Links for Dec 29, 2024 - Jan 4, 2025
Interesting links and articles I’ve found for the week of Dec 29, 2024 - Jan 4, 2025
Culture and Society
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0RkEs3Xwf0
Amazing video on how clams help monitor water quality. (via)
https://earthsky.org/tonight/planetary-alignment-january-25-2025/
There will not be an “8 planet alignment on January 25, 2025”, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be lots of planets visible in the night sky this month. This article explains what and why and how to view it.
https://nautil.us/does-lifes-happiness-have-a-shape-1174420/
Happiness in western countries is “U-shaped” - highest when we are young, and then later in life. The rest of the world doesn’t necessarily follow this shape.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/12/30/david-whyte-burnout/
The always superlative Maria Popova takes on David Whyte’s essay on burnout. It can be a force for necessary change. “Burnout calls for creative breakdown, either in submitting to unconscious self-sabotage, the way that disasters large and small seem to track our exhausted burned-out self on a daily basis, the way we actually create those disasters unknowingly ourselves, trying to make a break for freedom or to create a conscious creative breakdown. Burnout is often as much the resistance to making these changes as being worn down by what we cannot seem to change: all the ways I find it impossible to leave the job, or leave the relationship; all the ways I find it impossible to change my approach to work, or all the ways I need to simply learn to love again must be looked at and allowed to break down and fall away.”
https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/why-boys-dont-go-to-college
Fascinating article claiming (with sources) that male vs. female spaces have a tipping point. “…It’s a slippery slope. When the number of women hits 60% the men who are there make a swift exit and other men stop joining…”
Technology
https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/113759146475476863
“…three examples of fediverse bots that run as independent fediverse servers, rather than using some platform's (most commonly Mastodon's) API …” The referenced bots implement pieces of the ActivityPub protocol directly.
https://beyondloom.com/decker/
Decker is a (somewhat) modern reinterpretation of the original HyperCard concept.
https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt
A shared list of LLM crawlers (for use in your robots.txt file)
https://minimaxir.com/2025/01/write-better-code/
LLMs respond well when asked to “write better code” (via)
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/blind-people-waymos-changing-lives-19965037.php
I suspect this is a Waymo planed piece, but I like it nonetheless. Some blind and low vision folks in SF talk about how they like Waymo. “… Perhaps most importantly, calling a Waymo means certainty that the ride won’t be canceled — a frequent gripe some blind people, especially those who use guide dogs, have with Uber and Lyft. “I’ll get denial after denial, five or six times,” Sharon Giovinazzo, 55, said of her experience using Uber and Lyft. Giovinazzo, the CEO of San Francisco-based nonprofit Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, uses a guide dog, a sticking point with some drivers. “They say, ‘We don’t want a dog in our car.’” …”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/they-spy-on-you-but-not-like-that/
Simon Willison always seems to have a well reasoned take on technology. This article on how your phones are not listening to you is a solid take. We should be paranoid, but not about this.
Amateur Radio
https://copaseticflow.blogspot.com/2024/12/more-coding-with-chatgpt-miscopied-cw.html
The author used ChatGPT to quickly create a Python programs to help with tracking POTA contacts. Nothing earth-shattering, but this post demonstrates how creating simple programmatic tools - an option which used to be only available to skilled programmers — is now the province of anyone with access to a decent LLM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TEgRoLsSoc
Excellent tutorial by Hayden VK6HH about using an SDR switch and parallel SDRs along with a transceiver.