dullneon.com » random notes » page 24

The only software I truly missed from the Windows world was foobar2k. I was absolutely shocked (in a happy way) to see someone has attempted to port it to the Mac.

I am not shocked (in a low-key way) to see that it’s nowhere near close to being a finished article. ReplayGain, DSP, and connecting to an FTP server seem to work. But otherwise, there’s no scrobbling, no folder views, no album art displays, etc. It doesn’t fit my needs yet but it is definitely coming together in a good way.

Oh, you can use foobar2000 on Ubuntu in a snap. If your music is on a server or a network drive like me, you need to configure Wine a little bit.

Edsger W. Dijkstra on software engineering nearly 20 years ago → The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don’t master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.

From Scott Galloway‘s Every Seven Years (which is almost two years old now).

• You can’t get a table at average restaurants
• There’s an Uber for private jets
• Jay Z and Jared Leto are considered thoughtful startup investors
• The food at your company is… good
• A lot of articles explaining why “this time is different” (here, here, and here)
• You’re introduced to remarkably uninteresting tech people at Cannes, who people think are “fascinating”
• Tech CEOs are on the cover of fashion magazines and marrying supermodels
• Founders of tech firms believe it’s their responsibility to put a man on Mars and cure death because… you know, they’re awesome
• Billionaires with undergraduate and graduate degrees pay kids to drop out of college
• Currencies mined by machines are… currency
• There are CEOs of two firms at once

When you’re down, you’re not supposed to hit other people who are down. That’s not how you get up.

Really bright yellow which actually looks better in person. The contents are as satisfying as the packaging.

What the hell did you just watch? A teaser for a film that’s currently raising money for the pre-production stage.

This was the look of the creative and commercial interwebs in the late 90s/early 00s. There were good bits and really shitty ones, just like the Metalheart book.

Understanding how a glue works will help you choose the right glue for the job. The manufacturer knows their glue better than the cashier at the hardware store. Reading the label thoroughly will help you know if a glue is appropriate for your needs. Also, many glues have a help line or a website.

I am worried that algorithms are getting too prominent in the world. It started out that computer scientists were worried nobody was listening to us. Now I’m worried that too many people are listening.

A clever(!) cross-browser proof-of-concept to bring down modern browsers that relies on nested CSS var() and calc() handling.