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Why is it so hard to build an airport?
Airports are a critical piece of modern infrastructure.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 694 posts.
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Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map
Learn how to view areas of GPS jamming affecting aircraft around the world and how GPS jamming affects aviation.
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Waffle House's Magic Marker System
I thought for sure that I’d previously written about the secret jelly packet & pickle-based system that chefs at the Waffle House use to “store” all of the orde
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YouTube now requires to label their realistic-looking videos made using AI
Generative AI is transforming the ways creators express themselves – from storyboarding ideas to experimenting with tools that enhance the creative process. But viewers …
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Thoughts on the Future of Software Development
My optimistic take on the future of Software Development in the age of AI.
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Google Scholar search: "certainly, here is" -chatgpt -llm
Searching Google Scholar for "certainly, here is" turns up a huge number of academic papers that include parts that were evidently written by ChatGPT - sections that start with "Certainly, …
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Research shows that people who BS are more likely to fall for BS (2021)
People who frequently try to impress or persuade others with misleading exaggerations and distortions are themselves more likely to be fooled by impressive-s
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Meta’s Broken Promises
The 51-page report, “Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook,” documents a pattern of undue removal and suppression of protected speech including peaceful expression in support of Palestine and public debate about Palestinian human rights. Human Rights Watch found…
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EFF to Ninth Circuit: No Software Exception to Traditional Copyright Limits
Copyright’s reach is already far too broad, and courts have no business expanding it any further, particularly where that reframing will undermine adversarial interoperability. Unfortunately, a federal district court did just that in the latest iteration of Oracle v. Rimini, concluding that...
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Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
A short policy memo recently posted on the Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) website argues that “mass timber can help solve the housing shortage.” It was posted as part of the Housing Ideas Challenge, a collaboration between FAS, Matt Yglesias and a few other organizations to generate new, innovative ideas for…
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Simplicity of IRC (2022)
During discussions with my friends and colleagues, whenever the topic of chat protocols comes up, I often remark how simple the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol is and how this simplicity has fostered creativity in the lives of many young computer hobbyists growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For many of…
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Any Technology Indistinguishable from Magic Is Hiding Something
Odes & Satires, and other matters of stuff & things.
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On the new Dutch intelligence and security law
13th of June UPDATE: The Dutch government has failed to hire and house the promised new 10 oversight staff. Yet, the new law will be enacted July 1st, passing oversight to people that don’t exist. I surely enjoyed living under the rule of law, but it appears it was a passing thing. “The Netherlands hosts some of the…
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Weather forecasts have become more accurate
A four-day forecast today is as accurate as a one-day forecast 30 years ago.
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The internet is slipping out of our reach
With AI encroaching every open forum on the internet, the future of human discourse is bleak.
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Are We Watching the Internet Die?
Sometime this month, Reddit will go public at a valuation of $6.5bn. Select Redditors were offered the chance to buy stock at the initial listing price, which it hasn’t announced yet but is expected to be in the range of $31-34 per share. Regardless of the actual
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Bell Labs: An Institute of Creative Technology (2015)
This week I finished the most recent book in my self-guided study of 20th century technology, namely The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Jon Gertner. As the title implies, it’s a chronicle of research and development wing of AT&T, a history that lasts...
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E-Bikes Overtake Buggies for Some Amish (2021)
In some Amish communities these days, e-bikes are beginning to outnumber buggies on the roads. Horse-drawn buggies, long a symbol of the Amish lifestyle, are finding less use as more people in Amish communities adopt electric-powered bicycles. In small Amish towns across America such as Sugarcreek, Ohio, Napponee…
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Why Tolkien Hated Dune
A short intro to the philosophy of ethics J.R.R. Tolkien maintained a very private, but very negative opinion of Frank Herbert’s Dune. In Tolkien’s Library, entry 964, Tolkien is quoted…
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Self-control signals and affords power
New research from the UC San Diego Rady School of Management and Texas A&M University finds that having self-control is often what leads to power.
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Chlorpyrifos: Pesticide tied to brain damage in children
Prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos, a widely used insecticide, is linked to lower birth weight, reduced IQ, loss of working memory, attention disorders, and delayed motor development.
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How the Great Green Wall is holding back the Sahara desert
The Great Green Wall being built in Africa to halt the southern progress of the Sahara Desert is a favorite public works project of mine — it’s massive, ambitio