Moldbug's Urbit.

Mencius Moldbug’s Urbit system appears to be public!  Take the time to read his introductory materials – you will not regret it.   Any regular reader of this site will probably take some interest in Urbit. While I disagree with many of Moldbug’s fundamental design decisions, I believe that his is the first modern ab initio […]

Don't Blame the Mice.

Your kitchen is alive with vermin! Who is to blame? The cruel forces of nature? Or, might it be you – the fellow who scattered delicious crumbs everywhere; spilled honey a thousand times without picking up a mop once; and kept a mountain of old newspapers around for rodents to chew into nest liner? Your […]

Bitcoin Adventures.

The Bitcoin Kill Switch is quite alive, well, and waiting to be pressed: “I can’t assure with 100% certainty that the all the black dots are owned by Satoshi, but almost all are owned by a single entity, and that entity began mining right from block 1, and with the same performance as the genesis […]

A Review of MPEx, the Bitcoin Stock Exchange.

“The most important thing a crook needs is an impeccable reputation.” (Attributed to Agatha Christie.) Bitcoin interests me as an obvious example of a technological jewel tossed around aimlessly by the brutal hands of cave men. I can’t help but picture a flashlight or a radio set, left behind in the wilderness by geologists, to […]

Shitcoin: a Modest Proposal.

This post is of interest only to those who study Bitcoin. If you have never heard of Bitcoin, read my previous post on the subject. Shitcoin is to be a distributed network for attaching “dirt” to particular bitcoins when certain conditions are met, in a manner which allows Bitcoin users to post bonds in order […]

Bitcoin, or How to Hammer in Nails with a Microscope.

“The enlightened, disciplined mind is the holiest of holies, a wonder among wonders. Upon the Earth – a grain of sand in the Universe, man is on the order of one-billionth of the smallest magnitude… And yet this particle in your mind’s eye, that lives but for sixty or so trips of the Earth around […]

Project JMC

The great inventor John McCarthy (1927 – 2011) now has an official posthumous website: Project JMC. Don’t miss his fascinating (though little-known) political essays!

Engelbart's Violin

Computing pioneer Alan Kay tells us that a computer is “an instrument whose music is ideas.” This seems like a beautiful metaphor, until you realize that we have somehow ended up in a world where the profession of musician is nearly unknown.  To continue with this analogy, let’s imagine that you were a child who […]

For Your Eyes Only

Rumor has it that a well-known industrial giant will soon attempt to bring head-mounted displays back into fashion. One ought to remember that, for a number of reasons, they were never really “in” fashion to begin with.  To my knowledge, every single one ever marketed fell into one of the following categories: Military toy, priced […]

Why Hypercard Had to Die

Update: Click here if you would like to try HyperCard yourself. I was a Hypercard child – though our friendship was brief. Our seventh-grade class was led into a room full of brand-new Macintosh Performas.  The day’s lesson was a crash course in the use of an uncomplicated yet marvelous program. With it, one might […]