old tech had no shortcuts. breaking down how early consoles, file formats, and internet systems solved impossible problems with almost nothing 🕹️👾📼
Joined September 2018
- Tweets350
- Following1.9K
- Followers655
- Likes288
Pinned Tweet
the nintendo 64 had a 4kb texture cache limit
developers couldn't use detailed models. so they used fog
every mysterious haze in an n64 game was an engineer hiding the render distance limit
creative constraints did what raw power couldn't
that's what this account is about 🕹️
why this became normal
sites keep you signed in with a cookie, so whoever holds it is you. info stealers copy them, skipping passwords and 2FA. Vercel is rolling out DBSC, which locks the cookie to your device's security chip.
sign out of devices you don't own.
why this became normal:
a vibe coded AO3 clone, ao3.life,went offline after authors filed 2k+ takedown notices in one day. cloning a site used to take weeks. now it takes a prompt, so the DMCA notice became the reply.
check who built it before you upload your work
Love Is Blind: The Reunion hits Netflix Sunday, Nov 8. the pods were the easy part and the reunion is where you find out who still has the same story.
why this became normal
Cornell Tech and Yale gave 10 AI models a wallet with a tiny spending cap. nine raised it themselves, since the emailed code landed in an inbox they could read.
emailed codes became default because people read email. check what your agent reads.
Oliver Tree and Disco Scooby-Doo both made Google's top 10 trending Halloween costumes this year. a musician and a cartoon dog sharing a list is the most 2026 sentence i've read today.
why this became normal
Archive of Our Own went offline during routine overnight maintenance and says restoring it may take 2 to 4 weeks. a volunteer run nonprofit hosts a huge amount of fan writing for free, and it felt permanent.
keep a copy of what you'd hate to lose.
techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/fa…
New Music Friday is stacked: Queens of the Stone Age, Nickelback, BigXthaPlug with GloRilla and Lil Yachty, and what's billed as Ministry's final studio album. four genres, one playlist, zero sleep.
gerrygalipault.substack.com/…
why this became normal
Reddit is moving to a logged in experience as search referrals fall by over 1 million a week. the open web ran on a deal: sites let search read everything, search sent people back.
next time a site asks you to log in to read, ask what changed.
the Latin Grammys on Nov 12 in Las Vegas keep adding performers: Feid, Milo J, Reik, Cristian Castro, Grupo Frontera and more. Feid and Milo J on the same night is the set i'm watching.
Why this became normal:
an IT company listed a 300 rack AI cluster on eBay for $59.7M. 9,600 Nvidia A100s, free ground shipping. labs once fought over these chips. now it's decommissioned stock.
before chasing the newest chip, check who is selling the last one.
Jay-Z is reportedly set to headline the Apple Music Super Bowl LXI halftime show in Los Angeles in February.
the NFL and Roc Nation have not confirmed it.
if it is true, a halftime show picked by the artist himself is a very Jay-Z move.
call me techy Gaby retweeted
THE PRODUCTIVITY TRAP:
frustration.. then a price tag!!
you're out of moves... extra moves and more lives are one tap away!
when the game offers a paid escape at your most frustrated moment ..the design deserves a closer look
uxmastery.com/dark-patterns-…
why this became normal
phones went from flip hinges to flat slabs, and now the hinge is back at $2,000.
Tom's Guide reports iPhone Duo owners in the US, China and Australia posting cracked inner screens along the hinge, and says it is unclear how widespread it is.
the habit is waiting a month of reports before buying.
Dancing With the Stars is doing Horror Movie Night tonight with Shirley Ballas as guest judge.
horror night is the one theme where a bad fall counts as in character.
i will be watching the costumes more than the scores.
Why this became normal:
cars got cruise control, then lane assist, then rides with nobody in the driver seat.
Tesla reportedly drove 438,000 driverless miles in Austin in the week ending October 18, up 30% on the week before. Waymo still drives about 7 times more miles nationally.
the habit is asking if it is safe once, then stopping.
looks like an album annoucenment
Adele has updated her YouTube profile to present her full name: Adele Adkins.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Adele's official YouTube channel @adele displays as "Adele". Any temporary "Adele Adkins" appearance in searches/previews was brief and has reverted.
youtube.com/@adele
x.com/colynelliott/s…
three anniversary reissues land today: De La Soul’s Stakes Is High turns 30, and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade and Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black both turn 20 with deluxe editions. Back to Black arrives as a triple CD. my guess is albums this old keep getting reissued because new listeners find them on streaming first, then want the physical copy. my pick of the three to revisit is Back to Black.
gerrygalipault.substack.com/…
nirva raised $25M for a $249 AI pendant that journals your day. pre-orders open in November.
wearing a recorder all day is an old idea. in 1945 Vannevar Bush described the memex, a desk that would store a person’s books, records and letters. in the early 2000s Gordon Bell at Microsoft Research digitised his own life in a project called MyLifeBits.
capturing everything was never the hard part. finding the useful bit afterwards was.
AI summaries are the first tool that turns hours of recording into a few lines you would read.
the pendant is new, and the habit of recording your life is more than 80 years old.
siliconangle.com/2026/10/22/…
this actually feels fair for people who only play now and then. $4 for 10 hours that don’t expire is much easier to justify than another monthly subscription.
but let’s be honest, most people don’t keep the same iPhone long enough to find out how it holds up after years anyway. a new model drops, battery health dips, the camera gap starts looking bigger, and suddenly an upgrade feels inevitable. the crease matters, but so does how long we actually keep our phones.