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Why is AI so useless for business?
AI research has structural problems that limit how much it can impact business. But understanding why gives a way to determine what will work and what won't, as well as reveal new business opportunities.
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Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify
I'm making over $800 per month with my music— almost exclusively through Spotify. This is up from $400 per month last year. I don't tour, I don't sell merch and I'm not on a major label. I'm just a small indie artist making music in my evenings— and Spotify is making that possible.
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Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
For decades, I have been talking about the importance of individual privacy. For almost as long, I have been using the metaphor of digital feudalism to describe how large companies have become central control points for our data. And for maybe half a decade, I have been talking about the world-sized robot that is the…
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Disclosure: Another macOS privacy protections bypass
Today I'm disclosing a macOS privacy protections bypass. (You may recall that I disclosed another one last year .) The privacy protections system (also known as TCC: Transparency, Consent, and Control) was introduced in macOS Mojave, and one of its purposes is to protect certain files on your Mac from access by…
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The US is using the Guardian to justify jailing Assange for life
Julian Assange is not on trial simply for his liberty and his life. He is fighting for the right of every journalist to do hard-hitting investigative journalism without fear of arrest and extradition to the United States. Assange faces 175 years in a US super-max prison on the basis of claims by Donald Trump’s administ
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Dynamic type systems are not inherently more open
Internet debates about typing disciplines continue to be plagued by a pervasive myth that dynamic type systems are inherently better at modeling “open world” domains. The argument usually goes like this: the goal of static typing is to pin everything down as much as possible, but in the real world, that just isn’t…
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Systemd, ten years later: a historical and technical retrospective
10 years ago, systemd was announced and swiftly rose to become one of the most persistently controversial and polarizing pieces of software in recent history, and especially in the GNU/Linux world. The quality and nature of debate has not improved in the least from the major flame wars around 2012-2014, and systemd…
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“Why Using WhatsApp Is Dangerous“
telegra.ph/why-using-whatsapp-is-dangerous-01-30-42020381 points234 commentscited by 3Security & Privacy details
A few months ago I wrote about a WhatsApp backdoor that allowed hackers to access all data on any phone running WhatsApp [1]. Facebook, its parent company, claimed at the time that they had no proof the flaw had ever been used by attackers [2]. Last week it became clear that this backdoor had been exploited to extract…
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My least favorite Rust type
Idx is typically an integral type, but you can make a Range of anything, which will become important later. Here’s a range of Unit:
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Please Fund More Science
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal. Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the...
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GitHub Dark Mode is too Dark
If you hate it too this is why. Using color theory to show why GitHub dark mode is disappointing
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My Eight-Year Quest to Digitize 45 Videotapes
My journey to create a YouTube of memories from my family’s old home videos.
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How I operated as a staff engineer at Heroku
I was incredibly lucky to spend 5 amazing years at Heroku. By the end of my time, I was operating in a Staff capacity, although I’m honestly completely uncle...
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Why are we so bad at software engineering?
From XKCD, released under the Creative Commons 2.5 License An app contributed to chaos at last week's 2020 Democratic Iowa Caucus. Hours after the caucus opened, it became obvious that something had gone wrong. No results had been reported yet. Reports surfaced that described technical problems and inconsistencies…
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I can't keep up with idiomatic Rust
Recently withoutboats posted a series of blog posts about some syntax sugar he would like added to Rust.
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People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
What does it look like to be obsessed with success and prestige? Imagine a guy who starts many endeavors and side projects just because he wants to be known as the creator of something. Or someone who builds another social app, not because he has an unique problem that's unaddressed, but because he wants to be the…
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Why I Quit Using Google
So I was recently asked why I prefer to use free and open source software over more conventional and popular proprietary software and services. A few years ago I was an avid Google user. I was deep…
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Flatpak: A security nightmare – two years later
Flatpak - a security nightmare
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Remote software developers earn more than non-remote developers
This post is an excerpt from my 2020 software developer pay analysis . Read the rest of the analysis here .
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The End of OS X
OS X is retired, but fortunately, its legacy appears to live on in macOS 11.0.
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I assume I’m below average (2010)
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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So I reverse engineered two dating apps
In this post I show some of my findings during the reverse engineering of the apps Coffee Meets Bagel and The League. I have identified several critical vulnerabilities during the research, all of which have been reported to the affected vendors. Introduction In these unprecedented times, more and more people are…
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How I made a 3D game in 2 KB of JavaScript
Months ago, when I heard that the legendary JS1k game jam would not be continuing, I talked it over with some other devs and decided to help fill the void we would host a 2k game jam on itch called…
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The database I wish I had
I watched the talk " Platform as a Reflection of Values: Joyent, Node.js and beyond " by Bryan Cantrill, and I think he was able to put into words something I already felt for some time: if there’s no piece of software out there that reflects your values, it’s time for you to build that softwarefootnote:talk-time[ At…