Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me:
hardware
In 1998 I briefly worked for FiringSquad, a gaming website founded by Doom and Quake champion Thresh aka Dennis Fong and his brother Lyle. I can trace my long-standing interest in chairs and keyboards to some of the early, groundbreaking articles they wrote. Dennis and Lyle were great guys to
productivity
What do you need to do today? Other than read this blog entry, I mean. Have you ever noticed that a huge percentage of Lifehacker-like productivity porn site content is a breathless description of the details of Yet Another To-Do Application? There are dozens upon dozens of the things to
mobile devices
MG Siegler writes: The PC is over. It will linger, but increasingly as a relic. I now dread using my computer. I want to use a tablet most of the time. And increasingly, I can. I want to use a smartphone all the rest of the time. And I do.
programming
This is not a post about programming, or being a geek. In all likelihood, this is not a post you will enjoy reading. Consider yourselves warned. I don’t remember how I found this Moth video of comedian Anthony Griffith. It is not a fun thing to watch, especially as
laptops
I’ve been chasing the perfect PC laptop for over a decade now. Though I’ve tolerated lugging around five to seven pound machines because I had to, laptops were always about portability first and most of all to me. I quickly gravitated to so-called ultraportable laptops as soon as
security
I’ve already documented my brief, youthful dalliance with the illegal side of computing as it existed in the late 1980s. But was it crime? Was I truly a criminal? I don’t think so. To be perfectly blunt, I wasn’t talented enough to be any kind of threat.
security
Twenty-four years ago today, I had a very bad day. On August 8, 1988, I was a senior in high school. I was working my after school and weekend job at Safeway as a cashier, when the store manager suddenly walked over and said I better stop ringing up customers
software development concepts
When you’re hired at Google, you only have to do the job you were hired for 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, you can work on whatever you like – provided it advances Google in some way. At least, that’s the theory. Google’s 20
lcd panels
When I wrote about TN LCD panels 5 years ago, I considered them acceptable, despite their overall mediocrity, mostly due to the massive price difference. Unfortunately, the vast majority of LCDs on the market now are TN. You can opt to pay a little bit more for one of the
movies
One of my favorite movie scenes is from The Last King of Scotland, a dramatized “biography” of the megalomaniac dictator Idi Amin, as seen through the eyes of a fictional Scottish personal physician. 0:00 /2:07 1× Idi AminI want you to tell me what to do!GarriganYou want
programming languages
Stack Overflow – like most online communities I’ve studied – naturally trends toward increased strictness over time. It’s primarily a defense mechanism, an immune system of the sort a child develops after first entering school or daycare and being exposed to the wide, wide world of everyday sneezes and coughs
software development concepts
If I had to make a list of the top 10 things I’ve done in my life that I regret, “writing a book” would definitely be on it. I took on the book project mostly because it was an opportunity to work with a few friends whose company I