Programmers are the most optimistic bunch of people I have ever come across. Ask us how long something will take and chances are our estimates will be way off. It’s not because we hate you. It’s not because we didn’t know any better, either. We’re just very optimistic about everything. The project, our skills, the [...]
Two days ago SpaceX launched a rocket. With it, hopefully, a new space age. It’s taken us 70 years to go from “Hey neat, our V2 rocket can fly through space a bit” to having the first commercial space mission – if I understand correctly the Dragon capsule is delivering some stuff to the International Space Station. [...]
We are on the brink of a huge cultural shift. As governments worldwide flop around trying to Fix The Economy ™ and make sure we all don’t starve to death … … there are individuals spending trillions of dollars pushing the envelope of humankind’s achievement. The whole of humankind. Not just padding their pockets. Things that a [...]
A whole industry is actively conning us. But they get away with it, because we can’t get away from them. No, I’m not talking about Facebook or Google or Microsoft or Apple. That’s child’s play in comparison. Nope, not copyright and patent trolls either. I’m talking about the business model used by the razor blade, [...]
This post is aimed at my local readers, the rest can look at it as a curiosity from an awesome small country that is fumbling all over itself trying to be even awesomer. Slave labor We don’t have Mexicans, but we do have students. A whole social caste of people ripe for abuse because they [...]
A punch to the face. That’s what it feels like when you release something and nobody likes it. A hard punch to the face. That’s what it feels like when you miss a block in boxing. Launching products and boxing have so much in common they are pretty much the same thing. Both are about overcoming [...]
The Boy Scouts have a rule: “Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it.” If you find a mess on the ground, you clean it up regardless of who might have made the mess. /../ the original form by Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, was “Try and leave this world a little better than you [...]
Because you are an idiot. But that’s harsh, so let me explain why this makes you an idiot. There was an article posted to HN yesterdayabout why people don’t go to the gym, it included a simple motivational technique of paying yourself to go. After commenting that the only thing it takes to go to [...]
The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill in the US aimed at protecting intellectual property online. As originally proposed the bill would (skip to Something Useful if you know this stuff) /../ allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. [...]
Programmers are a special breed, good programmers especially – our craft is more an art than we like to admit when trying to wrestle it into a Hard Engineering Discipline ™. It’s actually more like mathematics, music or the wizardry Kaylee does in Firefly. Good programmers have a special feel, a talent that is difficult [...]
