August 2016 This article describes my experience contributing a medium-sized feature to Python. In short: I wrote PEP 471 and contributed os.scandir() to the Python standard library and the CPython co
In late February 2014, Daniel was at his computer trading bitcoin on Tokyo-based crypto exchange Mt. Gox. Suddenly, the website flashed white and became unresponsive. In a panic, Daniel turned for ans
This article first appeared in Computer magazine and is brought to you by InfoQ & IEEE Computer Society. The CAP theorem asserts that any networked shared-data system can have only two of three desir
March 2021 Summary: I believe that small websites are compelling aesthetically, but are also important to help us resist selling our souls to large tech companies. In this essay I present a vision for
April 2017 Summary: Recently I wrote approximately 500 lines of Python code that implements just enough of a Git client to create a repository, add files to the index, commit, and push itself to GitHu
March 2017 Go to: | | | Recently we implemented a duplicate image detector to avoid importing dupes into Jetsetter’s large image store. To achieve this, we wrote a Python implementation of the dHash p
Posted December 14, 2023 As software has eaten the world, it has become integral to every industry and nearly every endeavor in our society. As a result, the governments around the world have become i
Photographs by Gena Steffens In the steamy heat of afternoon, Yamit Diaz Romero steered our motorized longboat around overhanging bamboo branches and islets in the Claro Cocorná Sur River, in western
Earlier this year, I moved from San Francisco to New York with my dogs, kids, and husband. My family rented an apartment. And once we figured out that we liked it here and wanted to stay, we looked to
Marble Arch Mound prepares to open to the public, July 2021. (Hollie Adams/Stringer.) This July 4th, would you consider becoming a paid member of Persuasion? It’s the support of our paying members tha
(Image credit: ilgmyzin/Unsplash) ChatGPT has inadvertently revealed a set of internal instructions embedded by OpenAI to a user who shared what they discovered on Reddit. OpenAI has since shut down t
In 1968, at the first NATO Software Engineering conference, the term "software crisis" was coined. These conferences were pivotal moments in computing history, as they were some of the first efforts t
In 2015, Dan McKinley laid out a model for software teams selecting technologies. He proposed that each team have a limited supply of “innovation tokens”, and, when selecting a technology, they can ch
30 May, 2024 I recently had a conversation with a friend about my twitter journey. I told him about how random accounts have responded with kindness in Dms when I was just a smoll account. To which he
Published 22 July 2012 Share page About sharing Image caption, In the 1930s, Keynes urged investment in public works to restart growth What would John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential econo
Say what you will about Bernard von NotHaus, the man has led his federal probation officers to some beautiful places. First, there was the waterfront penthouse in Miami Beach. Then the penthouse at th
The rise of generative artificial intelligence and other digital technologies has enabled tech companies to offload tasks from their employees onto users. While this has helped companies reduce costs
On 26 June 2024, the 127th Ecma General Assembly approved the ECMAScript 2024 language specification, which means that it’s officially a standard now. This blog post explains what’s new. The editors o
(Ad, please don’t block.) JavaScript was created in May 1995 in 10 days, by Brendan Eich. Eich worked at Netscape and implemented JavaScript for their web browser, Netscape Navigator. The idea was tha
(Ad, please don’t block.) This chapter lists what’s new in recent ECMAScript versions – in reverse chronological order. It ends before ES6 (ES2015): ES2016 was the first truly incremental release of E
Image generated with Midjourney The year is 2014. Barrack Obama is in the first year of his second term as the US President. Elon Musk is still being seen by many people as the “cool billionaire”, the
The New Deal was a massive effort to lift the United States out of the Great Depression on several fronts. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan created the Social Security Administration to protect
Unix's fsync(), write ahead logs, and durability versus integrity July 2, 2024 I recently read Phil Eaton's A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability (via), which is about what it says i
American economist (1926–1995) "Rothbard" redirects here. For other uses, see Rothbard (disambiguation). Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Aus
X11R1 on Sun Techfury90 CC0 I apologize that this post is a little late. On 19th June the X Window System celebrated its 40th birthday. Wikipedia has a comprehensive history of the system including th
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are approximately the same as each other. For instance, we may have crawled the web over some period of time,
From bottom to top The doubling of the number of transistors on a chip every 2 years, a seemly inevitable trend that has been called Moore's law, has contributed immensely to improvements in computer
Credits Claire L. Evans is a writer and musician exploring ecology, technology and culture. The first time it happened, it was an accident. But every dream is. It would have been my last REM cycle of
Man-Computer Symbiosis J. C. R. Licklider IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960 Summary Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in cooperativ
Official C++ Mascot Last week Systems Distributed ‘24, was personally the most valuable conference I’ve attended! The highlight of the week was meeting people in person whom I’ve engaged with for mont
Note: It’s easy to calculate this metric directly. All you have to do is to take Nvidia’s run-rate revenue forecast and multiply it by 2x to reflect the total cost of AI data centers (GPUs are half of
A new US non-profit organization called the Ladybird Browser Initiative has been set up to develop the Ladybird web browser, based on a new engine that does not borrow code from other browsers. Accord
Robert Barsky examines the profound impact of Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" on Noam Chomsky's early embrace of left-libertarian and anarchist ideologies. By: Robert F. Barsky BeeLine Reader uses subt
At present, I have an alarming number of tabs open. I’m absolutely not going to tell you how many, or how many are open on my phone. There are 15 pages of notes in my now-finished notebook that are ab
Neven Mrgan How it feels to get an AI email from a friend 5/29/2024 Neven Mrgan Recently I received an AI-written email from a friend. It wasn’t sent to test AI, or to show it off, as in “ha ha check
The 1980's: A Very Good Time for the Very Rich Credit...The New York Times Archives See the article in its original context from March 5, 1992, Section A, Page 1Buy Reprints View on timesmachine Times
A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior Noam Chomsky In Leon A. Jakobovits and Murray S. Miron (eds.), Readings in the Psychology of Language, Prentice-Hall, 1967, pp. 142-143 Preface Rereading th
Journalism faces a credibility crisis. Only 32% of Americans report having “a great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in news reporting — a historical low. Journalists generally assume that their lack o
In C, we allocate memory on the heap using the malloc function. Other programming languages like C++ or zig (e.g., std.heap.c_allocator) may call on malloc underneath so it is important to understand
Enlarge Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Linux and its code are made by people, and people are not with us forever. Over the weekend, a brief message on the Linux kernel mailing list reminded people of ju
amontalenti