Technology Commentary

According to the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report, bad bot traffic levels rose for the fifth consecutive year, indicating an alarming trend

It's good to know the difference between HDDs and SSDs and understand how the different SSD technologies affect reliability.

There are three competing priorities that companies have as it relates to software development: security, maintainability, and velocity. I’ll elaborate on what I mean by each of these in just a bit…

To sum up my stance: Tracking is wrong when it’s done without consent, and when users have no idea what’s being tracked or how it’s being used. Tracking is fine when it’s done with consent, and users know what’s being tracked and how it’s being used.

An open source WebAssembly project brings web components to other languages, allowing devs to share web components across digital properties.

Wasm is maturing, with mainstream language support, Kubernetes deployment options, the revolutionary possibilities of the component model and more.

The Overture Maps Foundation has launched a beta of its service this week, bringing enterprises and startups an open source alternative to Google Maps.

The Distributed AI Research Institute is a space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech’s pervasive influence.

Cassie Kozyrkov wants to use applied data science, AI and analytics to create better tools and products – a discipline that she calls decision intelligence

One GIGA POD is composed of multiple racks populated with GIGABYTE GPU servers acting as one powerful cluster that accelerates everything AI.

Is Sun’s Blackbox a gimmick? Some analysts think there’s a lot more to it, but we’ll have to wait until it ships to be sure.

Last October, Sun introduced the idea of a datacenter-in-a-box to the world. The idea is that any time, any where you need a datacenter, Sun can drop-ship you one where ever you might need it.

Sun Modular Datacenter is a portable data center built into a standard 20-foot intermodal container manufactured and marketed by Sun Microsystems. An external chiller and power were required for the operation of a Sun MD. A data center of up to 280 servers could be rapidly deployed by shipping the container in a regular way to locations that might not be suitable for a building or another structure, and connecting it to the required infrastructure. Sun stated that the system could be made operational for 1% of the cost of building a traditional data center.

Sun Microsystems has developed a novel “data center in a box” in an effort to transform the economics of corporate computing.

Container data centers lead to a module design revolution

Former Sun executives and employees gather for a reunion and talk about pranks, parties, and technical choices—the crazy and the brilliant.

Posted on Friday 19 Apr 2024. 1,394 words, 5 links. By Matt Webb.

Learn how to use philosophy to run your business more effectively

It's been over two weeks! Let's catch up. We can talk about anything you want, so long as it's App Store policies regarding "retro" game emulators or…

By Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci and Ethan Zuckerman Social media has changed the way memes—cultural building blocks—are produced, transmitted, and selected. In particular, social media has expanded the diversity of memes and accelerated their evolutionary process. Framing social media as an evolutionary environment for memes is a useful analytical tool for understanding the digital public sphere. In […]

Integrating some non-computing science into reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) can give us the models we want.

Apple has a hit on its hands. Will it seize the opportunity?

Barb’s story It’s 12 noon on a Minneapolis Wednesday, which means Barb can be found at Quang. As the waiter sets down Barb’s usual order (#307, the Bun Chay, extra spicy), Barb&#8…

I looked at how much electricity ChatGPT is supposed to use and compared it to some other items. From that perspective, it doesn't seem that crazy.

Explore the poetic world of whales and their whalesong in Rebecca Giggs' profound book "Fathoms," diving into these giants' aquatic ambience.

School buses look nearly the same as they did almost 100 years ago despite cars totally changing, but that's not a bad thing.

No Longer Mine  When I write, I like to listen to music. Most of my first book was written to a series of CDs I purchased from Amazon and ripped to my Mac – early turn of the century electron…