Scrum has given us a lot, but it’s time for some conscious uncoupling Gothmog, Lord of the Rings“The age of men is over.” confidently (and rather aggressively, as you would expect from one of those nasty orcs) declares the Orc commander Gothmog in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King “The…
Category: Technology
Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard ’22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA
Academics and Student Life By James S. Bikales and Michelle G. Kurilla Harvard undergraduates returned to the classroom this year for the first time since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic — at first masked and distanced, and, after March, maskless. The long-anticipated Science and Engineering Complex in Allston opened its doors to students this…
In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia
Wikipedia sure is popular. The most popular articles in a given week routinely get millions of views. But with 6 million plus articles, Wikipedia has plenty of room for articles about topics which are profoundly obscure, even downright boring. I should know, I’ve written dozens of them! Some of what I consider to be my…
The end of big data
Thirty-eight billion dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Being boring. Databricks is a $38 billion dollar mistake. As a ninth largest private tech company in the world,1 banking $800 million of revenue per year, it’s a mistake all of us would be lucky to make. But it’s hard not to look at Databricks and see…
The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)
The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s Story and photos by Kevin KellyIn an adapted excerpt from an interview on the Deviate podcast with Rolf Potts, a writer and speaker best known as a futurist talks about his early travel years in Asia, when backpacking meant cutting yourself off almost completely from…
California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California could soon hold social media companies responsible for harming children who have become addicted to their products, permitting parents to sue platforms like Instagram and TikTok for Up to $25,000 per violation under a bill that passed the state Assembly on Monday. The bill defines “addiction” as kids under 18…
Broadcom to Acquire VMware for $61B
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Knowasiak.comMay 26 (Knowasiak) – Broadcom Inc (AVGO.O) said on Thursday it will acquire cloud computing company VMware Inc (VMW.N) in a $61 billion cash-and stock deal, the chipmaker’s biggest and boldest bid to diversify its business into enterprise software. The acquisition is the second biggest announced globally so…
The New York Times is wrong about Haiti
The New York Times recently published a series of articles about the history of Haiti. Unfortunately, I’m writing this essay to call them out. They made two errors. And since this is not an isolated incident, I feel the need to write about it. My main argument is The New York Times is trying to…
Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?
For years, it has been an article of faith in corporate America that cloud computing and artificial intelligence will fuel a surge in wealth-generating productivity. That belief has inspired a flood of venture funding and company spending. And the payoff, proponents insist, will not be confined to a small group of tech giants but will…
GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell
Teaching first-year university students or high schoolers to use a Unix shell is not always the easiest or most entertaining of tasks. GameShell was devised as a tool to help students at the Université Savoie Mont Blanc to engage with a real shell, in a way that encourages learning while also having fun. The original…
Street View turns 15
E Ethan Russell Director of Product, Google Maps Fifteen years ago, Street View began as a far-fetched idea from Google co-founder Larry Page to build a 360-degree map of the entire world. Fast forward to today: There are now over 220 billion Street View images from over 100 countries and territories — a new milestone…
Unofficial firmware upgrade for Dyson V6/V7 vacuum battery management system
An (Unofficial) Firmware Upgrade for Dyson V6/V7 Vacuum Battery Management System (BMS) Dyson vacuum batteries are designed to fail. Here’s why: Series battery cells in a battery pack inevitably become imbalanced. This is extremely common and why cell balancing was invented. Dyson uses a very nice ISL94208 battery management IC that includes cell balancing. It…
Tether Withdrawals Top $10B
Tether claims its dollar-pegged token is “fully backed.” Justin Tallis | Afp | Getty Images Investors have yanked more than $10 billion out of tether in the past two weeks amid heightened regulatory scrutiny over stablecoins. Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin, has seen its circulating supply plunge from a record $84.2 billion on May 11…
Show HN: Comon – a WinDbg extension to trace COM interactions
The project homepage is at https://wtrace.net. Comon is a WinDbg extension that can help you trace COM interactions (COM class creations and interface querying). You may use it to investigate various COM issues and better understand application logic. During a debugging session, comon will record virtual table addresses (for the newly created COM objects) and…
Show HN: IndigoStack – a new native macOS app for local web development
Introducing Indigo — the native macOS app which will revolutionise the way you configure and run local web servers on your Mac. Sign Up for the beta Bare metal. With the best of virtualized.Run all the same services as your production stack, isolated but directly on your Mac.No Docker, no virtual machines, no hassles.Remove or…
Show HN: Arttime – CLI art meets functionality
🧜🏼♀️ Beauty of text art meets functionality of clock/timer ⏰. arttime brings curated text-art to otherwise artless terminal emulators of starving developers and other users who can use terminal. Purpose/features: Bring curated text/ascii art to artless terminals, currently 300+ high-quality text art to choose from Provide a simple yet smart alarm/timer for commandline Native desktop…
Show HN: Zen Mode for macOS
Hide Everything. Mute Everything.Download for macOS(Monterey)Note: As an early adopter(first 10 users), you will get the app for FREE. IT’S GONE Next 30 users you will able to purchase it at $3. IT’S GONE Next 60 users you will able to purchase it at $5. Final price at launch: $8-$10 What is it?- Have you…
Show HN: A simple biological circuit simulator
In a few months time, I’m very excited to be embarking on a PhD in Interdisciplinary Biosciences. Since I trained as a phycisist, I’m keenly aware of the amount of stuff I don’t know, keenly unaware of the stuff I don’t know I don’t know, and trying to avoid the wonderful physics tradition of deceiving…
Show HN: No-code e-commerce search
How toAmazon have image-to-image search. Now you can too. Image by Alex Cureton-Griffiths, created from Canva stock elementsSo, Amazon have a pretty cool feature where you can snap a picture of your favorite clothes to find similar clothes in their store. Or Tide Pods. Or teddy bears. Or Nicholas Cage pillows. You get the gist.…
Show HN: Search Query, How to Find Exposed HFS HTTP File Server
Emerging Security Issues With Free and Open-source NAS (Network Attached Storage) NAS has become an increasingly common way to handle files and backup storage. As usage increases, NAS security issues, particularly with QNAP and Synology products, are frequently spotted. In addition to its vulnerabilities with CVE ID, critical NAS data is exposed to the internet…