Notices by Ernie Smith (ernie@writing.exchange)

@murph @tedium @jwz Sorry, I probably should have. I admit that I really got sucked into the “prior art in hardware form” rabbit hole when writing the piece.

When did the screen saver come to life? And why are they more boring now than they were 30 years ago?

I’d like to argue that when we talk about screen savers, we’re talking about two very different things.

https://tedium.co/2025/01/12/screen-saver-history/

new @tedium

There’s a Google Project Ara prototype on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156569238176

@ActionRetro I like how two people in the comments determined what it was immediately.

I know a lot of tech-heads are on here, but Bluesky also deserves to have tech-heads. It’s lonely being the only guy talking about Hackintosh and distros on that site.

Let’s start a community over there. I’m here: https://bsky.app/profile/ernie.tedium.co

You don't have to love the fediverse but can you stop walking into hornet’s nests and blaming the hornets?

@TechConnectify I agree there's room for improvement. It just struck me as a weird thread where he had a point that was likely to be poorly accepted, but didn't seem to anticipate the response.

What did this guy expect would happen? He posted something savaging the platform and people got up in arms about it.

https://mastodon.social/@o_simardcasanova/113053473600003123

@ActionRetro this is where the Pentium 3 goes, right?

Just now realizing that Vox Day, the far-right activist and white supremacist, was the first person ever to write about NESticle in a newspaper.

He did so in May 1997, a little over a month after it first came out.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/north-bay-nugget-first-mention-of-nestic/152803261/

Hey Logitech why don’t you advertise mice like this anymore?

Cowards

EDIT: Now with story! https://tedium.co/2024/08/01/logitech-forever-mouse-hardware-subscription/

The ads for the American market were much tamer BTW

It’s been so long since we’ve had a Weird Al polka medley that the one he just released has literally every massive hit of the last decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0ZoX4dBvwk

The irony is not lost on me that the Internet Archive went out of its way to acquire the physical versions of millions of books and loan them out carefully and in a limited way, and is facing a near-extinction-level event over it, while for-profit and VC-backed companies are just stealing people’s content and making up excuses to validate the bad behavior.

Had a friend soft-pressure me into posting on Threads in earnest

… but I don’t wanna

Why does nobody talk about Deerhunter anymore? What a great band. Bradford Cox is the people’s champ.

I am now in the Dumb Domain business. Buy a Dumb Domain from my store.

It will generate new domains every time you reload the page. See what you get. And tell a friend.

https://dumbdomain.store

I want to lean into a suggestion @mattl gave and consider doing shirts to promote the URL tag. (Especially as I see someone else attempting to do the same.)

But I want to make them inexpensive and minimally profitable—I’d rather they be something people can afford to promote a message than a major revenue source, if that makes sense. Any suggestions on what my best option for that might be?

Hard to disagree with this take.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2117752/google-gemini-ai.html

@ActionRetro finally captures the natural retro gaming position on camera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9qBJa8IUZU