(the software crisis)
"Technical" skills
If you've ever said "soft skills" and felt weird about it, this essay is for you
How I RSS - Tim Hårek
How I use RSS on a daily basis
Michael Tsai - Blog - On the Origins of .DS_Store
Compact Discs With Hidden Pregap Tracks: How Did They Do It?
Pondering the compatibility issues and complications of a clever element of the audio CD hidden track boom: The before-album pregap.
TDD saved my brain
ISP Column - June 2024
Linux Kernel Panic QR Codes: Nerdy Or Awesome?
An upcoming iteration of the Linux kernel could take a user-friendly direction: A Linux version of the Blue Screen of Death, complete with QR code.
The Workstation You Wanted In 1990, In Your Pocket
Years ago there was a sharp divide in desktop computing between the mundane PC-type machines, and the so-called workstations which were the UNIX powerhouses of the day. A lot of familiar names prod…
Building Software Products Alone:Orchestrating the Meta-Skills
Quality and productivity are not necessarily mutually exclusive
Quality and productivity are not necessarily mutually exclusive One of my pet peeves is when people pit q...
Weeknotes 295 - agency exchanges for communities
Thinking again about new concepts of agency in a genAI reality. And notions from last week’s news.
Digital price tags are a good thing
Jason Kottke: Walmart Is Switching to Electronic Price Tags
Walmart is switching to electronic price tags that “allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds”. No one wants this!! No one wants surge pricing on ice cream and price increases on items already in your cart.
The
The Future of Writing: How AI Will Reshape Our Tools
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash Earlier this morning while reading The Wall Street Journal, I learned that Bruce Bastian, co-creator of WordPerfect, the word-processing software, had died at 76. …
Stop calling the robots “smart”
There is a 1895 French short film called L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station in English) where a stationary camera was set up on a tripod and filmed a train, well, coming into the station. The story goes that
Preparing for the era of orchestrated apps
Apple’s App Intents slide from WWDC 2024. It’s going to be years before we can really see the impact of Apple embracing systemwide AI features via Apple Intelligence. Many of the featur…
Preparing for the Era of Orchestrated Apps
Jason Snell on Six Colors: Preparing for the Era of Orchestrated Apps
When everything is orchestrated properly, all the capabilities of all your apps are put into a big soup, and the AI system at the heart of your device can choose the right capabilities to do what you need
The public web and consent
This blog exists on the public web, and that means you as a user have a lot of control over both how you consume my work and what you can do with it. I publish to the web, so I suppose the canonical way of reading my work is to
At 50 Years Old, Is SQL Becoming a Niche Skill?
This post was originally triggered – and I choose that word carefully – by a recent experience on a cloud cost-optimisation project. These experiences prompted me to consider how things…
The Future, Present, and Past of News
Eleventh in the News Commons series. all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in U…
The Personal Internet
—is not this: By now we take it for granted. To live your digital life on the Internet, you need accounts. Lots of them. You need one for every website that provides a service, plus your Mac or Win…
Testing a WebSocket that could hang open for hours | nicole@web
No Observability Without Theory: The Talk
Last month, I had the unadulterated pleasure of presenting “No Observability Without Theory” at Monitorama 2024. If you’ve never been to Monitorama, I can’t recommend it eno…
Field Notes 07.03.2024
On My Mind On the eve of our Independence Day, I can’t help but think of our current political challenges. It doesn’t matter which side of the political aisle you walk. After all, the reality of ou…
Gradually, then Suddenly: Upon the Threshold
Small improvements can lead to big changes
This 1:1 monitor has completely changed my life
Open your eyes and see the truth. The Eizo FlexScan EV2730Q is about to change everything you know about monitors.
X Window System At 40
X11R1 on Sun Techfury90 CC0 I apologize that this post is a little late. On 19 th June the X Window System celebrated its 40th birthday. W...
Serverless cloud technology fades away
Serverless was a big deal for a hot minute, but now it seems old-fashioned, even though its basic elements, agility and scalability, are still relevant.
Your generative AI project is going to fail
Fueled by vibes and with stars in their eyes, enterprises are not taking the time to understand generative AI’s limitations and to create their own rules-based approach.
How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play
AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive.