Iterative

This retrospective on the making of the original Fallout is worth watching even just for the part about the hoop jumping required to get Windows 95 certification

The Seneca: First Edition mechanical keyboard by Norbauer & Co starts at USD$3,600 and there is a 6-9 month waitlist to get one. It’s the first midlife crisis purchase that I could seriously get behind.

The Seneca is the product of one industrial designer’s obsession to build the perfect keyboard. One that looks, sounds, and feels exactly how Ryan Norbauer wants a keyboard to be.

In this Friday Video Adam Savage visits Norbauer and they dive deep into space bar stabilisers. And by deep, I mean way further into the rabbit hole that you’d think possible. It’s a wonderful interview.

And I really want one of those keyboards.

Self-described loner, rebel, and music chronicler Trash Theory’s YouTube channel is a treasure trove of deep dives into bands and genres from the 80s and 90s.

This week’s one is about Weezer’s Blue Album.

[On] the band’s first album [Rivers] Cuomo wove tales of unravelling mental health, absent fathers and romances never attempted, told through the lens of personal minutiae and pop cultural obsession.

Bonus link from the comments: a Spotify playlist of every song mentioned in the video.

Simon Willison’s blog continues to be a wealth of interesting posts. Recently:

• The Door Problem
• Links and materials for Living off Microsoft Copilot
• Matt Webb’s Braggoscope Prompts

If you’re remotely interested in how modern programming is developing, including serious consideration of the bad bits, then Simon is a must-read.

Charles Stross: On mistaking a transient state for a permanent one

Astronomers were the first to notice, as Starlink streaks made a mess for ground based telescopes to peer through. But the next issue is metal polution, as re-entering satellites melt and mostly vapourize in the upper atmosphere. 45,000 Starlink 2 satellites would weigh 90,000 tonnes, and with a 10 year life (never mind the 3-5 year current lifespan) they’d be dumping nearly ten thousand tonnes of metal into the upper stratosphere every year, which is probably a Bad Thing and is rightly generating alarm among environmentalists and climate researchers.

However.

Dumping 9000 tons of metal into the upper atmosphere is a linear extrapolation from today’s situation, and does not reflect what’s ultimately going to happen. This is a transient phase—the gold rush, the railroad race—and not the steady state we’re going to end up in once the period of rapid expansion comes to an end.

Current favourite podcast: I’ve been enjoying Dr Katie Mack & John Green’s podcast about the history of the universe. They are three episodes in and have finally got to a timescale beyond the first few seconds. It’t fantastic. Here’s the trailer: