My VCS Goes to GDC
As you may remember, I brought my Atari out to GDC for the Independent Game Festival. It’s been having an unusual time indeed during its travels, and I believe it hasn’t seen this much excitement in some 33 years. Here are some highlights: In the Delta SkyClub Stowed under the seat in front of me At the baggage carousel In… read more
Updated on February 4, 2022 at 11 a.m. ET. Wordle! It’s a word game people are playing online. Each day, the game offers one new puzzle: Guess a five-letter English word correctly in six or fewer tries. After each guess, the game tells you which letters are correct, which are wrong, and which are the right letters in the wrong… read more
The SEC’s suit against the Tesla CEO is the latest sign that he can’t separate his company’s performance from his vision for the future.
Elon Musk is a believer. In space travel, in clean energy, in massive engineering solutions to human problems. So the naysayers who don’t believe in the future of Tesla—which has struggled with production, labor, and debt issues—have always bugged him. On August 7, he announced a possible solution: Withdrawing from the public market and the scrutiny it brings. “Am considering… read more
Google and Facebook are easy scapegoats, but companies have been collecting, selling, and reusing your personal data for decades, and now that the public has finally noticed, it’s too late. The personal-data privacy war is long over, and you lost.
A barista gets burned at work, buys first-aid cream at Target, and later that day sees a Facebook ad for the same product. In another Target, someone shouts down the aisle to a companion to pick up some Red Bull; on the ride home, Instagram serves a sponsored post for the beverage. A home baker wishes aloud for a KitchenAid… read more
A pedestrian killed by a self-driving Uber in Tempe shows that the legal implications of autonomous cars are as important, if not more so, than the technology.
On Sunday night, a self-driving car operated by Uber struck and killed a pedestrian, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, on North Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona. It appears to be the first time an automobile driven by a computer has killed a human being by force of impact. The car was traveling at 38 miles per hour. An initial investigation by Tempe… read more
Yes, but it didn’t act alone.
Weather always makes good news, but the role of climate change in altering weather, especially extreme weather, has made the subject a lightning rod for unease. A case in point this week: A heat wave is triggering record temperatures in the Southwest. American Airlines reported having canceled up to 50 flights at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport, where the temperature has… read more
Even as an adult (though also for kids)
One of the great psychological tricks of parenting is the false choice. “Do you want to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt?” you might ask in the morning, or “Do you want broccoli or green beans?” before dinner. In the face of panic, indecision or tantrum, winnowing down options can force Junior to focus, decide and move forward.… read more
What it takes for good ideas to attract money.
Summer, 2001. Players install the boxed, retail software for an Electronic Arts game called Majestic. After signing up, the game sends players messages by phone, email, AIM, BlackBerry, and even fax—shards of a paranoia fiction story that plays out in real-time. The title goes on hiatus after the September 11 attacks—this was not the year for fourth-wall-breaking paranoia fiction entertainment. It… read more
Self-driving cars could encourage policies that end public access to America’s roads.
Whenever people go from one place to another, they don’t think much about the roads and sidewalks that pass beneath them. But this infrastructure, known as the public right-of-way, doesn’t work by magic. It is managed and regulated by specific laws. People don’t own the roads they travel on, but streets and sidewalks provide an easement—a right of use or… read more
It’s silly to capitalize it, but doing so gave the global network a needed sense of awe and terror
We’ve long stopped referring to the Internet as “the information superhighway,” but there was a reason for the metaphor. Back in the 1990s, when the phrase gained popularity, it worked because a highway is fast, and online life offered access to information—and later shopping, services, and socialization—at previously unthinkable levels of speed and convenience. The irony of “information superhighway” as… read more