As usual, Paul Ford’s Web Conversations With the Year 2000, says it better than I can: 2000 me: Wow you still work on the web, that’s amazing. It must be so easy to publish really interesting web pages. 2020 me:Uhhhhh. [Very long pause.] Look, you can pay a low monthly fee and listen to any… Continue reading Twenty years on
Category: Uncategorized
Not at those prices
I think Nick Heer is being much too charitable to Apple when he says that: So, while I generally agree with Hansmeyer’s suggestions for changes, I have to wonder if these limitations are somehow deliberate, rather than something Apple has yet to change. The touchscreen-oriented interaction model of the iPad necessarily limits its software in… Continue reading Not at those prices
Fame while hidden from view
Catching up with my podcast queue the other day, I was slightly taken aback at the moment in episode 153 of Imaginary Worlds where Doug Jones mentioned that he’s recently turned sixty years old and finds himself having to think a bit harder nowadays about whether a younger performer might be a better fit for… Continue reading Fame while hidden from view
COVID-19 Vaccine SE
The Onion reveals that Pfizer Announces First Batch Of Coronavirus Vaccine Will Be Collector’s Edition Limited To 2,000 Doses: NEW YORK—Following this week’s news that the immunization may be 90% effective in preventing Covid-19, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced in an advertisement Wednesday that the first batch of its highly anticipated coronavirus vaccine would arrive in… Continue reading COVID-19 Vaccine SE
Nominal
I cannot be the only person who read Nominal… Don’t ask why Batman is sad unless you’re willing to give him the time to consult his spreadsheet. … and whose first thought was “Excel is a lousy tool for this.” We’ve all fallen into this trap, but we’ve all regretted it by the time the… Continue reading Nominal
Robot delusions
Courtesy of Medium’s algorithms flagging this as a story I might like, Lost Letters From Cassini reveals the sad truth behind the fate of the Cassini probe: At last the REAL story of the Cassini spacecraft can be told. Read the letters NASA doesn’t want you to see! […] September 15th, 2017 My Dearest Geneviève:… Continue reading Robot delusions
Another sucker writes…
David Thomson, reviewing two recent Cary Grant biographies for the London Review of Books: Dead at 82, Cary Grant had made 77 films. [But…] let’s say there are twenty or so pictures that are keepers. Then let’s add that in any one of those films he had 15 minutes of ambiguous splendour. That’s five hours… Continue reading Another sucker writes…
Team commuting
Driven mad by the way lockdowns have given Microsoft Teams a chance to snag a portion of the enterprise software market, it seems that Microsoft may have over-reached themselves if this Wall Street Journal article about changes to Teams is anything to go by: Microsoft Corp. is developing an update to its Teams package of… Continue reading Team commuting
Button pressed
I’m a tad unclear on whether building a device that lets you press a button in order to press another button is quite the great leap forward it’s being painted as here: I showed this to someone and they said, “So.. you built a button that you press that will press a button? Why not… Continue reading Button pressed
Incorruptible
Today seems to have turned into a day of reading speculative fiction online. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday… I first read Incorruptible by Peter Watts a couple of years ago as part of the XPRIZE Flight #008 competition. It’s precisely as optimistic as you’d expect from Watts: This is the moment Malika… Continue reading Incorruptible