Friday Links 24-11

Some cheerful urbanism news this week. It is especially great to see how Paris is progressing.

For a fun nerdy read, have a look at the tic-tac-toe implemented in printf, or the floppy history.

Engineering 

How to measure your cloud carbon footprint [Podcast] - nice open-source tool.

Backdoor in XZ Utils That Almost Happened - Schneier weighs in too.

The Turing Police say "X Wins"  - tic-tac-toe implemented in a single printf. 

Notes on how to use LLMs in your product. - as always, a good summary from Will.

Environment

Taylor Swift's Two Private Jets in 2023: Where Did They Go? [YouTube] - two? 

Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists - this really isn't news any more. 

Human rights violated by Swiss inaction on climate, ECHR rules in landmark case - go KlimaSeniorinnen!

TIL: Most Teabags contain plastics, and release micro plastics in large amounts when brewed - I am now 2% plastic.

Urbanism

End of the Line? Saudi Arabia ‘forced to scale back’ plans for desert megacity - nobody really believed this would happen? Do cities created by rich people ever work?

How do the dolmuş and minibus systems work in Istanbul? | With Geert Kloppenburg  [YouTube] - one way of having flexible public transport. 

Spain to end 'golden visas' granting residency to investors who spend €500k on housing - it was not widely used, but it is good that they stop it. 

French Revolution: Cyclists Now Outnumber Motorists In Paris - this was a pretty quick change overall. 

Campaigners hail “historic” EU cycling declaration - it remains to be seen if this changes anything.

Beyond Bike Lanes: What Really Impressed Us About Cycling in the Netherlands [YouTube] - the Netherlands are still showing the way.

Random Floppies

The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk - amazingly, I never had a computer with proper 5 1/4 floppy disks, only with 3 and later 3 1/2 disks.

583. Are We Living Through the Most Revolutionary Period in History? [Podcast] - mostly depressing. 

GNU Stow 2.4.0 released - I switched to using this for my dotfiles last year, and I just now learn that I know the maintainer. 

How to Build a Small Solar Power System - this goes straight to the to-do list.

Friday Links Disclaimer

Inclusion of links does not imply that I agree with the content of linked articles or podcasts. I am just interested in all kinds of perspectives. If you follow the link posts over time, you might notice common themes, though.

More about the links in a separate post: About Friday Links.