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zackkatz

362 karma · joined April 8, 2016

meet.hn/city/42.4514428,-72.5012528/Leverett

Socials: - mastodon:mastodon.social/@zackkatz - bsky.app/profile/zackkatz - https://katz.co - https://www.gravitykit.com

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submissionscomments
zackkatz··on Understanding WCAG 2.2 as ePub and PDF
Finally! I've been trying to find a single document that has all this.
zackkatz··on EmDash creators on lock-in, Node sandboxing, and Cloudflare's commitment [video]
Disclosure: I'm one of the hosts.

This was one of EmDash's first podcast interviews since launch. A few things that came up that I haven't seen addressed elsewhere:

- Kane confirmed Matthew Prince (Cloudflare CEO) directly asked "can we build the next WordPress?" — this was top-down, not a skunkworks project

- Their Q2 roadmap was literally a question mark. They didn't know if anyone would care. The community response changed that, and they're actively allocating resources

- Plugin sandboxing outside Cloudflare is being worked on by community contributors; Kane expects a Node implementation "next week"

- They want federated/distributed plugin marketplaces (looking at the FAIR proposal), not a centralized store

- Joost de Valk (Yoast creator) already has a merged PR improving SEO handling in core

- No marketplace monetization yet, but they explicitly want devs to build commercial businesses on it

First 37 minutes is the interview, rest is discussion of implications from a WordPress product perspective.

zackkatz··on New England's last coal plant has stopped operating, according to its owners
Unfortunately (and unbelievably!), Massachusetts still burns trash.

> There are more than 100 municipal waste combustion facilities in operation across the United States. Five of these are located in Massachusetts.

https://www.mass.gov/guides/municipal-waste-combustors

zackkatz··on We hacked Burger King: How auth bypass led to drive-thru audio surveillance
Great write-up! I was sorry to see there wasn’t a reward for you reporting this to them.

At least you didn’t find that the bathroom rating tablets had audio as well!

zackkatz··on Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto Win 2024 Turing Award
Very cool to see this! It turns out my wife and I bought Andy Barto’s (and his wife’s) house.

During the process, there was a bidding war. They said “make your prime offer” so, knowing he was a mathematician, we made an offer that was a prime number :-)

So neat to see him be recognized for his work.

zackkatz··on Scientists glue two proteins together, driving cancer cells to self-destruct
Strange: the New York Times wrote about this on July 26, 2023.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/health/cancer-self-destru...

zackkatz··on Study measuring toxic metals in tampons shows arsenic, lead, other contaminants
> The metal concentrations varied by where the tampons were purchased (US vs. EU/UK), organic vs. non-organic, and store- vs. name-brand. However, they found that metals were present in all types of tampons; no category had consistently lower concentrations of all or most metals. Lead concentrations were higher in non-organic tampons but arsenic was higher in organic tampons. > > Metals could make their way into tampons a number of ways: The cotton material could have absorbed the metals from water, air, soil, through a nearby contaminant (for example, if a cotton field was near a lead smelter), or some might be added intentionally during manufacturing as part of a pigment, whitener, antibacterial agent, or some other process in the factory producing the products.
zackkatz··on A Slower Speed of Light (2012)
Playing this game on my 27” iMac was the first time I experienced nausea from motion sickness. I felt ill for two days.

Player beware!

zackkatz··on The 'drinking bird' makes a comeback and could power gadgets with clean energy
Agreed. This article makes it sound like this is a perpetual motion machine.
zackkatz··on Show HN: Alzheimer's Buddy: Use Flashing Light and Sound at 40Hz
Wow, this is intense!

Think twice before sampling it if you have any sensitivity to flashing lights. Might seem obvious, but apparently needs saying!

zackkatz··on Brain waves usually found in sleep can protect against epileptic activity
I had nocturnal childhood epilepsy and, thankfully, I grew out of it.

I would have an “aura” before going to bed that I would be having a seizure that night.

Thankfully, I never had a daytime seizure.

zackkatz··on NASA: Capillary Cup
The article doesn’t address the question of how the cup truly works. It relies on capillary action but, based on the article, I’m not sure how.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capillary_action

zackkatz··on How do we save water: Stop growing alfalfa in Imperial County
Same in the west slope of Colorado. So much water is used to grow alfalfa, in part because there is a “use it or lose it” water rights policy:

> Failure to apply a water right to beneficial use when water was available for a period of ten or more years results in a rebuttable presumption of abandonment.

This leads to huge amounts of wasted water and alfalfa growing.

https://dwr.colorado.gov/services/water-administration/water...

zackkatz··on Skybox AI: Use AI to generate 3D worlds
Mine was stuck until I toggled the "Auto-pan skybox" setting and it appeared.
zackkatz··on Skybox AI: Use AI to generate 3D worlds
I gave it this prompt, which I didn't spend any time refining, and it came up with a world that does a pretty good job of matching it.

> A world made of very strong rock that has lots of rain. The rain contains acid, which wears the rock down. There is lots of soil, but it s in very thin layers because the world is relatively new.

https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/215b2684ceac6daac1958d020e24...

zackkatz··on CPR's true survival rate is lower than many people think
This article doesn’t really address statistics for younger people. I feel like the headline should be: should elderly people be given CPR? For me the answer is a strong no. Why on Earth would you give CPR to a 90-year old person!?

> survival after out-of-hospital CPR dropped from 6.7% for patients in their 70s to just 2.4% for those over 90

zackkatz··on Apple previews Live Speech, Personal Voice, and more new accessibility features
a) These features are truly moving. I didn’t expect to get emotional from a press release. b) It’s gonna be a bonkers keynote if they’re releasing this before WWDC.
zackkatz··on Some employers have decided to build their own housing for workers
Headline: Innovative company reinvents company town. Visionary leaders hope to drive employees into debt and eventually forced servitude.
zackkatz··on Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says
You can just say “15 minutes” and it has a higher success rate for me.
zackkatz··on This website is solar powered and running on a Raspberry Pi-like computer
The PNGs aren't optimized—I crunched them losslessly and saved 8%–10%.
zackkatz··on Our Shift to Usage-Based Pricing
Hi Arpit! That’s wonderful news, thank you!

I’m running Appsmith Cloud.

zackkatz··on Our Shift to Usage-Based Pricing
I would love to use Appsmith and pay-by-usage, but I’m blocked by not being able to SSH tunnel into MySQL.

Anyone with this same issue, please upvote!

https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith/issues/518

zackkatz··on AI Voice Generator: Text to Speech Software
Here are the docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/s...
zackkatz··on Comparing Google and ChatGPT
They could still serve AdSense-style ads inside the generated content.
zackkatz··on Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo Pipes even supported running YQL as a node inside a pipe!

It was so good.

zackkatz··on Britain's largest 'Sea Dragon' discovered in UK's smallest county
There’s a great short video on the Anglican Water website:

https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/community/rutland-sea-dragon

zackkatz··on I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown
This is a great thread/analysis on Twitter by a maker of Newsletter Glue. She has extensive experience with all these providers:

https://twitter.com/lesley_pizza/status/1477841280990257152

zackkatz··on Japanese Typewriters
The title should be updated to reflect that it was written in 2009.
zackkatz··on Creep – a pretty sweet 4px wide pixel font
I loved designing every single website using Mini 7 back in the day. Amazing that this is just 4px!
zackkatz··on Link shorteners: the long and short of why you shouldn’t use them
I run my own using [YOURLS](https://yourls.org). It addresses the issues brought up in the article:

Control your links, override slug names so they are readable, maintain private analytics, keep branded by running on your own domain.

It’s easy to set up and maintained by many of the people working on WordPress core. I recommend it.

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