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 The argument seems compelling, the logic inescapable. As hardware doubles its density every 18-24 months, courtesy of Moore’s Law, and as software eats the world, technology will replace a broad swathe of jobs outright–from burger-flippers to physicians–and networks will atomize many others from full-time positions into gigs performed by many fungible workers. Tech, in… Read More

 There was a ton of fallout as the Greek economic crisis worsened this week week and the country struggled to come up with answers to its growing predicament. As Alexia Tsotsis explained  in an article on TechCrunch earlier this week: This week, the Syriza government failed in negotiations to receive a tranche of bailout money in time to make a $1.7 billion IMF payment on June 30th. Instead… Read More

 You’re no DJ. That’s the biggest problem with streaming services. A search box connected to the history of recorded music can be discouraging. You constantly have to know what to play next. That’s why Apple was so smart to make Apple Music all about telling you what to play next. Apple is the king of making complicated technology accessible to the masses. It turned clunky… Read More

 Hearken to me, my fellow developers. We live in complex and confusing times. Once we sought to make things ever simpler. Then we discovered that simple isn’t necessarily scalable, or efficient, or resilient, and turned to favoring composition over simplicity, deconstructing our systems into multiple independent services. And now–well–now it sometimes seems we have hit upon… Read More

 Take a quick look, a sneak peek, into our not-so-distant future, courtesy of the great science-fiction writer Peter Watts(1), who writes in Aeon magazine: “You already know that we can run machines with our brainwaves. That’s been old news for almost a decade… But we’ve moved beyond merely thinking orders at machinery. Now we’re using that machinery to wire… Read More

 The great thing about Bitcoin, for a tech columnist like me, is that it’s simultaneously over-the-top cinematic and technically dense. Richard Branson recently hosted a “Blockchain Summit” at his private Caribbean island. There’s a Bitcoin Jet. At the same time, 2015 has seen the release of a whole slew of technically gnarly–and technically… Read More

 Apple will at last address a glaring oversight with regard to its Health application and its usefulness to women: in iOS 9, the app will support the ability for women to track their reproductive health. Yes, finally: Apple is making period tracking a built-in feature for the iPhone. Announced briefly at yesterday’s WWDC event in San Francisco, Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering… Read More

 I’ve been a software developer, a novelist, a journalist, and a manager–and managing developers is easily the trickiest thing I’ve ever done. (Not the hardest. But the trickiest.) I don’t pretend to be an expert, or a great manager. But I can assure you I am someone who screwed up a lot along the road to being better. Here are some mistakes from which I have learned: Read More

 Governments are scared of software. This month, the Commerce Department proposed to classify “intrusion software” as dual-use civilian/military technology; the UK announced a law which will require “Google, Facebook and other internet giants” to “give British spies access to encrypted conversations”; and the Justice Department claimed APIs should be… Read More

 Bitcoin: it’s at a crucially important crossroads; it’s approaching a crisis that threatens its very existence; it has never been more likely to erupt into enormous global importance. Which? Don’t be ridiculous. It is all those things at once, of course, as usual. I only wish I was joking. If you’re dumb enough to judge Bitcoin purely by its exchange rate, you might… Read More

 Earlier this year, Viacom-owned kids’ network Nickelodeon announced its plans to enter the subscription video market with its own over-the-top streaming service aimed at the preschool crowd. Called Noggin, the service launched this March on iOS with a decent selection of titles, including a few popular names from the kids TV market, like “Blue’s Clues.” The question… Read More