melkat.link - a link blog by Melanie Kat

A Hacker Got All My Texts for $16

vice.com • Tue, Mar 16, 2021

This has long been true, but for some reason it still needs to be said: two-factor authentication over text message makes you less secure than not having it.

Gaming's endless struggle with abusive men

linkedin.com • Thu, Mar 11, 2021

With the recent sexual assault allegations of former people’s champ GrandPooBear, I’ve been thinking a lot about his sudden heel turn, and I think this article hits him on the nose with a newspaper.

Medium Workers Union (MWU)

mediumworkersunion.org • Thu, Feb 11, 2021

Congratulations to the people at Medium! I love seeing unions spread around San Francisco tech companies. Hopefully soon with my employer :3

Kalidoface - Become a Virtual Character

kalidoface.com • Mon, Jan 25, 2021

Virtual avatars for streaming and videos have become popular over the last few years. Now you can do it from your browser on your phone?! So cool.

🏳️‍⚧️ Melanie's birthday fundraiser for Trans Lifeline 🏳️‍⚧️

facebook.com • Fri, Jan 22, 2021

For my birthday I’m running a fundraiser for Trans Lifeline. At this time we’ve raised over $2,000 on Facebook and if we include people who directly donated at TransLifeline.org we’ve raised over $3,900! Support the fundraiser while you can because the fundraiser ends January 30th. (You can donate to Trans Lifeline directly anytime!)

An overview of Polish nonbinary pronouns

zaimki.pl • Tue, Dec 8, 2020

I don’t know Polish but this is pretty fascinating about how the language handles pronouns.

React Aria

react-spectrum.adobe.com • Mon, Nov 16, 2020

I don’t know what’s more wild: a React hook that makes your custom UI elements accessible or that this came from Adobe.

The Business of Selling White Women the Righteousness of Their Own Anger

jezebel.com • Tue, Nov 10, 2020

This article is a beautiful takedown of the fake feminism people sell. Though, this article fails to mention anything at all about trans issues, who are also deeply effected by mobilized angry white women trying to destroy feminism.

Is Madeline Canonically Trans?

maddythorson.medium.com • Fri, Nov 6, 2020

Watching Maddy find themself has been a joy, and reading about how Celeste developed with them is great.

A Spooky Adventure at Next.js Conf

netlify.com • Wed, Oct 28, 2020

Cassidy had an excellent talk today about building an adventure game with NextJS, which is definitely in my interests because I’ve been building my own visual novel in NextJS over the last few months.

🌺funky little cat🌺 on Twitter

mobile.twitter.com • Thu, Oct 15, 2020

Thanks to @cokeypuffss for spreading this employee benefit from Discord. This money would not last long even if you didn’t use it for surgery but it’s a huge help for trans people since insurance and medical care can be horrifyingly bad.

【雪ミク】「アイ / DECO*27 feat.初音ミク」【踊ってみた

youtube.com • Sun, Oct 11, 2020

Yuki Miku daiyo does a dance on a roof!

LuxerOne Package Delivery Notifications with Pushcuts and IFTTT Pro

gist.github.com • Thu, Sep 10, 2020

I’m still learning IFTTT Pro but I made a script for detecting when I have a new delivery in a LuxerOne package locker and it uses the Pushcut app to send a notification with the QR code to unlock the locker holding my package.

Introducing IFTTT Pro

ifttt.com • Thu, Sep 10, 2020

This has been a long time coming, and I’m so happy this is here. Even better, you make more advance functions using JavaScript!

If Found

dreamfeel.org • Tue, Sep 8, 2020

A delightful and emotional visual novel. I haven’t finished it yet, but the opening sure was A LOT.

No Masters

gist.github.com • Tue, Sep 8, 2020

Because Git and GitHub are too cowardly to *already* be setting the default branch from a white supremacy reference to something simple like “main,” here are instructions to fix your code repository.

Fall Guys Secrets - A Super Serious Lore Interview

thegamer.com • Tue, Sep 8, 2020

The lore behind Fall Guys is as adorable as the little beans. That said, I can't wait for those eggs to hatch 👀

Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like `jwt.io` and Online JSON Validators

jvt.me • Tue, Sep 8, 2020

I've seen people at every place I've worked just... share things like this with any webpage with a text input box and it's never set right with me. It's such an easy way to social engineer your way in to free personal identifiable information.

MY HOT PICS on Google Play

play.google.com • Thu, Sep 3, 2020

I spent the last week playing with React Native and was able to ship an Android app pretty fast. I'm working on iOS but it's still in the Testflight stage for now. This is my first step and I hope to continue iterating!

Women Make

womenmake.com • Mon, Aug 17, 2020

I stumbled upon this neat community of women makers the other day. Best of all they are trans/nonbinary inclusive.

ink - 🌈 React for interactive command-line apps

github.com • Tue, Aug 11, 2020

I am oddly excited about the possibilities of using React Hooks in CLI tools.

Ooblets

ooblets.com • Thu, Aug 6, 2020

I picked this game up in early access a few weeks ago and I’ve put a lot of time in to it. It’s a non-violent Pokémon meets Animal Crossing game with some of my favorite dialog in a game since Night in the Woods. While the game is unfinished and there are a few bugs, it’s still incredibly fun and I can’t wait to see where this game goes.

Boop: the Scriptable Scratchpad.

boop.okat.best • Sun, Jul 26, 2020

This is pretty cool, I will definitely be writing some custom scripts for it. During my time as an engineer I’ve always thought the best way to steal company secrets is to make a JSON formatter website or something. I love their headline, "Stop pasting company secrets into random websites."

Tech Sector Job Interviews Assess Anxiety, Not Software Skills

news.ncsu.edu • Sat, Jul 25, 2020

I can't believe it took a study for this to be apparent. I can't control much of the flow of how job interviews work as an engineer, but I can try my best to make the other person comfortable and relaxed. That is always my goal during interviews. Anything that might make them nervous or anxious I specifically avoid.

This blog is now open source

github.com • Wed, Jun 17, 2020

I have now published publicly for the first time the code that powers this website.

DeepL Translate

deepl.com • Tue, Jun 16, 2020

Translations with DeepL feels more accurate and more natural. I am looking forward to a browser extension.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ pitch tracker for femme voices

github.com • Mon, Jun 15, 2020

Hey I just wanted to share that I open sourced a weekend experiment I made a few weekends ago to track pitch frequencies. It’s not the best, but I learned so much in building it within a few constraints: using React Hooks and must work on mobile Safari as well as desktop browsers.

Video Games Have To Reckon With How They Depict The Police

kotaku.com • Sun, Jun 14, 2020

Don’t trust anyone who wants to depict pigs as anything other than violent and bigoted. Not Spider-man. Not Andy Griffith. No one gets to ignore this.

‘Neopets’: Inside Look at Early 2000s Internet Girl Culture

variety.com • Sun, Jun 7, 2020

As a girl who learned web development on Neopets, this is very much true and close to my heart.

Disability is not good for Facebook says: ‘Facebook’.

abilityaccess.blog • Fri, May 29, 2020

The audio clip on the article is HORRIFYING. Seems TikTok is not alone in their actions.

TikTok Admits It Suppressed Videos by Disabled, Queer, and Fat Creators

slate.com • Fri, May 29, 2020

While we're criticizing TikTok for hiding "ugly" and "poor" people from their platform, they have also admitted to discrimination of other protected groups.

TikTok Told Moderators: Suppress Posts by the “Ugly” and Poor

theintercept.com • Fri, May 29, 2020

Earlier today it was falsely going around that TikTok was banning Black Lives Matter from their platform. Let's take a look at which groups they are actually preventing from using their platform.

Quick Assist in Windows 10

community.windows.com • Wed, May 13, 2020

Sometimes you need to help your family out from miles away. I had no idea this feature was in Windows, for free. Oh, and did I mention it just works?

LumaFusion

luma-touch.com • Wed, May 13, 2020

I’ve been looking at this app for a while, but it really feels like the closest thing to Final Cut Pro on the iPad (or iPhone?) I was able to take a hour long video and chop it up almost instantly.

My name is only real enough to work at Facebook, not to use on the site

medium.com • Thu, Apr 9, 2020

This post is nearly five years old and yet still as relevant as ever, as Facebook still does not like that queer people use their website. This doesn't stop fake accounts or harassment, obviously. The alt-right trolls still attack people daily and use the site to plan attacks on innocent people.

Looking At Guns In Virtual Reality

youtube.com • Thu, Apr 9, 2020

I think about this video from Polygon a lot. I can’t say I will be able to do justice the gun epidemic in the United States here. Guns are horrifying. I’ve played in VR. Games with guns and people attacking me in VR make me too uncomfortable to ever want to do again. I remember trying Robo Recall for the first time, and I was panicking. When I was 19 I had a gun shot at my father and I. I am very much against guns of all kind. Even in VR. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t like VR.