Data is real, and it can hurt you. Conversely, data cannot hurt you if you do not pluck it from the ether and rudely force it into existence in the first place. Let's talk, briefly, about data minimization. Data minimization is a term that describes what is, on
Ukraine took out a bunch of Russian nuclear-capable strategic bomber aircraft last weekend, and they did it with small, cheap drones. As well as with over a year of intricate and incredibly stealthy planning, which is, if you ask me, the really important part. Keeping in mind that information on
To build new technology, we must imagine it first. Every technological marvel that humanity has ever come up with came into being by this process of imagination, of both individual and collective musing about things we’d like to do, and the tools we might be able to build to
When the pandemic began, back in those flopsweat days of March 2020, I came to a horrible realization. Due to necessary quarantines, lockdowns, travel restrictions, and general social disruption, the human race was going to be forced into a state of collective and sudden Onlineness totally unprecedented in history. Billions
Apple's engineers have figured out how to design a robot lamp so adorable that everyone I've shown the video to says they'd die for it. By studying how to translate human expression into the movements of an outwardly-normal looking appliance, Apple's team
I'm back in the USA. I haven't been here since December 16th. I spent the last month in Sulawesi, and then spent a few more days in Jakarta and Singapore before boarding a flight back to California, where I'm staying with my parents for
I went to Thailand in March because I needed to get some work done. Bangkok is a pretty ideal place if you're looking for somewhere easy to hunker down for a while to grind away on projects, proposals, and emails. There's excellent public transportation, great and
As I write this, America's mad king Donald Trump continues his cruel and needless attacks on Canada, from asinine tariffs to batshit insane threats to make the country the USA's 51st state. Entirely understandably, Canadians are outraged by this act of betrayal from a formerly staunch
Taipei: Week One I spent my first eight nights in Taiwan at the Riviera Hotel, a nicely renovated, mid-century built place near the Yuanshan Taipei MRT Station, in a green and pleasant neighborhood that used to be home to a lot of American GIs during the period when the US
Hi, I'm in Taiwan. It has come to my attention that the world may be ending. Well, kind of. For some of us, in a sense. I can't begin to catalog the horrors here since January 20th: a lot of people are working on that (like
We live in the era of too much news, but even by those already-low standards, there's been too much goddamned news over the last two weeks. Every time I try to sit down and write one of these, something else happens. It's kind of been like
In the middle of this terrible month - a month made to shamble through, a month which must be endured - I received a far smaller piece of bad news. Simon's Rock, the weird little college for weird kids where I spent a weird year and a half,