Indian Radiohead
Avie Sheck presents a unique spin on Radiohead’s Creep. He enlisted his mother, who added a new dimension to the alternative hit by singing in a Hindustani music style known as Raag Bilawal.
Atari 2600 glassware
Wild – the Atari joystick decanter set modeled after the CX-10 Atari joystick. Comes in at $120 for those retro Atari friends.
Updated install instructions for Flux AI
Dominik Bößl made a pretty straightforward video on how to get FLUX.1 installed and using StabilityMatrix as package manager so you can use multiple different generative AI packages.
I like Movies
“I can’t believe my job is to make you feel good about yourself”
-Lawrence’s boss Alana
I Like Movies is a film about an naive, overly optimistic kid named Lawrence who is absorbed in the world of movies and his own ‘creative’ viewpoints. Unfortunately, he’s socially abrasive, clueless as to how the world/life works, and goes on about creative visions when he hasn’t even held a simple job or seems to make anything anyone wants to see. He shares too much to the point of embarrassing himself and his friends.
I think the movie hits a couple of important themes that are relevant today. First, that when we’re young we often embarrassingly think our thoughts and ideas are unique and amazing – only later to realize how cringe we really were.
Secondly, I think the quote from the boss nails what being a manager is like today – especially for those that grew up in the isolation of covid. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they’re struggling at a much higher rate than other generations – even when rated by their own peers. So the question is, how does one help those that are struggling like Lawrence along?
Epic Photography often is boring looking
I used a lot of interesting tricks when I was taking landscape photography. You could use a dirty mud puddle to make amazing shots that looked like you were on the beach or overlooking a lake. It works for shooting people too. Epic shots are often all about lighting and focusing on split second shot. A good reminder in the Instagram era where everyone is posting ‘perfect’ pictures.
Doughnut shop in Indiana is still using Commodore 64’s as their cash register
The Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg, IN is a respectable local donut shop. What sets it apart, however, is the fact they are still using Commodore 64’s for their cash registers.
A recent series of photos on X attracted a lot of attention this week, as it showed staff at the Hilligoss Bakery apparently processing orders on a Commodore 64-based register system. Commenters pointed out that the last publicly posted picture of the register was taken in 2021, so Tom’s Hardware decided to give them a call—and staff duly verified that the systems were still in use.
Links:
- https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/indiana-bakery-still-using-commodore-64s-originally-released-in-1982-as-point-of-sale-terminals
- https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/a-small-doughnut-shop-in-indiana-is-still-using-commodore-64s-as-register-systems-42-years-after-their-initial-release/#
- https://x.com/RetroVidGaming/status/1868587811517219090
Portland gets an F in city finances
A 2024 report on city finances report gave Portland a full on ‘F’ for the state of it’s finances. Primarily due to the incredible debt burden of each resident. This isn’t a surprise considering Portland has the second highest tax rates in the country, and is currently facing a $27 million budget shortfall (especially as it’s tax base flees across the state line to Vancouver and businesses increasingly are leaving as well)
Read more about the state of the cities finances as well as thoughts of your favorite other major US cities.
Articles:
Rundle Mall
John Farnham has a classic late 80’s sound and was famous for his pop songs. He also did this ridiculously banging tune for the Rundle Mall in Adelaide, Australia.
More developer attacks
A group of Israeli researchers managed to infect over 100 organizations by typosquatting an infected version of a popular theme on Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code marketplace. They reported they were able to infect ‘numerous’ high-value targets (billion dollar publicly listed companies, security companies, court networks, etc) within 24 hours of publishing the extension. It was able to collect system information and send it to a remote server via an HTTPS POST request. It didn’t get flagged by endpoint detection.
By using what they learned, they examining other extensions on the VSCode Marketplace. Researchers found the following:
- 1,283 with known malicious code (229 million installs).
- 8,161 communicating with hardcoded IP addresses.
- 1,452 running unknown executables.
- 2,304 that are using another publisher’s Github repo, indicating they are a copycat.
They found blatantly obvious issues like this code that opens a reverse shell to the cybercriminal’s server
In summary, the lack of controls on the VSCode marketplace allows threat actors to perform rampant abuse. While the researchers reported the extensions they found to Microsoft, the vast majority remain available for download via VSCode Marketplace after they published their report.
Articles:
AI Brings History to Life
AI can bring still images to life. I wrote about MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia tool before.