Bee Bus Stops ↦

Buzz stops: bus shelter roofs turned into gardens for bees and butterflies | Bees | The Guardian

I signed up for a daily email when Seth Godin collaborated and launched the Carbon Almanac. This piece came in, and I loved the simplicity of this project and how it could have a much more significant impact.

Dutch cities have managed to stabilize urban bee populations in recent years, a study found last year, following decades of declines, and bee hotels and bee stops were among their solutions. Utrecht, which was Europe’s first city to get bee bus stops, now has more than 300. It has created a “no roofs unused” policy, in which every roof will now be greened with plants and mosses or have solar panels.

via: The Guardian

1/5/2023 Eco

Tesla Rolls Out Steam Game Support for Newest Vehicle Models–>

The newest models of Tesla’s electric vehicles are now Steam-powered. And by that, of course, we mean the vehicles’ central consoles can now access and play thousands of titles from Valve’s popular Steam gaming platform.

The new addition, part of Tesla’s 2022.44.25.1 “holiday update,” is currently only available on the high-end “new” Model S and X vehicles Tesla released in 2022, each of which includes 16GB of onboard RAM (though CEO and founder Elon Musk promised in a tweet that a “retrofit” will be available for older models). The release notes for the update suggest that those vehicles should be able to run any game that has been Verified by Valve for play on the company’s Steam Deck handheld.

I don’t own a Tesla. I am not sure what Tesla owners are asking¹ for, but I bet Steam Deck games were not on anyone’s bingo card.

Via Arstechnica

12/15/2022 Business

Mastodon

I was sure I joined Mastodon several years ago but could not find my account. You can find me here on Mastodon

12/10/2022

Automated Packaging →

There is something about this machine that I find fascinating. Is it the effiecency, the savings on packaging and mailing I am not sure.

The machine can do up to 500 packages an hour, and Sparck says customers save on shipping and reduce their cardboard consumption by 20% by using the smallest possible box. (They also claim their taped-on-two-sides boxes are easier for the recipient to open and more likely to be flattened and recycled, though they offer no evidence to back that up.)

Via Core77

10/20/2022 Business

Consumer Ad Platforms

I used to love Instagram to show off my photos and see my friends’ work online. Flickr still exists and was terrific but has largely been in sunset mode as the community of people has all moved away.

For the past couple of weeks, scrolling through my Instagram feed, I noticed just how many ads there were.

The Reels portion feels like every third reel is an advertisement. The feed section has always had ads, but initially, they did not seem intrusive. Now they are constant. It has gotten to the point that some days I feel I see more ads than the images of the people I follow.

In both cases, the ads are now more aggressive¹ and repetitive and irrelevant.

Since they are not going away, I figured I could fine-tune them to reduce interest and limit the off-the-wall ones. I went through every interest listed and selected Show Less. I have no idea where they connect my interest in this service or thing. More than 85% of them I had zero interest in or actively hated.

Select an Ad: Hit Hide Ad –> Irrelevant, or I see it too often or Report Ad: –> select Spam or Scam.

Wait for the algorithm to catch up. Wait for it. Bingo, more ads that I will never click on but will destroy the app’s experience.

Is the increase in poor ads the result of ATT from Apple? Is every advertiser desperate for “engagement”? Probably some of both.

Starting to wonder if Instagram should pivot and remove all user photos and display ads to people; it feels like we are close now.

10/11/2022 Business