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"All your base are belong to us" intro to my 2004 MIT Spam Conference talk
As I've mentioned before my talk at the 2004 MIT Spam Conference was about using one machine learning system to beat another. In that case ...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 694 posts.
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The Myth of Bananaland
The marketing and reality of the United Fruit Company
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Browsing negative content online makes mental health struggles worse: Study
People struggling with their mental health are more likely to browse negative content online, and in turn, that negative content makes their symptoms worse, according to a series of studies by researchers at MIT.
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Ukraine's three nuclear power plants have restored electricity production
Ukraine’s three operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) have largely restored their electricity production after sharply reducing output last week as a precautionary step due to renewed attacks on the country’s increasingly fragile energy grid, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy…
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There Are No More Dogs in Antarctica
The first journey we made with the gold picture frame sledge was to a small glacier not far from the base known as 'Sunnyside Glacier'. Me and Fergal Buckley took photographs of several toys with...
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Amnesty International concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.
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The “simple” 38 step journey to getting an RFC
The Internet is built on the mutual understanding of network protocols and practices, and most of those protocols are defined using Request For Comments (RFC) or Best Common Practices (BCP) documents.
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US Senators implore Department of Defense to expand the use of Matrix
Senators Ron Wyden and Eric Schmitt push the Defense Department to expand the use of Matrix to deliver sovereign, end-to-end encrypted and interoperable communications.
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Grifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
Four archetypes in software engineering
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Why did clothing become boring?
An investigation into when, how, and why everyone started dressing the same — and what it was like when they didn't
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Nearly half of teenagers globally cannot read with comprehension
The chart shows the share of children at the end of lower-secondary school age — aged 12 to 15 — who meet the minimum proficiency set by UNESCO in reading comprehension. This means they can connect the main ideas across various texts, understand the author’s intentions, and draw reasoned conclusions.
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Kenya and "the decline of the greatest coffee" (2021)
During one of his “yes or no” Instagram Q&As, Scott Rao lamented the declining quality of Kenyan coffees over the last three years—a sentiment I’ve heard echoed by buyers across Europe, the US, and Australia. He kicked a different question over to me about whether cultivar or microclimate or process has the greatest…
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’Brain rot‘ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024
After more than 37,000 votes on our shortlist, we're pleased to announce that the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 is 'brain rot'.
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You must read at least one book to ride
The first is going to sound bad in a culture where engineers are encouraged to apologize for existing while it is totally acceptable for a grifter that can't code to insist that they're a "thought leader". It is that, in my immediate professional environment, I am consistently acknowledged to be one of the best…
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The Engagement Is Better on Bluesky
Bluesky is the lobby to the open web. Find and build your community here.
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The deterioration of Google
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
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Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation
On the last day of 1945, with World War II finally behind it, Finland's government announced a new and very strange policy. All Finns were r...
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Do you need ID to read the REAL-ID rules?
[“The welcoming, friendly and visually pleasing appearance” of the TSA’s headquarters at 6595 Springfield Center Drive, Springfield, VA.]
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Prayer, Placement, and Absolution: Peter Hristoff on Islamic Prayer Rugs (2015)
Artist in Residence Peter Hristoff meditates on the role of Islamic prayer rugs (seccades) and the role they play in his own creative output.
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Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?
A data scientist’s perspective
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Institutional memory and reverse smuggling (2011)
Institutional memory comes in two forms: people and documentation. People remember how things work and why. Sometimes they write it down and store that information somewhere. Institutional amnesia works similarly. The people leave and the documents disappear, rot, or just become forgotten (as it were).
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Why I have resigned from the Royal Society
The Royal Society is a venerable institution founded in 1660, whose original members included such eminent men as Christopher Wren, Robert H...
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Wildlife monitoring technologies used to intimidate and spy on women
Camera traps and drones deployed by government authorities to monitor a forest in India are infringing on the privacy and rights of local women.
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Those correction notices, in full
In light of our recent discussion of the unwillingness of authors of published papers to acknowledge their mistakes, I thought I’d post the four correction notices that I’ve felt the need to issue.
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Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform
Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:
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The tech utopia fantasy is over
i talk about how the idea of a humanity-saving tech revolution from the usual tech suspects is dead (for me).
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The 'Return to Office' Lies
i vent about return to office bullshittery.
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Against the Dark Forest
The complex of ideas I’m going to call the Dark Internet Forest emerges from mostly insidery tech thinking, but from multiple directions.