Computing
Non-AI computing: networks, servers, hardware, software engineering, and digital security and privacy.
#2656: Marconi vs. the Cable Builders: Who Really Built the Internet?
Was the internet born from Marconi's wireless towers or the first transatlantic telegraph cables? We argue both sides.
#2650: How to Catch an LLM's Bad Writing Habits
A practical guide to analyzing podcast transcripts for repetitive language and dialogue patterns — from Python word counts to embedding clustering.
#2646: When Your Door Won't Open: The Failure-Mode Philosophy of Smart Locks
Z-Wave vs Zigbee vs Wi-Fi for smart locks. What's reliable enough to trust with your front door?
#2644: Crafting Agendas That Actually Work (With AI)
Stop writing table-of-contents agendas. Learn the diplomat’s method for crafting meetings that actually achieve their goals.
#2643: How Stenographers Type 300 Words Per Minute
Court reporters don’t type letters—they chord syllables at 300 words per minute. Here’s how it works and why AI can’t replace them yet.
#2641: Bridging Analog and Digital Note-Taking
How Nano Banana finally solves the text rendering problem, turning messy whiteboard photos into polished tech diagrams.
#2640: Why Instructional Models Beat Conversational for Batch AI
Beyond cheaper tokens—how batch inference changes AI workflows and why instructional models beat conversational ones for automated jobs.
#2639: The Hidden Layer That Makes Search Work
Why your search results miss the mark — and how cross-encoders fix it.
#2636: Take Notes Like a Diplomat
What WikiLeaks cables teach us about capturing meetings: judgment over transcription, context over completeness.
#2618: Text Normalization's Hidden Complexity
How to handle acronyms in text-to-speech pipelines using BERT models, lexicons, and layered preprocessing.
#2608: Can You Wire Your House Like a Hotel?
Can you wire your house like a hotel? Here's what KNX costs, how it works, and how to connect it to Home Assistant.
#2604: Self-Hosted Screen Recording: Tools Beyond Loom
Practical tools and trade-offs for async video documentation with real data control across platforms including Linux.
#2603: Defining the Agentic Workspace
How composable AI agent skills turn tedious media tasks into one-instruction operations for creatives.
#2602: Letting Non-Experts Direct Audio Tools Through Conversation
How to use AI for podcast mastering — and why agentic AI works better for small tasks than big promises.
#2599: The $200 Printer That Changed Everything
What $200 buys you for printing keycaps, cable housings, and small parts at home — with real material and environmental math.
#2594: The Hierarchy of Immutable Code
From mask ROM to e-fuses: how hardware enforces a hierarchy of mutability in every computing device.
#2593: The Politics of Unicode: Paleo-Hebrew, Han Unification, and Who Decides What a Character Is
What it takes to build a custom keyboard for an ancient biblical script, from Unicode politics to font design.
#2592: The Market That Never Went Away
From IBM terminals to Stream Decks — how macro keyboards evolved under the radar for decades.
#2591: Decoupling Script from Voice
How dynamic voice replacement could let listeners choose who narrates each host's lines.
#2590: The Uncanny Valley of Clean Speech
How transformer models distinguish "um" from meaningful speech — and why removing too much makes you sound like a robot.