Technology Commentary

Plus: The end of Internet Explorer, a free-speech platform, and a lake in need of a new name.

According to the ODI data spectrum, data exists on a spectrum from closed, to shared to open. Closed data is limited to internal use in an organisation. Shared data might be available to specific g…

Posted on Thursday 16 Jun 2022. 635 words, 7 links. By Matt Webb.

This week an AI researcher at Google announced that he detected a sentient being in one of their AIs and that when he brought this to the attention of Google management, they suspended him. The AI researcher was using a sophisticated

Posted on 2022-06-14

Today I created a private blog site — that is, Internet-accessible but SSL-and-password-protected — and realized that there was no easy way for most people to subscribe to it. Even if t…

Apple hasn’t always had refined user experiences in their operating systems. In the distant past of the ’90s they were still kind of clunky computers that were far from the polished, hi…

I am imagining a type of institution that would specialize in long-range research. These institutions (plural) would manage research that had a 25+ year horizon. This might be "pure" basic research with no apparent value within 25 years, as well

The smart home was supposed to make our lives easier, but confusing controls and too many apps are frustrating. There must be a better way.

"When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical." - Jony Ive

Posted on Thursday 9 Jun 2022. 1,120 words, 3 links. By Matt Webb.

Is mobile-first CSS always the best option? Patrick Clancey explores the pros and cons of the classic methodology, as well as when other solutions might work better.

This time I'm definitely gonna post more than once!

In 1988, the anthropologist Joseph Tainter published a book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. In it, he described the rise and fall of great civilizations such as the Romans, the Mayans, an…

Guest Post: The IPv4 Unicast Extensions Project seeks to free up 6 to 7% of the IPv4 address space.

All individuals transacting in Bitcoin are within six degrees or fewer of separation from a core group, say researchers.

Fragmentation has put paid to the dream of this OS ever being bigger than Windows

The web is hostile to upstart search engine crawlers, and most websites only allow Google’s crawler.

Front-end, back-end, and full-stack development are distinct software development disciplines. In this post, we break down the three types of developers.

Pondering the way that gaps in Billboard’s music charts have, for decades, created opportunities for bands and artists to maximize their exposure.

The pandemic reshaped modern life in many ways. Over two years later, we still see ongoing shifts to urban centers. With remote and hybrid work here to stay, thriving careers in the tech industry do not depend on living in traditional technology capitals such as San Francisco, Seattle, or New York.

We spend so much of our time online without knowing where we are—or how fragmented we've become. Locating ourselves can help us leave our bubble.

Dynamic charts describe the trends of GitHub repositories in a collection with four metrics（Star, Pull Request, Pull Request Creators, Issue）.