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Redbox rental machines are being picked up by rando home tinkerers because the company Redbox is in bankruptcy and has abandoned these machines all across the country....

Latest macOS release blocks registering global hotkeys which use only the Shift or Option keys in the name of security....

From the New York Times: Mr. Trump has promoted the venture since August, but its exact purpose remains unclear. No official launch date has been set. On the livestream, he did not address the project directly, leaving the details to the two entrepreneurs, Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman. Mr. Herro has described himself as “the dirtbag of the internet,” while Mr. Folkman used to teach classes on how to seduce women. ...

By now this story has done the rounds and I really wanted to ignore it, given how vacuous the entire thing was right from the get-go. But then I saw clips of this interview which is mentioned by The Wall Street Journal: Vance insisted on CNN this past Sunday that he had firsthand accounts of the incidents from constituents, but the media had paid no attention to migrant problems in American cities “until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.” He added, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” ...

From the decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive (opinion pdf, h/t TechDirt) published the other week: To be sure, expanding access to knowledge would, in a general sense, benefit the public. “But [a]ny copyright infringer may claim to benefit the public by increasing public access to the copyrighted work.” Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 569. That does not alone render the infringement lawful. Indeed, the Copyright Act and its empowering constitutional authority reflect a considered judgment that “the Progress of Science and useful Arts” is best promoted by laws that protect authors’ original works and permit authors to set the terms of engagement, at least for a limited time. See Sony, 464 U.S. at 429. Doing so benefits the public “by providing rewards for authorship.” Google Books, 804 F.3d at 212. This monopolistic power is a feature, not a bug, of the Copyright Act. ...

John Gruber at Daring Fireball: But I’m also sure their exist other users who don’t quite know what a web browser is, don’t know that the browser they’re currently using — and perhaps have been using for over a decade — is named “Safari”, and won’t know how to undo a mistake they might make on this browser choice screen. Emphasis mine. Larger points being made by this article aside1, the idea that there exist “users who don’t quite know what a web browser is” baffled me. Good user interface design does not hide the concept of a “web browser” from the user. ...

Nolen Royalty built something very cool: On June 26th 2024, I launched a website called One Million Checkboxes (OMCB). It had one million global checkboxes on it - checking (or unchecking) a box changed it for everyone on the site, instantly. What a nifty idea. Flippant and fun, this is the sort of website I miss and think1 I can recall from my college years (late 2000’s into 2010’s). ...

Ian Carroll writing on his blog: The KCM [Known Crew Member] process is fairly simple: the employee uses the dedicated lane and presents their KCM barcode or provides the TSA agent their employee number and airline. Various forms of ID need to be presented while the TSA agent’s laptop verifies the employment status with the airline. If successful, the employee can access the sterile area without any screening at all. ...

Craig Hockenberry writing on his blog Furbo.org: As these generative technologies get better, you will be less likely to trust what appears in your search results. This change will happen at an exponential rate thanks to slop being generated from other slop. […] The human component of the web won’t change. People will need answers that they can trust. Folks on the web are also resourceful; they always have been. ...

Although it was published back in February of this year, I recently listened to this four-part podcast series on the sudden rise and subsequent fall of demand for cycling during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Fascinating listening with excellent sourcing from industry insiders and bicycle shop owners. ...