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Category: Interesting or Cool

Lidar in Disneyland and Fooling self driving cars

Lidar in Disneyland and Fooling self driving cars

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Mark Rober tested out both a Lexus equipped with lidar, and a Tesla that uses just visible light cameras. He wants to see if which of the systems will fall for a variety of tests that could fool self-driving cars. Including painting a fake road on a brick wall.

Bonus points, he took a lidar onto his ride of various Disneyland rides. He tries to see if by just bringing his lidar on Space Mountain if he could map and 3D print it. Results of that at 16:25

I couldn’t agree more

I couldn’t agree more

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“I’m in my 40’s now. When I was a kid, I used to have tons of my favorite books that I wanted to see made into movies. Now, in 2025, I hope the exact opposite for any story I love.”

I saw this quote on a movie buff forum and couldn’t agree more. Classic stories are butchered, re-imagined by people who don’t even know the source material, or reframed for ‘modern’ sensibilities.

We do have examples of amazing Lord of the Rings from Peter Jackson – and then abominations like the follow-up series on Amazon that shows the show runners don’t understand the basics of the source material nor the intent of the author that wrote it.

Cheating in racing

Cheating in racing

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A big blow to racers in the 2025 Indy 500 race in the form of after-race penalties. Some of them were expected, but the worst was a penalty against Andretti Global racer Marcus Ericsson that moved him from his 2nd place finish to 31st place due to modifications to the energy management system cover.

Cheating in racing is certainly not new. Smokey Yunick was a deeply involved in the early years of NASCAR as a multiple award winning mechanic. His teams would include 50 of the most famous drivers in the sport, winning a total of 57 NASCAR Cup Series races.

Besides his successes, he was also famous for claiming the majority of the NASCAR rulebook in the 70’s was due to the crazy things he did.

USB3 external GPU

USB3 external GPU

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I’ve written about connecting an external GPU to your laptop/NUC system before, but now there’s yet another solution from AMD.

The Tiny Corp showed off connecting an AMD GPU over USB3 via libusb. It should work on Windows, Linux, and even Mac systems. They use a user space driver to simplify development and is limited to AMD RDNA 3/4 GPUs.

Github link for the eGPU USB3 feature.

All too common today

All too common today

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Developer Timeline has some pretty funny developer videos.

I’ve personally seen this – and I have been in the industry long enough to know that some of our best developers weren’t the best at interviewing – and vice versa. As the tech layoffs deepen, I think we’ll see more of this.

And if you’re a junior dev:

Why Blue states can’t build enough housing

Why Blue states can’t build enough housing

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From a planner who is now recognizing many blue state policies are regressive and a big part of the reason there isn’t enough affordable housing in western blue states (which like Oregon are shrinking) while many red states have lots of attractive affordable housing (and are growing).

Amazing Japanese Kabuki and Noe Theater channel

Amazing Japanese Kabuki and Noe Theater channel

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Kabuki is the highly stylized Japanese theater tradition that dates back hundreds of years. Kabuki In-Depth is an amazing YouTube channel that describes many of the elements to Kabuki, as well as has summaries of famous Kabuki plays and famous performances/performers. It’s an amazing place to start if you’re interested in the art form.

I think this is an amazing untapped art form that has a lot to offer modern audiences.

Understanding the stage:

Mie Pose

Kabuki Make-up

Stage tricks

Sharply growing Catholic Converts in the US

Sharply growing Catholic Converts in the US

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It’s been noted that for the last few years, the number of people entering the Catholic Church at Easter has been sharply rising. It’s not just a one-year, post-covid fluke. Cleveland diocese saw a 50% larger Catechumen class in 2024 than 2023 (465), then about 75% higher number in 2025. Many other diocese are seeing the same trend.

Diocese across the US are seeing ever-increasing numbers of converts. Even the New York Times reported that young men are flooding to churches of many Christian denominations – especially Gen Z men.