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There's a new art form on the rise. Generative art has existed since the 1960s, but the new on-chain generative art platforms are pushing the medium in an exciting new direction. While many of the generative techniques are the same, the goals for the program output are wildly different from before. The direct path from the script to the viewer, as well as the large number of iterations, encourages artists to create a special class of artistic algorithm, what I'll refer to here as long-form...

Beauty and solace in the abandoned worlds of Roblox.

On June 8, 2021, Amazon deployed an “opt-in” way for people to enable the company to expand its private network into communities, creating infrastructure

You want to be productive. Software wants to help. But even with a glut of tools claiming to make us all into taskmasters, we almost never master our tasks.

You only get one shot at life. What if yours has been one long string of mistakes?

To privacy activists Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbag, we don't need brain implants to become cyborgs; we're already jacked in. And we need a Universal Declaration of Cyborg Rights.

What makes a graduate program predatory?

For thousands of Dominicans in New York’s Washington Heights, the shores of Lake Welch in Harriman State Park are for family, friends, and giant pots of empaguetadas

Every software team says they do Agile and yet almost nobody is Agile. How did we get to this point? Where do we go from here?

Spyware sold to authoritarian regimes used to target activists, politicians and journalists, data suggests

As devices continue to diversify in dizzying ways, how can we make sure our work on the web stays as relevant as ever for the long haul? Cathy Dutton shares how practitioners must design for the un…

The top 3 reasons why your Instagram engagement is down right now, and what you can do to bring it back up!

Worry is traditionally seen as a negative emotion. But is it possible worry has a positive function, and that we just don’t tend to use it well? Physician and researcher Martin L. Rossman argues that worry is actually an adaptive function to better solve problems and imagine creative solutions. And worrying well is a skill ... Read More

Why did so many Americans receive strange packages they didn’t think they’d ordered?

When I first started working on Typesense six years ago, I set myself a simple rule: I shall write some code everyday before or after work. That’s it. No deadlines, no quarterly goals, no milestones. I did not have a choice really — I was about to get married and was already working full-time in a demanding role. As you can imagine, building a search engine from scratch is not a trivial undertaking, so that was my way of not having to deal with additional stress.

The Secret Service raids an artist's apartment at Apple's request.

Soo Youn is considering giving up the apps. She speaks to those who have already taken the plunge – with liberating results

Snapshots from the Facebook feeds of our Citizen Browser panelists illuminate how Facebook’s recommendation algorithm siloes information on the platform.

Growing out of things is spun as a given: Old clothes that no longer fit or feel like you, jobs or schools, phases of life, living situations, habits. Growth is part of the plan, the part those of us…

The human body has become a strange contradiction at the heart of the modern blockbuster. Sexy, yes. But sexual? No.

The long read: Caffeine makes us more energetic, efficient and faster. But we have become so dependent that we need it just to get to our baseline

How could I have succumbed to this common, embarrassing habit that just about everyone on Earth knows is a scourge?

In his Grub Street Diet, New Yorker investigative journalist Ronan Farrow spends the week in Los Angeles meeting with sources, relaxing with Korean barbecue, and having complicated feelings about green juice.

If there’s one quote that’s particularly popular in management circles, it’s “what gets measured gets managed”—often misattributed to famous management consultant Peter Drucker. First, Drucker never said this; second, he actually didn’t believe such a thing; third, the idea is flawed. A long game of telephone The idea probably originated from a paper published in ... Read More

On-Chain Generative Art

In this wide-ranging essay, the author argues that pretending to be above and beyond politics is by itself a political position; in adopting it, one has aligned with the state and sided with the powerful.

Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.