If anyone is an "AI vegan" it's me -- I don't use these tools at all, ever, because they are unethical. Telling me that they are delicious is not going to make them ethical.

Also, I will endlessly berate you about your use.

That's veganism, you're welcome.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/ai-vegan/feed/ 47 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/still-seeking-basecamp-alternative/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/still-seeking-basecamp-alternative/#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2026 03:34:31 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6E I asked this 6 months ago and got no good answers so let's try again.

Against my better judgment, I let my staff start using Basecamp about 8 years ago, and now I want to ditch it for something open source and self-hosted.

Several people suggested Nextcloud. After much pain, I got that installed, and finally convinced my general manager to take a look at it. Here is his review:

I spent more time poking at this today, and on several occasions it took it 20-30 seconds to respond to link clicks.

I've also spent some time reading the manual, and... I hate these people so much. it's all about how to access your data with various protocols, and nothing about how to use the actual software or WTF the software is expected to do or how you might use it.

It looks like the "todo lists" is all those "cards". They even have an example set that implies each card has more details, but opening them, it just says DESCRIPTION and you can't edit it.

I cannot make any sense out of this. Is it mostly hosting infrasrtucture that is used by other, more sane front-ends? it alludes to a bunch of features, but it seems like those are "apps" that you have to add. on it's own, it's about as friendly as teaching a Boomer to set up a linux desktop so they can check emails.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate this "I'd rather have my gums planed".

A few other people suggested Openproject.

It seems that the only method of installation that Openproject documents is "install an entire VM" or "install these RPMs" and of course they don't have a package for the OS that I use ("Amazon Linux 2023"). There's not a single mention of how one might go about installing from source, so I don't even know where to begin trying to test it out.

Also they say "whatever you do, don't install our software on a server that has anything else running on it, because we might completely scorch anything that isn't ours." Confidence-inspiring!

Even more confidence-inspiring: "A user you've blocked has previously contributed to this repository: Claude". So it's slopware, too.

I am now soliciting suggestions. Please give me non-terrible suggestions.

What I am seeking:

• Create and organize sets of documents.
• Create tasks and assign them to people.
• Sometimes with due dates.
• In both of these things, edit text, with basic styling and inlined images, WYSIWYG, including from a phone.
• Attach things like PDFs.
• 100% locally hosted.
• Not paying a monthly fee to an unhinged fascist to keep my files on their computer.

What I don't care about: Anything not on that list, including but not limited to:

• git;
• Markdown;
• AWS buckets;
• Dropbox;
• Learning what business-brain buzzwords like "Gantt" or "Scrum" mean.

Things that should not need to be said but do:

• Do not suggest software that you do not use.
• Do not just Google it for me.

Previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/still-seeking-basecamp-alternative/feed/ 38 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/popup-video-2/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/popup-video-2/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:30:45 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6C Last year I wrote popup-video.js, a Google-surveillance-defeating YouTube player. You may have noticed it in action on the DNA Lounge calendar pages and galleries but I've made some improvements recently.

• The web page contains only a locally-hosted thumbnail. Nothing from YouTube is loaded until someone clicks play. This means no surveillance trackers on every one of your pages that has a video, and also the pages load dozens fewer megabytes.

• When you click play, a fake-window pops up inside the page with a YouTube player.

• Clicking anywhere makes it go away.

• There's a "minimize" button that makes it drop back down into the place where the thumbnail was and continue playing.

• If the inline thumb is nearly as wide as the page, it plays inline instead of doing the popup thing (this is often the case on mobile).

• It works on playlists as well as single videos.

• For single videos, it generates an ad-hoc playlist of all of the other YouTube videos linked on the current page, so the "previous" and "next" buttons show those.

• It works on portrait videos and videos with weird aspect ratios.

Dear Lazyweb,

If you understand the ever-changing rules about auto-play, perhaps you can offer some guidance.

On desktop Safari, you have to click twice to get the first video to play: the YouTube player pops up but does not then auto-play, unless you have done "Website settings / Allow all auto-play" for jwz.org. This is -- what's the word -- fucked up, because the creation of the IFRAME and the sending of the "play" event all happen underneath the user's "click" event, so this should be considered interactive.

And on mobile Safari you always have to click twice.

(I don't remember what the situation is on Chrome or Firefox on account of not caring.)

Anyway, if you know how to make it play with one click instead of two, I would like to know how to do that. Your suggestion should take the form of, "Here's a modified version of your JS file that works". Your speculation is acknowledged and ignored.

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/popup-video-2/feed/ 10 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/i-just-like-saying-dicks-rewards/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/i-just-like-saying-dicks-rewards/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:25:39 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk58 So what is with all of this amateurish phishing spam that has been sliding right past SpamAssassin like shit through a goose for the past few months? Has someone recently discovered a new technique for finding open relays that will SPF-sign anything?

Received: from mail.vividdreamqb.name (milestone.clevervistakb.com [170.130.167.11])
From: Dicks Rewards Team <dicksp0@vividdreamqb.name>
Subject: Final notice: YETI Beach Lounge Wagon unlocked by your gear score
Message-ID: <RUxA2tTL-gy3-hDiWXM33jfhjh3zp@vividdreamqb.name>
X-Request-ID: d36d3311-8a4b-4ac9-91b0-4afeee106923
Feedback-ID: jhkmk:vividdreamqb.name:mail
X-Spam-Report:
    * 0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
    * 0.4 KHOP_HELO_FCRDNS Relay HELO differs from its IP's reverse DNS

I can't even tell who has been popped here. "clevervistakb.com" and "vividdreamqb.name" have the same IPs but different registrars (maybe that's a TLD thing?) It's also not clear to me which of those domains sender_access matches on.

I have, however, come to the conclusion that that there are simply too many web sites.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/i-just-like-saying-dicks-rewards/feed/ 9 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/today-i-woke-up-and-chose-violence/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/today-i-woke-up-and-chose-violence/#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:13:53 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk5y Arguing with robots has become something of a hobby of mine.

▶︎

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Direction finding has traced the signal to a US base near Stuttgart, Germany. In addition to using Farsi, Iran has repeatedly attempted to jam the signal, causing V32 to change frequencies a few times. There's also a more recent, so far unidentified, jammer trying to block the signal.

In addition to direction finding, there is a surprising amount of information you can glean from the audio. The first few days of broadcasts had specific beeps in the background, which appear to be warning tones from a specific type of American military transmitter that warns the operator when encryption is not engaged. At first, a human read the numbers. Eventually, the station switched to using automated numbers. In addition, there have been a few times when Windows 10 system sounds have leaked into the transmission.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/new-numbers-station-just-dropped/feed/ 9 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/xscreensaver-6-15/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/xscreensaver-6-15/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:15:32 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk5c XScreenSaver 6.15 is out now, including iOS and Android. A whopping thirteen new savers this time:

• New hack by me, worldpieces.
• New Shadertoy hacks brought into the fold: bestill, bubblecolors, darktransit, downfall, driftclouds, goldenapollian, noxfire, prococean, rigrekt, trainmandala, trizm and universeball.

Shadertoys are so wild; you'll see like 30 lines of code, and when it runs it build an entire environment without there being a polygon or a model apparent anywhere. What witchcraft is this?? Well, here's a really good article that explains the techniques used: Painting With Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching.

I fixed a bunch of Android bullshit, too (some of which meant needing to reimplement glRotatef etc. from first principles). Android's implementation of GLES is a buggy mess. Also I think Android has again lost the ability to ask for permission to load photos. I can't figure it out, so someone who gives a shit will have to send me a patch. I also still can't figure out why transparency doesn't work on Android. This makes Peepers be particularly horrifying.

Map Scroller: I updated the list of available maps, and made it show the name of the nearest city. One of the new map sets that works is the Google Satellite Map, and if you have two monitors, I highly recommend running that map in "Fully random location" mode. It has a habit of picking two places many thousands of miles apart that look surprisingly similar, like Greenland and Syria.

This one took so much time! Most of my screensavers are pretty quick; generally they'll percolate in my head for a while, then I do the first 90% in half a day, and then the second 90% in another half day to two days. But this one was composed entirely of ratholes.

1. Oh, first I have to find some sane way to get the country outlines. That means learning about GeoJSON and getting the proper data set from Natural Earth Data. Then that data has to be massaged and merged, and while there's probably some command-line way to do that, using mapshaper.org was easier.

2. Now I've got a bunch of polylines with weird "hole" rules (not winding-rule!) and I need to triangulate them. Next rathole: learning how to use triangle.c correctly.

3. Then I notice that while the GeoJSON has population data for countries, it does not for states and provinces. Ok, that should be easy to grab from Wikipedia, right? Next rathole: learning about SparQL, the Wikidata query language. It is one of the nastiest and most baffling query languages I've seen. Good job on that.

4. Then I realize that while the GeoJSON contains the names of the countries translated into various languages, it doesn't tell you which ones are the official languages! Next rathole! Ok, surely we can get that from Wikidata too... Nope. While the Wikipedia pages contain the endonyms in the local character set, the Wikidata items only have them transliterated into Latin characters. To fix that, I had to scrape the Wikipedia page and parse the Wiki markup using regexps, dooming us to inhuman toil, etc. etc. Anyway, I got it working so that Japan can be spelled 日本...

5. ...on macOS, iOS and Android. Why doesn't it work on Linux? Oh ho ho ho, another rathole, this one un-solved! So on Linux it notices when all of the characters came out as square boxes and falls back to the transliterated Latin versions. You're welcome.

6. Ok, it's starting to come together. But since I'm zooming in a lot, the Earth imagery is looking a little grainy, since the image I have is 2048x1024. Well let's just go upgrade that. Next rathole! The old images I had were from the public domain 2002 NASA "Blue Marble" images and 2000 "Visible Earth, City Lights" images none of which still exist on NASA's site (all praise archive.org!)

   They seem to have deprecated those data sets in favor of the 2025 "Blue Marble: Next Generation" images and the 2012 "Black Marble" images. But... they're weird. First, both sets of images completely omit the North polar ice. Second, the 2025 daytime oceans are colored completely flat, whereas the 2002 images contained bathymetry details. And third, and worst of all, is no pairing of 2025 day images and 2016 night images where the pair have the same ice extents. This means that when we blend between the day and night images, it looks very weird. It took me days to finally accept that there was nothing that I could do to work around that.

7. So now that those various ratholes are out of the way, it's trigonometry time. The way the countries pop up and face forward toward whereever the camera is a technique called "billboarding" and it's pretty easy. But what's not easy is doing a smooth transition between the object being billboarded, and the object being back in the scene. Especially since it's position in the scene is spinning and wobbling about willy-nilly. (Remember, you can also spin the globe with the mouse, and it has to keep track of that as well!)

8. So the final rathole was finally coming to terms with quaternions. Quaternions and I have had a passing acquaintance for many years, but I finally had to get down and dirty and really understand them to make all of this work.

   Wikipedia describes quaternions as:

   Quaternions form a four-dimensional associative normed division algebra over the real numbers, and therefore a ring, also a division ring and a domain. It is a special case of a Clifford algebra, classified as Cl₀,₂(ℝ)≅Cl⁺₃,₀(ℝ). According to the Frobenius theorem, the algebra ℍ is one of only two finite-dimensional division rings containing a proper subring isomorphic to the real numbers; the other being the complex numbers.

   "I did not understand a math thing, and then I read the Wikipedia article on it, and now I understand the math thing" -- said literally no one ever. As far as I can tell, every math article on Wikipedia is written with the target audience of "person who wrote their grad school thesis on it" and no one else. Wikipedia's math articles are absolutely fucking useless for purposes of, you know, education.

   Anyway, 3Blue1Brown has a good intro video that is not like that!

   By the way, I propose that "Quaternions" should be pronounced like extruded cornmeal toroid "Funyuns".

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/xscreensaver-6-15/feed/ 91 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/the-oberlin-luddite-club/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/the-oberlin-luddite-club/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:20:30 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk5M

Oberlin Luddites Reject "Year of AI Exploration" Adpoted by School Dear President Ambar, We are writing to you on a typewriter that is over 70 years old; this is a machine that we all know well. With it, we misspell words without the crutch of spell check or generative AI and we think intently about every phrase we pound out. As we force ourselves, for once, to slow down, we engage in a cognitive dialogue with ourselves. We do not seek perfection because we know that education is about the growing and challenging of our young minds' potential, not the chasing of inititurtonal 'gold-star' approval. We do not believe that your so-c alled 'Year of AI Exploration; providing enterprise ChatGPT and Google Gemini sub scriptions to every Oberlin student aligns with our college's founding principles. You claim that this year will be one of experimentation, not adoption. But even just one semester of accepted (encouraged even) chat bot use will jettison our student body down a lazy and irredeem able tunnel of intellctual destruction. We are a college grounded in learning and labor, which now risks straying from these rooted ideals. With ChatGPT at the helm, our emails, essays,and discussion posts will be generated for us, not by us. And let's not fool ourselves. This is precisely what these platforms will be used for by our busy, anxious student body. We see your vision for this year as advancing the college's 'businessification'--an alarming trend also seen in the takeover of our beloved library cafe by a 'bookstore' With no bools in stock (just shiny merch) and an app replacing customer service. In one instance, the college assumes we want efficiency at all cost through automated rather than hand-pulled coffee. In the other lies the false belief that we simply desire to turn in an essay, regardless of how little we've written of it. We need not stand by and witness the further atrophy of our liberal arts education. As you embark on your year of AI, we'll embark on our own year of self-actualization, of realizing the fruits of our labor and embracing human imperfection and raw inquiry. We will boldly reject information technologies operating out of data centers ghat guzzle water and energy sources(that simply must contradict our campus's carbon-neutral devotion). We will turn instead t o ourselves and embrace our natural intelligence, intentional hard work, and generative sweat rather than generative AI. We urge anyone who feels similarly to risk disapproval, perceived backwardness and the outward appearance of naivete and join us. Let us not ask what AI can do for Oberlin students, but what Oberlin students can do ourselves, while we still have the brain capacity to think on our own. Yours truly, The Luddite Club of Oberlin College, Logan Lane, CharLie McLaughlin, Mary Claire McGreivey, Sawyer Van Dyck, Simon Puchner-Noel,and Marlowe Blantz

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/the-oberlin-luddite-club/feed/ 23 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/google-pass-redux/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/google-pass-redux/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:05:00 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk45 Dear Lazyweb,

Four years ago I asked whether "Google Pass" was a thing that I needed to give a shit about and consensus was, "no, nobody uses that." But I have heard anecdotally, recently, that this might no longer be true. Thoughts?

The goal here is, "reduce the amount of time it takes for someone standing in front of my nightclub to wave their QR code at the door staff." On iOS, Apple Wallet supports that goal very well.

Note: I don't use Android and know as little about its ecosystem as possible, so please use small words.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/google-pass-redux/feed/ 125 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/ageless-linux/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/ageless-linux/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2026 19:03:28 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk43 The Ageless Device: A physical computing device designed to satisfy every element of the California Digital Age Assurance Act's regulatory scope while deliberately refusing to comply with its requirements. The device costs less than lunch and will be handed to children.

Configuration Tiers: Three Levels of Infraction

TIER 0, "The Pamphlet" ~$6
Minimum viable violation. A bootable Linux device with a display, network connectivity, and an app store. No battery, no keyboard -- just proof that this constitutes a regulated device under AB 1043. Good for bulk handout at conferences (50-100 units).

Legal status: Arguable. The 128×64 display introduces fuzziness. The AG could claim it's a dev board. That's fine -- ambiguity is instructive too.

TIER 1, "The Computer", ~$12
An unambiguous general purpose computing device. Color display, keyboard, WiFi, Linux, app store, user setup. The core product. There is no interpretive gap between this device and the law's definitions.

Legal status: Unambiguous. This is a computer with a color display, keyboard, WiFi, Linux, and an app store. It does not collect age data. It is handed to a child. The maximum fine is $7,500.

TIER 2, "The Appliance", ~$18
A self-contained, battery-powered pocket Linux computer. The educational device angle -- a modern descendant of the Acorn BBC Micro and the original Raspberry Pi.

Legal status: Beyond unambiguous. A pocket computer with a color screen, keyboard, battery, WiFi, 8GB storage, and an AI accelerator. It costs less than a large pizza. It fits in a child's hand.

Every tab on this site is gold:

How Distros Are Responding: We track how Linux distributions are responding to age verification mandates, and we provide tools to undo whatever they implement. If a distribution adds an age collection prompt, we will publish a script that removes it. If it ships a D-Bus age verification daemon, we will publish a package that replaces it with silence.

How One Bill Becomes Every Bill: AB 1043 was not written in isolation. It is a template. ICMEC published the model text as a ready-to-introduce statutory draft, and its Global Head of Policy presented it directly to Virginia's Joint Commission on Technology and Science. The same organizations that drafted the model bill are now deploying it in state legislatures across the country. The companies that benefit from the compliance moat fund the advocacy organizations that draft the bills that create the compliance moat. [...]

The Door That Stays Open: AB 1043 requires only self-declared age -- a birthdate field, not government ID or biometrics. Industry analysts have described this as "an initial implementation designed to get the door open." Self-declaration today. Biometric verification tomorrow. The infrastructure is the same; only the input changes. Once every operating system has an age collection interface and a real-time API for transmitting age data to applications, upgrading from a text field to a face scan is a configuration change, not a new law.

Penalty Comparison: Cost of Giving a Child a Computer:

Cost of one Ageless Linux device: $12-18
Maximum combined US penalty for one device given to one child: $46,000
US penalty-to-cost ratio: 3,067:1
Brazil penalty for one violation: up to 522,222:1

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/ageless-linux/feed/ 25 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/systemd-censord/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/systemd-censord/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2026 18:40:50 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk41 Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2026 20:38:08 -0800. To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org. Cc: xdg@lists.freedesktop.org, ...]]> *Slow clap*

On the need for a censorship API for legal compliance reasons in some countries and U.S. states

From: FloofyWolf <debian-devel-list@floofywolf.net>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2026 20:38:08 -0800
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Cc: xdg@lists.freedesktop.org, ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com, debian-legal@lists.debian.org, legal@lists.fedoraproject.org, devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Subject: On the need for a censorship API for legal compliance reasons in some countries and U.S. states

Recently, a proposal has been made to implement an API for a new California censorship regulation, "On the unfortunate need for an "age verification" API for legal compliance reasons in some U.S. states" by Aaron Rainbolt. I believe the approach outlined to be very short-sighted, in that creating a bespoke API for each of the hundreds of government censorship requirements that debian will presumably now be following will result in much duplication of effort and an unreliable user experience in which important censorship restrictions may be missed and not implemented. As such, with people now supporting the idea that debian should implement government censorship requests, even creating new standards if needed, I propose the creation of a censorship framework to speed implementation of current and future censorship regulations. [...]

Systemd units will be created for every desired censorship function, and will be started based on the user's location. For example, a unit for Kazakhstan will implement the government-required backdoor, a unit for China will implement keyword scans and web access blocks (more on this later), a unit for Florida will ban all packages with "trans" in the name (201 packages in current stable distribution), a unit for Oklahoma will ensure all educational software is compliant with the Christian Holy Bible, a unit for the entire United States will prevent installation of any program capable of decoding DVD or BluRay media, and a unit for California will provide the user's age to all applications and all web sites from which applications may be downloaded. As can be seen, multiple units may be started for a given location. [...]

To prevent users from bypassing censorship requirements, debian will need to switch to being a binary-only distribution with signed binaries, signed kernel, and signed kernel modules, with mandatory secureboot, and controls to prevent any non-signed software from being installed, written, or compiled, as any foreign sources of software may fail to query systemd-censord or may fail to respect the permissions it returns.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/systemd-censord/feed/ 53 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/github-copilot-litigation/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/github-copilot-litigation/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2026 18:27:04 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk4z This suit started in 2022 but seems to still be slogging along:

By training their AI systems on public GitHub repositories (though based on their public statements, possibly much more) we contend that the defendants have violated the legal rights of a vast number of creators who posted code or other work under certain open-source licenses on GitHub. Which licenses? A set of 11 popular open-source licenses that all require attribution of the author's name and copyright, including the MIT license, the GPL, and the Apache license. (These are enumerated in the appendix to the complaint.)

In addition to violating the attribution requirements of these licenses, we contend that the defendants have violated:

• GitHub's own terms of service and privacy policies;
• DMCA § 1202, which forbids the removal of copyright-management information;
• the California Consumer Privacy Act;
• and other laws giving rise to related legal claims.

Previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/github-copilot-litigation/feed/ 4 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/macos-26-guest-user/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/macos-26-guest-user/#comments Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:33:55 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk4f Back in the heady days of macOS 14, you could customize the default reset-to environment of the "guest" user (Safari bookmarks, items on Dock, etc.) by copying stuff into "/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/". And of course macOS 26 seems to have completely fucked this. How do you accomplish this now?

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/macos-26-guest-user/feed/ 20 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/ai-protest-music-is-a-thing-now/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/ai-protest-music-is-a-thing-now/#comments Sat, 14 Mar 2026 19:41:09 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk4W DNA Lounge, a room full of people chanted "No AI" along with Anton Corazza's song of the same name. The kids might be alright!

Previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/math-is-hard-mastodon-edition/feed/ 14 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/today-in-scrapers/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/today-in-scrapers/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:28:44 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk4K Honestly one of the most offensive things about these AI scraper bots is how bad at their jobs they are. Look at these 404s from the last 6 hours and despair:

/blog/2014/12/30/411x480 /blog/2014/12/30/500x417 /blog/2018/05/12/2048x1365 /blog/2018/05/12/736x677 /blog/2018/05/12/3000x2049 /blog/2018/05/12/2400x1600 /blog/2014/12/30/500x638 /blog/2024/1920x1440 /blog/2015/08/3375x2561 /blog/2015/08/600x600 /blog/2017/08/page/2/1400x781 /blog/2017/08/page/2/1280x720 /blog/2017/08/page/2/464x363 /blog/2017/08/page/2/1200x1600 /blog/2010/03/07/480x640 /blog/2011/09/312x360 /blog/2011/09/640x423 /blog/2011/09/600x800 /blog/2006/09/page/4/1042x673 /blog/2018/03/550x826 /blog/2018/03/640x427 /blog/2018/03/754x1024 /blog/2018/03/815x600 /blog/tag/www/page/2/410x630 /blog/tag/www/page/2/1200x809 /blog/tag/www/page/2/600x900 /blog/2016/04/page/3/962x1779 /blog/2016/04/page/3/1100x568 /blog/2016/04/page/3/1100x568 /blog/2016/04/page/3/1200x848 /blog/tag/www/768x1087 /blog/2014/2692x2970 /blog/tag/www/768x1087 /blog/tag/www/480x360 /blog/tag/www/906x222 /blog/tag/www/480x360 /blog/tag/www/768x270 /blog/2018/01/page/2/450x337 /blog/2018/01/page/2/500x667 /blog/2017/11/teeth-4/500x624 /blog/tag/www/988x1354 /blog/tag/www/800x450 /blog/tag/www/2000x2000 /blog/tag/www/2000x2000 /blog/tag/www/625x512 /blog/tag/www/768x432 /blog/tag/www/615x297 /blog/2014/640x360 /blog/2018/01/page/2/300x450 /blog/2014/1741x2600 /blog/tag/www/712x600 /blog/2018/01/page/2/585x350 /blog/2021/11/page/3/753x1200 /blog/2021/11/page/3/753x1200 /blog/2021/11/page/3/900x563 /blog/2021/11/page/3/1280x960 /blog/2022/05/page/2/1103x300 /blog/2022/05/page/2/1103x300 /blog/2018/07/page/4/315x450 /blog/2022/05/page/2/300x364 /blog/2018/07/page/4/2203x2938 /blog/2014/02/09/400x300 /blog/tag/dazzle/page/2/562x562 /blog/tag/dazzle/page/2/668x960 /blog/tag/dazzle/page/2/950x538 /blog/2006/02/blobby-art/500x375 /blog/tag/dazzle/page/2/484x604 /blog/tag/dazzle/page/2/3300x2475 /blog/tag/katrina/1318x1078 /blog/2019/03/page/3/680x510 /blog/tag/fanboys/768x547 /blog/tag/fanboys/768x1064 /blog/tag/fanboys/575x452 /blog/tag/fanboys/512x512 /blog/tag/fanboys/360x480 /blog/tag/fanboys/768x513 /blog/tag/fanboys/1024x759 /blog/tag/fanboys/584x328 /blog/2010/12/page/3/768x512 /blog/2010/12/page/3/500x628 /blog/2010/12/page/3/500x628 /blog/2010/12/page/3/960x1280 /blog/2010/12/page/3/960x1280 /blog/2019/07/02/500x392 /blog/2019/07/02/388x517 /blog/2019/07/02/388x517 /blog/2013/05/12/468x468 /blog/2019/04/01/900x1200 /blog/2019/04/01/1297x846 /blog/2019/04/01/768x432 /blog/2019/04/01/768x428 /blog/2023/12/shrimpfluencer/640x1136 /blog/2019/04/01/1200x628 /blog/2016/11/page/3/768x1024 /blog/2005/07/page/4/520x503 /blog/2005/07/page/4/520x503 /blog/2005/07/page/4/409x309 /blog/2023/12/psychedelic-cryptography/600x594 /blog/2021/01/page/4/1200x800 /blog/2021/01/page/4/1200x633

Of course all of them claim to be Chrome on "Windows NT 10.0".

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/today-in-scrapers/feed/ 26 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/that-one-xkcd-thing-now-interactive/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/that-one-xkcd-thing-now-interactive/#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:25:15 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk4B

In my online undergraduate P5.js course, students are about to begin the module on motion and physics, including a bit of physics simulation using Matter.js. It suddenly occurred to me that I had never seen anybody put together this particular demo before, and I realized it had to be done. Messy source code here.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/that-one-xkcd-thing-now-interactive/feed/ 29 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/linux-xft-unicode-fonts/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/linux-xft-unicode-fonts/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2026 20:11:33 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk39 XftDrawStringUtf8 that succeeds in displaying Japanese characters? On Debian 13 with "fonts-noto" installed, "lxterminal" can do it but XScreenSaver still can't seem to display anything more complicated than Cyrillic.

E.g. "unicrud --block Katakana".

The actual XFT font I get from XftFontOpenXlfd("-*-sans serif-bold-r-*-*-*-180-*-*-*-*-*-*") is

Noto Sans-300 :familylang=en :style=Bold :stylelang=en :fullname=Noto Sans Bold :fullnamelang=en :slant=0 :weight=200 :width=100 :pixelsize=401.899 :foundry=GOOG :antialias=True :hintstyle=1 :hinting=True :verticallayout=False :autohint=False :globaladvance=True :file=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/noto/NotoSans-Bold.ttf :index=0 :outline=True :scalable=True :dpi=96.4557 :rgba=5 :scale=1 :minspace=False :fontversion=131334 :capability=otlayout\:DFLT otlayout\:cyrl otlayout\:grek otlayout\:latn :fontformat=TrueType :embolden=False :embeddedbitmap=True :decorative=False :lcdfilter=1 :namelang=en :prgname=unicrud :postscriptname=NotoSans-Bold :color=False :symbol=False :variable=False :fonthashint=True :order=0 :namedinstance=False :fontwrapper=SFNT

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/linux-xft-unicode-fonts/feed/ 42 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/let-friction-ring/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/let-friction-ring/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:55:15 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk33 Dear Lazyweb,

I have this pulley wheel, 50mm inside diameter, 4mm groove. I need a rubber traction ring to go inside it. I cannot find anyone who will sell this to me.

The ring must be flat or concave, not round like a typical gasket seal O-ring, or the string its pulling will just slide off the track.

Alternately, any similar-sized metal pulley wheel that comes with a friction surface pre-attached, 8mm axis hole with set screw.

I have tried coating it with sugru, but that is too soft and wears off after not-very-long.

Update: If you're going to say "why don't you just" or "have you searched for" without a purchase link to a product of the correct size, please know that you are not helping.

Previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/let-friction-ring/feed/ 115 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/cocaine/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/cocaine/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2026 01:47:12 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3t Every now and then I make the mistake of of posting something on Mastodon that really should have gone on the blog first. This is one of those, from last week. It did some numbers.

Everything written by AI boosters tracks much more clearly if you simply replace "AI" with "cocaine".

I shall demonstrate!

(Not linking to OP, because it's trash.)

"Let's pretend you're the only person at your company using cocaine.

You decide you're going to impress your employer, and work for 8 hours a day at 10x productivity. You knock it out of the park and make everyone else look terrible by comparison. [...]

In this scenario, you capture 100% of the value from your adopting cocaine."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/cocaine/feed/ 161 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/youtube-oauth-api-fuckery/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/youtube-oauth-api-fuckery/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:08:53 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3r I have two YouTube accounts, jwz and dnalounge, and I'm using the oauth API with both of them to automate uploads and stuff. With the DNA account, I am getting a refresh_token that lasts forever. But with the jwz one, I am getting a refresh_token that can only refresh the access_token for a week, and then I have to log in again. Any ideas what fuckery is afoot?

The DNA token does this:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/tokeninfo?access_token=DNA_ACCESS_TOKEN_1 => access_type	=> "offline", audience	=> "DNA_PROJECT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com", expires_in	=> 3574, issued_to	=> "DNA_PROJECT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com", scope 	=> "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube" POST https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token client_id	=> "DNA_PROJECT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com", client_secret	=> "DNA_CLIENT_SECRET", grant_type	=> "refresh_token", refresh_token	=> "DNA_REFRESH_TOKEN" result: access_token	=> "DNA_ACCESS_TOKEN_2", expires_in	=> 3599, scope 	=> "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube", token_type	=> "Bearer" token expiration 0:00:59:34 => 0:00:59:59

but the jwz token does this:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/tokeninfo?access_token=JWZ_ACCESS_TOKEN_1 => access_type	=> "offline", audience	=> "JWZ_PROJECT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com", expires_in	=> 3413, issued_to	=> "JWZ_PROJECT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com" scope 	=> "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube", POST https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token client_id	=> "JWZ_CLIENT_ID", client_secret	=> "JWZ_CLIENT_SECRET", grant_type	=> "refresh_token", refresh_token	=> "JWZ_REFRESH_TOKEN" result: access_token	=> "JWZ_ACCESS_TOKEN_2", expires_in	=> 3599, refresh_token_expires_in	=> 201701 scope 	=> "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube", token_type	=> "Bearer", token expiration 0:00:56:53 => 0:00:59:59 refresh expires in 2:00:01:41

Maybe I'm logging in wrong? I log in with user/pass/TOTP "jwz@jwz.org" which takes me to the channel "@yesthatjwz" then I load:

https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?client_id=JWZ_PROJECT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com&redirect_uri=https://localhost&response_type=code&scope=https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube&access_type=offline

and it asks me to choose my "brand" account. There are three listed: "DNA Lounge", "yesthatjwz", and another "jwz" account. The selection that works is the "yestthatjwz" one. The mystery account is @alsojwz1853 and I don't know why it exists but I'm afraid to delete it in case that breaks something.

When I sign in with "jwz@jwz.org", it takes me directly to my real channel, @yesthatjwz.

When I sign in with: "yesthatjwz" or "youtube@jwz.org" or "yesthatjwz@jwz.org", it asks me to select a channel: @yesthatjwz or "also jwz" @alsojwz1853.

Trying to sign in with "alsojwz1853" says "could not find your account".

Another clue: both the "DNA Lounge" and "yesthatjwz" accounts work with or without at-signs, /dnalounge, /@dnalounge, /yesthatjwz and /@yesthatjwz, but the other one only works as /@alsojwz1853, not as /alsojwz1853. Maybe because they are old accounts that pre-date YouTube being purchased by Google? Another difference is that the thing in console.cloud.google.com/auth/clients/*_PROJECT_ID for DNA is an "iOS client" created in 2014, but for "jwz" is a "Desktop client" created in 2024. There don't seem to be any settings.

But I still don't understand why the DNA and jwz accounts have different behavior.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/youtube-oauth-api-fuckery/feed/ 32 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/remote/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/remote/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:29:26 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3k https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/remote/feed/ 49 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/all-your-base-slight-remaster/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/all-your-base-slight-remaster/#comments Mon, 16 Feb 2026 21:28:40 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3i "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" on Newgrounds.

In honor of this important anniversary, I downloaded the original Flash SWF file from Internet Archive, played it using Ruffle in a full-screen window, and replaced the audio with the original MP3 of "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" by The Laziest Men on Mars. So this is probably the highest fidelity encoding possible, without going back to the original forum GIFs.

Make your time.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/tear-us-a-heart/feed/ 2 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/door-ajar-versus-100-billion-valuation/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/door-ajar-versus-100-billion-valuation/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2026 01:23:47 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3Z Today I learned that you can DoS a Waymo by opening its door.

"The More You Know..."

Waymo, Google's autonomous vehicle company, and DoorDash, the delivery and gig work platform, have launched a pilot program that pays Dashers, at least in one case, around $10 to travel to a parked Waymo and close its door that the previous passenger left open.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/door-ajar-versus-100-billion-valuation/feed/ 60 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/ai-is-a-dick-move/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/ai-is-a-dick-move/#comments Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:08:55 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3I Baldur Bjarnason:

I've stopped trying to debate software developers on LLMs. It's a fruitless debate. Even if the believers in agents and copilots could be budged on empirical grounds, and the past few years have given us plenty of evidence that they can't, this is still a crowd that is explicitly fine with using tools that are themselves deeply unethical. [...]

Somebody who is capable of looking past "ICE is using LLMs as accountability sinks for waving extremists through their recruitment processes", generated abuse, or how chatbot-mediated alienation seems to be pushing vulnerable people into psychosis-like symptoms, won't be persuaded by a meaningful study. Their goal is to maintain their personal benefit, as they see it, and all they are doing is attempting to negotiate with you what the level of abuse is that you find acceptable. Preventing abuse is not on their agenda.

You lost them right at the outset. [...]

Nor do they seem to care, except in a performative way, that "AI" is designed to be an outright attack on labour and education, using the works of those being attacked -- without their consent -- as the tools for dismantling their own communities and industries, all done in overt collaboration with the ultra right. [...]

Going all "but it works great for me" even as the industry burns around you and the "it" is a right-wing political project built on disregarding consent, being applied to dismantle public infrastructure and institutions, is fundamentally a dick move.

And debating dicks is pointless.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/ai-is-a-dick-move/feed/ 42 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/waymo-exec-admits-remote-drivers-in-philippines/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/waymo-exec-admits-remote-drivers-in-philippines/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2026 20:55:56 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3E Mechanical Turk, meet Mechanical Filipino:

Mauricio Peña, the company's Chief Safety Officer, confirmed under questioning that the Google subsidiary employs human operators abroad [...]

"They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles," Peña told the Senate committee. "The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input."

When pressed on how many operators are located outside the United States, Peña said he did not have the breakdown available, escalating frustration from senators.

"It just seems kind of curious that you don't know that answer," one senator responded, before asking in which countries the operators are located.

"The Philippines," Peña replied. [...]

"Having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue," the senator said. "The information the operators receive could be out of date. It could introduce tremendous cybersecurity vulnerabilities. We don't know if these people have US driver's licenses." [...]

"It's one thing when a taxi is replaced by an Uber or a Lyft. It's another thing when the jobs just go completely overseas," the senator added.

But hey, at least these jobs aren't being stolen by immigrants!

JP summarizes this well:

The insistence on personifying their products eg "the waymo asks for help", "the human recommends" is such a conspicuous odd contortion that it's almost certain there are legal + business imperatives behind it that they don't talk about and won't until a regulator forces them to. [...]

They want to pay remote drivers from whatever country is currently cheapest, none of whom will have US state drivers' licenses. claiming that they're "advising, not driving" is the linchpin of their argument that that's not as illegal and dangerous as it clearly is. they're constructing legal fortifications before the deaths and lawsuits rise.

Let's not forget that these companies are still immune from prosecution when one of their remotely-operated drones commits a moving violation, up to and including a killing. And that Waymo's owner Google have stated in court filings that it is good for business if their competitors' cars kill more people.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/waymo-exec-admits-remote-drivers-in-philippines/feed/ 35 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/oh-no-2/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/oh-no-2/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2026 02:25:26 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk27 Oh no I'm in the Epstein files:

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.