Monthly Archives: March 2021

Google and the Petro Curse

Posted on 2021-03-11 by jcs

The Google graveyard of services is a familiar Internet trope that describes Google’s habit of sunsetting popular services. It’s infuriating. Seemingly everyone has a story of some app they depended on that Google killed. The smart money no longer adopts … Continue reading →

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Happy 48th Birthday, Dark Side of the Moon

Posted on 2021-03-10 by jcs

It’s that time again. As we do every year on March 10, Irreal is celebrating the anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, one of the best and most successful albums ever produced. I’m aware … Continue reading →

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The Most Vital Language

Posted on 2021-03-09 by jcs

Kontra has an interesting question: If aliens (which obviously would come from Mars aboard one of Musk’s spaceships) manage to completely disable one programming language to bring human civilization on earth to a screeching halt, which language would they choose? … Continue reading →

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Query: Emacs on the M1

Posted on 2021-03-08 by jcs

It’s time for me to upgrade my MacBook Pro. I don’t usually upgrade this soon but my current laptop has the horrible butterfly keyboard and there are flickering problems both with Emacs and other apps. The new hotness, of course, … Continue reading →

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Data Leverage

Posted on 2021-03-07 by jcs

Over at the MIT Technology Review, Karen Hao has a seemingly promising article with the enticing title How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you. I read the article with great anticipation hoping it would provide … Continue reading →

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Clojure and Scheme Compared

Posted on 2021-03-06 by jcs

As I’ve said before, I’m sometimes tempted to take up Clojure but have always been put off by its reliance on the JVM. Last year, Mike Zamansky posted a couple of videos (1, 2) on using Clojure for the Advent … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Offend a Programmer

Posted on 2021-03-05 by jcs

How to offend a programmer with a survey: #emacs https://t.co/j12Lj1dPpc — (webdev “Tory”) (@Endless_WebDev) February 28, 2021 You gotta admit: It is offensive. The proper survey would have been Emacs Vim VSCode, Atom, Sublime, or other bling-centric editor Eclipse, IntelliJ, … Continue reading →

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Brown M&Ms

Posted on 2021-03-04 by jcs

Do you know the story of brown M&Ms? It’s one of my favorite stories both because of the cleverness it reveals but also because of—at least according to conventional wisdom—the unexpected source of that cleverness. The short version of the … Continue reading →

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On Passwords and SolarWinds

Posted on 2021-03-03 by jcs

By now everyone knows about the major breach of the U.S. Government (and probably others) that had its genesis in an exploit that gave attackers access to the SolarWinds build chain. Some are reporting that the problem was a leaked … Continue reading →

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How to Implement a Zettelkasten Link Type in Org

Posted on 2021-03-02 by jcs

Christian Tietze is an author at the zettelkasten.de site and, of course, keeps his notes in a Zettelkasten. He has his own app, The Archive, for that but he’s also an Emacs user. He uses a timestamp as a key … Continue reading →

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