Waxy.org

Waxy.org

@waxy.org

Since 2002, hot links and cool takes from Andy Baio aka @andy.baio.net. WWW: https://waxy.org/ RSS: https://waxy.org/feed/ Mastodon: https://xoxo.zone/@waxy

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Pillowfort closing in December — the user-funded Tumblresque platform never fully recovered after suffering three months of downtime in 2021

pillowfort.socialStaff: Pillowfort is closing.I’m terribly sorry to bring this news to you. This is, genuinely, the hardest decision I have ever made in my life, and I have put off doing it for as long as I could. While we did have many people reach out about the non-profit initiative, for which I am grateful, it became apparent that we crucially wouldn’t be able to find someone to take over as the head of Pillowfort and lead the organization. Since things cannot continue the way they have been, and with nobody able to take Pillowfort off my hands, the only option left is to close it.The essentials are: Pillowfort’s last day will be December 4th, 2026. All subscriptions have been cancelled. You will still be able to access the features you paid for until Pillowfort’s final day. We will be honoring refund requests for any and all purchases or donations made in the last 75 days (i.e. since August 5th). Just contact Staff with information about the payment(s) you want refunded. We will be releasing a blog export feature soon to allow you to save a text file of all your blog posts. In the meantime, you can also download an archive of your blog using the unofficial Tassel browser extension. [READ-MORE]In retrospect, I think the site never really recovered from the security incident in 2021. We had great momentum going up to that point, but after we had to take the site down for several weeks, the buzz and word of mouth never came back no matter how much we tried. While the money Pillowfort brought in over the years since then was enough to keep Pillowfort running with a skeleton crew, a skeleton crew was never going to be a sustainable way to run a platform of this complexity. At our biggest, we only had one community manager, one content moderator, and 3 web developers comprising our team, all of whom were part-time. This left me having to wear a lot of hats to fill in the gaps, and frankly I have been burned out from the responsibility of it all for years now. Perhaps if I’d been more honest with myself about my limitations and asked for help earlier things may have turned out differently, but I can only deal with the situation as it is now.I still believe that a place like Pillowfort deserves to exist, and that belief has kept me going through many of the difficult times I’ve had running this site over the last decade. I also couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing those of you who do love this place, and it still pains me so much to do it. Tragically, the need for a place like Pillowfort has only grown more dire in the nearly ten years since we launched, but it’s also become more difficult to sustain a place like Pillowfort since it started. It’s broken my heart to see the internet I used to love become toxic, corporatized, and unrecognizable. I hope someone else will come along and create a better platform for us all, because we badly need it, and I’m sorry I couldn’t make Pillowfort last. But I hope you will remember Pillowfort fondly for what it was while it lasted.Sincerely,Julia[/READ-MORE]

Modern Day Typographer — "Papyrus is a virus and restraint is the inoculum"

youtube.comModern Day Typographer - Elle CordovaModern Day Typographer Lyrics by Elle Cordova, set to the tune of "Modern Major General" by Gilbert & Sullivan -- with a tip of the hat to the great Tom Lehrer! Music arranged by Toni Lindgren Audio mixed and mastered by AJ Minnette Special thanks to Monotype for supplying all these fonts Lyrics: There’s Avant Guard and Avenir and Aksendiz (Grotesk) and Arial Benton, Bebas, Bembo, Bookman, Bauhaus, Bell Centennial For glossy magazine displays, Bodoni is quite masterful But for literature I do prefer its predecessor Baskerville There’s Cooper Black, and Copperplate, Calibri, and there’s Cambria Comfortable old Caslon, Cochin, Compacta, and Clarendon For code I’m told you’d be well served by Courier or Consolas If there's a place for Comic Sans it's surely not in legal documents There’s DIN and DAX, Didot and Droid, and Dynamo and Droid Sans Pro Electra, Eurostile, and Eras, Fira, Friar, Folio Futura is a favorite and I’m always gonna root for her But then for legibility you can’t go wrong with Frutiger Franklin Gothic for the headlines, and Georgia for the body text Gotham for the poster, and Gill Sans for corporate ad signage Don’t forget Goudy Old Style and legendary Garamond Still popular with publishers both British and American Hoefler (Text), Intro, Impact, Janson, Knockout, Leida, Lucida Minion, Middle Earth, and Nimbus, Noyland, Oval, Optima Palatino, Pluto, and there’s Provan and new Proxima (Nova) Papyrus is a virus and restraint is the inoculum There’s Quarto, Rotis, Rockwell, and there’s Raleigh and then Romeo Sabon and Swiss, and Syntax, also Souvenir and San Marco Times New Roman, Univers, Verdana, Windings, Zapfino And those are just a minuscule fraction of the fonts I know Elle: Who even are you? I am the very model of a modern day typographer I know the type tonalities from elegant to jocular I am a master tracker and my kerning is harmonical I know the sacred swatches and can name the hues Pantonical I can tell didone serif from the old style or transitional I tap the finest foundries with subscription Monotypical I know letterform anatomy and all the font apocrypha I am the very model of modern day typographer Chorus of fonts: She is the very model of modern day typographer She is the very model of a modern day typographer She is the very model of a modern typographic connoisseur Now there’s one last font I know you’re probably eagerly expecting and To let it go unmentioned here would really be heretical The font that launched a thousand knock off copycats and replicas It’s Neue Hass Grotesk or better known as The . . . Helvetica Elle: I think I’ll just use the default. #typography #fonts #gilbertandsullivan

Grand Theft Automated License Plate Reader — Morry Kolman made a GTA V mod that adds 235 Flock cameras around Los Santos, earn cash by destroying them

youtube.comGTALPR Trailer - 235 Flock Cameras in GTA VGrand Theft Automated License Plate Reader is a GTA V mod that installs 235 Flock Automated License Plate Reader cameras (ALPRs) around the in-game map of Los Santos. This number is 1/10th the amount of Flock ALPRS currently tracked by DeFlock.org in LA County, which GTA V is heavily based on. As players drive through the map, they are subjected to seemingly inescapable surveillance, with pictures taken of them every time they enter a new camera's field of view. This makes the game much harder, as not only does police surveillance become nearly impossible to evade, but representing Flock's own history of inaccurate reporting, every time a player passes through a camera's field of view, the mod creates a 1 in 20 chance that the ALPR will trigger a police chase without any cause. A few other notable features: 1. When destroyed, players can pick up the remnants of the camera for $600, the estimated market value of all components in a Flock camera based on a list created in a hardware teardown by Eyes Off CR. 2. While Los Santos is a shrunken and fictionalized version of LA, there are many points across the two where their maps and camera placements are near one-to-one. Muscle Beach & Muscle Sands is a good example (see below). 3. Players can choose to have the cameras take actual pictures of them while they play and then render and save them later. The pictures that the mod's Flock cameras take mimic Flock's own watermarking/overlays. Pictures can also be taken any time a player destroys a camera, letting them compile an album. 4. The 3D model used for the camera in game is custom-built to mimic Flock's own cameras. 5. There is built-in speedrun functionality, with a stats screen tracking number of cameras destroyed, and fastest time to destroy 10, 50, or all cameras.