andrewconl.in is tinkering

Hello again! It’s been a little while, but plenty of interesting stuff has built up for me to share.

• First up, a couple of posts about the dangers and pitfalls of ccTLDs, and the problems they can cause:
  • .af
  • .io

• A(nother) great blog post from Cory Doctorow, this time about the cult of Apple. I have no idea how he pumps out such high quality so quickly. I can barely stick to one post a week!

• Molly White has shared the in-depth process for switching away from Substack, after everything that has happened with that site. Very useful if you are in a similar situation, but worth a skim anyways just to see what good technical writing looks like. And as always, I am pro-self-hosting whenever possible.

• In a similar vein, I really enjoyed this article from Android Authority about creating an offline smart home using HomeAssistant. This has always been something that I’ve wanted to do, maybe I’ll get around to it this year! [he lied].

• This is a really interesting story from ArsTechnica about how the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymity was busted.

• There is always something that I have seen during the week that really amazes me when I make these posts, which is rather inspiring. This week that honour goes to raytracing in BBC Basic. I mean, need I say more?

• If you liked the above, then check out the other amazing BBC Basic creations over at bbcmicrobot.com. This is fully rendered from a BBC Micro emulator in the browser!

• 6174.

• Yet another ridiculous StackExchange deep dive, this time into the pictures on child’s alphabet ball (it is better than it sounds).

• Last but not least, a titan of the internet, David Mills sadly passed away recently. If you want some information on just how important his contributions to the early internet were, this New Yorker article (archive link) is a great read.

A.