A simple concept from Kansas City is sweeping the country. Planting fruit trees on vacant lots and making the produce free to anyone has cascading positive effects for the community. Now, more than a million people live within walking distance of a Giving Grove orchard.
There's a website you enjoy visiting, but it contains some elements that for whatever reason you don't like. Maybe they're distracting or you just find them ugly. What do you do? You could put up with it, but you can also take matters in your own hands and remove the annoying stuff yourself. I don't know that browsers can do this out of the gate, but there are extensions which can. Here are two I'm familiar with, and one of them you might already have installed anyway.
uBlock Origin
With uBlock Origin, which I can highly recommend anyway unless you love seeing ads, it's actually really easy. I'm doing this in Firefox, I assume it works the same in other browsers which support uBlock Origin.
Let's assume you'd want to remove the Links gif at the top of my weekly linkdumps. In uBlock Origin it's really simple, you go to the site which has the element on it you want to remove and click the extension icon in the browser toolbar.
Then you select the pipette symbol which allows you to pick the element you want to remove, and click the element on the site. A window pops up that tells you what will be removed and you can click preview to see if the effect is the one you want, and if it is, click Create and a filter will be created which removes this element from the website.
That's it, done. The element is gone.
To get rid of the filter, open uBlock Origin again, select the gears symbol and then click the My filters tab. There you can see the filter rule which was just created and you can modify and remove it.
Stylus
Another extension which is more powerful but also more complicated to use is Stylus. This extension allows you to modify any CSS element of a website, giving you total control over the appearance of a site, but also requiring some knowledge about CSS of course.
In order to use Stylus, first you need to identify the CSS class or ID of the element you want to remove. You can either look it up in the site's source code or use the inspect tool of your browser. In the case of the gif on my site, it has the ID linkdumps_gif:
<img class="image" id="linkdumps_gif" alt="an animated 90s style GIF that has the word Links in green font on black background" src="/images/gifs/links.gif">
Knowing this, you can open the Stylus extension from the browser toolbar and click the plus symbol next to the URL, or the URL itself.
This takes you to the extension's page where you can add new CSS rules for the selected website.
Here, some CSS knowledge is needed, but in order to hide an element, it's usually enough to select the element and make it invisible with display:none. In the case of my site, this code snippet will do the trick:
#linkdumps_gif {
display: none;
}
This will hide the element in question. Save, and you're done.
So that's it, two ways to hide unwanted objects on a website. I'm sure there are many more, but these are the ones I know. Hope this is helpful.
BBS-era "door" games are preserved by the site Break Into Chat, along with their history. Now the site's actually traced the origins of several ANSI art screens in the 1980s and "how different people later transformed the original images," starting from one of the most popular bulletin board systems in St. Louis, Missouri.
Slashdot reader Kirkman14 writes:
"Fire Escape" was curator of the authoritative list of bulletin board systems in St. Louis's area code and sysop of the area's mostâŠ
Somehow Iâd never heard of this before: NPR produced and aired1 radio dramatizations of the films in the original Star Wars trilogy. The first program was particularly popular, garnering NPR hundreds of thousands of new listeners. The original versions are available in full on The Internet Archive:
All three programs contain elements of John Williamsâ original soundtrack. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels reprised their movie roles for the first two radio programs2 and some other bold-faced names made appearances throughout: Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, John Lithgow as Yoda (??), Ed Begley Jr. as Boba Fett (???), David Alan Grier as a nameless X-wing fighter pilot, and Nia Vardalos.
The radio programs were based on the original film scripts with some added scenes; from Open Culture:
With science-fiction novelist Brian Daley brought on to add or restore scenes to the script of the original dialogue-light feature film, the story stretches out to thirteen episodes for a total runtime of six hours. The series thus stands as an early example of the expansion of the Star Wars universe that, in all kinds of media, has continued apace ever since.
Daley adapted the script partly using material from earlier drafts of Lucasâs scripts, and restored several scenes cut from the final edit of the film, as well as adding original new scenes created specially for the audio version. The narrative of the first two episodes takes place entirely before the opening scene of the 1977 film, and expands the background to events leading up to the capture of the Tantive IV spacecraft above the planet Tatooine. Episode 1, largely based on cut scenes fromâŠ
Although no ghouls, goblins, or trick-or-treaters come knocking at the International Space Stationâs front hatch, crew members aboard the orbiting laboratory still like to get in the Halloween spirit. Whether individually or as an entire crew, they dress up in sometimes spooky, sometimes scary, but always creative costumes, often designed from materials available aboard the space station. Â
Take a look at how the station crews have celebrated in years past.
ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano finally gets his wish to fly like Superman aboard the International Space Station during Expedition 37.
A trio of Expedition 73 astronauts dressed for Halloween in 2025.
Expedition 70 astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, left, Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), NASA astronaut Loral OâHara, and ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen celebrate Halloween 2023.
In 2022, Expedition 68 astronauts Koichi Wakata of JAXA, left, and NASA astronauts Francisco âFrankâ Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada dressed as popular video game and cartoon characters, using stowage containers in their Halloween costumes and holding improvised trick-or-treat bags.
Expedition 66 crewmembers NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, left, Thomas Pesquet of ESA, Akihiko Hoshide of JAXA, and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei show off their Halloween cards.
Members of Expedition 61, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, top left, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, and NASA astronauts Andrew âDrewâ Morgan, and Jessica Meir, show off their Halloween spirit in 2019.
Flight Engineer Sergei Prokopyev of Roscosmos, dressed as Elvis Presley, Commander Alexander Gerst of ESA as Darth Vader, and Flight Engineer Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA as a mad scientist, pose for a Halloween photo inside the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module pressurized module aboard the space station during Expedition 57.
NASA
In 2017, Expedition 53 crew members show off their Halloween costumes.
Expedition 21 NASA astronaut Nicole Stott shows off her Halloween costume.
For Halloween 2009, the Expedition 21 crew shows off its costumes.
The space station remains a vital scientific platform, providing the foundation needed to survive and thrive as humanity ventures into the unexplored territories of our universe.Â
Explore stories, images, and research from more than 25 years of continuous human presence aboard the space station. Â
They Stopped 57 Shootings. Everyone Was Just Fired. âA program called Peace Orlando hired neighborhood residents closest to the violenceâŠwho could see a shooting coming and talk people down.â It workedâŠand then the program was shut down.
If we care to cast an eye over the history of ubiquitous personal computing as we know it today, we might immediately point at the original IBM PC. After all, for most of us our machines share backward compatibility in some form through multiple generations back to that original box from 1981.
But if we look at the things we use today and take for granted, from laser printers to graphics cards to the routers which power most of the Internet, theyâre not from IBM at all. At the recent Vintage Computing Festival Berlin, [Michael Engel] delivered a talk naming a surprising progenitor for much of that technology, none other than Sun Microsystems.
It all starts with [Andy Bechtolsheim], famously Sunâs co-founder, when at the end of the 1970s he was a postgraduate at Stanford University. Working on the Stanford University Network â SUN â project he designed a computer to be used as a workstation on the network. The processor of choice then was Motorolaâs 68000, but it lacked the MMU that would be required to run UNIX. His design had an MMU implemented externally to the 68000, with a bank of SRAM serving as the page table. This designâŠ
Have you seen this? If you haven't, you should. I think everyone needs to. Wealth inequality on a scale this extreme is almost impossible to explain. You have to experience it to understand. Go ahead. Try it out. Where is the top of this graph? Good question. Keep scrolling
Sprout is planning to sell replacement motherboards for certain iPods. âSprout only replaces the motherboard and uses your iPodâs original parts. No soldering required, and fully reversible.â Bluetooth, WiFi, 500K songs, USB-C, even streaming.
Railpass simulates a train ride in your browser window using real video footage. Choose from trains from around the world or add some weather to the mix. Sound on for the best ride.
For more than a year, marshalled by animator Andy Bailey, more than 1000 artists collaborated to create a hand-drawn, shot-for-shot, animated, flipbook version of Peter Jacksonâs The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The entire three hours. 120,000 individually drawn pages. A couple of months ago, they released the first 11 minutes:
Itâs pretty amazing. It doesnât include the audio or music from the movie, but I bet you could mute the sound on this and simultaneously play the actual movie for the sound. Hereâs an earlier sneak peek at some of the scenes:
The first clip I claimed was a pretty iconic scene from the beginning of the movie. I chose to render it in pencil as itâs night time and I felt black and white would be more dramatic. As I worked through the frames, I did worry that the subtle variances in shading would make the clip look disjointed, but I think it adds a cool movement to the scene. There is that rough, quirky imperfection to hand drawing. You can see the final result with comparison below (digitized and compiled by Andy).
The internet is a vast and confusing place no matter your age. Trying to help youth engage with it safely and privately is a complicated topic that touches on many different skillsets and ideas. But just because itâs complicated doesnât mean itâs impossible. Weâve launched our Online Privacy for Parents and Youth Surveillance Self-Defense guide in hopes to provide a framework for finding solutions that work for you.Â
EFF rolls out this crucial resource as state and local governments consider ill-advised laws that cut young people off from essential information and experiences. This particularly harms vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online communities they can't access offline. Such laws also entail age gating, which compromises the privacy of all internet users and stifles young usersâ ability to learn, grow, and express themselves.
Young people have unique needs and those needs change over time. Trying to protect from everything all the time is an exhausting process, but the security community has long had a solution for this: security planning (also called threat modeling). The idea is to provide a series of questions designed to help you focus on whatâs truly important. When it comes to online privacy, this is as applicable for youth and parents as it is for anyone else.Â
We used a security plan as our foundation for this guide because deciding what is and isnât important is the first step we should all take when assessing our privacy risks. But this isnât a place for quick fixes, and every young person has their unique needs and considerations. There is no single tool or technology fix that can substitute for spending time learning, and then teaching a young person, how the internet works, how to use it, what sorts of harms exist, and how to navigate thoseâŠ
Iâd never heard of this before: in 1990, the BBC aired a program created by and starring Douglas Adams called Hyperland. It begins with a frustrated Adams throwing his TV out (too linear, too non-interactive) and Tom Baker (from Doctor Who) popping up as an intelligent interactive agent that promises to âdo your every slightest bidding, to fetch and carry for you, to work tirelessly and selflessly on your behalf, always ready, always willing, no job too small or too menialâ.
The Free Software Foundation "has never supported Raspberry Pi," writes their deputy directory Sean O'Brien, "as it depends on nonfree software for the boot process, leaving an important part of the computer outside the user's control."
But they're now decrying "an even more intrusive restriction on user freedom" â the binary-blob bootloader changes that limit your ability to upgrade RAM:
The restriction is not new: the relevant checks were introduced in the device firmware around 2024.âŠ
The news of the past couple of weeks has seen the ESP32 turned into an software-defined radio (SDR) thanks to a hidden baseband mode, an exciting development by anyoneâs standards. It seems unexpected SDRs are like busses in that you wait for ages and two turn up at once, because hot on the heels of the ESP32 story is [Samson1te], revealing the SDR functionality hidden within the LR2021 LoRa chip. This one is especially interesting because as well as a 2.4 GHz radio, the chip sports a radio that works from 150 to 960 MHz.
Weâre indebted to them for posting this in a comment on our receive converter post, as a complimentary project to the ESP32 one. It gives a 16-bit SDR with receive and transmit, however as with the ESP32 itâs early days and we hope great things lie ahead. There are comprehensive docs available, should you wish to enter the fray. Currently the main demo is P25 digital voice.
The âbiofriendlyâ nature of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) filament often gets touted as one of its main advantages over alternatives like PETG, but even a modicum of research ought to inform a person that the biodegrading feature of PLA is only true for pure PLA without additives and at temperatures at or above its glass transition temperature (Tg). Thus the results of a year-long experiment by [I built a thing] shouldnât be too surprising.
After burying said PLA in the garden like any self-respecting person does who tries to dispose of some evidence, the PLA suffered through a European winter and very hot, dry summer, before being dug up again recently for inspection and testing. Although not the first time that someone has tested this, itâs a good reminder considering just how much PLA filament is used each year.
In total three sample sets were used, one being the control, the other two buried in soil and compost respectively. A visual inspection showed no major difference, and a tensile strength test also showed no statistically significant change among all three sample sets. The experiment could have been concluded here, but instead calorimetry was used in a laboratory setting to see whether exposure to microbes as commonly found in soil does anything significant.
This isothermal microcalorimetry test was performed at the University of Basel, effectively to answer the question whether thereâs anything in the PLA samples that can feed said microbes. As it turns out, the answer is a resounding ânoâ, with microbial activity within the presence of PLA dropping off even quicker presumably due to there being less volume available for nutrients.
When [I built a thing] contacted a large number of commercial biodegrading facilities in Switzerland, Germany and the USA, many would happily take PLA, but none of them would accepted 3D-printed PLA parts, which says a lot. The primary reason for this appears to be that even under industrial composting conditions it simply takes too long for these facilities to consider these to be economical to compost.
With PLA primarily degrading via hydrolysis, it needs to be exposed to the right conditions for this process to not take an eternity. You can of course use something like PHA instead, which doesnât require this hydrolysis step to be biodegradable. Overall PLA is quite a crummy material, with it also suffering from embrittlement due to crystallization that will happily turn a spool of PLA into lots of sad fragments. This makes PETG into a very common and very attractive alternative to PLA.
