Recently updated blogs

Update: in the afternoon of January 14, news emerged that Sonos CPO Maxime Bouvat-Merlin is also leaving the company. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is out, felled by last year’s disastrous app launch. I have no inside track on what happened, but from what I’ve read, Sonos’s leaders made some terrible decisions. They’re worth looking at so we can avoid making similar mistakes. Before I elaborate, a few disclaimers. I’m not …

Week highlights: new releases of HDRView, LibreCAD, and cabbage; new features in GIMP and Ardour; FreeCAD’s alternative Ribbon UI gets an update. GIMP The DDS plugin now support loading files with BC7 compression. CmykStudent read the docs, looked up the implementation in ImageMagick, and wrote the code. This is a new feature, which seems counter-intuitive for something that has had two release candidates, but there you go. HDRView 2.1.0 Wojciech …

Wind whispers insults down the chimney - all your failures as a husband, friend, human You pull on Gore-Tex. Rustle as you walk. A meteorological mystery - This storm has squatted overhead for weeks. You pull on rubber boots. Open your front door. The cold hits your exposed cheek followed by countless raindrops, each delivering possible disasters. You pull each foot forward. Soon, one step follows another, squelching in saturated …

In my previous job, I worked as a food broker, which meant I was like a snack detective, hunting down the best munchies to bring to the masses. To get a jump on my snack game, I scoured the internet for clues about what these treats tasted like before I even dared to approach potential suppliers. One of my secret weapons was the legendary Taquitos.net. This site just hit the …

I haven't used it for anything yet, but automerge looks like a really nice library for doing CRDT/OT-like multi-player interactions

Last week, NASA announced it would study two different ways to pick up the samples the Perseverance rover is collecting on Mars and return them to Earth. Jeff Foust reports on the two approaches as well as interest by at least one company in an alternative.

When Ruth Neely France died in 1956 Cincinnati’s ink-stained wretches tumbled all over themselves to effusively memorialize Neely’s non-nonsense style and her outrageous adventures in the quest for a front-page headline. Some of the anecdotes were actually true. A few would have brought a smile to Neely’s face. In her day, she was not above a dash of hyperbole to keep her readers entranced.Did she really climb to the top …

I think, yup, I think the January 2025 RMC might be one of the best magazines I’ve bought so far. Ferry to Halifax. Quick walk. They close at six, I think, on a Monday. I’ve been so darn sick with... Read More ›

It’s some months since I read Marietje Schaake’s The Tech Coup, as she delivered the ST Lee Poicy Lecture here in Cambridge last November 11th, right after the US presidential election. Just a short time later, her warning looks even more prescient than it did on the day, as the American tech executives bend the knee at the court of Mar A Lago. Most of the book is a descriptive …

The unlikely connection between podcast studios, Renaissance libraries and man-caves.

In our first ‘Revolutionary Stuart Parliaments‘ article of 2025, Editor of the 1640-60 House of Lords section, Dr David Scott, considers the leading parliamentarian peer, Viscount Saye and Sele, and his relationship with the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. ‘The Warre was begun in our streets before the King or Parliament had any Armies’ concluded the renowned church leader Richard Baxter about the outbreak of the English Civil War in …

I’ve invoked the Flickr photos of Leo London a few times here. I don’t know the guy. I just happened upon his pics, at one point, and found several that spoke to my own NYC experience, and I’ve been raiding his collection ever since. Apropos of nothing, I was looking at them again and thought I’d re-circulate them. Both the one up top and the one below are Leo's. Presumably …

The death of photographer Oliviero Toscani was announced yesterday. To mark this news, we’re publishing a column I wrote for Creative Review in 2011, as the magazine he helped found, Colors, celebrated its 20th anniversary. Colors was an extraordinary piece of magazine publishing, bankrolled by Italian knitwear company Benetton and devised by Toscani, an Italian photographer/art director best known for his advertising work (in addition to Colors he also produced …

Alex Blechman? Ray Bradbury? Neal Stephenson? Mark Zuckerberg? Abe Murray? Anonymous? Depiction of a mysterious crystal sphere from Unsplash. Question for Quote Investigator: Science fiction is filled with cautionary fables and dystopian visions such as the murderous HAL 9000 computer of the movie “2001”, the relentless T-800 robot of the movie “The Terminator”, the disorienting cyberspace of the short story “Burning Chrome” by William Gibson, and the frenetic metaverse of …

Also known as gnocchetti dalla Valle D’Aosta, these teardrop dumplings (chnèfflènè) are a wonderful example of Italian mountain fare. They are made with a thick batter similar to spaetzle cooked in boiling salted water and dressed with onions sautéed in butter, wine and a little broth. A simple vegetarian recipe that takes little time to... The post Italian teardrop dumplings (chnèfflènè) appeared first on The Pasta Project.