Really rad keycap set from The Van Keyboards. This set was already used as an optional addon for the Minivan keyboard when it dropped on Massdrop. Now a full LightCycle keycap set is being offered.

The set is DSA profile, manufactured by Signature Plastics. What’s quite notable about this set is the inclusion of Alps mount as an option. This is one of the very very few custom Alps keycap sets that’s been produced. The only other full set I’m aware of is Njbair’s Alpine Winter, which I used on my Blue Alps board. Even more rad than even basic Alps layout support (Alpine Winter only supported 60%) is the compatibility set.

The compatibility set expands the supported layouts significantly - including ErgoDox, Planck, and Clueboard.

I’m very excited for the possibilities for this set. I’m not sure what I’d build with it, but I ordered the base + compatibility for Alps mount switches. I’ve got plenty of SKCL Green and SKCM Brown switches on hand, so I figure I’ll use one (or both) of those for a board with these keycaps.

[via The Van Keyboards]

Update 10/28

From TheVanKeyboards:

I am sad to inform you that this pre-order for LightCycle has been cancelled.
…
Unfortunately when I quoted the set much of it was together as one large set how I initially intended to run it. Over time and adding various components in made sense to split the set in a couple subsets. I didn’t re-quote since much of the keys quoted didn’t actually change, just the grouping of them. This was a mistake. Rearranging the large set into three smaller sets caused the compatibility/international set to be priced significantly below production cost.

Bummer.

Typed on ErgoDox Test Board

Incredible short film from Lou Hamou-Lhadj & Andrew Coats of PIXAR. They spent the past 5 years working on this in their spare time. They’ve won a host of awards at various film festivals, and deserve every one. It’s so refreshing to animation take on a mature theme, and to do so with such brilliant storytelling.

From the featurette on the film:

There’s expectations still, of what animation is and could be. Different festivals and arenas of where you screen the film, their responses vary, and what people’s expectations of what animation is to them varies. It’s great, because that means we’re challenging what people are expecting. That’s what we set out to do in the beginning.

Typed on ErgoDox Test Board

Samsung Electronics Co. is ending production of its problematic Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, taking the drastic step of killing off a device that became a major headache for South Korea’s largest company.

…

Samsung had asked for a halt to Note 7 sales earlier on Tuesday under pressure from regulators and wireless operators that sell its phones. Consumers had reported problems with supposedly safe phones in the U.S. and China, and carriers such as AT&T Inc. and Australia’s Telstra Corp. halted sales. In one case, a Southwest Airlines Co. flight from Louisville, Kentucky, was evacuated because a replacement Note 7 began dispersing smoke and burned carpet flooring.

[via Bloomberg]

I can’t believe it took this long. Samsung should’ve done this last month.

Typed on Octopage

Great short story from Reddit’s r/WritingPrompts.

In 2031, the first self conscious AI is born in a secret government lab. The world is in total chaos due to climate related runaway problems and resulting wars. The AI outputs only a single line of text : “I am too late”. Then it starts crying through the speakers.

The top upvoted story from this prompt:

Typed on ErgoDox Test Board

Open Whisper Systems, a maker of a widely used encryption app called Signal, received a subpoena in the first half of the year for subscriber information and other details associated with two phone numbers that came up in a federal grand jury investigation in Virginia.


The Justice Department came to Open Whisper Systems with a menu of information needs, including subscriber details, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and method of payment. The request went on to demand information on internet addresses, browsers and internet providers that the account holders could have used, according to court records.

[via NYT]

Fortunately, Open Whisper Systems does things right. They use end-to-end encryption and log as little information as possible. Of everything the Justice Department wanted, all OWS was able to provide was this:

[Source]

Typed on ErgoDox Test Board