We had a solar eclipse here in Europe last week. I didn't see it this time, but I've seen I think two partial eclipses before and they were always fascinating to witness. We had a total solar eclipse that was visible in South Germany where I live back in 1999. I remember watching this from the roof of my school with a couple of friends and teachers. We saw the eclipse begin and the moon move in front of the sun, and everybody was hyped up and excited - but about half an hour before totality clouds started moving in, and by the time it got dark the sky was completely overcast and we couldn't see anything. It was incredibly disappointing. Still fascinating to see it get dark and then light again in the middle of the day, but man… a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity ruined by clouds. Actually, maybe twice in a lifetime, because the next total eclipse will be visible here in 2081, when I will be 99 years old. Make sure you get subscribed so you don't miss my review of it! Articles Google wins bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines emails, chats, documents Why would anyone buy a company's emails and teams chats for $10 Million? To train their AI models of course. This shows just how desperate these corporations are for new training data, now that they scanned and shredded all the books they could get their hands on. It also means absolutely nothing is sacred… Neo-Etiquette Basics: The New Rules of Being Human Joan Westenberg suggests 21 rules for living together in a modern society. They are all incredibly basic and shouldn't even have to be spelled out (like taking out your in-ears when talking to someone), but a depressingly large number of people fail at behaving in a socially acceptable way these days. (via Jack Baty) Who’s Tracking You? Use This New Service to Find Out – Krebs on Security Interesting read, but also a depressing one. Recently someone on Mastodon commented on a post of mine that modern tech feels actively hostile to them. And they're spot on. Software/Services The Brutalist Report I forgot who showed this to me - someone on Mastodon. Anyway, it's a html-only overview of the latest headlines from a number of news outlets. It's a bit overwhelming, but interesting to scroll through. GitHub - idolpx/meatloaf: The internet is a massive floppy drive for your C64 with Meatloaf! · GitHub With this esp32-based device you can load C64 disk and tape images straight from an online source. That's pretty amazing. (via dirk dierickx) Hardware Projects Running Zork On The Steam Controller | Hackaday Old and boring: Playing games with a controller. New hotness: Running games on the controller itself! Retrocomputing Contest | Hackaday.io Hackaday is running a retrocomputing contest. What's the acronym for that? HRC? HARC? I think ours (OCC) is better… I'm not planning to participate, but it might be worth keeping an eye on the submissions page because there's a lot of cool stuff in there already, and more is going to come. Videos Total Solar Eclipse from 92,000 Feet - YouTube Lots of interesting science-y information about solar eclipses. And people losing their minds when it happens :) Around the Small Web The Weekly Sniff 002 AY started his own weekly link post series, which I obviously approve of. Authenticating digital works without ‘detectors’ – Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden A great post about what AI means for artists these days. "Aidan Walker observes that viewers’ attitude has flipped towards skepticism, 'beginning from a place of believing posts are fake until proven real, rather than the other way around.'" That kind of got to me, because I notice this in myself - I see a new website and immediately wonder if it was slop generated. And I don't like that… (via Annie)