Skip to Content

Kevin Kortum

225 posts

Posts by Kevin Kortum

šŸ€ A handful of ex-ABA players hope for a last-second financial long shot from the NBA

Athletic

If these 23 old heads are having to gig for Uber and Amway at 80-years old, whatever pension they are getting from the NBA isn’t enough. Just give these guys $1k-a-month to help meet their basic needs, at least. The NBA just signed the biggest tv deal ever and can’t scrounge around the couch cushions for $2.7 million (which would cover $1k/month for 23 players for ten years)??? Hell, put $2mil in a savings account and between interest and guys passing away, it should be more than covered.

šŸŒ World Monitor - Real-Time Global Intelligence Dashboard

World Monitor & WIRED

ā€œThe system ingests 100-plus data streams simultaneously,ā€ Habib notes. The result is a constantly updating map of global tensions: conflict zones with escalation scores, military aircraft broadcasting positions through ADS-B transponders, ship movements tracked through AIS signals, nuclear installations, submarine cables, internet outages and satellite fire detections.

This is incredibly cool.

The visual is stunning, and the whole idea of just having a dashboard of all major events happening across the globe is insane.

From conflicts to extreme weather and other major events; having a complete view pulling from so many sources and doing multiple source checks is awesome. Clicking into one provides points of context, headlines, key developments, facts and figures, and more.

To top it off, it was built by a music‑streaming CEO in India, which is wild to me.

šŸ”Š How We Built Monologue for iOS

lucas.love

I just learned that friend of the Variable, Lucas, developer extraordinaire, developed the Monologue app for iOS, taking the initial concept and prototype that was vibe-coded based on the Mac app and turning it into an absolutely killer iPhone app. Still not a huge fan of the extremely AI bullish Every, but knowing that a developer like Lucas, who puts time, care, and attention into everything he does, is working on it now means this app should progress and only improve for the better. I’ve now switched to it from SuperWhisper for all my transcription needs.

šŸ“± The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling

Politico

The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is ā€œground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group.

Honestly, I really love this idea. It’s so easy to just fall into doom scrolling and go down a never-ending rabbit hole. So forcing some kind of decision-making to continue is a good idea, given some of the addiction we’ve seen arise from these types of apps.

I’ve also been thinking defaulting to an algorithmic timeline should be nixed. If a user wants to make that decision and switch over, let ’em. But even on Instagram, where you have the following feed, you have to switch to it every single time—that should be the default. Then you can switch to a discover feed or the algorithm or whatever if you so choose.

Or maybe I’m just a weak human being with no self-control. But both could be true.

šŸ¤– OpenAI amending deal with Pentagon, CEO Altman says

Reuters

Surprisingly absolutely no one with half a brain, OpenAI actually couldn’t fulfill the same deal as Anthropic while holding to the same high standards and principles.

And it’s all of these shortsighted nincompoops that are going to absolutely destroy the economy—and not just the stock market, but the everyday lives of normal folks—along with the idiotic policies, actions, and war (crimes) of the current administration.

I’m rambling and getting a bit off topic now, but we are at the point (and, to be clear, have been for sometime) in a post-capitalistic society where outputs don’t actually matter. Instead what businesses make is irrelevant as all they care about are numbers on a spreadsheet to appease Wall Street. The best ideas or products don’t prevail, just those who have inherited or ā€œcreatedā€ wealth, sitting on billions of dollars with companies that make billions in profit, but somehow can’t afford to pay full-time employees enough to keep them off of welfare.

It’s almost funny when the right wing made up this fake idea of a ā€œwelfare queenā€ who just wanted to sit at home and collect a check, when, in reality, they created a system where those same people have to work two jobs to survive—working harder than any CEO pencil pusher—while still sitting below the poverty line because of the actual welfare class that was created due out of Regan and trickle down economics.

🐻 Bears Pro Bowl center Drew Dalman retiring at age 27

Athletic

Shit.

I mean good for him—hopefully there’s no medical thing pushing him to this—but go enjoy your money while you’re young and have a restful life with your family. That should be the goal for most folks anyway, but boy is this going to be a huge hit to the Bears for next season…