ajlburke's comments

I saw the name and thought it might be some kind of retro throwback to the 1996 version of Netscape Communicator. I was sort of looking forward to the integrated but awkward built-in mail client and newsreader.

Hacker News still uses tables - for layout!

But it always loads super fast, and it just works.

We figured out how to display text on a web page decades ago. It's a shame more people aren't just doing it the direct way anymore.

(Applications are a different matter obviously)

I liked his point near the end of the article comparing blockchains to XML - overcomplicated and oversold and added to too many things due to marketing and consultant hype.

The obvious next question he didn't ask is, what is the JSON of blockchain? The one that's more flexible and efficient and ends up actually becoming ubiquitous?

Maybe it hasn't appeared yet? Maybe it shouldn't? I don't know, but the comparison is just waiting for that followup.

I gather it was used to regulate the temperature of the liquid coolant - but instead of just some pipes or whatever, the designers turned it into a nice "waterfall" feature. I think it even lit up.

It should be noted that anybody coming into Canada now from a foreign country, no matter their citizenship, is being told to self-quarantine for 14 days.

This isn't mandatory or enforced (yet) but it's not exactly a red carpet for folks to come visit for tourism or business meetings.

Thanks for the beorg link - I've been trying to find a way to make my org-mode files mobile-accessible.

JustifyContents and AlignItems are like inserting an old USB key: I always get it backwards the first time and have to switch it over.

Take a look at FlexBox - if you've been around the CSS layout block a few times you might find yourself going "finally - they figured it out!"

I like to think of Sisyphus a bit like someone waiting in line for a rollercoaster or a ski lift. The pushing is a slog, but then you reach the top and WOW BOOOM the rock cascades down the hill and it's AWESOME! Time to start pushing it back up again.

Yes yes I know Sisyphus is a metaphor for the pointlessness of life - but that doesn't mean you have to take it at face value.

I loved EMACS when I first tried it. Granted, that was in around 2001 and my day job had required using a terrible bloated version of IBM WebSphere Application Developer which would leak 16 megs of RAM every time I tried to open an HTML page, forcing me to completely restart my 640meg Dell several times a day. EMACS, in Terminal.app on the then-new OSX, was so refreshingly fast and light (and comparitively good looking) that I finally felt like I could do some real work for a change.

I know that sounds kind of ridiculous, considering EMACS' history - but you never had to use that vintage IBM JSP suite!

Between this and the infamous hacker group called "The Shadow Brokers" I think it's time someone did a study on the influence of Mass Effect on tech culture.

Not me, though - I'm in the middle of some calibrations right now.

My local airport (Halifax YHZ) has notoriously bad landing conditions, and around a year ago I was in a 767 that aborted its landing and went back around. Turns out (at least as far as I've been able to tell from Wikipedia etc.) that the entire aborted landing sequence is activated in one step by the pilot and the plane does all the multiple complicated things it needs to do (change thrust, trim, flaps, etc.) mostly by itself. How that would work with bad sensors is a separate question - although presumably by this point in a flight you'd know what's up with your sensors one way or another.

That's very cool - thanks for sharing!

I've done some work in "parallel worlds" overlaid on top of the real one by latitude/longitude, using the cool "ARCL" library - and the biggest headache I've found for location-based AR (instead of the type that just scans the room or a table) is that even little variations in GPS positioning can really interfere with the experience.

The first time you see virtual objects linked to a real-world place, it's magical - but that magic quickly goes away when everything suddenly shifts 10 (or 50) meters to the east because your device got updated GPS info.

I've become much more aware of how much "cheating" happens in driving / map apps to cover up these hiccups - ever take an exit and your map still shows you driving down the highway for a while? That kind of cheating probably won't work in an AR space.

This is technology that will no doubt improve, but it's definitely one of those "final 5% is 50% of the work" nuisances where just a small amount of inaccuracy can wreck the illusion.

One of the reasons I loved the Mass Effect games was that their design team had clearly been looking at these same pictures, especially when they built the Presidium.

As a kid, I would look at those pictures and imagine my life in the future looking like this. Instead, in the real future, I play video games where I can wander around these kinds of spaces virtually.

Freshbooks and Wave both offer repeatable invoices - I'm sure other invoicing/bookkeeping services do as well.

I "Flintstoned" my small SAAS with automated monthly Freshbooks invoices until I had the time and money to get Stripe properly integrated. It meant we could get paying customers from day one with one less programming/integration headache to worry about.

Skara Brae also features in some of the Ultima games. Supposedly both companies hired the same consultant who provided some of the same naming ideas to both customers - oops!

I cannot recommend this highly enough. It's a real slice of history. If you're lucky they'll actually let you play the game - which is still a fun challenge.

When I went there a few years ago, the PDP-1 demos were actually done by the original guys who programmed Spacewar! I don't know if they're still doing that, but it's magical to be in the presence of these pioneers. This industry is young enough that many of the original masters are still alive and eager to share their stories and achievements.

You're right - my mistake!

It was pretty awesome for enterprise software in the mid-90s, but the world caught up with it soon after.