Programming and human factors
The Great Filter Comes For Us All
2 December 2024 @ 6:25 pm
With a 13 billion year head start on evolution, why haven't any other forms of life in the universe contacted us by now?
teaching the aliens how to exit Vim(Arrival is a fantastic movie. Watch it, but don't stop there - read the
teaching the aliens how to exit Vim(Arrival is a fantastic movie. Watch it, but don't stop there - read the I Fight For The Users
30 November 2023 @ 8:11 pm
If you haven't been able to keep up with my blistering pace of one blog post per year, I don't blame you. There's a lot going on right now. It's a busy time. But let's pause and take a moment
The 2030 Self-Driving Car Bet
4 March 2022 @ 6:53 pm
It's my honor to announce that John Carmack and I have initiated a friendly bet of $10,000* to the 501(c)(3) charity of the winner’s choice:By January 1st, 2030, completely autonomous self-driving cars meeting SAE J3016 level 5 will be commercially available for
Updating The Single Most Influential Book of the BASIC Era
31 December 2021 @ 11:49 pm
In a way, these two books are responsible for my entire professional career.
With early computers, you didn't boot up to a fancy schmancy desktop, or a screen full of apps you could easily poke and prod with your finger. No, those computers booted up to the command
With early computers, you didn't boot up to a fancy schmancy desktop, or a screen full of apps you could easily poke and prod with your finger. No, those computers booted up to the commandBuilding a PC, Part IX: Downsizing
19 April 2020 @ 11:56 pm
Hard to believe that I've had the same PC case since 2011, and my last serious upgrade was in 2015. I guess that's yet another sign that the PC is over, because PC upgrades have gotten really boring. It took 5 years for me to muster
The Rise of the Electric Scooter
12 September 2019 @ 7:24 am
In an electric car, the (enormous) battery is a major part of the price. If electric car prices are decreasing, battery costs must be decreasing, because it's not like the cost of fabricating rubber, aluminum, glass, and steel into car shapes can decline that much, right?
On an
On anElectric Geek Transportation Systems
20 August 2019 @ 11:35 am
I've never thought of myself as a "car person". The last new car I bought (and in fact, now that I think about it, the first new car I ever bought) was the quirky 1998 Ford Contour SVT. Since then we bought a VW station wagon
An Exercise Program for the Fat Web
30 May 2019 @ 11:04 am
When I wrote about App-pocalypse Now in 2014, I implied the future still belonged to the web. And it does. But it's also true that the web has changed a lot in the last 10 years, much less the last 20 or 30.
Websites have gotten a lot
Websites have gotten a lotThe Cloud Is Just Someone Else's Computer
17 February 2019 @ 2:15 am
When we started Discourse in 2013, our server requirements were high:
1GB RAM
modern, fast dual core CPU
speedy solid state drive with 20+ GB
I'm not talking about a cheapo shared cpanel server, either, I mean a dedicated virtual private server with those specifications.
We were OK
What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?
22 October 2018 @ 10:52 am
I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here's my 15 second answer:
We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It's called Stack Overflow