Category: Technology

Mostly related to issues surrounding technology and computers, main include current events or news.

  • Building a (T1D) smartwatch from scratch

    Andrew Childs built a Type 1 Diabetes monitor from scratch.

    My 9 y.o. son has Type 1 diabetes, which basically means his pancreas is on manual (hard) mode 24×7. A healthy pancreas not only produces insulin, which helps convert glucose in the bloodstream into energy – it also produces glucagon, which tells the liver to release glucose into the bloodstream when blood sugar levels are too low. A person with T1D has to manage without either of these guardrails, and a low blood sugar can become a medical emergency if left untreated.

  • Luddite teens

    It sounds like a hipster indie band, but Luddite Teenagers are meeting up to emphasize connections without the distraction of technology.

    “Our club promotes conscious consumption of technology,” she said. “We’re for human connection. I’m one of the first members of the original Luddite Club in Brooklyn. Now I’m trying to start it in Philly.”

    She pulled out a flip phone, mystifying her recruit.

    “We use these,” she said. “This has been the most freeing experience of my life.”

  • Bitcoin fortune buried in a garbage dump

    It sounds like a joke, but there’s (bitcoin) treasure to the amount of $775 million in a UK garbage dump. The guy who lost the bitcoin is now trying to buy the dump.

  • Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji

    Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji – clever nerdery here. I’d imagine this gets fixed in places that would be susceptible to malicious code.

  • WikiTok to infinitely scroll Wikipedia

    WikiTok infinitely scrolls Wikipedia, randomly loading articles.

    From the developer, Isaac Gemel, Ars Technia describes WikiTok as

    … a neat way to stumble upon interesting information randomly, learn new things, and spend spare moments of boredom without reaching for an algorithmically addictive social media app. Although to be fair, WikiTok is addictive in its own way, but without an invasive algorithm tracking you and pushing you toward the lowest-common-denominator content. It’s also thrilling because you never know what’s going to pop up next.

    A fun bookmark to avoid doomscrolling.

  • More details on the Musk Coup

    Three articles regarding the ongoing Elon Musk coup.

    The newsy bits from the Verge, Elon Musk’s rapid unscheduled disassembly of the US government, particularly the GSA:

    The GSA, an agency most of us have never had to think about, is in charge of buildings, sure. But also it runs an awful lot of the technical infrastructure of the government — it is basically the feds’ IT. If the US government were a brain, the GSA is the brain stem, the part that manages heartbeats and breathing so they’re below the level of thoughts.

    The US Treasury has designated DOGE an insider threat:

    Members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team have had access to the US Treasury Department’s payment systems for over a week. On Thursday, the threat intelligence team at one of the department’s agencies recommended that DOGE members be monitored as an “insider threat.”

    And Mike Masnick sums it up, No people didn’t vote for this:

    The campaign promised economic relief: cheaper eggs and lower gas prices. Instead, voters got an unelected tech billionaire systematically dismantling federal agencies, surrounded by a coterie of 4chan edgelord trolls LARPing as cabinet secretaries, all operating without congressional oversight or constitutional authority. They voted for economic stability and got the effective end of the American Constitutional Republic instead.

  • The evil housekeeper problem

    The evil housekeeper problem refers to a concept in computer security where once somebody is in the room where your computer is, security of that device can no longer be guaranteed. And right now, we are seeing this play out in real time with Elon Musk and DOGE.

    You might think that there would be technical measures to stop someone right out of high school from coming in and changing the code to a government system. That the system could require two-factor authentication to deploy the code to the cloud. That you would need a smart card to log in to a specific system to do that. Nope—all those technical measures can be circumvented by coercion at the hands of the evil housekeeper.

  • Backing up government data sets

    Fascist bureaucrats don’t like facts that contradict their agenda. Backing up government data sets as an act of resistance.

  • 10 technologies for 2025

    MIT Technology Review posted their prognostications for what 10 technologies will make an impact in 2025. Maybe this will be the year of the robotaxi. Interestingly, cow burps, a significant source of methane, might receive relief.

    Cow burps are one of the largest sources of agricultural emissions—and one of the trickiest ones to solve. A food supplement that significantly reduces the amount of methane that cattle belch is now available in dozens of countries. Other products, which might prove even more effective, are likely on the way.

  • The best DeepSeek explainer

    Stratechery with the best DeepSeek AI explainer. It’s broad in describing the general applications and industry impacts, as well as parsing the technical bits of what they did.