[This is a guest post by Jana Gevertz and Steffen Marcus. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] In the last few months AI has hit our discipline with a frightening force. Many of us, understandably, have turned our attention to our students. They are absorbing this change while still working out what kind of mathematicians, and what kind of professionals, they hope to become. On this blog, Álvaro Lozano-Robledo recently asked “what should…

As you might've noticed, 0xff.nu looks... different –– It looks like an OS from the 90-s. The "fake desktop" concept is one I've been enamored with for quite a while, mostly because it looks cool and because of the nostalgic feeling it gives me personally, and it looks like I'm definitely not the only one that feels that way. The decision to actually pursue and implement this was driven by the fact that I wanted to redesign my space on the internet and make it work for me. That is not to say…

There’s not an awful lot new or surprising in this memo from Amazon leadership about the role of AI in software engineering, but it’s still interesting to see companies starting to codify the things that remain incredibly important for engineers (and product people!) to focus on. From real and continued first hand experience: As a technical or organizational leader, part of your job is making sure that your team or organization is using AI to the best effect to improve delivery for customers…

I like to archive my popular, but “finished” GitHub repositories, for two main reasons: If my SSH key ever gets stolen, it limits the damage that an attacker can do to my popular GitHub repositories, Those repositories are, as far as I consider, “finished”, and will no longer get updates. You can’t star archived GitHub repositories anymore, however. You can fork the repository and then star the fork, but it’s no longer possible to star the original. “You can’t star…

Slushpile index Part 1, Part 2, Part 3I should probably be paying more attention to the fact that the content of these posts is all compatible with Cairn.Wikipedia Slush #41. UmarellRetired old men in Italy who, having lots of free time on their hands, go stand around construction sites to watch / commentate. Life goals, honestly.2. Beringer’s Lying Stones1725 fossil hoax played by Johann Georg von Eckhart on Johann Bartholomeus Adam Beringer, dean of medicine at the University of Würzburg. The…

Don’t let an LLM pick your words. Be careful not to let it trick you into thinking your first draft is better than it is. Then outsource all the most tedious work to the model. Your voice stays intact, but your work is faster, better, and less painful. —Thomas & Erin Ptacek, How To Write With An LLM Thanks for still believing in RSS! Get in touch if you have any comments or feedback.

We're still working on it... nearly there......

Most of my repositories have exactly one contributor. That contributor also reviews the pull requests, approves them, and merges them, usually within the same minute. It is a very efficient process. It is not a very good one. GitHub users have had AI review bots for a while now. My code lives on a self-hosted Forgejo instance, and I was not interested in giving a SaaS product a token for it. So I built my own: a Forgejo PR review bot that reads every new pull request, asks an LLM for a review,…

I’ve made another package! django-launch-editor makes the file locations on Django’s debug error page into links that open your editor. Here’s how it looks, on a KeyError from the package’s example project: (Click to enlarge.) The change against stock Django is subtle, but can you spot the underlines on the file locations? They’re now links that open your editor at the right line, and even the right column when Python knows it. I think this is gonna be a neat time saver. Before, I would…

Sometimes I feel hot, white anger erupting below my ribs, tearing through me in flashes. Sometimes it settles for longer than I want, and it blinds me. In those stretches, I want to take everything I have ever known, everything I'm expected to be, and grind it to dust. Why should I accept unfairness and the helplessness that comes with it? Why should I accept being told that this is simply how the world works? Why should I comply when someone tries to control me, to live their way, to take away…

Ok, so there is one big problem with Yoga and a Pint now being at Barrel Theory (the old Lake Monster space). The beer is more to my taste (they specialize in hazies) and the beer is much stronger (think 7% instead of 3-5%). So I'm having to recalibrate my weekend days so I can get some work done before yoga, because I am not *quite* as productive immediately after. It's a worthwhile trade.While yesterday I did some reconciliations and fired off some emails first thing in the morning, today was…

If I get a message from higher-ups, it's usually a formal declaration that something is now my responsibility. Most of the directives seem reasonable. The absence of specific steps and procedures to make them happen could be interpreted as trust in me to carry them out how I think best, right? And the absence of any resources provided to effect these changes could imply that it's a fairly trivial ask. I'm not talking about rules like no fish in the office microwave. These are mandates to police…

Chicago is a lovely city. One of my favorites. I spent many happy years there, and also I go back periodically. So today I want to talk about Chicago as a transit city, much like I did London and Paris. How do you get around? What are the options? And how much do I enjoy it (spoiler: a lot).1. The BusThe workhorse of the Chicago transit system is, unsurprisingly both in a global and in a US context, the bus.The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is the primary transit agency in the city, and it…

Hayseed Stream for Mac is a very minimal Mac application, just as the iOS app is for mobile devices. It syncs locally based on feeds you add yourself or import using OPML. It includes keyboard shortcuts that should feel familiar and uses the same core set of code used in Stream for iOS. If you run across a blog in your browser and you’d like to subscribe to it just tap the share icon and select Subscribe In Stream to add your feed. Easy peasy. Stream for Mac finally made it’s way to the store,…

It’s dark and rainy and annoying enough outside that I am both enjoying sitting on the couch with a blanket and pining for my regular walks to the nearest park. And as usual for the season, work is steadily stacking up until the holidays, so this was an even more intense week than the last. But besides reviving another of my MacBooks, I’ve had a couple of free hours here and there to keep track of some stuff… Nature Is Healing Yes, US elections are inescapable, and no, I don’t care about the…

From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark (Harper, 2013), pp. 560-561: The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol. There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character. Viewed in this light, the outbreak of war was a tragedy, not a crime. Acknowledging this does not mean that we…

Tod Browning’s THE EXQUISITE THIEF (1919) seems to exist only as a single reel discovered frozen in the Dawson City film find. A great shame, since it looks to be a fine example of Browning’s “crook films,” the genre he was most associated with before he became a master of the macabre. (Of considerable interest […]

This week saw the highest views we've ever had here on The Review. That's due to the variety of interesting topics we've been touching on!And make sure you check out the end of this article where we drop some exclusive content! Uppercase Uppercase is a daily word game featuring a new, human-made puzzle every day! Check it out. Play For Free ArticlesCocoon 3.1 Brings The Console Experience to AndroidDash opened the week with their expert coverage of Cocoon's latest update. They put the new…

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades. A series of videos by RudeJack featuring a glitzed-up Wario with friends Freddie Waluigi and Captain Syrup, combined with various songs. The most recent (2½ minutes) was from last week, and uses a Neil Cicierega-made remix of the Spice Girls’ Wannabe, but there are earlier ones too. Earlier, Wario and co. in a crossover with A Fox In Space, music is Walk the Night by Skatt Bros.…

This little zine is absolutely gorgeous, full of top notch advice and very reasonably priced. The perfect stocking filler for the charter in your life.

Welcome to my virtual computer! This is a new "theme revision" of sorts, which as of 2026-11-03 runs as a test. The reasoning is that it feels "more natural" and closer to how my brain is structured. It also allows me to organize content without having to explicitly decide where it must live, and everything is organized either by container (akin to a directory/folder) or by filter which allows me to group content based on a set of different parameters.

When life has been traumatic, there are two directions a person can take. On the first, he wants to pass the hurt on to others. He wants the world to see how hard it was. He becomes the archetypal villain. The grey character. The one you sympathise with yet disagree with, because he too has a point. On the second, the person absorbs everything. He makes sure no one else feels the pain he had to endure. The ignored child grows up to ensure his own child never feels ignored. He makes sure the…

The Gumball Socks are done! I used Schachenmayr Sockenwolle in the “Exotic” colourway, which reminds me so much of the $0.25 gumball machines at the grocery store. They’re just plain stockinette, my favourite kind of socks to keep as a traveling project. I’m going to have to find another craft night project to work on next. And the Pink Stuff sweater is done too! It’s drying off after a bath. I’ll get some proper pictures and give the sweater its own blog post once I can put it on… but the…

Enter: IRC, Internet Relay Chat. I had my first experience with IRC sometime in 2020 or 2021. I forget exactly how I had heard about it to be honest, but I do remember freenode being the first server I joined (and Weechat, a TUI IRC client, being my client of choice :P). I had a ton of fun and actually made friends?? Sadly I happened to join just months before everything fell apart though, LOL. I stopped using IRC when freenode went offline. Around the time Discord made their age verfication…

I've been struggling, for years, to share little maps of places I've been and trips I've taken. The evidence is there, if you care to dive deep for it. A couple of days ago, all that changed. It is now easy-peasy: Overland1 on my phone records the trips and sends the data to Compass on my server; when Compass receives notice that a trip has ended, it sends the details to the new Micropub plugin here in Grav; and the plugin creates the route on a static map image and drafts a bare-bones post to…

Ich gehe immer gerne auf Suche nach spannenden kulinarischen Erfahrungen. Umso schöner, wenn man nicht lange suchen muss, sondern einen (Geheim)Tipp von anderen Foodies bekommt. Ich wäre ohne die Empfehlung des lieben Felix (@felix.dining) wahrscheinlich… Der Beitrag Einfach nur WOW – Zum Kölner Dom erschien zuerst auf Sternestulle.

I first read James Clear's Atomic Habits in 2021, but since I'm currently trying to improve my habits in a couple of areas (daily writing and better planning) I took it with me on a work trip for a quick re-read.

Caught up with a friend whom I have not met for more than six months. We are each other's sounding board. We share our frustrations, dreams and insecurity. I told her that a common friend of ours is coaching me pickleball. She remarked that while I am focusing on getting better in the material world, have I considered getting a coach for my soul? I am not a very religious person. I believe I should be busy living life and not to worry about death. Given that I have less than 50% of lifespan…

A beautiful panoramic photo of a lake, with color-changing trees on the far side. As I write this I'm ending my first day at a week-long artist residency in the Pocono Mountains. It's being held at a lakeside cabin within a nature sanctuary, the air has a crisp chill but isn't yet truly cold1At least during the day, and the leaves are changing color. It's beautiful, and as much as I love #philly, it's nice to get out of the city for a bit. I believe I first started thinking about trying to get…