Recently updated blogs

A new game for the Commodore PET, also, how to detect keyboards on a Commodore PET. Rumors that I am might be writing a game (or is it a playable joke?) are not entirey unfounded. Also, another (maybe helpful) note on PET keybords and how to detect them. Continue reading…

Interfaces are becoming less dense. I’m usually one to be skeptical of nostalgia and “we liked it that way” bias, but comparing websites and applications of 2024 to their 2000s-era counterparts, the spreading out of software is hard to ignore. To explain this trend, and suggest how we might regain density, I started by asking what, exactly, UI density is. It’s not just the way an interface looks at one …

What is the software industry playing at? - Tagged: Rant, Agile, Software Management

It is a well know fact I was a huge fan of pooping at work. There is something about getting paid to take a shit and wipe your ass on the company dime. Now that I don’t work pooping just isn’t the same.

Original airdate: May 19, 2024 The premise: Bart’s prank involving a human brain in a jar backfires when he is forced to “care” for it as a school assignment. He begins to form a true kinship with the human organ, a growing obsession that begins to worry Homer and Marge. The reaction: I’ve talked several times about the difficulty this show has had writing Bart over the last few decades. …

Bertrand and I have recently finished our review paper on Bayesian prediction. One of my favorite part there is the distinction between inferential and predictive Bayes. A Bayesian procedure is such that we treat observed data as a realization of random variables, and we calculate the conditional distribution of unknown quantities given the observed data. In this sense, there is no difference between posterior inference $p(\theta \vert y)$ and posterior …

Great news. Issue number two of "Incredible Doom - Eternal September" is now fully available online for free. Here's how you can enjoy it:Patrons: Grab your free e-book now as a token of our appreciation.Everyone else: read the whole story on the archive page here, get the e-book for just $3, or, if you love flipping through physical pages, snag a beautiful 53-page print version for $9. Tip: Buying both …

In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead. A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three astronauts and a space car. After a three day journey to the moon, two of the astronauts climbed into a spindly lander …

This was a good spring for cherry blossoms. We had many sunny days when the trees were in bloom in April. On a day like that it’s easy to think the meaning of life is beauty and calm and love and peace. The same when the white lilacs are in bloom. Though lilacs do make poor cut flowers. They don’t last long. So maybe the meaning of life is impermanence. …

In recognition of those who have served our country in the military, Heather Wilkinson Rojo of the Nutfield Genealogy blog started the Honor Roll Project. It’s an opportunity to publicly document the names on military memorials around the world, thus making them easily searchable on the internet for people who are looking for them! This post is about a plaque that most likely used to be at Norwalk’s old police …

I’m pretty sure reading /r/AmItheAsshole is harmful to my psyche, and yet… … and yet why shouldn’t I be able to participate in this collectively harmful behavior? I don’t have good enough stories so I made ChatGPT write some… r/AmItheAsshole • 30 minutes ago ConcernedMom29 AITA for Asking My Husband to Stop Setting Off Fireworks Inside the House? I'm a bit unsure if I'm in the wrong here, but I …

How to fix the `SQLSTATE[HY000] [1524] Plugin 'mysql_native_password' is not loaded` errors caused in MySQL 8.4 no longer enabling the `mysql_native_password` plugin by default.

What features do you think make good selling points for games? An immersive world and interesting character development? Challenging obstacles and boss fights? Or what about how big the file size is to download? Because for some reason, video game marketers in the 90s suddenly started doing a lot of bragging about how big the … Continue reading "(File) Size Matters?"

In one of those odd twists of the rules of the universe, a woman receives credit for doing something the male protagonist in this book actually did first. The woman is Coco Chanel, (who, by the way, is not mentioned in the book) and the man is Gerald Murphy. You may have heard of Murphy … … Continue reading →

X Corp. v. Bright Data Ltd. is being reported in the press for an odd proposition, quoting this sentence: “X Corp. wants it both ways: to keep its safe harbors yet exercise a copyright owner’s right to exclude, wresting fees from those who wish to extract and copy X users’ content.”1 Um, no, which I’ll briefly explain, later. What everyone is missing, though, is the opinion is the court’s frontal …