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This is a pretty good optical illusion. If you’re not on your phone, it also works if you shake your head a little. (thx, caroline)

Tags: optical illusions

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A guide on how (and why) to quit Spotify. “I am extremely glad I [switched away from Spotify]; it’s been a minute since I’ve felt something approaching genuine delight in discovering a new tech service.”

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Why We Have Two Nostrils Instead of One Big Hole. (Great title!) “The nostrils alternate airflow from one side to the other. This may allow one side of the nose to rest.”

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Stickertop.art is a massive collection of the tops of laptop computers adorned with stickers. Laptop stickers are more than decoration, they’re a form of self-expression. Each one is a snapshot of a moment, a place, and an attitude. But they’re fleeting; when the technology becomes outdated, the laptops along with the stories stuck to them often end up in the waste pile. I thought it was a shame for something so personal and creative to just disappear, so I created this site to preserve them. If you’re a laptop decorator, you can upload your sticker collection to the site. (via @juandesant) Tags: art · computers 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

I’m working on the 2025 gift guide right now, but I wanted to separately shout-out my favorite gift recommendation of the year: Kelli Anderson’s incredible popup book about typography & the alphabet, Alphabet in Motion (Amazon).

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A video featuring Magnus Carlsen trying to beat a very novice player at chess with increasingly unfair rules (opponent gets two moves per turn, opponent starts with 23 queens, Magnus starts with 1 king and 23 pawns, etc.)

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From Nature, a list of 10 people who helped shape science in 2025. “A fired public-health official, a mosquito breeder and a baby with a smile seen around the world. These are just a few of the remarkable people chosen for Nature’s 10.”

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The all-out AI race. “They are tearing towards a technology that could, in theory, sweep away millions of white-collar jobs and pose serious risks in bioweapons and cybersecurity. Or it could usher in a new era of abundance, health and wealth.”

From photographer and videographer Jan Erik Waider, a trio of videos that features the black sand beaches of Iceland from a drone’s vantage point. Captured on Iceland’s south coast where a glacial river meets the Atlantic Ocean. The camera observes the slow interplay ...

Narrative String Theory is collection all known instances in film & TV of bulletin boards covered with investigatory items, “walls and floors littered with paperwork by obsessives”, and so on.

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I have been interviewed for Hyde’s “Over/Under” series.

Niche Museums: The Museum of Jurassic Technology

I finally got to check off the museum that's been top of my want-to-go list since I first started documenting niche museums I've been to back in 2019.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology opened in Culver City, Los Angeles in 1988 and has been leaving visitors confused as to what's real and what isn't for nearly forty years.

Tags: museums

Dasha Litvinova, reporting for the AP: Russian authorities said Thursday they have imposed restrictions on Apple’s video calling service FaceTime, the latest step in an effort to tighten control over the internet and communications online. State internet regulator Roskom...

A birthday celebration, Beyond Tellerrand conference, Frankeninferno, and a whole bunch of random shots from Düsseldorf. (70 photos)

Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times, “Meta Weighs Cuts to Its Metaverse Unit” (gift link): Meta is considering making cuts to a division in its Reality Labs unit that works on the so-called metaverse, said three employees with knowledge of the matter. The cuts ...

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. Does your app get fake signups, throwaway emails, or users abusing your free tier? Or worse, bot attacks and brute force attempts?

WorkOS Radar can block all this and more. A simple API gives you advanced device fingerprinting that can detect bad actors, bots, and suspicious behavior. Your users trust you. WorkOS Radar lets you keep it that way.

Link: workos.com/radar?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=RSS…

Using LLMs at Oxide

Thoughtful guidance from Bryan Cantrill, who evaluates applications of LLMs against Oxide's core values of responsibility, rigor, empathy, teamwork, and urgency.

Via Lobste.rs

Tags: ai, generative-ai, llms, oxide, bryan-cantrill

Now I want to talk about how they're selling AI. The growth narrative of AI is that AI will disrupt labor markets. I use "disrupt" here in its most disreputable, tech bro sense.

The promise of AI – the promise AI companies make to investors – is that there will be AIs that can do your job, and when your boss fires you and replaces you with AI, he will keep half of your salary for himself, and give the other half to the AI company.

That's it.

That's the $13T growth story that MorganStanley is telling. It's why big investors and institutionals are giving AI companies hundreds of billions of dollars. And because they are piling in, normies are also getting sucked in, risking their retirement savings and their family's financial security.

— Cory Doctorow, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI

Tags: cory-doctorow, ai-ethics, ai

One small update I just appended to my piece Friday taking a look at the winning apps from this year’s App Store Awards:

Lastly, I have questions — some really hard questions — regarding Tiimo’s app icon. Such as, “What is that?”

Perhaps it got picked because it makes Apple’s new OS 26 icons look good by comparison?

Link: daringfireball.net/2025/12/2025_app_store_award_winners

What to try first? Run Claude Code in a repo (whether you know it well or not) and ask a question about how something works. You'll see how it looks through the files to find the answer. The next thing to try is a code change where you know exactly what you want but it's te...