Artificial intelligence still can’t beat a human when it comes to programming. But it’s only a matter of time.
The cover’s hero image draws you in. What is that beautiful-looking tape deck? (And wow, even today, that thing is pretty awesome.)
Web development moves at lightning speed. I still remember when I first started using libraries like jQuery, Prototype, script.aculo.us, Zepto, and many more. Even with modern tools like Angular, VueJS, React, Solid and Svelte, we still have to deal with the Document Object Model (DOM). While these frameworks encapsulate and hide direct DOM management, they still give us access to work with the DOM via refs and event handlers.
Good pizza is rare, even though the method to create it is well known.
In 2010, Airbus initiated a research collaboration with ENAC and Université de Toulouse III on a prospective study to define and validate an “Aeronautical Font”: the challenge was to improve the display of information on the cockpit screens, in particular in terms of legibility and comfort of reading, and to optimize the overall homogeneity of the cockpit.
Ah, the comfort zone—a snug emotional space where stress is scarce and predictability prevails. While it’s not all bad, staying there too long can effectively serve as a straightjacket for your potential. Let's peel back the layers and dissect the interplay between your comfort zone, personal growth, and the 'magic' that happens when you dare to stretch your boundaries.
Shoelace: A forward-thinking library of web components.
But behind the scenes, there’s a lot more going on. I’ll describe some of what happens, and (much much more importantly!) explain some tools you can use to see what’s going on behind the scenes yourself. We’ll use readelf, strace, ldd, debugfs, /proc, ltrace, dd, and stat. I won’t talk about the Python-specific parts at all – just what happens when you run any dynamically linked executable.
“The ability to do hard things is perhaps the most useful ability you can foster in yourself or your children. And proof that you are someone who can do them is one of the most useful assets you can have on your life resume.
I got a pair of AirPod Pro earbuds and set them up for my personal hearing needs. Later that day I went for a walk in my local woods and literally gasped out loud at hearing the birds I'd been missing for some years!
When you write some code and put it on a spacecraft headed into the far reaches of space, you need to it work, no matter what. Mistakes can mean loss of mission or even loss of life. In 2006, Gerard Holzmann of the NASA/JPL Laboratory for Reliable Software wrote a paper called The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code. The rules focus on testability, readability, and predictability:
In the pre-media world, we bumped into fables, or news from across the village, but mostly, our role models and experiences were based on reality.
In the process, they've given us vivid examples of why folding phones could be more than the latest gadget gimmick or another screen to scratch. They could actually be useful. According to these fictional futures, three primary reasons stand out:
NASA keeps the original film negatives from the Apollo program sealed in a frozen vault in Houston, TX and rarely grants access to them. As a result, nearly all of the photos we see of those historic missions were made decades ago or are copies of copies. Recently, the film was cleaned and digitally scanned at "an unprecedented resolution".
A few years ago I gave a short talk (slides) about myths that discourage people from blogging. I was chatting with a friend about blogging the other day and it made me want to write up that talk as a blog post.
It really is one of the best product names in Apple history: Vision is a description of a product, it is an aspiration for a use case, and it is a critique on the sort of society we are building, behind Apple’s leadership more than anyone else.
But, I’ve used essentially every major VR headset and AR device since 2013’s Oculus DK1 right up through the latest generations of Quest and Vive headsets. I’ve tried all of the experiences and stabs at making fetch happen when it comes to XR. I’ve been awed and re-awed as developers of the hardware and software of those devices and their marquee apps have continued to chew away at the “conundrum of the killer app” — trying to find something that would get real purchase with the broader public.
tldr InBrowser.App is an offline-capable PWA for tldr-pages. Fully runs in your browser. Zero API latency.
Vint Cerf is the recipient of the IEEE Medal of Honor “for cocreating the Internet architecture and providing sustained leadership in its phenomenal growth in becoming society’s critical infrastructure.” PETER ADAMS
Passkeys, the popular name for FIDO, are not only easy, they offer better protection against phishing than other forms of multi-factor authentication. This is how they work.
What is a passkey? A passkey is a new way to sign in that works completely without passwords. By using the security capabilities of your devices like Touch ID and Face ID, passkeys are way more secure and are easier to use than both passwords and all current 2-factor authentication methods.
Over the last year, cloud storage services Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive—and probably others—have migrated from custom kernel extensions to Apple’s new-ish File Provider extension. It provides an Apple-approved framework for integrating remote files into macOS and displaying them in the Finder. I touched on this move a year ago in “Cloud Storage Forecast Unsettled, with Possible Storms” (4 February 2022).