Many Linux users have experienced a lasting sense of accomplishment after composing a particularly clever command that achieves multiple actions in just one line or that manages to do in one line what usually takes 10 clicks and as many windows in a graphical user interface (GUI). Aside from being the stuff of legend, one-liners are great examples of why the terminal is considered to be such a powerful tool.

Super cool post on how to use electric grid frequency variations to match them into recorded sound clips, and basically allowing to timestamp the clip.

Cycling is one of the most sustainable modes of transportation. Increased ridership reduces fossil fuel consumption and pollution, saves space, and improves public health and safety. However, the bicycle itself has managed to elude environmental critique. Studies that calculate the environmental impact of cycling almost always compare it to driving, with predictable results: the bicycle is more sustainable than the car. Such research may encourage people to cycle more often but doesn't encourage manufacturers to make their bicycles as sustainable as possible.

I contribute to various free software projects and maintain various pieces of free software. Many of the entries on this page are only of archaeological interest.

A Google researcher looks into the mind of a computer.

Your value is not about utility.

A comprehensive, technobabble free explanation of how Bluetooth contact tracing (doesn't) work and why simple solutions are often not that simple, if not outright dangerous, when applied in real life.

Google's DeepMind has just released a new academic paper on AlphaZero -- the general purpose artificial intelligence system that mastered chess through self-play and went on to defeat the world champion of chess engines, Stockfish. In this video chess International Master Anna Rudolf takes a look at a never-before-seen game from a match played in January 2018, and discusses how the playing style and attacking chess of AlphaZero compare to computers and humans.

MPlayer has a fully configurable, command-driven control layer which allows you to control MPlayer using keyboard. But which are these shortcuts are not immediately know to users of MPlayer. Here is a list of mostly used MPlayer keyboard control shortcuts.

Gherkin uses a set of special keywords to give structure and meaning to executable specifications. Each keyword is translated to many spoken languages; in this reference we’ll use English.

Science-fiction writer, journalist and longtime Slashdot reader, Cory Doctorow, a.k.a. mouthbeef, writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) just published the latest installment in my case histories of "adversarial interoperability" -- once the main force that kept tech competitive. Today, I tell the story of Gopher, the web's immediate predecessor, which burrowed under the mainframe systems' guardians and created a menu-driven interface to campus resources, then the whole internet. Gopher ruled until browser vendors swallowed Gopherspace whole, incorporating it by turning gopher:// into a way to access anything on any Gopher server. Gopher served as the booster rocket that helped the web attain a stable orbit. But the tools that Gopher used to crack open the silos, and the moves that the web pulled to crack open Gopher, are radioactively illegal today.

If you wanted do to Facebook what Gopher did to the mainframes, you would be pulverized by the relentless grinding of software patents, terms of service, anticircumvention law, bullshit theories about APIs being copyrightable. Big Tech blames "network effects" for its monopolies -- but that's a counsel of despair. If impersonal forces (and not anticompetitive bullying) are what keeps tech big then there's no point in trying to make it small. Big Tech's critics swallow this line, demanding that Big Tech be given state-like duties to police user conduct -- duties that require billions and total control to perform, guaranteeing tech monopolists perpetual dominance. But the lesson of Gopher is that adversarial interoperability is judo for network effects.

The U.S. education system spent more than $26 billion on tech­nology in 2018. That’s larger than the entire Israeli military budget. By one estimate, annual global spending on technology in schools will soon total $252 billion. But the technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development and an unredeemable waste.

A few ones:

• To Jeff Dean, "NP" means "No Problemo"
• Jeff Dean's IDE doesn't do code analysis, it does code appreciation
• Jeff Dean's PIN is the last 4 digits of pi
• Google Search was Jeff Dean's Noogler Project
• Jeff Dean invented MapReduce so he could sort his fan mail
• Emacs' preferred editor is Jeff Dean
• Jeff Dean doesn't exist, he's actually an advanced AI created by Jeff Dean
• Jeff Dean compiles and runs his code before submitting, but only to check for compiler and CPU bugs
• Jeff Dean can instantiate abstract classes
• gcc -O4 sends your code to Jeff Dean for a complete rewrite
• When Jeff Dean listens to mp3s, he just cats them to /dev/dsp and does the decoding in his head
• Jeff Dean's resume lists the things he hasn't done; it's shorter that way
• Jeff Dean once implemented a web server in a single printf() call. Other engineers added thousands of lines of explanatory comments but still don't understand exactly how it works. Today that program is known as GWS
• When your code has undefined behavior, you get a seg fault and corrupted data. When Jeff Dean's code has undefined behavior, a unicorn rides in on a rainbow and gives everybody free ice cream
• When Jeff Dean says "Hello World", the world says "Hello Jeff"
• Jeff Dean traps the KILL signal
• Jeff Dean programs don't SEGFAULT. The memory rearranges itself in order to put data and code where it belongs.