ReHacked vol. 329: Designing for the Eye, Caveman Chemistry and more

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Caveman Chemistry : Hands-on Projects in Chemical Technology #lifehack #rabbithole #history #nature

Half a million years ago our ancestors learned to make fire from scratch. They crafted intricate tools from stone and brewed mind-altering elixirs from honey. Their descendants transformed clay into pottery, wool into clothing, and ashes into cleansers. In ceramic crucibles they turned rock into metal, metal into colored glazes, and glazes into glass. Buildings of brick and mortar enshrined books of parchment and paper. Kings and queens demanded ever more colorful clothing and accessories in order to out-class clod-hoppers and call-girls. Kingdoms rose and fell by the power of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. And the demands of everyday folk for glass and paper and soap stimulated the first round of chemical industrialization. From sulfuric acid to sodium carbonate. From aniline dyes to analgesic drugs. From blasting powder to fertilizers and plastics. In a phrase, “from Caveman to Chemist.”

Caveman Chemistry is an experiential exploration of chemical technology from the campfires of the stone age to the plastic soft-drink bottle. An experiential exploration? Not only will you learn about these technologies, you will learn to recreate them. Instructions are given for making bronze from metal ores; glass from sand, ashes, and limestone; paper from grass or straw; soap from fat; alcohol from honey; photographs from egg whites; chlorine from salt water and celluloid from cotton.

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Digital vassals? French Government ‘exposes citizens’ data to US’ #privacy

France’s deepening reliance on US tech giants is raising alarms about digital sovereignty and exposing public data to foreign jurisdictions.

In a French Senate report on economic and digital sovereignty, Senators accused the French State of “political fault”. That was in regard to outsourcing essential data infrastructure to US companies subject to US extraterritorial laws, including Microsoft, despite repeated warnings and alternatives.

“France is subject to US extraterritorial law,” the report stated, warning that public data, including from health, education and critical sectors, was exposed to foreign surveillance under US legislation such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD).

LibreOffice calls out Microsoft for using "complex" file formats to lock in Office users - Neowin #copyrights

LibreOffice has been on the offensive lately, taking the time to call out Microsoft and its practices whenever it can. Now, it is at it again, accusing Microsoft of "intentionally" using "unnecessarily complex" file formats to achieve user lock-in with its Microsoft 365 (Office) documents.

Nuberodesign > Blog > Designing for the Eye #design #longread

From the perspective of the artist, the punchcutter, and the typographer, there are no optical illusions here – they assume from the outset the apparent forms; what appears false is false for them, and what appears correct is correct for them. It is therefore not a matter of replacing precise counting, measuring, and constructing with a vague, fluctuating, arbitrary feeling that no one can verify, but rather of simply recognising the actual visual impression – whose assessment requires a very well-trained eye – as autho­ri­tative. This visual impression may be “sub­jec­tive”, but it is, as scholars say, “inter­subject­ively the same”, that is, subject to the same (perceptual) biases in all people. Since all visual art works in service of what the eye sees, we must acknowledge the eye’s authority wherever it stands in contradiction to number and measurement.

Cloudflare Starts Blocking Pirate Sites For UK Users - That's a Pretty Big Deal * TorrentFreak #copyrights

Cloudflare has become the first internet intermediary beyond local residential ISPs, to block access to pirate sites in the UK. Users attempting to access certain pirate sites are greeted with 'Error 451 - Unavailable for Legal Reasons'. In theory, ISP blocking should prevent UK users from even seeing this notice, but a combination of Cloudflare's blocking mechanism and choices made by some VPN users results in a piracy dead end.

Myanmar's proliferating scam centers. These borderland 'prisons' have three common features - Nikkei Asia #security #scam #crime #longread

Scam centers are not limited to the Myanmar-Thailand border. According to an April report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), they are scattered across border regions throughout Southeast Asia. Some Myanmar-based criminal groups have relocated to countries such as Laos and Cambodia in response to intensified crackdowns.

To address cross-border crime, Japan is strengthening cooperation with local authorities. In May, 29 Japanese nationals were detained by local authorities in Poipet, northwestern Cambodia, on suspicion of involvement in a fraud scheme. The site is suspected to be an overseas base for what Japanese police call an "anonymous and fluid criminal group" – known as a Tokuryu – which forms and dissolves through social media networks.

AI slows down open source developers. Peter Naur can teach us why. #software #ai

LIGO Detects Most Massive Black Hole Merger to Date - www.caltech.edu #space #nature

The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has detected the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed with gravitational waves using the US National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO observatories. The powerful merger produced a final black hole approximately 225 times the mass of our Sun. The signal, designated GW231123, was detected during the fourth observing run of the LVK network on November 23, 2023.

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