I use proofreading fonts (previously) like DP Sans Mono, which supports a wide range of Unicode characters. Some people with visual issues, dyslexia, or other reading impairments may also find it a more legible option for some use

A legible monospace font… the very typeface you’ve been trained to recognize since childhood. This font is a fork of Shannon Miwa’s Comic Shanns (version 1).

Git is hard: screwing up is easy, and figuring out how to fix your mistakes is fucking impossible. Git documentation has this chicken and egg problem where you can't search for how to get yourself out of a mess, unless you already know the name of the thing you need to know about in order to fix your problem.

So here are some bad situations I've gotten myself into, and how I eventually got myself out of them in plain english.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to fly between the skyscrapers of a city centre? ... to take a trip through Saturn's rings? ... or walk around inside a molecule of DNA? Well, with "computer graphics" you can ... For the artist it's a new way to paint; for the scientist to understand data; and for anyone to play more elaborate space-invaders style games, or to control dangerous or impossible events.

Let's Encrypt announced it had found a solution that will let those old Android phones keep ticking, and the solution is to just... keep using the expired certificate from IdenTrust? Let's Encrypt says "IdenTrust has agreed to issue a 3-year cross-sign for our ISRG Root X1 from their DST Root CA X3.

Maybe you know how to solder a bit, but you suck at it. Or it's frustrating and never comes out nice and you hate it.

Here's how to make it enjoyable, and get good results as a side effect.

Welcome to the London Sound Survey, a web project which collected over 2,000 recordings of everyday life in London between 2008 and 2020. It also has a wide and unique range of historical resources on the theme of urban sound.

It’s one thing turning your basement into a wine cellar, but some people are building replica streets, theme parks and even trains beneath their homes

This is a list of lists of lists, a list of list articles that contain other list articles on the English Wikipedia. In other words, each of the articles linked here is an index to multiple lists on a topic. Some of the linked articles may contain lists of lists as well.

A paper revolution is coming! From both my interest in sustainability and fascination for tools and techniques grew the idea of a 3D printer to recycle paper.

Enjoy this amazing aerial flight through a future cyberpunk city. With calm ambient and rain sound in the background. This City gives you the vibes from the atmosphere of Blade Runner, or the Game Cyberpunk 2077, but also reminds of Mute City from the Game F-Zero or the City of Tron.