Stay Gold, America
We are at an unprecedented point in American history, and I'm concerned we may lose sight of the American Dream.
Archive
The Great Filter Comes For Us All
With a 13 billion year head start on evolution, why haven't any other forms of life in the universe contacted us by now? (Arrival is a fantastic movie. Watch it, but don't stop there - read the Story of Your Life novella it was based on
I Fight For The Users
If you haven't been able to keep up with my blistering pace of one blog post per year, I don't blame you. There's a lot going on right now. It's a busy time. But let's pause and take a moment
The 2030 Self-Driving Car Bet
It's my honor to announce that John Carmack and I have initiated a friendly bet of $10,000* to the 501(c)(3) charity of the winner’s choice: By January 1st, 2030, completely autonomous self-driving cars meeting SAE J3016 level 5 will be commercially available for passenger
Updating The Single Most Influential Book of the BASIC Era
In a way, these two books are responsible for my entire professional career [https://blog.codinghorror.com/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-programming-i-learned-from-basic/] . With early computers, you didn't boot up to a fancy schmancy desktop, or a screen full of apps you could easily poke and prod with your finger. No, those computers
Building a PC, Part IX: Downsizing
Hard to believe that I've had the same PC case since 2011, and my last serious upgrade was in 2015. I guess that's yet another sign that the PC is over, because PC upgrades have gotten really boring. It took 5 years for me to muster
The Rise of the Electric Scooter
In an electric car, the (enormous) battery is a major part of the price [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-12/electric-vehicle-battery-shrinks-and-so-does-the-total-cost] . If electric car prices are decreasing, battery costs must be decreasing, because it's not like the cost of fabricating rubber, aluminum, glass, and steel into car
Electric Geek Transportation Systems
I've never thought of myself as a "car person". The last new car I bought (and in fact, now that I think about it, the first new car I ever bought) was the quirky 1998 Ford Contour SVT [https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2018/04/
An Exercise Program for the Fat Web
When I wrote about App-pocalypse Now [https://blog.codinghorror.com/app-pocalypse-now/] in 2014, I implied the future still belonged to the web. And it does. But it's also true that the web has changed a lot in the last 10 years, much less the last 20 or 30.
The Cloud Is Just Someone Else's Computer
When we started Discourse [https://discourse.org] in 2013, our server requirements were high: * 1GB RAM * modern, fast dual core CPU * speedy solid state drive with 20+ GB I'm not talking about a cheapo shared cpanel server, either, I mean a dedicated virtual private server with those specifications.
What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?
I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here's my 15 second answer: > We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It's called Stack
There is no longer any such thing as Computer Security
Remember "cybersecurity"? Mysterious hooded computer guys doing mysterious hooded computer guy .. things! Who knows what kind of naughty digital mischief they might be up to? Unfortunately, we now live in a world where this kind of digital mischief is literally rewriting the world's history. For proof
To Serve Man, with Software
I didn't choose to be a programmer. Somehow, it seemed, the computers chose me [https://blog.codinghorror.com/if-loving-computers-is-wrong-i-dont-want-to-be-right/]. For a long time, that was fine, that was enough; that was all I needed. But along the way I never felt that being a programmer was this unambiguously
The Existential Terror of Battle Royale
It's been a while since I wrote a blog post, I guess in general, but also a blog post about video games. Video games are probably the single thing most attributable to my career as a programmer [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ablog.codinghorror.com+%22video+
Hacker, Hack Thyself
We've read so many sad stories about communities that were fatally compromised or destroyed due to security exploits. We took that lesson to heart when we founded the Discourse [https://discourse.org] project; we endeavor to build open source software that is secure and safe for communities by
Thunderbolting Your Video Card
When I wrote about The Golden Age of x86 Gaming [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-golden-age-of-x86-gaming/], I implied that, in the future, it might be an interesting, albeit expensive, idea to upgrade your video card via an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. I'm here to report that the future is
Password Rules Are Bullshit
Of the many, many, many bad things about passwords [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dirty-truth-about-web-passwords/], you know what the worst is? Password rules. > If we don't solve the password problem for users in my lifetime I am gonna haunt you from beyond the grave as a ghost pic.
I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream
There is much I take for granted in my life, and the normal functioning of American government is one of those things. In my 46 years, I've lived under nine different presidents. The first I remember is Carter. I've voted in every presidential election since 1992,
An Inferno on the Head of a Pin
Today's processors contain billions of [https://blog.codinghorror.com/moores-law-in-practical-terms/] heat-generating transistors in an ever shrinking space. The power budget might go from: * 1000 watts on a specialized server * 100 watts on desktops * 30 watts on laptops * 5 watts on tablets * 1 or 2 watts on a phone
Let's Encrypt Everything
I'll admit I was late [https://blog.codinghorror.com/should-all-web-traffic-be-encrypted/] to the HTTPS party. [https://letsencrypt.org] But post Snowden, and particularly after the result of the last election here in the US, it's clear that everything on the web should be encrypted by default. Why?
Your Digital Pinball Machine
I've had something of an obsession with digital pinball for years now. That recently culminated in me buying a Virtuapin Mini. OK, yes, it's an extravagance. There's no question. But in my defense, it is a minor extravagance relative to a real pinball machine.
Can Software Make You Less Racist?
I don't think we computer geeks appreciate how profoundly the rise of the smartphone, and Facebook, has changed the Internet audience. It's something that really only happened in the last five years, as smartphones and data plans dropped radically in price and became accessible – and addictive
The Raspberry Pi Has Revolutionized Emulation
Every geek goes through a phase where they discover emulation. It's practically a rite of passage [https://blog.codinghorror.com/rediscovering-arcade-nostalgia/]. > I think I spent most of my childhood – and a large part of my life as a young adult – desperately wishing I was in a video
The Golden Age of x86 Gaming
I've been happy with my 2016 HTPC [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-2016-htpc-build/], but the situation has changed, largely because of something I mentioned in passing back in November: > The Xbox One and PS4 are effectively plain old PCs [http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156273-xbox-720-vs-ps4-vs-pc-how-the-hardware-specs-compare] , built on: * Intel