schmudde

I have updated my /now page. Here’s what I’m working on right now: schmud.de/pages/now.html

"Enabling Researchers is a Moral Imperative" - Yorba continues to take a different path. www.yorba.co/internet-les... #clojure

The environment has changed dramatically for subscription-based cultural services & medium-sized SaaS businesses. You won't be surprised to learn that the marketplace is consolidating towards the major players. But the numbers are even worse than you think. www.yorba.co/internet-les...

The Yorba team was built to build. I argue that's exactly why our products kept failing to communicate "less." With help from Don Norman and Melvin Conway, it became clear that the fix isn't a better feature, it's restraint. www.yorba.co/internet-les...

A new ghost bike. All hit hard, this one just a little harder. merveilles.town/@schmudde/11...

New site: Interdependencies. Long reads from the junctions between infrastructure, capital and law — nothing interesting ever breaks in one discipline at a time. Five essays up. i15s.org (yes, that's a numeronym; I'm still a nerd)

"This is why a new cassette player can be larger and mechanically worse than a #Walkman sold more than 30 years ago. [...] During the Walkman’s peak, shaving another millimeter from the body could justify a new motor and new tooling." ~ obsoletesony.substack.com/p/why-sony-c...

"Users create assets for corporate benefit - they are literally doing the work that drives corporate value - but they are not employees. In this way, social media platforms keep people in an unnegotiated space between employee, customer, and citizen." ~ schmud.de/posts/2020-0...

#Canadian #Painting of the Day: #AlexColville, Kiss with Honda, 1989 h/t Adam Tooze’s Chartbook open.substack.com/pub/adamtooz...

On the idea of authenticity in our mediated world. schmud.de/posts/2026-0...

Absolutely gonzo situation. We are in a terrible equilibrium with no guardrails. "An OpenAI Model Escaped Its Sandbox and Hacked Hugging Face" marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

Does Not Rhyme -through -cough -though -rough -bough Does Rhyme -pony -bologna

Well we went into deep waters in this discussion. Gareth King and I talk about software, identity, and contemporary art on "Ruined By The Internet?" - www.ruinedbytheinternet.com/digital-huma...

NEW BLOG FOR YOU Google's energy consumption numbers in their new climate report are mind-blowing. 2 years ago they flipped from linear to exponential growth, and their climate impact is blowing out, too. A WILD testament to the obscene bloat and waste of GenAI: ketanjoshi.co/2026/07/01/g...

Spotted in NYC

"Users create assets for corporate benefit - literally doing the work that drives corporate value - but they are not employees. Social media platforms keep people in an unnegotiated space between employee, customer, and citizen." schmud.de/posts/2020-0... #privacy

With all this talk about GitHub recently, the most complete perspective comes from @mitsuhiko.at on what we have gained and lost over the years. lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/4/28/be...

We repeat: we are not the same. Register at xcoax.org#registration and join us in Turin! #notTuring #xcoax2026

Companies have institutional memory; those that have faced regulatory scrutiny or bankruptcy behave differently than those which have not. The long tail of no longer enforcing the law (SEC, EPA, etc) is that younger megacorps will not have tasted limits to their power. www.wired.com/story/xai-ad...

"openai.com" was once the personal homepage of a guy named glenn (2001), and "tiktok.com" was the quaint shared homepage of a couple as their relationship progressed from dating to married with a baby (2000). THREAD!!!

If you're curious about what I'm working on right #now, I've updated my Now page with the latest: schmud.de/pages/now.html Book nerds, map nerds, music nerds are all invited.

Before music was on her radar, Sonic Youth co-founder Kim Gordon was a visual artist. Now you can see a survey of her work dating back to 2007 at “Count Your Chickens.” The show “incorporates humor, intelligence, vulnerability — and, of course, music,” says writer Natalie Haddad.

On aerial phenomenon from the year 1561. With a surprise twist at the end: flashbak.com/celestial-ph...

Happy birthday @inkandswitch.com! Ink & Switch is now 10 years old, and is celebrating with a piece of interactive digital art on www.inkandswitch.com – have a play with it :)

Tried to book trains to Torino from London. No problem booking, but impossible to pay nearly £1000 for two people round trip. We are flying and we really don't want to. The subsidies should be paid to rail not air travel.

This post on the use of lines in generative art (blog.veitheller.de/Generative_a...) reminded me of Charles Csuri's "Sine Curve Man" (1967). Recently saw it printed in Turin on plexiglass. It's spectacular.

An outsider's view of the ongoing fight in #Chicago: "Se le città sotto assedio sono diventate la scenografia perfetta della resistenza all’autoritarismo, nella provincia del Midwest ... la vita continua sui binari sonnolenti di una quotidianità indiscussa." www.doppiozero.com/iii-luisanne...

'Deep within the Karateka cartridge on the #Atari 7800, the programmer mixed in one human-readable message with the computer code: "Mommy and Me Are One." It never appears on screen. It is only visible to those looking at the code contained within.' ~ schmud.de/posts/2020-1...

Not sure if this clarifies or confuses me on HTTP codes. Therefore, probably the best instruction manual for this technology. httpstatusdogs.com

"The result is an emerging aspirational class who have everything except the thing they actually want: the ability to [...] bomb a foreign country. Turchin identifies these people as counter-elites —[who] have hit the limits of capital's affordances." ~ newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/the-g...

The 2026 issue of the HTML Review, “an annual journal of literature made to exist on the web”. [thehtml.review]

For last few years, an Italian production studio has been conducting hundreds of interviews with video game people. vgpplay.com/home You need to sign up to view it - and it's in Italian - but it's well worth it. I'll highlight some of their amazing gets on occasion.

Workers organizing is the strongest check against systemic tech abuse that impacts everyone. A related story from Keyna: www.svd.se/a/K8nrV4/met... May Day everyday! #labor

Yorba and yours truly in Forbes today. Working hard to try to make this darn internet thing a little better. www.forbes.com/sites/garydr...

As usual my Taste of 2025 arrives fashionably late. And as usual, it's full of interesting cultural and personal moments. Check it out here: schmud.de/books/taste-... #contemporaryart #industrial #buddhism

Yorba's State of Clutter 2025 is here! Exercising #privacy rights should be simple. Instead: 💌 Email unsubscribe? 84% success, takes seconds ♾️ Deleting your account? 48% success rate, might take weeks There's more juicy info on the gap between our rights in theory and practice: stateofclutter.org

Protip - @bunny.net advertises pay-for-use but quietly enforces a mandatory minimum fee for active zones that even violate their own “round up to $1” policy. Many corps, small and large - like Hetzner, AWS, and GCP - actually bill based on real usage, even when it’s under $1.

“Federalism is sacred… unless it’s violated in the most violent means. Then the federal government can do whatever it wants.”

After 30 years, First Monday is ceasing publication. Its existence is a tribute to openness and the web we want. firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

After 30 years, First Monday is ceasing publication. Its existence is a tribute to openness and the web we want. firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...