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New Mexican Christmas

New Mexican Christmas

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The glowing brown paper bags that adorn Southwestern walkways, churches, and homes during the Christmas holiday season are called luminarias. They’re also sometimes called farolitos, or “little lanterns,” and date back more than 300 years. The New Mexican tradition began when Spanish villages along the Rio Grande displayed the unique and easy-to-make lanterns to welcome the Christ child into the world.

I loved seeing these when I lived in Albuquerque. They’re largely only found in the dry winters of the southwest as they would be buried in East coast snows, blow 100 miles away in Midwest winter winds and snow, or would be rained into a soggy mess in the Pacific Northwest.

Visit Albuquerque has a little write-up on them that’s pretty cool on how to make them yourself.

Dysentery cases rising in Portland

Dysentery cases rising in Portland

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A sad side effect of a very permissive city-wide camping policy means that public sanitation has reached dangerous levels. To the level that we’re having outbreaks of communicable diseases related to feces.

Bans on urban camping and home codes have been a thing since Hooverville days. Public sanitation can become life and death health concern for urban residents. Sadly, it appears Portland has reached that tipping point, despite spending $75,000 a month on 130 public toilets (that were all destroyed or stolen)

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Free plane wifi via PySkyWiFi

Free plane wifi via PySkyWiFi

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Software engineer Robert Heaton posted the entire story behind his open-source PySkyWiFi project— or how he achieved free Wi-Fi on an airplane by painstakingly subverting the existing firewall.

The process started when he realized that his Airmiles account page, not blocked by the firewall, was still connected to the broader Internet, and this gap could be exploited.

After a lot of funny hacking, he got it working to the tune of “several bytes per second.” Yeah – BYTES per second.

So right now it’s probably still best to just pay for the wifi, take a nap, or read a book.

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Equality as an absolute value

Equality as an absolute value

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“Harrison Bergeron” is a satirical dystopian science-fiction short story written in 1961 by American author Kurt Vonnegut.

In the year 2081, the Constitution dictates that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, and her agents enforce the equality laws by forcing citizens to wear “handicaps” such as ugly masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radios that broadcast irritating noises meant to disrupt thoughts for the intelligent, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic. Examples include things like ballerinas wear grotesque masks and heavy weights to them to make them clumsy and unattractive.

A lot of modern policy is based on the notion of equality – but I think Vonnegut’s story presents a valid discussion point to what equality really means. Living in the extremely liberal town of Portland, I have heard people promote the very ideas in this story as a vision of equality. Does equality mean that all people must be the same?

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Inflatable Camping Shelter

Inflatable Camping Shelter

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Gear Patrol reported on a new four-season capsule tent that assembles in under five minutes, can sleep four, and fits into a backpack. It’s called the Air Station Pod-01 and it’s made by Exod – a company that also makes the Monolith inflating tent.

The shelter supposedly takes just five minutes to assemble with the included hand pump, and once set up, it offers a self-standing design with 4.2m² of floor space. The exterior of the capsule has two tunnel doors, a pair of windows and multiple ventilation points. All four walls can also be easily lifted up to create an open-air shelter. It weighs 18.7 lbs and can be disassembled by one person in five minutes, including the time it takes to stuff it into the included 25 x 35 x 64cm carrying backpack.

It’s claimed to be rigid enough to stand up in four seasons – but I’m curious how it would do with 3″ of snow on it (4.2m² = 6430in² * 3″ of snow = 19,440in³ or 11.25 cubic feet. Snow weighs about 12 pounds per cubic foot, so 3″ snow would weigh roughly 135lbs); or if its tie-down system could stand up to 20-35mph winds on a ridge.

At $2,679 (now $1930 at their website) it’s not cheap, but it certain is cool looking and would likely be right at home at a Burning Man style festival where wind/snow might not be a problem.

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Tech layoffs are still going strong in 2025 – and the stories are heartbreaking

Tech layoffs are still going strong in 2025 – and the stories are heartbreaking

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It’s only February, and there have already been 25,000 tech layoffs in 2025. There were over 150,000 job cuts across 542 companies in 2022-2024.

No sector has been hit harder than game development. It is likely true there was far too much growth during the pandemic, but it sure seems like the pendulum has been swinging back the other way with a vengance. Read some of the stories shared on the gamedev forum. Longtime devs are sharing that things are worse than many of them have ever seen and wages are dropping.

How do you get over being laid off by a game studio you loved working at, but have to watch from the sidelines on the continued development of the project?
byu/RespectfulGamer08 ingamedev

It’s even worse for juniors or people trying to get into the industry.

Your situation is similar to so many others’: junior devs can’t find paying work, their personal projects don’t make much or any money at all, and they survive by teaching game dev.

So junior game devs who can’t find paying work are teaching the next wave of junior devs who won’t be able to find paying work. So what will that new wave do, teach? Every year, I find out about another college or university that teaches game development. The number of students who get game dev degrees keeps increasing, but the number of jobs is not keeping pace.

That’s what the cycle looks like right now. It’s f*cked up, and I honestly don’t know when it will improve.

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Neural implant is like an aimbot

Neural implant is like an aimbot

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Noland Arbaugh is the only person so far to have been fitted with a brain implant by Neuralink. The hope was that he could control digital devices with his thoughts. Now, more than 100 days after the implantation, Arbaugh went on the Joe Rogan podcast to share his experience and how gaming has been re-introduced into his life.

His thoughts? Rave reviews. “I basically have an aimbot in my head. They’ll probably have different leagues for people like me because it’s just not fair.” “It’s that accurate and it’s faster…Sometimes, it’s moving before I even think it to move.”

There were later issues with the implanted wires pulling back, but Neuralink updated the software in lieu of more surgery and has proposed solutions for the 2nd possible patient.

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