I just landed a PR that fixed a nasty data race in . Which shouldn’t have been technically challenging, but I took side-trips into Erlang, unit test footguns, whether or not I should go on ac

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the GenAI giants “watermarking” their output, which to say hiding some data in it so you can tell that it’s been generated by ChatGPT or Gemini or C

Fools have said that the Prairies are boring. This cannot be true, because in the absence of hills and trees there’s more distance in each direction you might look. Also, Prairie landscapes includ

It’s been a rough few years, for the earth, for the societies that populate it, and for my family. Like they say, “sandwich generation” There’ve been weeks when I’ve struggled for a smile. I susp

Those first three words in the title name the members of the family, cylindrical West-African drums that you usually put on a stand to play. Think of those sizes as Papa bear, Mama bear, an

The world is, I mean. Bottom-up. Maybe that’s just me not understanding? It doesn’t surprise me that there are people who are stupid and/or evil. The surprise is, the others not voting them ou

I spent last week at a summer music camp put on by WCAMS, the West Coast Amateur Musicians Society, pronounced “Wickams”. My goal in writing this is to influence a few readers in the direction

This summer has been very sporting; in the course of a couple of weeks I attended a World Cup match and a minor-league baseball game. Took pictures and thought about enjoying this stuff. I know th

Dear World: Now is a good time to get off social media that’s going downhill. Where by “downhill” I mean any combination of less useful, less safe, or less fun. It’s time for something better,

It’s been a while. February was the last entry in this ; I never stopped working on it but there hasn’t been much blogworthy. This piece offers a progress update for those who’ve been enterta

The piece you’re now looking at exists because curation of interesting not-lightweight material included quite a few focused on our dominant malaise, namely you-know-what, I mean it’s in the

Hey everyone, I know you’re overloaded because everything has . Long-form reading or writing or art or music, who’s got time for that? Fortunately there are those who still do and here’s som

The best thing about long-lived incumbent technologies like JSON and XML is that nobody really has to think about them much any more. Except for, I do occasionally, because while I’m of eithe

A person watching over my shoulder asked “How are you switching around so fast?” and I realized that while most readers here know this trick, some may not, and it’s awfully useful. [Update: I

Recently I got an invitation from an organization I respect, to a gathering of senior people, unconference format. Yes, it’s mostly about AI. No, it doesn’t reek of boosterism. My guess is that th

War is bad. Don’t start one. But we’re already in a class war and we’re losing. Where by “we” I mean most people; the winning side comprises, roughly, the richest 0.1% of the population, who a

That’s , which is to say Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, and their new series , an in-progress work comprising 2¼ or so novels. The Coreys are of course best-known for their deservedly w

On impulse, Lauren and I went out for a short walk around just a few blocks as the grey Spring afternoon shaded to dusk. On a second impulse, I grabbed the camera on the way out the door. — —

Our family has used for many years. Most recently 1Password 7, now at least three years out of date. We didn’t want to upgrade to the latest version, went looking for alternatives, and have b

This will be the 30 Long-Links outing. I’m 100% sure that there does not live a human being who has looked at all those Links, but my logfiles say that quite a few of you, Dear Readers, at least t