Union strong

Congratulations to Digital Media United, part of NABET-CWA Local 31 and representing tech workers at NPR, on the ratification of its first contract!

Still holding some secrets

The Antikythera Mechanism visits the Astronomy Picture of the Day once again.

Undergrads

An excellent documentary on the genesis of BASIC (with just a touch of chest-thumping on the part of Dartmouth College).

Is anyone reading the literature?

Joseph Weizenbaum didn't expect his secretary to take ELIZA so seriously, either. Sheesh. "The new Bing & Edge – Learning from our first week."

One area where we are learning a new use-case for chat is how people are using it as a tool for more general discovery of the world, and for social entertainment. This is a great example of where new technology is finding product-market-fit for something we didn’t fully envision.

Arena.js

Oh, dear sweet Fox, yes (see JavaScript file browser, below).

End of the sprint

Friday I retired, after eight great years at NPR. According to Matt Welsh, not a moment too soon. I hope I haven't left any howlers like this one behind, although the clunky JavaScript-only file browser that I built as my first project for NPR has resisted refactoring for 14 years.