[20:09] I toyed with a little bash script yesterday, trying to check the list of all the tilde servers I know of (a total of 44) to find out which of those are still up and running, but there was little success in that. Of course, I can check wheter or not I can ping the URL or wether curl returns an http status code, but the server replying is not necessarily the tilde I was looking for. For example, I was surprised to see a response from tilde.center, which had been out of service for a while. Also, at least one former tilde domain was not renewed and now is home to NSFW stuff. Sad.
Interesting concept on tilde.center though, I'm especially curious how the distributed LDAP will turn out.
[19:22] Accessibility is hard, and even those with best intentions screw things up sometimes. The other day we got hardware for a user with a vision impairment, among this a calculator. An actual hand held one, no software. The device came with a big display and high contrast buttons, accompanied by a manual. The latter was written as these things usually are, just the tiniest bit larger than fine print. Again, this is a device intended for people with vision impairment. Someone did not think that through.
[19:48] Want to know what it is like to have magnets implanted in your fingers? Here's an FAQ. (Personally, I'm somewhat torn between "I want this" and "aaaaaaaaaaaaah!".)
[18:45] This is what a screen reader's speech synthesis sounds like when it gets confused by different languages. (via)
[18:42] I did believe data centers were kind of save, but it seems that I was mistaken.
[22:41] Talking about the Apollo program, NASA used a pretty interesting kind of memory in the guidance computer: Core rope memory. Fascinating to look back at this art of engineering.
[22:34] NASA has transcripts, audio files, videos of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Now that's cool.
[21:51] I've seen these things before, but I didn't know people came up with a name for them: the LackRack. TIL.
[21:36] When putting together Lego bricks, there are some connections that are considered "illegal". Here is a presentation listing a few of those and explaining why they are to be avoided. Official Lego statement, as far as I understand (via).
[21:29] On reddit, there is /r/tilde. Not much going on there, and between tilde news and various forums I don't really see the point in having it, but anyways.
[22:51] NanoPutians "are a series of organic molecules whose structural formulae resemble human forms."
[22:31] There is a map of wireless networks all around the globe.
[19:02] As Jamie Zawinski points out, we are already closer to the occurrence of the Year 2038 problem than we are to Y2K.
[18:03] A wifipicning is a social gathering around a wireless network, which is not connected to the internet. (A concept reminiscent of a pirate box.)
[22:54] I knew zip bombs and fork bombs, but today I learned about git bombs.
[20:13] I've seen quite a few public bookcases housed in decommissioned phone booths, but here's another funny idea: a disco in a phone booth.
[19:22] In an ongoing investigation, german police are searching for ... a MAC address. I wonder if there is anyone working there who has at least basic understanding of networking. Also I wonder if anyone working there now is embarrassed to admit it. Also also I'd really like to know how many false accusations will be made due to people using MAC address randomizers or simply due to the fact that MAC addresses are not necessarily that unique at times. *sigh*
[23:59] Interesting approach to testing a website's accessibility: not using a mouse for a day. (Sidenote: I have to stop being lazy and try Pentadactyl already.)
[20:01] One downside of https is that it makes the web less accessible for people with low bandwidth, unstable connections. Might be a better idea to offer https, but not enforce it.
[17:49] The Web Bloat Score Calculator takes a screenshot of a given webpage and calculates the bloat score by dividing the pages' total size by the size of the screenshot. The lower the score, the better. (This blog currently has a score of 0.046.)
[20:51] Two more tildes that I can't recall having seen before: cosmic.voyage and circumlunar.space. The latter appears to be heavily influenced by Bruce Sterling's novel Schismatrix, which gives me the opportunity to recommend it to you. Tends to be a bit lengthy in places, but by and large I enjoyed reading it.
[19:55] Because I keep forgetting it and it always takes me a few tries to get the right search terms to rediscover it: the red line indicating the current time in graphical calendar applications is called Marcus Bains line.