Once upon a time there was a giant called Rab who lived in Glasgow and almost no one came to his door to kill him anymore. He had lived there since the time before legend, long before
there even was a Glasgow, when giants and witches and kings and fairies and goblins fought, loved, and tricked their way across the land. It was a time when you had to live on your
wits and you could only survive by being clever enough to escape from the traps and tricks that you‘ll have heard about in other fairy stories. It was a time of hotheads and feuds but
luckily for him Rab was a more thoughtful person who managed to survive, more by avoiding than outwitting or fighting. So it was that he kept living in Glasgow right up to the present
day.
There is an American principle that success is more about what you are making than what you are worth, and even less about being able to stop working. This is a brilliant cultural
driver for a strong economy as it celebrates working billionaires. In Britain, the dream is more about making money then cashing in and going to sit on a beach somewhere. Maybe there
is also a third way where, when you no longer worry about where the next meal is coming from or you family is reasonably secure, you then turn down the money-making drive to
‘maintenance’ mode, ease off on stress, and put your energies into what you like rather than what you must.
You are at a party and overhear a conversation between Lucy and her friend.
In the conversation, Lucy mentions she has a secret number that is less than 100.
She also confesses the following information:
“The number is uniquely describable by the answers to the following four questions:”
Q1) Is the number divisible by two?
Q2) Is the number divisible by three?
Q3) Is the number divisible by five?
Q4) Is the number divisible by seven?
…
I loved this puzzle. I first solved it a brute-force way, with Excel. Then I found increasingly elegant and logical solutions. Then I shared it with some friends: I love it! Go read the whole thing.
Today, just about all monitors and screens are digital (typically using an LCD or Plasma technology), but a decade or two ago, computer displays were based on the analog technology
inherited from TV sets.
These analog displays were constructed around Cathode Rays Tubes (commonly referred to as CRTs).
Analog TV has a fascinating history from when broadcasts were first started (in Black and White), through to the adoption of color TV (using a totally backwards-compatible system with
the earlier monochrome standard), through to cable, and now digital.
Analog TV transmissions and their display technology really were clever inventions (and the addition of colour is another inspiring innovation). It’s worth taking a look about how
these devices work, and how they were designed, using the technology of the day.
After a couple of false starts, an analog colour TV system, that was backwards compatible with black and white, became standard in 1953, and remained unchanged until the take-over by
digital TV broadcasts in the early 2000’s.
I’ve come to believe that the goal of any good framework should be to make itself unnecessary.
Brian said it explicitly of his PhoneGap project:
The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist.
That makes total sense, especially if your code is a polyfill—those solutions are temporary by d…
As well as publishers creating AMP versions of their pages in order to appease Google, perhaps they will start to ask “Why can’t our regular pages be this fast?” By showing that
there is life beyond big bloated invasive web pages, perhaps the AMP project will work as a demo of what the whole web could be.
Alas, as time has passed, that hope shows no signs of being fulfilled. If anything, I’ve noticed publishers using the existence of their AMP pages as a justification for just letting
their “regular” pages put on weight.
In fact, AMP’s evolution has made it a viable solution to build entire websites.
On an episode of the Dev Mode podcast a while back, AMP was a hotly-debated topic. But even
those defending AMP were doing so on the understanding that it was more a proof-of-concept than a long-term solution (and also that AMP is just for news stories—something else that
Google are keen to change).
But now it’s clear that the Google AMP Project is being marketed more like a framework for the future: a collection of web components that prioritise performance
…
You all know my feelings on AMP already, I’m sure. As Jeremy points out, our optimistic ideas that these problems might go away as AMP “made itself
redundant” are turning out not to be true, and Google continues to abuse its monopoly on search to push its walled-garden further into the mainstream. Read his full article…
Nowadays, fraudulent online stock-trading schemes are common. But even before the first electric telegraph, two bankers committed the equivalent of modern-day Internet stock fraud.
Nowadays, fraudulent online stock-trading schemes are common. But even before the first electric telegraph, two bankers committed the equivalent of modern-day Internet stock fraud.
…
Fabulous article from 1999 about how two bankers in 1837 hacked additional data into the fledgling telegraph system to surreptitiously (and illicitly) send messages to give
them an edge at the stock exchange. Their innovative approach is similar to modern steganographic systems that hide information in headers, metadata, or within the encoding of invisible characters.
Erika and I did a long weekend in the woods as part of a victory lap/recovery from the Kickstarter. SO GOOD, and SO NEEDED. It's with great thanks that I share this wonderful comic
from Natalie on her non-monogamous life. I hope you all like this slice of autobio and honest comic. Drop her a word of
Erika and I did a long weekend in the woods as part of a victory lap/recovery from the Kickstarter. SO GOOD, and SO NEEDED. It’s with great thanks that I share this wonderful comic
from Natalie on her non-monogamous life. I hope you all like this slice of autobio and honest comic. Drop her a…
Oh Joy Sex Toy is a fabulous webcomic anyway, but it was especially pleasing to see some poly-representation in a guest comic on the
site recently. Especially when that guest comic mirrors a broad part of my own experience of polyamory: that it may look exciting, sexy, scandalous or crazy to other people, but – for
the most part – to us it’s pretty everyday, domestic, and mundane.
Pop quiz: In your typical James Bond movie, who is the protagonist?
Seems like a strange, obvious question, right? It’s obviously Bond. He’s the hero. He’s played by the top-billed actor. The franchise is basically named after him. So, clearly, Bond
is the protagonist. Right?
Put a pin in that…
Pop quiz: In your typical James Bond movie, who is the protagonist?
Seems like a strange, obvious question, right? It’s obviously Bond. He’s the hero. He’s played by the top-billed actor. The franchise is basically named after him. So, clearly, Bond
is the protagonist. Right?
Put a pin in that, and we’ll come back to it.
Now, here’s a similar question: In the new Avengers: Infinity War, who is the protagonist?
…
This article mirrors almost-exactly the conversation that Ruth and I had coming out of the cimena after seeing Infinity War the
other week.
You’ve seen Daft Punk music videos before. You’ve seen remixes of Daft Punk music videos before. You’ve seen Lego remixes of Daft Punk music videos before. But you haven’t seen anything
like this before (unless you’ve seen this before).
