Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost.
Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and make them available for the widest number of reading devices. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
Standard Ebooks aren’t just a beautiful addition to your digital library—they’re a high quality standard to build your own ebooks on.
Author: Scott Boehmer
-
Standard Ebooks
-
Why Billionaires Obey in Advance
The Trump administration is being actively taught right now that it can expect the full cooperation of the leaders of industry. Why are they offering themselves without being asked? Because that’s what they’re trained for.
The myth of the moral billionaire has dogged me my entire career. For years I’ve been reassured by people inside and outside the power structure of Silicon Valley that the moral judgement of people at the top of major companies was so reliable that it required no real oversight.
Jacob WardWhy Billionaires Obey in Advance (The Rip Current)
-
NC GOP Sore Losers
On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.
Sam LevineUnfortunately, Western North Carolina had to watch as every Republican in the general assembly shamelessly put their desire to strip political power away from recently elected Democrats ahead of the aid and relief their communities need. Using the guise of Hurricane Helene relief is a new low, even for general assembly Republicans.
Anderson Clayton, Chair of the North Carolina Democratic PartyNorth Carolina GOP lawmakers override veto to strip power from Democratic officials (The Guardian)
-
Writing Down Every UUID
I’ve been struggling to remember all of the UUIDs. There are a lot of them. So this week I wrote them all down. You can see my list at everyuuid.com.
Nolen RoyaltyWriting down (and searching through) every UUID (eieio.games)
-
The Purpose of a System is What it Does
When trying to understand systems, one really eye-opening and fundamental insight is to realize that the machine is never broken. What I mean by this is, when observing the outcomes of a particular system or institution, it’s very useful to start from the assumption that the outputs or impacts of that system are precisely what it was designed to do — whether we find those results to be good, bad or mixed.
Anil DashThe Purpose of a System is What it Does (Anil Dash)
-
The Case for “Single Stair” Reform
Building only one staircase into a building means that builders can use more space for living area. It not only lowers construction costs (building more stairs adds costs), but it also increases the amount of available housing space, bringing down total cost-per-square-foot. Builders can also fit single-stair buildings into smaller or more oddly-shaped parcels of land. In urban areas where the housing crisis is often worst, that describes a significant portion of real estate available for housing construction.
The bottom line: single-stair means more places to live, and they’re more affordable.
Carolina Forward Research StaffThe Case for “Single Star” Reform (Carolina Forward)
-
Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time Zones
What if event organizers could share a link that would do the work for you? If someone clicked on mytime.at/5pm/EST, they would see their local version of that time. It sounded simple enough.
I began coding.
I knew trying to manage time is a fool’s errand, but that’s what datetime libraries are for. I would merely build an extra time zone conversion layer on top.
Surely that couldn’t be complicated
…Right?
I soon discovered just how wrong I was. One after another, I kept learning the falsehood of yet another “fact” that had seemed obviously true. Eventually my original vision became literally impossible to pull off without making serious compromises.
Zain RizviFalsehoods programmers believe about time zones (Zain Rizvi)
-
Tricked by A.I.
A good video by a content creator who accidentally included some AI generated footage in one of their recent videos. It takes a look at how it ended up there and how the internet is getting filled with generated slop that you need to be increasingly vigilant for if you want to avoid it.
I do try to be thorough. So how didn’t I spot the molten nonsense coins, so obvious to the viewer? Well, brains are funny. Eyes too. What we see depends a great deal on what we expect to see.
Pillar of GarbageI Was Tricked by A.I. (And It’s Big Tech’s Fault) (Pillar of Garbage)
-
Stop Using Generative AI as a Search Engine
I know people are sick of talking about glue on pizza, but I find the large-scale degradation of our information environment that has already taken place shocking. (Just search Amazon if you want to see what I mean.) This happens in small ways, like Google’s AI wrongly saying that male foxes mate for life, and big ones, like spreading false information around a major news event. What good is an answer machine that nobody can trust?
Elizabeth LopattoStop using generative AI as a search engine (The Verge)
Scott Boehmer 