Hackers and Painters
Though old, this essay is still both relevant and brilliant. A must-read for computer science researchers. In the best case, the papers are just a formality. Hackers write cool software, and then write...
View ArticleWhat a pleasant cease-and-desist letter
If you haven’t been following, Jack Daniel’s sent me a letter saying the artwork for Broken Piano for President must be changed. What follows is, perhaps, the most polite cease and desist ever written....
View ArticleEdge on The Walking Dead
But to suggest that all of The Walking Dead’s power comes from inserting player choice and agency into familiar, desperate scenes is to do the game a disservice. It also features some of the smartest...
View ArticleWeb browsers I have known, from kottke.org
Chrome will probably be my last default browser on a non-mobile computer. Many of you use Mobile Safari much more than any desktop web browser; I’m not quite there but will be soon enough. I’m not...
View ArticleChinese Internet memes
Just because China blocks access to Facebook and Twitter, it doesn’t mean that the country is void of Internet memes — they’re just not quite the same as the ones I’m used to.
View ArticleTwitter, Advertisers, Users, and Third-party Devs (in that order)
It is sad and frustrating to see Twitter try and scare away third-party developers. It is equally frustrating to see their continued commitment to put sponsored content into our Twitter streams. A...
View ArticleHow Corning created Gorilla Glass
The office of Wendell Weeks, Corning’s CEO, is on the second floor, looking out onto the Chemung River. It was here that Steve Jobs gave the 53-year-old Weeks a seemingly impossible task: Make millions...
View ArticleNoah Gray on scientific abstracts
Scientific abstracts are the hooks attempting to capture a discerning reader’s attention, the shortcuts saving the busy reader some time and the keys unlocking scientific knowledge for those lacking a...
View ArticleThe winning formula for Nobel prizes
Genius, passion, hard work, and a little bit of luck – that’s what we are told sets Nobel prize recipients apart from us mere mortals. But could there be any secret, hidden factors that come into play?...
View ArticleThe best (and worst) media errors and corrections of 2012
This correction by The Economist is hilarious: Correction: An earlier version of this article claimed that journalists at Bloomberg Businessweek could be disciplined for sipping a spritzer at work....
View ArticleVideo Games Targeted By Senate In Wake Of Sandy Hook Shooting
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has introduced one of Congress’ first pieces of legislation related to the tragedy in Newtown, Conn.: a bill to study the impact of violent video games on children. I...
View ArticleDoes Blue Monday really exist?
… not only does Blue Monday appear to be a myth, but so does the idea that we don’t like Mondays in general.
View ArticleHow emoji conquered the world
By the time Docomo realized it had misjudged the demand for business-focused pagers, it was badly in need of a new killer app. What it came up with was emoji.
View ArticleSoftware mileage
Looking back on the first seven Impact columns for IEEE Software, the editors propose a new metric called software mileage, defined as the number of new customers per year per line of code.
View ArticleSystems for the automatic assessment of programming assignments
For work, I decided to look up some systems that allow programming assignments to be checked automatically. The following list is by no means complete, but should provide a general overview. I found...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Londons
This is One Hyde Park, which its developers insist is the world’s most exclusive address and the most expensive residential development ever built anywhere on earth. With apartments selling for up to...
View ArticleThe Random Walk: Mapping the World’s Prices 2013 (PDF)
Includes figures such as the Big Mac Index, Starbucks prices, and the price of beer at an average bar.
View ArticleThe KISS principle was noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960
The more you know — I thought it was a relatively new idea.
View ArticleWhat if bad code was discouraged on a language level?
Stumbling upon code that is messy, incoherent and less reusable than one would like is more of a rule of programming than the exception. I’ve always wondered why that is — haven’t we all been taught to...
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