Improv Dungeon
Time to replace your improv partner! You’ve played AI Dungeon, now play Improv Dungeon. Write out your scenario and the AI will play along!
melkat.link
Is the Oculus Rift sexist?
qz.com •
danah boyd's piece from 2014 has always been facinating to me, but relating it to my own experiences around transitioning and the ways that I have percevied depth just feels like a lot of gender validation for me :)
Heroku removes SMS as an MFA Verification Method
We all know SMS two factor auth is very dangerous due to it’s insecure nature, but we don’t often here companies actually doing anything about it. Most won’t remove SMS two factor auth because they want your phone number so they can better target you with ads. Hopefully we start to see more people follow this trend, as everyone else is just playing security theatre.
A Hacker Got All My Texts for $16
vice.com •
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
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)
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
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 🏳️⚧️
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
I don’t know Polish but this is pretty fascinating about how the language handles pronouns.
React Aria
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
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?
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
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
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
Yuki Miku daiyo does a dance on a roof!
LuxerOne Package Delivery Notifications with Pushcuts and IFTTT Pro
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
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
A delightful and emotional visual novel. I haven’t finished it yet, but the opening sure was A LOT.
No Masters
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
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 •
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
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
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
I am oddly excited about the possibilities of using React Hooks in CLI tools.
Ooblets
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.
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
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
I have now published publicly for the first time the code that powers this website.
DeepL Translate
Translations with DeepL feels more accurate and more natural. I am looking forward to a browser extension.
🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ pitch tracker for femme voices
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
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
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’.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
~80% of Steam games earn under $5K in first two weeks
It also appears no one makes a living on Steam, a platform built upon a race to the bottom of sales.
No one makes a living on Patreon
Every once and a while Patreon doesn something bad and then I can't help but remember this article from before The Outline laid everyone off recently.
Visual Studio Live Share
A new plugin from Microsoft for their code editor allows people to collaborate in real time on projects. This looks so fun.
Adam Ruins Everything - Why People Think Video Games Are Just for Boys
Adam Conover explains the history on Nintendo’s push to push women out of gaming. This is from the episode Adam Ruins Summer Fun of Adam Ruins Everything.
No girls allowed
Tracey Lien’s 2013 piece for Polygon reminds us that Nintendo invented the myth that games are for boys.
Amazonians United Wins PTO for all Amazon Workers
> "Amazon did not “give” us PTO — we took our PTO from Amazon’s greedy hands. And we have to keep fighting so that Amazon gives us our PTO on top of the sick time we already have."
Nintendo explains philosophy behind Animal Crossing’s big changes, such as gender expression and terraforming
Maybe Nintendo is finally growing up? They should fix Zelda and Mario now.
App Developers at Glitch Vote To Form Union
Congratulations to the employees at Glitch! I hope to see this come to a company near me!
Rage Against The M FEAT.Hatsune Miku
"Don't touch my phone / No touch my heart” A fun Miku music video from BIGHEAD, apapico, caseif, and Incept
corellium/projectsandcastle
This is pretty wild! Android apps on iOS? This is something to keep an eye on for sure.
The Curious Worldview of Michael Schur's Television
Grace Robertson digs in to why the politics and self-congratulatory nature of Michael Shur's television shows trip him up and make for awkward television.