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If PHP Were British
PHP, as the result of a spectacular error of judgement, appears to be written in US English. How do we developers ensure the traditions of the British Empire continue to be upheld, even in the digital age?
Nym Wars (Google+ "real name" rules)
I hadn't been paying much attention to the Google "Real Names" clusterfuck, because it was so obvious to me that they were going to lose this one in the press that it would all be over soon. But it's still not over, and the Google brass appear to be digging in their heels, despite the universally bad press they're…
How GitHub Works: Creativity is Important
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
(A play in 4 acts. Please feel free to exit along with the stage character that best represents you. Take intermissions as you see fit. Click on the stage if...
Who Does Facebook Think You Are Searching For?
UPDATE March 28, 2013: Many people have commented here and emailed me that it no longer works for you. I have made an update to fix the bookmarklet for those with Facebook Graph Search. You can get…
How GitHub Works: Be Asynchronous
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
I'm a phony. Are you?
pho·ny also pho·ney (fō'nē) adj. pho·ni·er, pho·ni·est 1. a. Not genuine or ...
My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
Hi 👋 you're reading a pretty old post! I started writing on here back in high school and this page may not reflect my current views. Recommend checking out related articles and categories down below, I've likely published more recent thoughts on this topic.
How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
Undeletable Cookies
A couple of weeks ago Wired reported the discovery of a new, undeletable, web cookie: Researchers at U.C. Berkeley have discovered that some of the net’s most popular sites are using a tracking service that can’t be evaded—even when users block cookies, turn off storage in Flash, or use browsers’ “incognito”…
Balls
Motorola knew they had Google by the balls.
Things I’ve never heard a successful startup founder say
Please stop repeating these ideas! This isn't how successful companies work.
I’m sorry, but were you actually trying to remember your comical passwords?
I love a good XKCD comic; Randall Munroe has a unique way of cutting right to the crux of technology issues and always doing it in a humorous fashion. Little Bobby Tables [http://xkcd.com/327/] remains an all-time classic and it’s amazing how many times you’ll
Perlis Languages
A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. – Alan Perlis
Do trees communicate? Networks, networks
I was unfamiliar with how mycorrhizal networks connect the roots of trees, facilitating the sharing of resources. Dr. Suzanne Simard writes: Graduate student Kevin Beiler has uncovered the extent a…
Quake Engine source review
I happily dove into Quake World source code . Here is what I understood, hopefully it will help someone to swim. This article is in four parts : Architecture section Network section Prediction section Rendition section
Understanding "Prototypes" in JavaScript
For the purposes of this post, I will be talking about JavaScript objects using syntax defined in ECMAScript 5.1. The basic semantics existed in Edition 3, but they were not well exposed. A Whole New Object In JavaScript, objects are pairs of keys and values (in Ruby, this structure