Reading stories about Amazon omitting order details in emails, apparently in order to stop other suppliers from scraping the email content, a few months ago I wondered: The mystery isn’t about why Amazon are doing this: I’m just wondering why I seem to have missed out? Yesterday I placed my first Amazon UK order in… Continue reading Seen
Month: December 2020
Coming soon
Note to readers: do not, under any circumstances, be consuming drinks while you read this tweet. I have a friend that referred to prequels obi wan as ponytail Derek for some reason. This was her first ever watch — Kali (@DWfan3421) December 26, 2020 There I was casually sipping a Diet Coke and scrolling through… Continue reading Coming soon
US Space Force
Slacktivist, on the branding for the US’s Space Force: I don’t know who came up with this stuff, but these are not the people I want representing the rest of us at First Contact. I realise this isn’t going to be anywhere remotely near the top of the Biden administration’s list of Trump-era decisions that… Continue reading US Space Force
Lockdown, Airfix-style
Dumb joke, nice execution: Quarantine Comix #249 #QuarantineComix I spent SO much time on this very, VERY dumb joke oh my days… To buy the original ink drawing of this comic please go here:https://t.co/7KotGPLRRm pic.twitter.com/wgbeneDn3o — Rachael Smith (@rachael_) December 17, 2020 [Via MetaFilter]
Shameless
Further to this earlier post about how Microsoft planned to have Microsoft 365 track user productivity, Microsoft issued a graceful apology, very likely delivered through gritted teeth for that feature that someone sneaked into the software they were planning on selling to businesses everywhere they could: Jeffrey Snover, a veteran Microsoft engineer and CTO of… Continue reading Shameless
QG: HHH
David Squires shares with the world his take on The Queen’s Gambit: Hungry Hungry Hippos edition: A popular tabletop game that requires considerable guile and skill Has to be said, there’s a small part of me that would have really liked to see this.1 And a large part of me that thinks that take on… Continue reading QG: HHH
Cruel fame
Nice snark from Molly Templeton at Tor.com, reacting to the latest trailer for comet-impact disaster movie Greenland : Greenland takes the general premise of Deep Impact and kicks it up a notch: Why simply have one comet on a trajectory to strike the earth when you could also have many smaller pieces of the comet wreak… Continue reading Cruel fame
ACME-dunnit
A perfect end to the mystery: pic.twitter.com/5q4b87iGKs — 🔸 Richard Starkings 🔸 (@RichStarkings) December 6, 2020 [Via RT by @cstross]
Not Ready
I never got round to reading Ready Player One because judging by the reviews I read at the time it sounded as if the book was unutterably proud of itself for stringing together lists of pop cultural trivia for geeks to recognise. Judging by Laura Hudson’s review for Slate , I don’t think I’ll be… Continue reading Not Ready
Twenty years on, take 2
Further to this, Paul Ford finds himself talking more seriously about what the web has become twenty years on: 2000 me: Wow you still work on the web, that’s amazing. It must be so easy to publish really interesting web pages. 2020 me:Technically, well, yes. Anything you could do 20 years ago, you can do… Continue reading Twenty years on, take 2