Troy Dowling

The only reason I know what webp is, is because its “that dumb format” that doesn’t play like a GIF in Signal.

You might be interested in the story of Luigi Galvani’s experiments with frog muscle tissue. It was seminal work in anatomy as well as physics.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631069106000370?via%3Dihub

I have a whole desk full of calculators. The two I use most are:

Sharp EL-W516X A very capable little dot-matrix device, with some limited programming / macro ability. Performs all of the calculus, stats, matrix, and combinatorics functions I use regularly. This was my go-to calculator until I started using the…

Casio fx-115ES PLUS At some point, I had to write some exams which only allowed a few calculators off an approved list. This was the one I picked from the list. It is a very competent little device which can do anything the Sharp unit above can. After getting over the novelty of having to learn a new keypad, I found it nearly identical to the Sharp in usage.

I think that both calculators are effectively identical in terms of function, but the Sharp may have a slight advantage in terms of its interface. I would wager it takes slightly fewer keystrokes for the same operation on average as compared to the Casio. I also didn’t really take advantage of the programmable aspect, instead using the four keys for the common multipliers I use in my work: kilo, milli, micro, nano. I liked how the display would read in “natural” terms like “2 * pi * 10k * 100μ” instead of having a tonne of “10^n” terms in the line.

The Casio has the advantage that it is typically on just about any approved calculator list; if you’re taking exams down the line, consider getting used to an approved calculator now so you’re not wasting time searching for buttons later. It’s also the more popular choice, I think. I saw plenty of students, TAs, and instructors using this calculator which could make it easier to give and receive help on it.

One of the frustrating things about Signal is its extreme compression. I hope WhatsApp laxing up a bit will be the final push to the Signal devs to allow me to send a 30 MiB photo if I want to. Just give me a damn opt-in option buried in a settings menu for Pete’s sake.

Annoys me to no end that I’m forced to crunch image quality down. The reasons I heard in discussion were to save disk space and network bandwidth. I have no sympathy for either of these points. Have a modicum of digital hygiene and delete old files, and pressure your ridiculous governments to invest and regulate ISPs, then join the rest of the world in the 21st century.

Outside of IM, in the mid-2000s and earlier, the Internet was more of a space of personal expression and burgeoning e-commerce.

There was Geocities and Anglefire where anyone could create a personal homepage with rudimentary HTML skills. You could show off your personality and share your interests, and (some) others would be excited to find you and sign your guest book. You’d be excited every time the hit counter on your page went up.

Talking in real-time, over IRC usually, was the first taste of true globalisation for many. There were other, older forums around like BBSs, but these were even more techno-niche nerd havens. The web forum (PHPBB) later came along and created what I consider to be the protoweb of what we have today. Profiles, display pictures, post counts, threads and boards, etc.

Another large difference was that the Internet was still a very collaborative space. Services usually had open APIs, so that you could write or use software that brought the services you wanted into the format you prefer. Think: all of your IM accounts in one messaging app, all of your website news feeds delivered to an RSS reader, and data that easily flowed from one space to another. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before these same services saw the business sense in restricting users from exporting their data, thus confining them to “walled gardens” where they were readily subjected to ads, and without recourse to leave. And thus the API died.

There was essentially no presence of celebrity on the net as we know it today. Before MySpace, at least, you would be required to go out and search for Sean Connery’s personal blog, or Paris Hiltons fashion tips. Today, it’s difficult to avoid these things being pressed upon you. At this point in time, you chased people, now it seems the web has them chasing you.

Commerce was a commonplace part of the net as early as the 90s, depending on your idea of commonplace. Nobody trusted computers with their financial data like credit cards. Giving your address to a seller felt wildly reckless… until it didn’t. A little bookstore called Amazon started the novel idea of efficient online sales with less of the burden of storage, eBay rose seemingly overnight, Elon Musk made his fortune selling PayPal, we all collected Net Beans like they’d be worth anything.

Video playback and other multimedia features bled their way into the web from the millennium onward. Online journalism felt like it was in it’s fittest shape.

There was a huge culture of shareware in every market. Shareware games, file utilities, media players, everything. It was how you hoped to be discovered as a software author. We’d load diskettes with BonziBuddy and cursor themes and trade them with friends in break rooms and schoolyards. The coolest among you know how to find pirated games and bootleg software.

Comment sections were truly, deeply, disgusting hives of scum and villainy.

EDIT: Some typos. Thanks, Ace!

Hack.

It doesn’t mean someone guessed your Facebook dictionary-word password.

It doesn’t even mean some black hoodie-wearing, bad actor remotely broke into a secure computer system.

It’s a clever trick. Whether it’s in code or concrete. Some creative, elegant, unexpected, solution to a problem.

“I know a menu hack. Order the kids burger and add cheese to save a buck.”

“We ran out of conductors in the cable, so we’re transmitting power via a differential pair. I know it’s a hack, but we need to ship by end of month.”

Fiirefox?

Za’atar, or sambal oelek.

Your email likely is already delivered over a TLS or SMARTLS protected channel. That’s not the (only) problem PGP addresses. PGP provides message authentication in addition to encryption.

To take your colleague as an example, his email was cryptographically signed by him. A function that requires his private key, and possibly a passphrase to unlock the key. The signature includes a hash of the message, and requires that private key to generate. On your end, your client hashes the message again and compares the signature. If it isn’t identical, someone has tampered with the content. Presuming you met up ahead of time in person or through another trusted channel, and shared public keys, seeing the valid signature also gives you confidence that this email was actually written by the person you expect, and not anyone else with access to their device or account. (If the senders key is still safe anyway.)

Could you elaborate? If John Smith gets a speeding ticket, all other drivers get a video of it in a “Don’t be like John” email? There must be so many drivers, so surely it can’t be “all” of them.