| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3752 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 113 | Comments |
Published on in Books
Standard disclaimer[1]
This is one of the earliest stories in the entire Expanse universe. It takes place before even Leviathan Wakes. This is Fred Johnson’s origin story. It tells the story of how he started as an Earth marine and how he came to be known as the eponymous butcher.
The present-day Fred Johnson has been taken captive by Anderson Dawes, then-leader of the OPA. But Fred Johnson hasn’t been captured because he’s a danger to the OPA. Quite the contrary: Johnson has become a drunk and... [More]
Published on in Miscellaneous
Hot takes are not a good thing for online discourse. They’re occasionally funny, but they tend to kill thought as people start to one-up each other with more hot takes. Or, even worse, “takedowns” of what were obviously meant as hot takes.
Is Anything on the Internet Real? by minutephysics (YouTube)
Listen first. Or read. Ingest.
Pause to think about what you’ve just read or heard. Try to sort out where it might go in your existing knowledge. Does it fit? No? Why not?
Try to imagine why the other person might have written or communicated the thought... [More]
Published on in Miscellaneous
Are people who say “this year sucked” necessarily spoiled and blind to their own privilege? Or are they extending their moral obligation to mean that, even though they personally benefitted, “this year sucked”—and that things will continue to suck—for a lot of other people?
The article ‘Wow, What A Terrible Year!’ Say People Living At The Absolute Peak Of Human Civilization (Babylon Bee) is intended as satire, but as with all satire, there is supposed to be an underlying truth to it. That’s what... [More]
Published on in Movies
These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve... [More]
Published on in Design
Hoo-boy, no wonder this app has a two-out-of-five-star rating on the App Store. It’s absolutely terrible.
This is one of the first pages I saw:
I had used my Swiss ID card as my proof of identity during the purchase. Now, I was supposed to actually send a photo of it to UPC so that they could verify it.[1] Unfortunately, I couldn’t see my option in this list. I was not encouraged that the second button was labeled “Passp”. I clicked that first, thinking that maybe the app just thought that all... [More]
Published on in Miscellaneous
Hot off the presses of the conspiracy-theory pressure-cooker is the idea that the new movie Don’t Look Up—which is about a world that ignores the dire warnings of scientists about an incoming comet—is “predictive programming”. I suppose that means that it’s not just entertainment, but material intended to train people into acquiescence when something does arrive? Like aliens? The article Looks like that global UFO “attack” may be impending after all by Mark Crispin Miller (News from Underground) includes this quote from a reader,
“I... [More]”
Published on in Programming
I recently read through the a11y myths. They’re quite interesting and should be required reading for managers running projects that develop web sites.
From it, I learned about the evils of overlays (see the Overlay Fact Sheet) and that there are really good resources out there, like Understanding Conformance (W3C) with WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).
“All WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria are written as testable criteria for objectively determining if content satisfies them. Testing the... [More]”
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
border-radius lets you define ellipses Published on in Programming
I hadn’t ever really thought about it because I don’t use the API very much, but it turns out that the border-radius property is not only a shorthand for setting all four corners at once, but also sets the horizontal and vertical lengths simultaneously. To set them individually, use a / between two values.
The corner radii are then calculated using ellipses as shown in the following visualization,
The article CSS Border-Radius Can Do That? by Nils Binder on October 9, 2018 (9 elements) has many more examples. It also introduces a Fancy-Border-Radius... [More]
Published on in Books
Standard disclaimer[1]
This novel felt a bit like others I’ve read about tenured professors in America, like Roth’s The Dying Animal. It’s not got much of a plot to speak of. Instead, it’s more a set of character studies of Jack Gladney and his odd family: Babette (his third wife, I believe) and a mix of his and her children, Heinrich, Denise, Steffie, and Wilder. There are other children and their mothers (Jack’s exes) scattered around the country, who make rare appearances. Jack teaches Hitler... [More]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
I recently stumbled across a recommendation on Reddit from /u/schoschi1337 for reading articles that are behind paywalls (without paying for the subscription, of course). I recommend paying for the content that you read online. I pay for a lot of stuff I read online.
Paying for content honestly the only way to combat low-quality, high-engagement tripe that is otherwise the lowest common denominator of 95% of the Internet, where everyone’s hustling for the increasingly fragmented and... [More]
Published on in Fun
I dunno, Dilbert has always been dark, but I thought these three recent cartoons were even more cynical than usual.
Dilbert: Burrow Into A Team (14.12.2021)
Dilbert: Guy With No Talents (15.12.2021)
Dilbert: Lower The Quality (17.12.2021)
I feel like they come at it from opposite angles, but Dilbert and Existential Comics have a lot of overlap in critiquing the existing system.
A recent one about anarchism was great.
Published on in Fun
I think Austin Bragg and Andrew Heaton (of Reason Magazine) make pretty funny videos.[1] Their latest is about the recent the congressional cryptocurrency hearings. These are a good idea—you can’t just hand your economy over to a world of unregulated scamming without asking a few questions[2]—but some of the people seemed…unprepared, to be charitable.
What Should Have Happened at the Cryptocurrency Hearings by ReasonTV (YouTube)
Published on in Science & Nature
A not insignificant part of the community doesn’t want the COVID vaccine. So, they’re coming up with their own versions. I heard from one friend that he’s taking dandelion extract. He’s convinced it will help fend off COVID, so that means he thinks he’s developed a partial vaccine, at least. The picture below comes from an anti-vaxx blogger I follow,[1]
Nyquil: just as good as the vaccine
The guy posted it without comment, other than to title it “A safe alternative to the “vaccine”“, so I have no idea whether he’s just kidding... [More]
Published on in Programming
Most of us know “hackers” from the media—either the news media, television shows like Mr. Robot, or movies like Swordfish. But the fast and easy way of hacking presented in the media actually does a disservice to how incredibly clever these hacks really are.
Less-complex techniques—like guessing or brute-forcing passwords—still work super-well. And you’ve always got social engineering hacks, like just asking someone for their credentials in an official-sounding way. But real, technical... [More]
Published on in Design
The Strava “your year in review” is back in 2021.[1]
I just wanted to point out a couple of things:
Published on in Books
This is the latest roundup of book titles that my Kindle shows me when I’m not reading it. Long ago, I considered paying to turn off this advertising, but it’s proven to be so entertaining that I’m happy I never gave in.
This is a view into what people are reading or what Amazon would like people to be reading or … whatever. I simply observe and catalog. I also sometimes have to hide my Kindle in public places so that no-one calls the police for what they think I’m reading.
Published on in Design
I’m in the market for a mobile plan, so my wife forwarded me a link to this page at UPC:
I’ve taken the liberty of adding some notes to the screenshot, but I’ll also list them here:
Published on in Programming
I just finished reading through the State of CSS 2021. It’s a well-presented[1] summary of a developer survey about CSS.
I liked the following sections:
Published on in Sports
Every time I want to adjust my ski bindings, I (A) remember how easy it was to adjust them last time and (B) forget how it worked.
It is very easy to adjust the binding for boot length.
Setting Salomon S9 12 TI ski bindings − insert screwdriver
Setting Salomon S9 12 TI ski bindings − lift screwdriver
Click either of the images to... [More]
Published on in earthli.com
After 16 years hosted at Encodo Systems, earthli has moved from an Ubuntu VM to Web Hosting at HostFactory.
The move went very smoothly, although there are always a bunch of things to remember, especially when you haven’t changed servers for a long time—and especially when changing from a dedicated VM/server to shared web hosting. Thankfully, web hosting is a great fit for earthli because a dedicated server is quite expensive, starting at about CHF35.-/month. I took a look at cloud-based... [More]
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Quotes
“Because they claim to be concerned with the welfare of whole societies, governments arrogate to themselves the right to pass off as mere abstract profit or loss the human unhappiness that their decisions provoke or their negligence permits. It is a duty of an international citizenship to always bring the testimony of people’s suffering to the eyes and ears of governments, sufferings for which it’s untrue that they are not responsible. The suffering of men must never be a mere silent residue... [More]”
Published on in Science & Nature
In combatting the pandemic efficiently and successfully, Switzerland is in a pretty bad place right now. It’s not nearly as bad as Austria or Germany (or a bunch of Eastern Europe, for that matter), but it’s not too far behind.
There aren’t too many reasons to believe that things will go any better in Switzerland than it’s gone in those countries—with their overflowing hospitals and people dying due to emergency-triage policies.
That’s the thing about playing musical chairs for real: when... [More]
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Quotes
“The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off”
Published on in Quotes
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
