Technology Commentary

When TV came online in the aughts, it was exciting. Then Facebook took over.

Rather than optimizing think about how you get better at innovating.

Why are we talking about AGI when we can’t define “intelligence” adequately?

There is an inarguable correlation between organizations embracing SRE as an operational practice and public cloud repatriation rates.

We are doing our workforce a grave disservice by ignoring the Great Burnout and the shift needed to course-correct DevOps from the ground up.

In the two decades since it was first included in products available to the general public, Bluetooth has become so widespread that an entire generation of consumers may not be able to remember a time without it.

AI is starting to unbundle the final part of the idea propagation value chain: idea creation and substantiation. The impacts will be far-reaching.

Originally built to enable sustainable open source at Read the Docs, EthicalAds is a privacy-preserving ad network for developers. Advertise without compromise.

From a legal perspective, the fact that cyber-related activities can escape regulatory control, accountability mechanisms, and move across borders is a serious concern. Not only is it rarely possible to attribute responsibility to a cyber attacker and their agent/client, but the potential for human rights violations is even greater.

Generative AI uses millions of images and works of art created by humans to create new pictures. So, who should be compensated?

Hi, I’m `[email protected]`. That’s not just my address; it’s my identity. An identity that Google can take away with no notice. In this essay, I argue that email providers, like other utility providers, should be required to give 30 days’ notice before closing an account.

It is not too long after I told you that I was too cheap to pay $10 a month for github copilot and I came up with the idea for Severus, my own AI pair programmer. It was something that went boom. My blog usually doesn’t have more than 20 or 30 viewers a day … Continue reading "Severus does the magic"

Time was, I sat down nearly every day of the week to contemplate a blank page – and a few hours later, more or less, I’d hit “publish” in the Wordpress backend, and a few hu…

Virtzilla has built itself an island. Important players aren't welcome to visit and might go elsewhere

AI image synthesis goes open source, with big implications.

Last March, a group of researchers revealed that they had developed an AI) tool that could invent potential new chemicals weapons. What’s more, it could do so at an incredible speed: It took only six hours for the AI tool to suggest 40,000 of them.

"Phillip, are you familiar with SNMP? Do you know Python?" asked Phillip's new boss. "No."

Developments in AI, Privacy, Biology, and More

If you like documentaries and the creative and often unexpected use-value of design, check out Rebel Architecture from Al Jazeera: “A six-part documentary series profiling architects who are using …

The insight from the semiotic above is from NASA  Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen, who was interviewed in 2020 on The Knowledge Project Podcast.

Posted on Friday 9 Sep 2022. 506 words, no links. By Matt Webb.

One morning a couple months ago, while I was staying at a friend’s house near Los Angeles, I was surprised to find the Los Angeles Times still being delivered there. The paper was smaller and…

Often when an organization is going through some turmoil, executives think to themselves, “Ah, I should have some one-on-ones with the team so they can hear how we’re handling this.” On the other side, I frequently hear from folks who get nervous when they get these meeting invites, “The CEO/CTO/CPO/etc just scheduled a one-on-one with me what am I supposed to talk to them about?” There’s no universal guide to this, but you can usually categorize these meetings into a small taxonomy of meetings, so here are a few notes on each variety and some general advice.

Meetings are actually horrible at conveying information to your team.

Learn how developers, technologists, and forward thinking organizations are adapting to the new normal.

The Preact team has introduced a new feature called Signals, claiming that it is “a better way to manage state.” The idea of signals is to optimize the processing that takes place when the data that defines the state of an application changes. In an example from the introductory post, converting code from using React […]

Apple introduced some impressive product updates; the real news, though, were the prices, which suggested that Apple is fully embracing being a services company.