Technology Commentary

Ben Rubin, cocreator of hit pandemic chat app Houseparty, has launched a new group messaging platform that aims to solve the problems undermining trust in public conversation—using blockchain. If it fails, that’s OK by him.

At scale there are no rollbacks and no cut-overs. Your software only moves forward.

The chatbots-as-search paradigm encourages us to just accept answers as given, especially when they are stated in terms that are both friendly and authoritative. The chatbot interface invites you t…

SpaceX’s triumph is downstream of a dream and getting the cost structure necessary to make it happen; Elon Musk is trying the same approach for Tesla self-driving cars

So much technology, so little understanding.

The NY Times has had a difficult time covering the 2024 election in a clear, responsible manner. But I wanted to highlight this sh

Discover why Application Performance Monitoring (APM) may not be the best solution for every app. Learn about the hidden costs, reactive pitfalls, and when a proactive approach to performance can be more effective.

If your favorite content management system feels like it’s sinking into a shallow well of hubris, you might want alternatives. I have a few ideas.

You’re getting hit by pre-election chaos everywhere online. Let’s take a step back and get a bit of a palate cleanser. A little Tedium goes a long way.

The man who attempted to sue Linux out of existence died a month and a half ago with little notice by the Linux and open source communities.

People might argue that JSON Schema is overkill or outdated. But in this article, we’ll explore that it is not the case and understand how…

Exploration of C++ complexity with first-hand experience of compiler bugs

Reflections on A Philosophy of Software Design — Part 1

Artificial intelligence has always been around us, with [Timothy J. O’Malley]’s 1985 book on AI projects for the Commodore 64 being one example of this. With AI defined as being the the…

Soundtrack: EL-P - Flyentology At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called 'The Growth Mindset" that drives company decision-making in everything from how products are sold, to how your on-the-job performance is judged. I am

Posted on Friday 1 Nov 2024. 1,016 words, 13 links. By Matt Webb.

Book review

Us technologists excel at not seeing the human aspects of why things work—-we assume it is just the good technology driving everything. There is a reason we are good at coding in isolation. It is because we aren’t good at human things. We are nerds, geeks, or whatever outsider phrase you use to describe yourself. We put a lot of faith in good and right technological solutions. It’s all very binary and easy-—it is either good or bad. On or off. When in reality these are all very human things. I strongly believe that much of the success of HTTP APIs over other solutions was the humans talking, sharing, and demonstrating how this free and ubiquitous technology can be used in useful and meaningful ways.

Basket of options versus option on a basket

After 20 years of blogging I am wondering where to go from here. The answer isn’t to quit. But continuing as-is won’t do either.

When I was writing MINISTRY OF SPACE, only the technical appendix to this book, THE MARS PROJECT, was available, and that was invaluable. I picked this up around 2006 to accompany it on a shelf, an…

By Om Malik I first met Matthew Prince in 2010, the day he launched Cloudflare at TechCrunch Disrupt. His original pitch for Cloudflare was “Content Delivery...

Step back & think about which system you're optimizing

I discovered Minimalissimo 15 years ago, literally on the day they started publishing. It became part of my RSS reader. It found a home in a folder called “The good stuff,” which had many such webs…

David Pierce: How Digg helped invent the social internet In its early days, Digg was something like the homepage of the internet. Any user could submit a link, and then any other user could either promote it with a “dig” or demote it with a “bury.” The best and most

On the state of evaluation for language models.

First published Dec 8, 2021.