JP

if your hobby is touched in any way by electronic components needed by the hyperscalars, AI is coming for it, gaming most of all

shortages everywhere as far as the eye can see

n the mundane course of modern life, you might occasionally find yourself glimpsing the dark abyss - that is, catching a few seconds of a stranger's phone screen. A peek over a shoulder, through a car window at a dash-mounted phone, or perhaps, pointedly, at the hands of a distracted person whose eyes you're trying to raise, will likely reveal a version of the same thing: not, in 2026, a wall of text, a feed, or even a slideshow of stories, but an endless scroll of tall videos.

Taken together, the videos sometimes tell a simple story in algorithmic silhouette, with one bikini video after another, a cascade of talking sports heads, an unbroken flow of clothes to buy, or influencers talking over the News with a particular political orientation. Just as often, though, a stolen screen glance reveals a dismal anti-story, in which an AI model has guessed, in a whole bunch of different directions, what the user is "most likely to be interested in or engage with." It has done so by following, to borrow Meta's language, a series of steps: "Gather inventory," "leverage signals," "make predictions," and "rank reels by score." To the intended viewer, the resulting mix of videos is incoherent but probably also intuitive, at least on an individual basis. To you, the screen peeper, the spectacle is profoundly uncomfortable, not just because you're eavesdropping the output of an intimate machine-learning profile gleaned from private and often passive "signals" provided by someone you don't know, but because you know, deep down, that your chained-together clips — and the chains of people you know, love, and respect — would be exactly as alien, and alienating, to anyone outside of your narrow algorithmic cone. You're seeing yourself. You're really just sitting there, recreationally A/B testing content for hours in order to help Meta and TikTok find videos — any videos, about anything — that are a little bit harder for us not to watch.

once you start looking for it, you see evidence and consequences of online desocialization everywhere nymag.com/intelligence...

Hey @wired.com (and Wired journos) - why is the masked email I gave you on some spammer's list?

Time to cancel my subscription if you're going to sell my data to god knows who.

An adorable raccoon.

He's apparently required by law to. bsky.app/profile/park...

Unreal Tournament 2004 is now available for free.

...well, I mean, you probably could've grabbed a GOG offline installer out the back of a truck earlier, but NOW it's Official/Legally Free and has the in-development community patch packed in for ongoing support. www.oldunreal.com/downloads/ut...

This digital painting/render shows the NEAR spacecraft as it reached the surface, with attitude control jets spraying dust about. The spacecraft is a digital model I made from references, the asteroid surface foreground is based on the last photographs of the surface obtained on the way down. The rest of the scenery is painted based on more distant views. This was used on the cover of the mission final report.

This view shows the context of the final photos in relation to the landed attitude of the NEAR spacecraft. The surface relief is guesswork, with the final descent photographs draped over a hand painted Digital Elevation map of the rocks etc. That surface model became the basis of the foreground of the other portrayal.

25 years ago today the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on the Asteroid Eros, after orbiting it and making a map of the elongated 34 km long asteroid. It gently landed on the surface with its cameras obtaining views during the final descent. Digital art. #SCIART

HEY YOU! YES YOU! TAKE THIS SHIT OUT OF LINKS! A screenshot of a link with a question mark followed by a seemingly random string of characters. These are source identifiers. Source identifiers are used to track your activity on a site. Where you came from, what device you use, and even who you talk to. Whether it's written clearly in the url or tied to a random string of characters, it's assigned to your activity. When you send a link containing a source identifier to somebody and they click it, it signals to the website that you two are connected. And that data goes right back to the website operators, and thus their advertisers. Whenever you select "share" or "copy link" on a social app or website, it creates a link like this. If you give even the smallest shit about online privacy, it's important to remove them. Everything after the "?" symbol can be removed without issue, especially sections starting with "si=" or "utm_source="

This thing 🫴

gradient.horse Draw a horse, watch it run!

This is fun. You should go draw horsies instead of whatever it is you're meant to be getting on with*.

gradient.horse

*That's a lie. If you have important things to do don't listen to me. But this is cute.

Screenshot of the capsule from the Machine in the 1997 film Contact.

Everything we own should not be hackable and subscription based. This is a nightmare

can we bring sidekicks back please?

Alien Isolation

Alien Isolation

Discover the true meaning of fear in Alien: Isolation, now 75% off during the Humble Lunar New Year sale. https://bit.ly/4agQP7x

hahaha, of course

You sure you wouldn't prefer a dragon highball?

to me the problem is increasingly less about "new thing is worse than old thing we need to retvrn" it's more like "does anyone else think it's weird all this new stuff reeeeeeally wants to scan my face"

A 2 panel sketch disgram of a 1 meter tall pod. in the second panel, an oval section pops off and a demonic little face with short tentacles flies out, crudely drawn.

My favorite artifact in the "you don't need AI to do art" discourse is, of course, screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's sketch of the facehugger to explain it to Giger.

That "command module raise burn" is kind of wild. Presumably that happened way earlier than it appears on this plot, right? They didn't slew like 120 degrees right before entry?

This is why the "we can't possibly build enough batteries" angle reads to me as complete bullshit.

Hyundai accidentally sold a quarter of gigawatt worth of solid power output for three whole days. And that wasn't even the point.

Discworld QOTD, from The Wee Free Men

"Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular."

That's fair. I guess I'd be interested in if it's more likely to have a physical problem than a traditional handle. Probably. But definitely better than all-electric like Tesla.

I wonder if that includes ones that have an easy physical override like Ioniqs. You just push the back of the handle and the front pops out on a pivot.

gross

Reentry - A Space Flight Simulator on Steam Do you have what it takes to be an astronaut? Reentry is a realistic space flight simulator based on NASAs space programs; from the first American human spaceflight in Project Mercury, the rendezvous ...

Mister Spaceshipper, have you checked out Reentry? I haven't tried it yet but this is exactly what my 10 year old self always wanted.

store.steampowered.com/app/882140/R...

well now I need to fire up UT again

Really got sucked into #Cairn this weekend. Haven’t finished it yet but if you like an outdoor survival game with a good story (and mountains!), highly recommend. 🏔️

Podcast Episode #0535 - Kanzenshuu Episode #0535 of Kanzenshuu - The Podcast (for the week of 2026-02-01): your one, only, and best Dragon Ball podcast around!

Genkidamatsuri podcast time! @vegettoex.bsky.social welcomes @animeajay.bsky.social to discuss the Beerus & Galactic Patrol anime announcements, and @detectivex.bsky.social joins to chat with the @kanzenshuu.com Patreon community about video games & more!

👂🎙️📻👇 www.kanzenshuu.com/2026/02/01/p...

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

a red and pink cross stitch on blue fabric. "everything I love causes carpal tunnel" surrounded by hearts, a needle and thread, and a skein of embroidery floss.

relevant to many of yalls interests.

My favorite will forever be "What Fits Into Russia"