Technology Commentary

Early in life, my parents got me one of these Commodore home computers and it transformed something deep inside my brain. Other kids saw it as another device where they could consume a never-ending stream of colorful games, a means to be entertained, and maybe an opportunity to visit other

Sapiens and Collective Fictions Recently I read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari. The basic thesis of the book is that humans require ‘collective fictions’ so that …

They met by chance, got hooked on an idea, and wrote the “Transformers” paper—the most consequential tech breakthrough in recent history.

This is another post in our Code Health series. A version of this post originally appeared in Google bathrooms worldwide as a Google Tes...

The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.

Fred Hebert discusses various small approaches and patterns that influence how teams deal with reliability, and highlights some of the key interactions and behaviors.

My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5 most successful memes) is featured in this cute little collectible book, The Dark Forest Anthology o…

Opening up a few spots for my active advisory practice

Zapier for your browser Automate

Using local data to answer authorization questions with Oso Cloud

Somehow we forgot how to center rectangles and must find our way back

Enterprises and telco operators are preparing their networks for profound innovations to come.

Veteran AI programmer and entrepreneur Andrew Yeung on the difficulties and opportunities of building an AI-powered, interactive FAQ.

Marques Brownlee has tremendous power because he can go direct to consumers; that is possible in media, and AI will make it possible everywhere.

Data users have long sought the ability to query data directly in Kafka, and we’re getting close to finding that missing magic with SQL.

How the world of social media made it so you could reach more people than ever, but that 1,000 true fans concept hasn't really changed.

The Map Happenings series on the hugely impactful events that forever changed our world. This week: the story of a little known company called ‘Etak’. I think you’ll find it a fas…

Etak, Inc. was an independent US-based vendor of automotive navigation system equipment, digital maps, and mapping software. It was founded in 1983.[1] Competitor Navteq was founded in 1985.[2]

With backing from Atari’s cofounder, an engineer-navigator brought high-tech driving directions to cars–during the Reagan Administration.

When I'm not here pointing out dog videos, I spend the rest of my work day as a technology journalist. I decided that I wanted in on this line of…

It feels good at first, then the stink may come later

No, not shrimp Jesus—though that's noteworthy, too. We're talking about what TikTok could be planning with AI influencers.

The command line utilities "less" and "more" are a pun on the aphorism "less is more."

With the complexity of building and maintaining internal developer platforms, does anyone else feel the pendulum is about to drop?

Self-hosted apps are having a moment, but people are still a little freaked out by them. Could a Flatpak-style approach to self-hosting help matters?

Does it matter if you call it platform engineering or API governance? Map out and standardize your APIs so they can be easily accessed internally and reused.

There have been multiple attempts to create a new social network that tries to mimic Twitter as a short-text-oriented real-time platform ever since Twitter (nee X) started to fray. M…