The notice recommends customers migrate to Kick, a new accounting startup that announced its $9 million seed raise in October 2024 in a round led by OpenAI and General Catalyst. Kick’s CEO and founder, Conrad Wadowski, posted a message on LinkedIn to former Bench users about how Kick is “working to get your financials back in your hands.”

This is weird. How did “Kick” have access to Bench’s customer list? Is there some relationship between these companies?

OK, this is very interesting. One of the biggest limitations with biodegradable plastics is that they’re water-soluble, which makes them useless for most food packaging applications.

If this only breaks down when exposed to saltwater at particular concentrations it might be a lot more useful.

That said, the article’s not specific on which salt… I assume NaCl because that’s the highest concentration in seawater, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that other salts won’t cause the breakdown to start… and the environment isn’t exactly salt-free. Most foodstuffs aren’t de-ionized either.

Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

Getting to Where You Are by Steven Harrison

Journey Without Goal by Chogyam Trungpa

I recommend them in this order. I think Journey Without Goal is more useful after reading the other two - it’s not a good starting point. The idea is sort of to start with calming the noise in your head that makes you anxious or upset, then explore understanding and getting to know yourself, and then after finding some measure of internal stability work on larger perspectives on your life and your relationship with others.

But also we’ll track everyone everywhere they go, with facial recognition.

Oh no, Firefox is fine, possibly better than Chrome in that aspect. I’m thinking more about any other browser projects that might come up if Chrome is taken from Google and then collapses.

Or, what happens if a potentially bad actor acquires Chrome, and where does that leave all of the apps that are built around it?

It’s a good question because maintaining a modern web browser is a complicated and expensive project, which any potential buyer would have to sustain financially somehow. Chrome without the integrated ad service business would probably be highly unprofitable - so why would any business take it on?

The only real answer I can come up with is pretty ugly: data mining. Lots of services are dependent on Chrome that can’t just move to a new platform on short notice. Chrome is not just the web browser, it’s also the web engine for most mobile apps (a lot of apps are just stripped-down Chrome with a hard-coded server target).

Chrome has basically sucked all the air out of the room for other browser projects, so maybe taking it away from Google will create some space for new projects to grow… but it’s hard to see any of them becoming well-developed and trustworthy for things like health data, government services, financial transactions &etc anytime soon.

Act your wage.

luxury != quality

And it will be exploitative as fuck.

Hyper-reality

eOthello

Play Othello in your browser against people around the globe, no app install required. The website is really nicely built, very clean.

Mindustry is available in F-Droid.

Honestly I recommend looking through the entire Games section of F-Droid. There’s good stuff in there like Freebloks and Chip Defense and Frozen Bubble.

Perl? Shit man I learned Fortran in college. There’s still COBOL systems in active use. At least Perl was invented after keypunchers were deprecated.

Imagine dropping an invisible screw while you’re trying to put the engine back together.

…except getting something out of the drawer.

You might consider doing something with the Lego robotics stuff, something like Nxt-sketcher.

Hmm…

The ketogenic diet is not considered a benign, holistic, or all-natural treatment. As with any serious medical therapy, it may result in complications, although these are generally less severe and less frequent than with anticonvulsant medication or surgery. […] Supplements are necessary to counter the dietary deficiency of many micronutrients. […] Like many anticonvulsant drugs, the ketogenic diet has an adverse effect on bone health. […] In adolescents and adults, common side effects reported include weight loss, constipation, dyslipidemia, and in women, dysmenorrhea.

Sounds like you’re right, this diet is something that should be done for specific medical reasons, with professional guidance and with specific goals in mind:

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate dietary therapy that in conventional medicine is used mainly to treat hard-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet

Technically not the truth… The USA was responsible for about 37% of total global spending on military in 2023, and is the largest single spender (in US$ equivalent) globally. However, as a percentage of GDP the USA doesn’t even make the top 15. (and if you’re talking about a nation’s spending priorities then the percentage matters more than the $ value)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures

Yes.

The rental economy calls to us and we must go…

Windows 11

It was last year. You missed it.