A friend just passed this interview along, and it got me thinking. Every so often, this sort of thing pops up on my radar: lone individual / tiny group doing things on their own rather than using the commonly available mass-produced thing, and they’re doing it for Reasons. I find something seductive in these stories.Continue reading “Insightful Or Obvious?”
Category Archives: Intellectual Curiosity
Concurrency, Closures, and SwiftUI on Mac OS X
Puzzlin’ Code
Okay, here’s some SwiftUI code: Why, why, do I need to prefix tipPercentages with ‘self.‘ once we’re in the third closure but not inside the second or even the first? What’s magical about this situation? I know there’s something, but nobody is saying what.
Harbinger, Party of Some
A friend pointed out this paper about, “harbinger ZIP codes.” It is fascinating! Geography as destiny, and the likelihood is that cranks live near each other. Wow.
Right Thing, Wrong Time
Cryptocurrency, quantum supremacy, imminent death of the Internet. So, Google recently announced that they’d achieved quantum supremacy. One of the things that quantum computers are supposed to be really good at is cracking crypto really fast. The past couple of years have seen an explosion of cryptocurrencies, which are one application of blockchain, which reliesContinue reading “Right Thing, Wrong Time”
Greatness Abides
Okay, so when I looked at Google news this morning, this story was in the “For you…based on your interests” section: Gremlin Brings Chaos Monkey Testing to Spinnaker CD Platform. Now, I’m a respecter of Dev Ops, but I’m not really a practitioner of Dev Ops. So I think this is cool, but the coolestContinue reading “Greatness Abides”
It Could Be Better
A long time ago, my housemate (who is one of the only people who reads this – Hi, Kurt!) had this great explanation for why his homework wouldn’t compile: “It was perfect, so I fixed it.” Man, that so describes every programmer I’ve ever worked with. (Incidentally and orthogonal to the point of this post,Continue reading “It Could Be Better”
Book Recommendations
My friend Matt Maxwell wrote The Queen of No Tomorrows and it got published by Broken Eye Books. It is totally worth buying and installing on your phone so you can read it in line at the grocery store, while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office, and any other time you have five seconds toContinue reading “Book Recommendations”
I Hate Your Bot
I dunno, something like a year ago, a guy I know started retweeting a client of his who was working on building a chatbot platform. Now, let’s be honest: in customer facing positions, a lot of interactions are going to be the same. People are way more similar than they are different, and so if oneContinue reading “I Hate Your Bot”
Credit Where Credit Is Due
It seems to me that I’ve been seeing lots and lots of social media posts which assert that [artist | intellectual] predicted [dystopian future that looks just like one aspect of today’s world] and did it [years ago]. I have to wonder what that’s in aid of. I mean, the second half of the 20th centuryContinue reading “Credit Where Credit Is Due”