What’s On Your To-Do List?

I keep a list of things I want to do for KDO in Apple Notes, organized into four sections: small, medium, large, and longshots/obsolete. This note contains tweaks, bug fixes, code refactoring, new site features, roadmap items,1 infrastructure migrations, potential project ideas,…

The Bizarre, Murky History of Soviet-Born Tetris....

The Bizarre, Murky History of Soviet-Born Tetris. “Ironically, Tetris’s success began because the totalitarian Soviet regime did not recognize what we take for granted in the West: the freedom to publish.”

On commodified, automated intelligence. “If any of these...

On commodified, automated intelligence. “If any of these things shake out and we make it out of the near-future, the best you can hope for is a universal basic income, pegged to a meaningful percentage of existing compute.” (God that’s bleak.)

The MN Stolen Neighbors Quilt

Over the past six months, dozens of people pitched in to create the MN Stolen Neighbors Quilt, which is made of 12,500 squares, each one representing an immigrant abducted in Minnesota by the Trump regime’s secret police (ICE + CBP). The quilt was recently unveiled at the MN S…

Polaroid Mod Review: The Camera That Brings Everyone Joy

The Polaroid Mod is a camera that I think is really fun in addition to being pretty advanced. I'm not sure how sustainable it is though. For sure, it brought everyone I took photos of quite a bit of visible joy. But in today's world, it's impossible for photographers to spell th…

Is the Sony A7s IV Finally Launching Soon?

Sony has had a wonderful year so far. The company launched some great cameras, including the high-resolution king, the a7R VI, recently. While the company has not spoken about what the next launch will be about, a few reports are pointing out that it will be the successor to the…

In the wake of her divorce, Curtis Sittenfeld revisits...

In the wake of her divorce, Curtis Sittenfeld revisits her 2015 piece on marriage. “Toward the end, I felt as if the best versions of ourselves had married and the worst versions of ourselves were getting divorced.”

Does Shooting in Auto ISO Actually Hurt Your Exposure Control?

Modern cameras are so good that auto ISO control is something that isn't even worth fussing over as long as you set the right parameters. This is especially the case with cameras that don't have the highest megapixel counts and have been around since the year 2020. If anything t…

Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer

OpenAI isn’t going to release its newest model because...

OpenAI isn’t going to release its newest model because “it showed high levels of what the company saw as deception, or a willingness to mislead users about its actions [and] was also willing to go beyond the original scope of what it was asked to do”.

This American Life has a whole episode with Nikole...

This American Life has a whole episode with Nikole Hannah-Jones and her daughter Najya, following up on her NYT article about Nikole’s school choice for Najya.

Whoa, for the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of...

Whoa, for the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder has released four additional songs from that recording session. “We didn’t add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it.”

Traveling Light? Our Presets Do the Heavy Lifting in Post

When you're traveling, the last thing you want is to spend hours in front of a laptop editing photos instead of being out exploring. That's exactly the problem our Lightroom presets and Capture One styles solve. Apply one, adjust a couple of sliders if needed, and you're done. W…

Could Sharper Lenses Really Make Images Look Like AI?

The lead image of this article is one that will always stick out to me. It's an image of my good friend, Alex. And I remember when I was showing it off to a bartender identifying as Gen Z, she told me it looked like AI. However, I was showing her the literal back of the camera s…

Moonday

Ilmoonination Actually, we have a waning gibbous moon tonight. It was full two nights ago. But I need to a headline, so there ya go. How's fishing? Mainstream media continues to get sidestreamed. That's what I take from Ad Market Resumes Tepid Growth In August, 'Traditional' Me…

The Rare Lens From the Nevada Test Site

Today's awesome vintage find on ebay is something for collectors with a taste for rarity and curiosity for military history. You definitely don't see a 1000mm 40-inch f/8 Cyclotar lens spring up from the depths of ebay everyday! What exactly is this curious-looking item? Well, t…

nikitonsky is being grumpy

nikitonsky: I was wondering what a play button does on an already playing video. Turned out first video was a “cover image” for another video! #Anthropic #Claude #Video #Play

Are Modern Cameras Useless Without AI and Scene Detection?

When you shoot with a modern camera, chances are that you're using some of the more very automated autofocus modes. By that, I'm talking about AI detection and scene detection -- depending on what brand we're discussing and the vernacular that they're using. In the past year or…