779,923 Jun unique visitors TypeScript is an open source lanaguage from Microsoft that solves this problem by introducing an optional type system and class-based object-orientation, which make great tooling for large applications possible. TypeScript lets you write JavaScript that is robust enough…

Erasure codes are one of those seemingly magical mathematical creations that with the developments described in the paper XORing Elephants: Novel Erasure Codes for Big Data, are set to replace triple replication as the data storage protection mechanism of choice. The result says Robin Harris…

There were plenty of high profile people at the Economist event in March, but hands down the best session was a simple interview with Ed Catmull , the president of Pixar . Martin Giles from the Economist did the interview, and did an excellent job letting Catmull cover some excellent territory.…

The computer from WarGames is going on sale. Great prop story here: http://t.co/Y7O0znk7sU

Today, a large collection of Web hosting and service companies announced that they will support Railgun, a compression protocol for dynamic Web content. The list includes the content delivery network and Web security provider CloudFlare, cloud providers Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, and thirty…

George R.R. Martin is the man behind A Song of Ice and Fire — the series of epic novels upon which HBO’s Game of Thrones is based. A novelist and screenwriter, Martin’s career has spanned a number of genres and mediums, from short stories to the 1980s reboot of The Twilight Zone. In addition to the…

Remember when in 10 Things I Hate About You , Larisa Oleynik sees her sister’s black underwear and tells Joseph Gordon-Levitt it means she wants to have sex someday, or is sexually active? Because that’s the only reason someone would have black underwear. Underwear means things! So ladies and gents,…

Walk through the first steps of character creation with today's preview of Star Wars®: Edge of the Empire™! http://t.co/lNDa4vtWfp

As we've already discussed twice before , some directors will go to insane lengths to avoid using CGI, seemingly just so they can point at the screen during the premiere and say, "Yeah, a real guy totally did that." And now, thanks to our investigative efforts, you too can annoy people at the movies…

Written by Joanna Schroeder for The Good Men Project Dear Izz, The hardest thing to do, as a parent, is to let your kid go out into the world on his own, even if it’s just to kindergarten. Dad and I may talk a tough game about loving that you guys are getting bigger, but if we’re honest, it’s pretty…

The Dungeon Master has detention. We wait at his house by the county road. The Dungeon Master’s little brother Marco puts out corn chips and orange soda. Marco is a paladin. He fights for the glory of Christ. Marco has been many paladins since winter break. They are all named Valentine, and the…

ADDitude readers share the IEP tips and tricks that help their ADHD children stay focused, happy, and successful at school. by Kay Marner Filed Under: ADHD Accommodations, 504s, IEPs , ADHD in High School Print Other IEP Accommodations "I am a teacher and I suggest auditory cuing to sustain…

By Kurt Wagner, reporter FORTUNE — “Weird.” That was the one-word answer given by Apple (AAPL) chairman Arthur D. Levinson when asked to describe his experience running the company’s board of directors since Steve Jobs’s death. Levinson, who joined the board in 2000, was a colleague and close friend…

At Sprint.ly we’re big fans of shipping. So much so that we militantly remove anything that stands in our way of shipping, including process. "You can’t ship process." – Ethan Kaplan, VP of Product at Live Nation Our approach, which we call Non-Blocking Development , isn’t so much a methodology as…

I'm Bored. What's Next? http://t.co/TssuU2Ru via @techcrunch

In my previous post , I started off with some initial impressions of Dungeon World by Sage Kobold Games, including an Actual Play writeup of my first session, playing through the awesome old AD&D classic G1 – Steading of the Hill Giant Chief . In this post, I run through our second session, and…

Early on Halloween morning, members of Facebook’s Computer Emergency Response Team received an urgent e-mail from an FBI special agent who regularly briefs them on security matters. The e-mail contained a Facebook link to a PHP script that appeared to give anyone who knew its location unfettered…

Harrison Ford's complicated history with Han Solo http://t.co/GsJmRriv

Aaron’s Law: http://t.co/xmHUzErm #AaronSwartz

Jan. 21, 2010 • essays • 0 Comments Recently the startup I've been working at for 6 or so months launched its first product. Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers -- a place where you can find the best source for a wide range of information online; from local hotspots…

Pixar story artist Emma Coats has tweeted a series of “story basics” over the past month and a half — guidelines that she learned from her more senior colleagues on how to create appealing stories: #1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes. #2: You gotta keep in mind what’s…

With the upcoming release of Django 1.5 one of the largest changes is that you can now specify your own User model. If you’re fine with Django’s current User model than you don’t have to change any code. If you want to take advantage of this new functionality then keep on reading as I’ll go through…

For much of the time we spent developing Safari — long before it was called by that name — it pretended to be Microsoft Internet Explorer. Specifically, Internet Explorer for Mac, which Apple had provided with the OS since 1998. Less than six months before Safari debuted, it started pretending to be…

That note from Ryan Dancey on WOTC's acquisition of TSR was from back in 2000. Interesting historical #dnd read: http://t.co/SllYBBTy

During the early development of Safari, I didn’t just worry about leaking our secret project through Apple’s IP address or our browser’s user agent string. It also concerned me that curious gawkers on the outside would notice who I was hiring at Apple. Other than a bit part in a documentary about…

RIP @aaronsw - so sad and wrong. Lessig's post about this the best so far - http://t.co/UBeUb9Wp

A good look at the "obligation" mechanic from the new SW #rpg http://t.co/ySMmKMEC

Even as most of the nation’s 15,000 public school districts roll out new systems to evaluate teachers, many are still struggling with a central question: What’s the best way to identify an effective educator? After a three-year, $45 million research project, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation…

Motivation and good studying strategies, not IQ, predict the growth in math abilities, a new study shows. Image: olly/Shutterstock.com Looks like Tiger Mom had it half-right: Motivation to work hard and good study techniques, not IQ, lead to better math skills, a new study shows. But there's a…

Gabe @cwgabriel Monday, December 24 2012 - 12:17 PM I picked up the new Star Wars: Edge of the Empire beginner game box. This is an all in one product that contains everything you need to play a little adventure including character sheets, maps, rulebook and a handful of the special dice that are…

One of my fondest childhood memories is me sitting on a sled, being dragged along a thinly snow covered road by my dad. I was looking up at him and reflecting on the fact that he is also an individual person, just as I am. He has his own thoughts, his own wants, and his own memories. He’d had an…

Why we still love board games

When I run any kind of roleplaying game, I want the entire affair to be a smooth, seamless, exciting cinematic experience with a minimum of stutters and hiccups due to complicated rules. Of course, I also like adhering to complicated rules and fully enjoy exercising well-designed game system…

Go's goroutines make it easy to make embarrassingly parallel programs, but in many "real world" cases resources can be limited and attempting to do everything at once can exhaust your access to them. In these cases, you need to limit the concurrency of your program to fall in line with the…

Many years ago, when I was just a "cub", I found myself wandering through a very dilapidated section of my local library. There were dusty books with the bindings missing, books missing whole sections of pages, and a bin filled with torn and crumpled comic books. Being the ever-curious child I was,…

Everyone struggles with time management. We're inefficient beings: we're subject to long stretches of no productivity followed by whims of inspiration mixed with forgetfulness and all tied together by emotions that we struggle daily to control -- time tramples us all. In short, it's not easy being…

Image via Wikipedia A guest post by Daniel Donahoo Children are born to role play. It is one of the key ways in which children learn. Ok, so it isn’t all dice, paper and miniatures, but children have been creating their own RPGs forever. They don’t even use dice. All the early childhood development…

As the internet gets smarter and smarter and JavaScript starts piling up on web pages, we need to learn to organize our code. The days of filling the global namespace with all the functions we can think of are long over and have become far too difficult to maintain. Along with many other design…

How I got started consulting and the advice which changed my life. How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting. Hiya guys! Patrick (patio11) here. You signed up for periodic emails from me about making and selling software. My business is a motley collection of side…