Bubbles
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The NOVA episode “Athens: Birthplace of Democracy,” which aired on Arizona PBS on July 1, 2026, stated: “For the ancient Greeks, true democracy only worked through the extensive use of random selection.”The candidate selection process in...
In search of a relatively flat cycling route that would show us an interesting cross-section of Halifax, we found our way to the Chain of Lakes Trail this afternoon. The trail runs 7¼ km, starting on Joseph Howe Boulevard and ending on...
It is easy to behave well when you are winning. You smile. You embrace the people around you. You shake hands. You thank those who supported you. Everything feels fair because the result went your way. Losing is the real test. When...
I’m speaking at Python Toronto’s July 23 Meetup on Personal Data Archaeology with Python. Almost every platform you use holds a slice of your life, all locked behind an API. The Dogsheep pattern (pioneered by Simon Willison) pulls that...
The story so far: after Doctor Who‘s 2005 return was a storming success, BBC Radio 7 (and its successor station BBC 4 Extra) decided they want to get in on that sweet TARDIS action, and struck a deal with Big Finish to produce a season...
Cryptography Should Be Hard to Use Improperly
This is the second post in a series I’m writing about the most interesting findings from my Masters research on the impact of AI on software engineering, as well as some of the thoughts I’ve had since. This one is about how AI made...
A few years back, I came across Robert Graham’s wc2 repository on GitHub. wc2 is an implementation of the Unix wc command that is significantly faster than the existing GNU and BSD wc implementations. It achieves its speed by using...
Passkeys are the most important thing happening in information security right now because they are the only principled solution to the overwhelming effectiveness of phishing attacks. Just like memory safety is the only principled...
lingthusiasm:ALTALTALTALTALTWhy does “ie” turn “dog” into itty bitty “doggie”? In this Lingthusiasm zine, Leah Velleman gets enthusiastic about diminutives. Yes, this one is extra tiny, it’s a diminutive zine about diminutives! A...
We’re back home after a crazy long weekend celebrating my birthday with the grandkids. We had some adventures on land, in chasing a few leaves around the pool, and walking across a few bridges. This grandpa couldn’t have asked for a...
This case involves Apple’s handling of user-uploaded files hosted in private iCloud storage. Instead of adopting PhotoDNA to scan hosted files for CSAM, Apple created its own proprietary alternative, NeuralHash, which apparently wasn’t...
I got some interesting answers from the askmath subreddit for the convex shapes of hexagons problem.
Open Minis is a brilliant app, and is based on roughly the same iSH-derived ARM64 core I used for ios-linuxkit (which I wrote about when I released it). I went all-out on generic Linux runtime support–Alpine, language runtimes, compilers...
Shooting in monochrome (black and white) really forces me to notice those hidden pockets of light, shadow and texture. Those people you see standing apart, somewhat intensly, staring up intently at a corner of ceiling in a public space,...