iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 9h

Pet peeve of mine: when tech people who should know better name a thing an "operating system" when it is, in fact, not an operating system. "This is our new operating system for [insert thing here]." -> turns out to actually be an electron app running on iOS or whatever.

1110

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

October baseball really is the best sport ever invented.

010

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

On one hand, magic isn't real, but on the other hand, we now routinely use special light to carve runes onto rocks and then course lightning through them to make them into thinking talking rocks. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA7W...

youtube.com

Apple M6 vs M5 Chip Deep-Dive

YouTube video by High Yield

060

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

More fun old CineFex finds: this amazing ad in the June 1997 issue from Blue Sky Studios looking for interested applicants. I think this must have been in the middle of production on their "Bunny" demo short, well before the first Ice Age went into production.

051

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

So I'm working on a small sideproject to convert all of the old CineFex iOS app digital issues into nice, high-res, print-layout-accurate, OCR'd/searchable PDF files. More on that later. Along the way I found this ad from the April 1981 issue. What a wild time that was!

051

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Apple TV has a new show where Awkwafina has to learn to cook as she endeavors to reopen her grandfather's Chinese restaurant. Probably not for everyone, but as a Chinese-American who loves to cook... this might be the most targeted at me show ever? www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCAZ...

youtube.com

Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook — Official Trailer | Apple TV

YouTube video by Apple TV

000

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

B&H recently posted a new listing for Kodak Ektachrome E100 in 120 format coming soon. I had read rumors that Kodak was spinning up production on another batch of Ektachrome, and it's looking like those rumors may be true. 👀 www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/19...

bhphotovideo.com

Kodak Professional Ektachrome E100 Color Transparency Film (120 Roll Film, 5-Pack, Retro Packaging)

Buy Kodak Professional Ektachrome E100 Color Transparency Film (120 Roll Film, 5-Pack, Retro Packaging) featuring Daylight-Balance Color Transparency Film, ISO 100/21° in E-6 Process, Extremely Fine G...

020

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In this video, Ben Krasnow builds a doohickey that reacts sodium and water without them exploding by drawing electricity out of the reaction, which... 1. Wat 2. This is my favorite kind of science video. I learned many an interesting thing! 3. Excitement guaranteed! www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0qq...

youtube.com

Drawing electricity from this sodium-water reactor prevents it from exploding (in theory)

YouTube video by Applied Science

020

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I still play Minecraft today, and I'm super looking forward to in a few years when my kid is old enough for me to play Minecraft with her. Easily the best bang-for-the-buck $6 or whatever it was that I ever spent.

010

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Sometime early in 2010 I found a TIGSource thread from a guy making some block game. I bought access to the "infdev" preview and subsequently went into like a fugue state for a week playing it. I don't remember anything from that week except blocks. Anyhow that was Minecraft.

120

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I own Factorio in my Steam library but have studiously and diligently avoided ever installing it or even downloading it and I am determined to never play it, because I know myself well enough to know that the moment I try it, I will disappear for like 3 months into that game.

470

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Phillies stave off elimination for one more day, on an Alec Bohm (of all people!) 10th inning opposite field home run. BRB, have to go fill out my Alec Bohm apology form...

000

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I think that if I were operating an in-demand restaurant, I would start prioritizing reservations not made using agents and put agent reservations at the bottom of the queue always, even below walk-ins. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if restaurants really started doing this.

041

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm surprised that World Labs is exiting this soon and at this price. The results from Atlas are super impressive and are ahead of anyone else doing 3D-native models; I would have expected an acquisition by a frontier lab or maybe a merger with Yann Lecun's lab. www.theverge.com/tech/1001749...

theverge.com

AMD is acquiring AI company World Labs in a deal worth more than $8 billion

Another big AI acquisition.

121

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Never thought we’d get an official new dimension in vanilla Minecraft before GTA VI.

150

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Every once in a while I think about how the Oakley Sunglasses guy sold his company for billions, but then instead of going into politics or whatevs, he did the irrational but utterly awesome thing of starting his own digital cinema camera company from scratch, which was RED.

080

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

No EVF is a huge mistake with this one. If it had a rangefinder-style corner EVF, this would have been an instant-buy for me. Instead, it has both no EVF and a worse LCD than the regular Z5II. For me it's back to considering the Fuji X-E5 or the Sony a7C II again. petapixel.com/2026/09/23/n...

petapixel.com

Nikon Z5 IIC Review: Smaller, Prettier, and Mostly Capable

Oh EVF, how we miss thee.

001

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Anyway if you don't know why I'm posting this, that's a good thing, and if you do know why I'm posting this, it's time to get off of the internet and go outside and touch grass for a bit.

110

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

In everything I've watched/read by Terence Tao, I've always been struck by the patience/humility he shows. He wrote a great article years ago about how he almost failed his PhD quals and what that taught him about humility and working hard: www.ams.org/about-us/Liv... (page 96)

ams.org

140

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Huge correction: this photo is from Citywalk, not BFI! The photographer (as watermarked in the image) is Taylor Umphenour, who is the projectionist at Citywalk. I had mixed him up in my head with the BFI guy.

020

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The storm sequence when Odysseus's ship is split in half... seeing that in full 70mm IMAX might be the single most jaw-dropping, visually spectacular, intense sequence I have ever seen in a movie. I make Hollywood movies for a living and I genuinely don't know how they made that.

110

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Also holy cow the Dune Part 3 preview that runs in front of 70mm IMAX screenings of The Odyssey... that preview came dangerously close to stealing the thunder from the main show. Dune Part 3 looks incredible.

221

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I finally saw The Odyssey in 70mm IMAX. What an astounding piece of filmmaking. I think it's easily Nolan's best film to date. I can't reiterate enough just how amazing the 1.43:1 70mm film IMAX GT experience is. (Pic is from the BFI IMAX screen, but I saw it at Citywalk in LA)

150

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Here's a neat free procedural rock generator tool that got released earlier this week. This is very cool and very handy! Especially since I just happen to be modeling something at the moment for a hobby project that requires a lot of rocks. tools.kogus.dev/rockstone/

24812

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I'm not a Leica guy personally, but I think it's super admirable how Leica offers servicing for every camera they've ever made going back 100+ years. Sure it might be super expensive, but at least they offer it at all. That's standing by your product! www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7dh...

youtube.com

Repairing a 100 Year Old Camera

YouTube video by Leica Camera

040

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

…AI of course meaning Auto-Indexing, which is the ability for the camera’s light meter to read the maximum aperture on the lens via a mechanical linkage to calculate shutter speeds. What on earth did you think I meant? (2/2)

1100

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

One really cool thing about this camera is that even though it is 30 years old, it is fully AI enabled. The AI on this camera makes it so much easier to use, and lets me get photos that don’t think I’d have gotten without AI assisting. (1/2)

130

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Also yes, while everyone else is ordering new iPhones this week, I bought a 30 year old film camera lol.

100

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Update on this: I (somewhat irresponsibly) bought a Nikon F4 and I got it with the optional waist-level viewfinder module, and now I totally get it. This is super fun to use, and the F4's focus assist / autofocus makes it actually practical.

120

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I wish that on digital streaming services and modern Blurays, wherever possible we could get both a high-res 35mm scanned version and a direct digital transfer version, with an option to pick. I can see valid arguments for both options. (2/2)

050

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This week's Animation Obsessive has an interesting/thoughtful article about how modern releases of animated movies originally released on film should look. Should they look like the original cels/digital data, or like the film prints? (1/2) animationobsessive.substack.com/p/disneys-fi...

animationobsessive.substack.com

Disney’s Films Used to Look Different

Plus: news.

26617

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Sigma just put out this video that is like... I guess an animated showcase of technical schematics for their lenses and cameras set to music? Anyhow I have no idea what it is for but boy does it look super cool and go way harder than it has any need to! www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvs9...

youtube.com

Light Assembly

YouTube video by SIGMA

071

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I'm a bit disappointed that the (counter)proof of Navier Stokes smoothness did not take the form of Terence Tao's idea to build logic gates out of fluid and then build a Turing machine and convert the whole problem into a programming problem. That was a wildly creative idea.

080

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Back in college when I wrote a FLIP solver, I had to add dampening hacks to deal with cases where the sim would blow up due to bugs in my implementation that I couldn't figure out. But now I can just say "well Navier Stokes isn't guaranteed to always have smooth solutions". 🤣

080

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

…is it just me or does it feel like an overwhelming majority of photos shot using Cinestill 800T are just of gas stations at night?

020

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I thought this was a pretty funny take:

001

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

If you’re someone like Elizabeth Holmes, I can’t even begin to fathom why you’d pick Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim of all people to make a documentary of you. “You Can See Everything” goes straight to the top of my most anticipated films of the year. www.vanityfair.com/story/nathan...

vanityfair.com

Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes Doc Met With Shock and Awe at Secret Screening

”I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced,” says Fielder, who lived with the Theranos founder and her family in the days leading up to her imprisonment.

081

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Not going to lie I kind of super admire this and this sounds like I’m really going to like it. There’s something fun and wild about a museum that is just one guy’s voice and it’s just the stuff that he likes, damn whatever the critics think. Disclaimer: I have a Lucas Museum founding membership.

030

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I feel like there are three things that are simultaneously true about GPT-6 Astra’s ability to use Blender and stuff: 1. It is very impressive 2. The results are still very far away from what human artists can do 3. What it can do is likely already enough for many applications

040

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

All of the superconductor experts that emerged two years ago with the LK99 stuff are now suddenly experts in Navier Stokes today. I sure wish I could become an expert in complicated stuff as quickly as them!

160

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I somewhat accidentally got into the Apple TV Silo series. What an incredibly well made show! Super smart writing and pacing, fantastic acting, and amazing production design and cinematography work. Other mystery box shows should take note that this is how it should be done.

250

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Yeah for medium format (real 120 film medium format, not the smaller version that Fujifilm/Hasselblad call medium format today) it makes sense and is totally workable. On some 35mm film cameras like the Nikon F4 that had humongous viewfinders, I think it's just about workable too. But far from all.

000

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

So on one hand I love the idea of waist-level viewfinders on film SLRs, but on the other hand... on a 35mm SLR, how does one get anywhere near to accurate manual focus with a waist-level viewfinder? Itseems too small to judge focus well unless you just shoot f/22 all day?

320

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Disclaimer: I work for Disney Animation but have absolutely nothing to do with the parks side of the company; I haven't the faintest idea about anything going on with parks, past present or future.

030

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I can't help but wonder how things could have turned out if Disney hadn't sold the Angels in 2003 and had instead kept the team, built a new stadium in a corner of the current Angels lot, and used the rest of that giant piece of land for a third park in Anaheim.

230

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I'm really looking forward to whatever technical presentations Rockstar hopefully will do about GTA VI rendering tech at GDC and SIGGRAPH next year. They really cooked with this one.

2190

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

The rumored development budget for GTA VI is reportedly over a billion dollars, and... yeah, it definitely looks like a billion dollars!

010

Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I watched the GTA VI extended look thing. As a professional rendering engineer, my opinion is: GTA VI has the most incredible realtime graphics I have ever seen, and by quite a margin. It's mind blowing that this is running on a PS5. Huge congrats to the Rockstar team!

2131