Youtuber Alexander the OK has produced a very nerdy deep dive into how the original version of Elite for the BBC Micro was written. It’s titled Elite - “The game that couldn’t be written and it’s just fantastic.
*The thing nobody talks about with engineering management is this:
Every 3-4 months every person experiences some sort of personal crisis. A family member dies, they have a bad illness, they get into an argument with another person at work, etc. etc. Sadly, that is just life. Normally after a month or so things settle down and life goes on.
But when you are managing 6+ people it means there is always a crisis you are helping someone work through. You are always carrying a bit of emotional burden or worry around with you.*
(via Simon Willison)
Cert NZ’s Cyber Smart concentrated on awareness of online scams. It’s worth sharing this site with friends and family.
Fancy an hour long walk down memory lane with Rob Pike, discussing his experience programming in the 70s, working on UNIX at Bell Labs, and developing, among other things, the first windowing system? Of course you do.
Celebrating 15 Years of StackOverflow. It’s very hard to overstate the impact StackOverlfow had on software development when it finally opened up after months and months of being six to eight weeks from launch. It was a sea change in how developers figured out what the hell was wrong with their code. This oral history by the original team is great value.
Contribute to this repo and you’ll legitimately be able to claim you’ve worked on a Little Game Galled Mario.
Six rules for dealing with injury, illness, and aging as an athlete.
Identifying and Mitigating the Security Risks of Generative AI
Every major technical invention resurfaces the dual-use dilemma – the new technology has the potential to be used for good as well as for harm. Generative AI techniques, such as large language models and diffusion models, have shown remarkable capabilities…However, GenAI can be used just as well by attackers to generate new attacks and increase the velocity and efficacy of existing attacks.
How the 5-panel hat took over the running world
Throw a rock at a running event and it is likely you’ll hit someone in a five-panel (note: We do not condone throwing rocks at running events). Of course, trends come and go and runners often glom onto a particular look before the newest trend comes along (see: sweatbands). But the five-panel hat has enjoyed a relatively long run at the top atop the heads of runners. Is this pervasiveness a passing phase, or has the five-panel hit that hallowed sweet spot between functionality and style?
Two recent links from Schneier on Security: Bots are better than humans at solving CAPTCHAs and LLMs and tool use