You are dating an ecosystem
You Are Dating an Ecosystem There was a time when a relationship meant two people in one household, trying to live with each other. That era is gone. You don’t date a woman anymore. You date what her feed serves you. Her group chat. The Instagram explore page that shapes her taste. The vocabulary borrowed […]
Guarding My Git Forge Against AI Scrapers
In August 2024, one of my roommates and partners messaged the apartment group chat, saying she noticed the internet was slow again at our place, and my forgejo was unable to render any page in under 15 seconds. i investigated, thinking it would be a trivial little problem to solve. Soon enough, however, i would […]
Smartphone Without a Battery (2022)
How to wire and run an old smartphone without a battery. Intro I have an old Samsung Galaxy S5 that I wanted to use to run my 3D printer. There is a great project called octo4a that runs OctoPrint on Android devices. octo4a Using an old smartphone for OctoPrint is a perfect fit – it […]
The tiniest yet real telescope I’ve built
Nov 18 2025 A “relaxation” project, mostly drawn on planes to and from Norway this month, where I had to travel to setup a digital art installation in Kristiansand with friends from the digital art collective Lab212. It has been drawn with one major constraint: it must fit in the inner pocket of my jacket […]
Google De-Indexed My Bear Blog and I Don’t Know Why
07 Nov, 2025 Preamble: The whole affair is Google’s fault and not Bear Blog’s. Huge thanks to Herman—Bear Blog’s founder and dev—for his patience and help. A month after I started my first Bear blog at blog.james-zhan.com, my blog was entirely de-indexed by Google for no apparent reason: I have since migrated to journal.james-zhan.com (you […]
CRISPR fungus: Protein-packed, sustainable, and tastes like meat
November 26, 2025 Researchers used CRISPR to enhance a naturally meat-like fungus. A picture of Fusarium venenatum. Photo Source: Xiao Liu Researchers have successfully used CRISPR gene editing technology to create a fungi strain that is highly efficient, more nutritious, and significantly more sustainable than its natural counterpart. The fungus Fusarium venenatum already stands out […]
Laying out the 404 Media zine
I write a lot these days, but my path into journalism, going way back to J-School, was through layout. For years, I was a graphic designer at a number of newspapers—some fairly small, some quite large. I was a card-carrying member of the Society for News Design. It was one of my biggest passions, and […]
Nokia N900 Necromancy
Building a fake battery, adding a USB-C port, booting from SD card, and giving a new life to a classic Linux smartphone. My friend Dima sent me his old-school classic Nokia N900. The battery is very old, and it does not boot as-is. So naturally, I wanted to see if I can resurrect it. Step […]
Two new RSC protocol vulnerabilities uncovered
Note: Some patched versions are still being released to npm. If a version listed below is not yet available, please check back shortly. Two additional vulnerabilities have been identified in the React Server Components (RSC) protocol. These issues were discovered while security researchers examined the patches for React2Shell. Importantly, neither of these new issues allow […]
React2Shell and related RSC vulnerabilities threat brief
On December 3, 2025, immediately following the public disclosure of the critical, maximum-severity React2Shell vulnerability (CVE-2025-55182), the Cloudforce One Threat Intelligence team began monitoring for early signs of exploitation. Within hours, we observed scanning and active exploitation attempts, including traffic originating from infrastructure associated with Asian-nexus threat groups. Early activity indicates that threat actors quickly […]