The Big Picture.
Why It’s So Hard to See that We’re Headed for the Biggest Crash Ever?
This is fairly typical of what happens toward the end of the conservation phase of every civilization’s adaptive cycle. Each problem that arises, taken by itself, is usually solvable—at least in principle. But, as problems accumulate, leaders who are accustomed to (and benefit from) the status quo grow increasingly reluctant to undertake the changes to systems and procedures that would be required in order to address worrisome trends. And as those trends are ignored, the level of effort and discomfort needed to reverse them soars. Once solving problems requires too much perceived sacrifice, the only realistic ways to deal with them are to deny their existence or to blame others for them. Blame has the advantages of enabling leaders to look as though they’re actually doing something, and of winning loyalty from their followers. But it does nothing to actually stave off snowballing crises.
The Galaksija computer was a craze in 1980s Yugoslavia, inspiring thousands of people to build versions in their own homes. The idea behind them was simple – to make technology available to everyone.
How Flash games shaped the video games industry.
A visual essay about the history of Flash games.
Makes me rethink my aversion against Flash a bit. Sure, I am happy it’s gone but of course everything that once was great and now disappeared leaves a melancholic vacuum.
Sold: An 1891 Patent by Granville T. Woods, Innovative Black Engineer.
Beginning during Woods’s lifetime, trade publications and other newspapers took to calling Woods the “Black Edison,” a nickname that reflected the virtual absence of Black Americans in engineering during Reconstruction and the late 19th century.
Selda Bağcan: Yaz Gazeteci Yaz (via fm4.orf.at).
IPv4, IPv6, and a sudden change in attitude.
Nature doesn’t care what you think about Postel’s Law, because the only Internet that happens will be the one that follows Postel’s Law. Every other internet will, without exception, eventually be joined to The Internet by some goofball who does it wrong, but just well enough that it adds value, so that eventually nobody will be willing to break the connection. And then to maintain that connection will require further application of Postel’s Law.
Will RISC-V Revolutionize Computing?
The royalty-free ISA, which debuted in 2011, supports new and more specialized microprocessor designs that soon will appear in traditional computing devices as well as wearables, home appliances, robotics, autonomous vehicles and factory equipment.
3D Book Image CSS Generator.
Generate an animated 3D image from a book cover and export to HTML/CSS to embed on your website.
This five-story, blood-red waterfall pours very slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. When geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, they thought the red color came from algae, but its true nature turned out to be much more spectacular.
Inside a Collaborative Text Editor.
The process of re-writing your edits to account for the work of others is called Operational Transformation. It's the most popular way to implement a collaborative editor and is used by Etherpad and Google Docs.