Sore Eyes

Paul Ford posted Robot Exclusion Protocol back in 2002: I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower to find another one sitting near the drain.

Read it and weep: The 49MB Web Page.

Sad but true: The Ensh*ttificator Via [Memex 1.1]

All that need be said about the menu designs in MacOS Tahoe.

Last week, John Varley passed away.

If we can tear our eyes away from the early days of the Starmer government and cast an eye upon other big electoral events in 2024, we find Rick Perlstein providing some much-needed perspective on Project 2025’s antecedents: One thing that especially grat…

Go read Doug Muir’s Fungal banking at Crooked Timber.

If the Daylight DC-1 proves to look as good in real life as it does in their launch video then it’s going to be a seriously tempting proposition.

I am reliably informed1 that Angie Wang’s New Yorker cartoon pondering the question Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

Doug Muir over at Crooked Timber, recounts a recent thought experiment: A transcript from memory of an evening conversation with my two older sons: “I heard that Jeff Bezos could run through the streets every day, throwing hundred dollar bills in the air,…

I’m indebted to The Overspill for sharing the intro to M.

Now the embargo on reviews of the Humane Ai Pin has come to an end, Humane might be wishing it hadn’t.

The biggest surprise to me reading this piece about Transport For London’s experiment at Willesden Green tube station is that all this extra technology could piggyback on the existing, slightly old and outdated CCTV cameras. 2 [This] was not just about sp…

Gary Ings’ article in HTML Review issue 3, a view source web, takes me back: On my personal websites view source meant being able to adapt and remix ideas.

It’s not so much that Excel is a bad place to store your parts catalogue as it is that it’s a less than ideal starting point if you go no further than dumping your data in Excel: It is not an exaggeration to say that up to and including at least the initi…

I’m always up for someone reminding us of the impact VisiCalc had on the world.1 Let Tim Harford pick up the story: Despite its stuttering beginning, VisiCalc quickly became a phenomenon.

I’m old enough to have watched the Richard Chamberlain/Toshiro Mifune version of Shōgun back in the day, but I don’t remember it well enough to fairly evaluate the quality of the 1980 version this long afterwards.

An Icelandic take on how the European Union sees industrial monopolies: What should surprise you is how accommodating and outright gentle the EU has been with Apple’s shenanigans over the years, whether it was about exploiting loopholes to avoid phone plug

Is Dan Ashworth a marquee signing that Dan Ashworth would recommend?

Matt Webb reckons that Tech has graduated from the Star Trek era to the Douglas Adams age: See, AI is the most Douglas Adams of all technologies.

The Big Picture: How We Got Into This Mess, And How We Get Out of It from Robert Reich.1 [Via Memex 1.1] Where “we” is the United States of America.

Just over 40 years ago, Apple decided to run a TV advert during the Superbowl.

Interesting to see an Apple Vision Pro in action in something resembling a real-world environment.

Having watched this Youtube audion/video mashup of Eminem vs ELO I have five discernible thoughts: SO PRETTY!!!

Apple’s reaction to the EU’s concerns about the App Store’s effects on the smartphone market is something I’d not paid close attention to, since the only device I own that was likely to be involved - an iPad Mini - is outdated enough to be a couple of OS…

Fascinating to see a dashboard showing the UK National Grid in action.

Interesting to watch (or read, if you prefer) Nilay Patel’s take on the Apple Vision Pro.

McSweeney’s tells us All The Types Of Science Fiction: 5 What if your cock was a bomb?

The Hofmann Wobble, by Ben Lerner depicts some of the drawbacks of being a Wikipedia editor: I did not think I was actually a marathoner.

The only fitting description of the SWANH.NET Star Wars Infographic is “epic”. 123 metres long. 1 I both wish I still owned a printer while also being very glad that I have access to multiple computing devices that have a graphical user interface that pro…

Nice work.