VPN?

Well you can, they found the secret trick: use more width and horizontal scrolling! 🤓

So theguardian.com has a new design and, controversially, I kind of like it.

Nice work folks!

Somewhat unwittingly volunteered for a hot sauce contest at work.

It got rather spicy towards the end…
🌶️🥵

🥁Introducing Gemini 2.5, our most intelligent model with impressive capabilities in advanced reasoning and coding.

Now integrating thinking capabilities, 2.5 Pro Experimental is our most performant Gemini model yet. It’s #1 on the LM Arena leaderboard. 🥇

Adolescence: devastatingly beautiful and heartbreaking picture of normal lives shattered by the tragic ripples of toxic undercurrents in society. A masterclass in understated screenwriting, naturalistic acting and bold cinematography.

Jack White, prowling the Troxy stage tonight with virtuosic rage like a bull commanding a bullring, deploying his relentless energy to enlist the audience as the 5th member of his formidable band.

www.instagram.com/p/DGrOue_CAA...

He nails it.

For context, I am building a localfirst app with Tinybase, Yjs, Liveblocks, and the first version has some level of encryption but it's very ad-hoc and I'm exploring making it a composable module that is reusable for any table and more transparent to the app.

@jamespearce.bsky.social @schickling.dev Thanks for the great Localfirst.fm podcast on Tinybase from last year! One thing that wasn't discussed was secure persistence (local, remote). Is there any prior art for adding an encryption layer ahead of persistence/synchronisation in Tinybase or LiveStore?

Pas vu. Ça vaut la peine ?

In the special disappointments from 2024: House of Dragons (laborious exercise in patience and ability to distinguish characters practically all sharing the same name) and Three Body Problem (regrettably faithful to the caricatural novel).

Other special mentions: catching up on series from previous years, I particularly loved The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (2023), Pluto (2023) and Severance (2022).

Very much uncomfortably excited for the new season of Severance coming out now!

While we‘re at it, 2024 was a particularly ripe year for quality TV series. The top 10 among them:

10. True Detective: Night Country
9. The Rings of Power
8. Emily in Paris
7. Mr & Mrs Smith
6. The Day Of The Jackal
5. One Day
4. The Penguin
3. The Bear
2. Shogun
1. Ripley

1. Arooj Aftab: Night Reign

Wondrous soundscapes, as if woven in the velvet of the night and Arooj Aftab’s warm yet quietly powerful voice.

2. The Smile: Wall of Eyes

The purest distillation of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s alt-rock genius mixed with the sinuous rhythms of Tom Skinner.

3. Mdou Moctar: Funeral For Justice

In which the furious solos of the Tuareg guitarist transcend the desert rock of his fantastic first album.

4. The Smile: Cutouts

Like a funkier & free Radiohead, The Smile deliver not one but two incredible albums this year, with Cutouts the more playful younger sibling of the two.

5. Zoot Woman: Maxidrama

Simple, catchy tunes from the British electropop band, which manage to sound like classic Zoot Woman yet fresh at the same time.

6. Shugo Tokumaru: Song Symbiosis

Another kaleidoscope of Japanese folk & joyful pop by Shugo Tokumaru, as always layering countless instruments on ever-surprising rhythms. More experimental and tender than ever, the relentless energy this time is interleaved with slow, emotional pieces.

7. Jack White: No Name

Bursting with intense power, this surprise bluesy opus somehow sounds both familiar and new, archetypal and inventive; unearthing more uncut rock gems from Jack White’s seemingly bottomless imagination.

8. Floating Points: Cascade

Cerebral dance music, halfway between club track and serpentine auditory voyage to the outer reaches of the galaxy.

9. Jamie XX: In Waves

Irresistible collage of dancefloor bangers, often beating their 90’s dance/house inspiration.

10. David Gilmour: Luck and Strange

Late entry into the canon of a legend, never pretending to reach the heights of Pink Floyd but humbly contributing a handful of earnest tunes to the collection.

Séb’s Top 2024 Albums Playlist · Bès Yevec · 98 items

You can listen as a Spotify playlist at open.spotify.com/playlist/5vF... or read on in 🧵 form:

Top 10 music albums from 2024 It’s been a while since the last “top albums” post. Or indeed the last blog post altogether. Better late than never. 2024 didn’t feel like the most fruitful year for music, but here is …

Better late than never, I belatedly posted my recap of my top 10 favourite albums from 2024 on my blog:

inso.cc/2025/01/26/t...

There seems to be broad consensus across both sides in America that the political system is fundamentally broken. The only disagreement is about whether Trump is the proof or the solution.

💔

Mulholland Drive

I've loved and been touched by virtually every single film of his, and we're so lucky they will grace cinema forever.

May the world be a little more Lynchian. ❤️