Photo-Illustration: Stevie Remsberg; Photos: Getty Images Get Ask Polly delivered weekly. Dear Polly, Why am I so lazy? As long as I can remember, I’ve always done as little as possible to still get the job done, to still get the A, to get the extra credit and be the teacher’s pet. I have always…

On May 18th, 2012, attorneys for Oracle and Google were battling over nine lines of code in a hearing before Judge William H. Alsup of the northern district of California. The first jury trial in Oracle v. Google , the fight over whether Google had hijacked code from Oracle for its Android system,…

Threadless , the internet-born design shop known for screen-printed graphic T-shirts, was once heralded as the best example of how to actually make money on the internet (back when it seemed impossible to do). Recent news that Threadless has acquired shoe design start-up Bucketfeet shows that the…

by Firefox 58, that’s the next but one version of the browser you all trust but don’t use , is going to become the first of the major browsers to do something about canvas fingerprinting – a devious, cookie-less way of tracking you on the web. Canvas fingerprinting relies on websites being able to…

AS DEVICES go, smartphones and tractors are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And an owner of a chain of mobile-device repair shops and a farmer of corn and soyabeans do not usually have much in common. But Jason DeWater and Guy Mills are upset for the same reason. “Even we can no longer fix the…

Photo: The Voorhes estimated that residents of the United States bought 183 million smartphones in 2016. There are already as many TVs in this country as there are people. That’s a lot of electronics, and these numbers are just going up. On balance, all this technology is probably making our lives…

The trick to being successful could, in fact, be simple. For one month, I declined all in-person activities with friends to see if it would make me more productive From my own experience interviewing highly successful artists, writers, and creative entrepreneurs I’ve found one of the most common…

In the video above two people are playing Laser Socks, a game I invented in an afternoon using a research programming system, common household items, and a couple lines of code. Players try to point a laser pointer at their opponent's socks while dodging their opponent's laser. Whenever they score a…

I was wondering recently after poring through yet another data breach how many people actually use multi-step verification. I mean here we have a construct where even if the attacker has the victim's credentials, they're rendered useless once challenged for the authenticator code or SMS which is…

A startup founder and ex-Facebook engineer’s story of the BSD+Patents license. Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice. A couple weeks ago, there was a renewed discussion about the software license for React, the popular rendering library created at Facebook. The Apache Foundation…

Several months ago, I turned off notifications from Facebook on my phone. Last week, I went ahead and removed the Facebook app from my phone. Now, I genuinely enjoy Facebook. I use it for keeping up with with my family and my IRL friends, who are spread out all over the world. (The questions I ask…

Here in famously pet-friendly Los Angeles, I encounter dogs that are blatantly not service animals on a daily basis. Recently, during a morning visit to my local café, I laughed when a woman whose tiny dog was thrashing around at the limits of its leash and barking fiercely at other customers loudly…

Max Hawkins' randomizer app sent him to the Czech Point Restaurant and Pub in Clutier, Iowa, among the many places he may never have found on his own. Courtesy of Max Hawkins This week, the podcast and show Invisibilia examines the nature of reality, with a Silicon Valley techie who created apps to…

Introduction Companies ask for a GitHub profile. Recruiters ask for a GitHub profile. The question “ Do you contribute to open-source? ” is now one of the most common questions asked in phone screens. If people want a GitHub, we shall give them a GitHub. This article will explain how to present a…

Share this article Free Price Quote From a Local Dealer View Special Offers No Obligation, Fast & Simple Free New Car Quote Change Car The Tesla Model 3 is here, and it is the most important vehicle of the century. Yes, the hyperbole is necessary. The original Tesla Model S was a proof of concept—it…

Portugal had one of the worst heroin epidemics in the Western world. At one point in the 1990s, a staggering 1% of the population was addicted to heroin. Overdoses were rampant, and drug-related deaths from AIDS were the highest in the European Union. Reeling from a dire public health crisis and…

Picture an electric vehicle startup. What do you see? A sleek, clean, bright industrial building next to one of California’s sun-baked highways? A massive factory in the Nevada desert? Or maybe an office in one of the smog-choked megacities of China? What about upstate New York? That’s where you’ll…

In the beginning, things were simple: you had two strings (a username and a password) and if someone knew both of them, they could log in. Easy. But the ecosystem in which they were used was simple too, for example in MIT's Time-Sharing Computer , considered to be the first computer system to use…

I’m CC’d on mails when things get slow, but never when things work as expected or are fast…oh well. Like an umpire in baseball, if we are doing our jobs, we are invisible. Subject: Docker operations slowing down I reach for my trusty haiku for this type of thing: Ah but in this scenario, it is…

Martin Fowler As I hear stories about teams using a microservices architecture , I've noticed a common pattern. Almost all the successful microservice stories have started with a monolith that got too big and was broken up Almost all the cases where I've heard of a system that was built as a…

The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle", and I mean it. And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen…

Suz Hinton nice cyber human 💾 web and open source hardware dev ☕️ I write code for @Microsoft 👩🏻‍🚀 http://noopkat.com @noopkat Jul 7 I gave streaming a go for the first time last July. Instead of gaming, which the majority of streamers on Twitch do, I wanted to stream the open source work I do in my…

Finding someone to market an API is like finding a unicorn. They need the technical knowledge to understand the API in detail, the communication skills to explain it, and the salesmanship to say why it’s the best. No one seems to have a concrete system, either — developer evangelists are encouraged…

In 1962, a local leader in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea asks Fore men to stop the sorcery that he believes is killing women and children. Courtesy Shirley Lindenbaum Most of the world didn't know anyone lived in the highlands of Papua New Guinea until the 1930s, when Australian gold…

So much land above the tunnels would be needed that you might as well just have a surface railway.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Reddit was raising about $150 Million in venture capital at a valuation of $1.7 billion. Since Reddit’s data is public on BigQuery , I quickly checked if there were any recent user engagement growth spurts which could justify such a high worth. Here’s an example…

Tattoo of Death , Choose Your Own Adventure #22 All maps courtesy of ChooseCo Reading a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book can feel like being lost in a maze and running through twists and turns only to find dead ends, switchbacks, and disappointment. In the books—for those not familiar with them—you…

I've had a few conversations recently where I say things like, "the Japanese Ruby community uses Ruby for different things than in America"... and I get blank stares. Specifically, I mention that America is very centered on Rails and web apps with Ruby. No surprise, right? "But then," people ask,…

How much do you read? For most of my adult life I read maybe five books a year — if I was lucky. I’d read a couple on vacation and I’d always have a few slow burners hanging around the bedside table for months. And then last year I surprised myself by reading 50 books. This year I’m on pace for 100.…