Bubbles
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My younger sister graduated with a CompSci degree a few years ago. I've been behind her, motivating her and demystifying the world of programming from the very beginning. There was a piece of advice I repeated everyday, trying to make...
I’m calling it now, the adoption of AI agents into software development will be one of the most costly mistakes in the field’s history. Agents cannot program, and it’s taking longer and longer to realize that they can’t. They are a...
Unimportant administrative note: I’ve imported the posts from my original blog back in 2001–2005, when the site was called the slate and, later, Blank Slate. (The posts were in a handful of PHP files I left behind and forgot about when I...
Kate Towner Under Review:Vile Lady Villains. Danai Cristopoulou. Union Square & Co, May 2026. In Danai Cristopoulou’s debut novel Vile Lady Villains, readers meet Lady Macbeth and Klytemnestra, villains from Shakespeare and Aeschylus,...
We find these examples in the actions of good men, which implant an eager rivalry and a keen desire to imitate them in the minds of those who have sought them out…. …. Fortune we prize for the good things that we may possess and enjoy...
It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most...
Today's SMBC presents a new take on Moravec's Paradox: Mouseover title: "Once I realized this, all those inept AI laundry-folding videos became hilarious." The AfterComic: This may also help explain HR AI's work-to-rule "efficiency"…
Wet lab. “Wet lab” was a new term to me, I had to look it up – it’s a laboratory with chemicals where there’s spill risk etc. I have a physics background myself and the closest I came to liquids was liquid nitrogen, and when you spill...
Observer of rail in the Balkans Fabian Vendrig sent me this story about plans to have the infrastructure in place by 2029 to be able to run a Beograd - Zagreb - Ljubljana train with a reasonable trip time, pointing to the renovation of...
When I ran Ethernet around our house, I thought I was being clever. A CAT6 cable for every room - lush! Some of my rooms have lots of devices, so they get a nice big Ethernet switch with lots of ports and blinking lights. But most of my...
As a follow-up to my previous two posts (see here and here), I want to pose another question to my fellow admirers and students of Adam Smith, another fundamental “Adam Smith problem”. In Book III of The Wealth of Nations, … Continue...