Technology Commentary

Data-centric artificial intelligence can help reduce hallucinations and biases and improve AI output quality in generative AI systems.

This week, CES is a trigger for thoughts on AI and the physical world. And more on mundane robotics, embedded intelligence, and wandering humans.

I recently finished reading “How Infrastructure Works”, by Deb Chandra. It is a must read if you are doing APIs at scale today. She opens the book by talking about charismatic infrastructure like the Brooklyn Bridge or the St Louis Arch. These are grand collective public infrastructure projects that rise above, stand out, and have a personality all of their own. This look at physical infrastructure got me thinking about APIs (duh), and how Stripe, Twilio, and a handful of other APIs enjoy a status as charismatic APIs. Her story is pushing me to think about why they enjoy this position and why can’t other APIs achieve the same status. Like physical infrastructure, I think there are certain characteristics that render virtual infrastructure more tangible, meaningful, and useful, which will help them not just succeed, but achieve a charismatic status in our stories.

How can organizations achieve the business goals for their software efforts when so many pitfalls threaten their success?

Recently I was chatting with a Staff-plus engineer who was struggling to influence his peers. Each time he suggested an approach, his team agreed with him, but his peers in the organization disagreed and pushed back. He wanted advice on why his peers kept undermining his approach. After our chat, I followed up by talking with his peers about some recent disagreements, and they kept highlighting missing context from the engineer’s proposals.

GraphQL Subscriptions in enterprise with WebSockets are a problem. Here''s how the WunderGraph Cosmo Router can help with event-based Subscriptions.

I will never forget the time I discovered how web pages were made. The year was 1995. I was using Windows 3.1 like most everyone, and it didn’t even support the TCP/IP network stack out of the box. I had to install a program called Trumpet Winsock and a hot new web browser called Netscape to connect to the Internet…

The creep of conducting our day-to-day interactions over screens has reached a breaking point—and it threatens to push out everyone but those with the “right” access.

The RFC process has been a huge success in defining the standards that run the Internet, but naively adopting this process for your company is a mistake. RFC processes tend to fail at most organizations because they lack a clear decision-making step.

A half-century ago, "Saturday Review" asked some of the era's visionaries for their predictions of what 2024 would look like. Here are their hits and misses.

Gnu ASCII armor can be used to convert any file from binary to a text file and back. Written for encryption but useful for any file.

The website of Robin Rendle, a designer and writer from the UK.

The internet seems ripe for change, and millions of people seem poised to connect in new ways, as they reconsider their relationship to technology.

An internet map…

There are internal and external changes. Internally, company needs, products and personnel are evolving. Externally, the tech landscape is constantly shifting.

Here’s why testing has become a choke point for developer velocity.

DOSP involves initially releasing software under a proprietary license, followed by a planned transition to an open source license.

Every so often, when I ask myself — why do I make such an effort to maintain my homestead on the internet and manage my newsletter? The answer bubbles up every so often when a social medi…

The central tenets of cloud computing, which really ought to be called utility computing, is that you only pay for what you use and that you can turn

For decades, the telephone industry supported ISDN, a technology designed to make copper lines more useful for consumers. It’s great—if you’re a voice actor.

Valve has shown to occasionally not act on community feedback and bug reports. A story about a decade old bug.

Increased network and security team collaboration can reduce security risks, drive operational efficiencies, and resolve incidents faster while enterprises can also enjoy cost-saving benefits.