Technology Commentary

I’m eager to promote accurate reporting about advanced technologies, especially those involving robots, AI, and computers. Most journalists…

In the past several decades, data processing and storage systems could be architected from best of breed components, and the market could – and did –

A network of research sites dedicated to the technology, business, and politics of APIs.

Only about one in five IT professionals in a new study by DigitalOcean said they use serverless at their organization. #serverless #cloudnative

Twenty years ago when I built my studio and remodeled other parts of our house I spent a lot of time and money in installing ethernet lines and phone cables throughout the rooms. Back then phones (what we now call … Continue reading →

Not normal is now normalized: the last few years have been unpredictable at best. It feels time to share some experiences and observations of the state and future of small manufacturing. Most people experience supply chain issues as simply not being able to purchase something, or only being able to do so at a greatly inflated markup. But another situation emerged that is even more frustrating: the potentially great difficulty of repairing existing things as a result of replacement parts either ...

Brian Crabtree of Monome recently posted about some of the supply chain issues he’s seeing. To lead with an actual case: we have not been able to get the STM32 microcontroller used in the Cro…

Interested in learning what's next for the gaming industry? Join gaming executives to discuss emerging parts of the industry this October at GamesBeat Summit Next. Learn more. It’s not often that you get to hear things from the horse’s mouth. In this case, I was able to do an interview with the guy who came […]

Although Ubuntu has been an enormous success, controversial decisions will prevent it from being named the best Linux distro in the future.

I had a moment of inspiration, envisioning something like the "falling code" from The Matrix.

Explaining exactly why Apple’s approach to ATT is anti-competitive

The non-transferability of verifiable credential is one of their super powers. This post examines how that super power can be used to reduce fraud and increase safety in a hired car platform.

Rather than boxing you into its own store, Valve’s portable gaming system lets you install software from anywhere, and it’s glorious.

We need to be talking about access

The latest generation of software deception is "containers." Containers are all the rage these days: They make hosting more flexible and reliable; they make development environments easier to set up; they're "like lightweight VMs"; and based on the marketing they also taste great and are less filling. But... what are they, really?

I recently had cause to reflect on the changes to the NFS (Network File System) protocol over the years and found that it was a story worth telling. It would be easy for such a story to become swamped by the details, as there are many of those, but one idea does stand out from the rest. The earliest version of NFS has been described as a "stateless" protocol, a term I still hear used occasionally. Much of the story of NFS follows the growth in the acknowledgment of, and support for, state. This article looks at the evolution of NFS (and its handling of state) during the early part of its life; a second installment will bring the story up to the present.

Created by Kachi Chan, 'Sisyphus' is an installation featuring two robots engaged in endless cyclic interaction. Smaller robots build brick arches, whilst a giant robot pushes them down – propelling a narrative of construction and deconstruction.

It is tempting to build abstractions so developers have to do less and build more. However, this can easily end up causing frustrations with developers if not done right.

The recent failure of an electric truck maker takes nothing away from the future of these EVs.

A comparison of file systems between Unix-like OSs and Windows OS[^1].

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