FeedCity

It pains me that I have to write this, but Gaia-X is a harmful and expensive distraction, and it is not doing anything that will ever get us a “European cloud”, not even indirectly. Its very existence is holding back progress. For this reason, Gaia-X should be abandoned, and we should try to learn as much as possible from its failure, so we can try something else. I provide some inspiration at the end of this post.

A look at the data.

Referring to product management, my old boss used to say, “There is no right or wrong, only trade-offs.” This applies to technology too (and, if you really think about it, life generally — but we won’t go that far). As an example, what makes npm great? It’s so easy to instal...

Bear's discovery feed improvements and a call for feedback

This post is a secret to everyone! Read more about RSS Club. Content warning: wherein I talk about sports. If that’s not your thing, feel free to skip this one. I’m not a rabid sports fan. I don’t have a team, though I do have teams I hate (or rather, like to h...

I really liked Robin’s piece, “Stop calling yourself an IC”. I still remember the way I felt the first time I heard that term. It was used in a way where its connotations conveyed a kind of laziness via lack of ambition. And I thought, “But wait, I am an individual contribu...

Our experience at an onsen 'theme park' in Tokyo

A sequel to last month's post on finite-state transducers for aperiodic tilings.

I was reading Chase McCoy’s notes about Figma’s move into the AI space and this one line stuck out to me (emphasis mine): Generating UI designs from scratch, based on a text prompt This reminded me of my note from a Wall Street Journal interview with Jony Ive where he talk...

Dit artikel is eerder ook verschenen in het tijdschrift iBestuur Soeverein is een duur woord, en het klinkt lekker. Iedereen zou het graag willen zijn, maar zoiets komt met kosten en ongemak. Het is daarom nuttig het begrip op te splitsen om te kijken wat we echt bedoelen, en wat het ons waard is. Vertrouwelijkheid is vaak het eerste wat in ons opkomt. Wie kan er allemaal meelezen met onze communicatie en bestanden?

Phew, it’s been a week. Last week, I travelled all the way to Rochester, New York, to attend the NarraScope 2024 conference at The Strong National Museum of Play. I $ for three days of inspiration, connection, and storytelling innovation… and it was awesome!

The conference kicked off with a captivating keynote from Nat Clayton, fresh from their work on Inkle’s “A Highland Song.” Their talk on spatial storytelling and level design perfectly set the tone for a conference exploring the intersection of narrative and interactivity. It really was a banger. (Update: You can watch it now!)

How do you write about the value of silence? It’s kind of absurd when you think about it. Do you use words to extol the value of something whose essence is the very absence of words? It’s like making a painting of the invisible. Do you use visible means to depict something t...

(or at least work better)

“Be even more suspicious […] of all those who employ the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ without your permission. This is another form of surreptitious conscription, designed to suggest that ‘we’ are all agreed on ‘our’ interests and identity. […] Always ask who this ‘we’ is” – Christopher Hitchens in Letters to a Young Contrarian. It is so easy to write “Europe must invest more in AI”, but it is a red flag that reveals sloppy thinking on two levels.

In favor of narrow roads

In modern SPAs it’s common to immediately escape baked-in browser behaviors. For example, using <button> often looks like this: <div> <input type="text" name="q" /> <button type="submit" onClick={(e) => { // Stop the baked-in behavi...

Er is recent veel discussie over digitale autonomie, en Europa’s “positie in de cloud”. Maandag 8 juli vanaf 14:00 is er een event “Digitale soevereiniteit: zin of onzin” bij Instituut Clingendael. Dit is (na inschrijving) ook online bij te wonen. Corinne Cath (TU Delft), Martijn Lucassen (Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat), Paul Brand (Stratix), Diana Krieger (Soverin) en ik zitten daar in een panel onder leiding van Ruben Brave (Internet Society) en Maaike Okano-Heijmans (Clingendael).

Welcome to SkewDB! A free database of GC and many other skews for over 53,000 chromosomes and plasmids (viewer, blog post). The Scientific Spring Meeting KNVM & NVMM 2022 presentation is here (pdf). And now also on YouTube as video! SkewDB, a comprehensive database of GC and 10 other skews for over 30,000 chromosomes and plasmids, Nature Scientific Data, 2022 doi:10.5061/dryad.g4f4qrfr6 Last database update: 5th of July 2024, now featuring homopolymer counts & codon bias data!

One-indexing problems in everyday life