A few words about Wikileaks
By now you have probably heard about Wikileaks (currently unavailable via its main domain, apparently due to political pressure, but still available at wikileaks.de, wikileaks.fi, and wikileaks.nl)....
View Article@linklog and the delicious shutdown
The linklog which appears to the left on the home page of this blog and also in my tumblr stream, as well as the independent @linklog stream on twitter, is powered by delicious. News leaked today that...
View ArticleThe 12 Days Of Christmas, by the numbers
So I read this tweet by Tim Siedell over the weekend, which made me think: hey, that is a lot of birds, isn't it? I mean, he's bringing her a partridge every day for 12 days, that's 12 partridges. But...
View ArticleI want to expose your children to homosexuality
Dear Parents of the World - There is a phrase used often, when talking about portrayals of homosexuals in the media, by people who say that it's okay for people to be gay in the privacy of their own...
View ArticleBriefly, on Agile
When you say "agile", I hear "cargo cult". Agile is a process for managing software development. If you have a great team of smart people who communicate well and trust each other, they can use agile...
View ArticleiPhoneTracker, Extra Creepy Edition
You may have heard about Pete Warden's iPhoneTracker, an app that lets you explore the giant trove of geolocation data your iPhone has been collecting since iOS 4.0 (and possibly before). You may not...
View ArticleORM is an anti-pattern
I tweeted about ORM last week, and since then several people have asked me to clarify what I meant. I have actually previously written about ORM, but it was in the context of a larger discussion about...
View ArticleWanted: statisticians
The only skills gap bigger than the one for programmers is the one for statisticians. The whole web industry is accumulating vast quantities of data and storing it, magpie-like, as if it has intrinsic...
View ArticleThe real cloud
Think about a movie that you're downloading via BitTorrent*. Better yet, visualize it using this amazing BitTorrent visualization. Where is the movie stored? Well, on the hard drive of the person who...
View ArticleOn Google integrating Google+ into Chrome
MG Siegler on Google integrating Google+ into Chrome: Right now, Google bakes G+ into most Google properties via the black nav bar. This undoubtedly spurs a lot of usage. What if the next phase is to...
View ArticleInvention
Charles Babbage, one of the father of computers, once wrote: I will yet venture to predict that a time will arrive, when the accumulating labour which arises from the arithmetical applications of...
View ArticleFive big problems with Twitter's UI
Okay Twitter, it's time you stopped getting a free pass. You have fucked up your interface, and it's time to fix it. Before we get to the UI problems, let's reiterate the bigger, older problem,...
View ArticleA conversation with Rick Santorum
Me: Hello, sir. I'd like to ask a fundamental question about your beliefs. Rick: Uh, sure. Me: I'm gay, and I'd like to get married someday. Can you tell me why you don't think that should happen?...
View Article2012 Presidential Election: the polls to watch
I am an obsessive follower of politics. With 189 days left until the US presidential election, I'm in full-on obsessive poll-watching mode. As usual, you should ignore national polls. The important...
View ArticleOthers
In retrospect, it seems obvious that we were conducting our searches for extraterrestrial life in completely the wrong way, and even then half-heartedly. But then, so many things are clear now that...
View ArticleHTML5 vs. Obj-C is not the same as PHP vs. C
Brace yourselves, because I'm turning the old fuddy-duddy up to max for this post. Alternative linkbait titles for this post are "Why HTML5 mobile apps suck" and "Get off my lawn!" When I started...
View ArticleBlue-collar knowledge workers will save the economy
I got into a conversation on tumblr about unemployment in the US, and how to fix it. Jakke's conclusion was pretty bleak: So the way things are going right now it looks like skilled workers (especially...
View ArticleWanted: statisticians
The only skills gap bigger than the one for programmers is the one for statisticians. The whole web industry is accumulating vast quantities of data and storing it, magpie-like, as if it has intrinsic...
View ArticleThe real cloud
Think about a movie that you're downloading via BitTorrent*. Better yet, visualize it using this amazing BitTorrent visualization. Where is the movie stored? Well, on the hard drive of the person who...
View ArticleOn Google integrating Google+ into Chrome
MG Siegler on Google integrating Google+ into Chrome: Right now, Google bakes G+ into most Google properties via the black nav bar. This undoubtedly spurs a lot of usage. What if the next phase is to...
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