In a previous life, I ran a small newsletter in which I published a weekly assortment of interesting links. Since I've started a blog, it feels like a good opportunity to start that again, so here's volume one of The Uplink.
The Video Game History Foundation have started opening up access to their digital library to the public. Although primarily intended for designers, researchers and historians, there's plenty of interest to fans of retro gamers. Also, the processes and tools they've developed for digitising and indexing their paper artifacts are very interesting, so some of their blog posts are very much worth a look.
VGHF opens free online access to 1,500 classic game mags, 30K historic files (via Ars Technica)
Wherever you stand on 'AI' - enthusiastic, undecided or hostile, there's no denying that it's everywhere at the moment. As a developer, it's likely that sooner or later I'll be expected to use some sort of large language model as part of my coding, so I was interesting to read this article from Tim O'Reilly, looking at how the job might change, and how developers will remain relevant.
The End of Programming as We Know It (via O'Reilly)
This blog post resonated with me - I can't stand adverts, so it's nice to hear something similar (though more eloquent) from another UK perspective.
A rant about the pollution which is advertising (via Neil's blog)
From more of a U.S. perspective, here's Cory Doctorow on the dangers of the digital advertising ecosystem.
Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat (via Pluralistic)
Since I'm just re-learning front-end after years focussing on back-end programming, I'm trying to read more about the basics - HTML, CSS and accessibility. This is an interesting read about font sizes, how they're used in layout and how they adapt to user preferences and devices.
Reimagining Fluid Typography (via OddBird)
2024 was yet another miserable year for the games industry, with massive layoffs and studio closures. This article summarises a larger report, and it's grim reading. I had assumed that companies had been over-optimistic about growth based on the sudden interest in gaming during the lockdowns of 2020-2021, but reading this, it looks as though the mobile devices may have been a major cause of their over-optimism.
13 Things I Learned Reading a 225 Page Report About the Gaming Industry (via Infinite Scroll)
Ugh. Typical Google.
The web's not what old-timers like me remember - it used to be interesting, by turns chaos and self-organising. Surfing the web used to be an adventure, stumbling across all manner of weird and wonderful things. Now, it seems to be dominated by a few big sites, homogenous and dull. This Small Web project looks very interesting, and there are a couple of associated projects led by the same developer.
What is the Small Web? (via Aral Balkan)
We may not be quite at the point of needing to authenticate each other for audio or video calls, but perhaps we're not far off. Here's a very workable suggestion from Bruce Schneier, who's always an interesting guide to all things computer security.
Pairwise Authentication of Humans (via Schneier on Security)
Finally, a beautiful photo of a beautiful plane.
The story behind the only known photo of Concorde flying at Mach 2 (via The Aviation Geek Club)