When disaster strikes, like a fire, flood, hurricane, or an epidemic, and utilities and supply chains get disrupted, you might see much higher prices for goods that yesterday were cheap. This is called price gouging.

For instance, in 2017 after hurricane Harvey struck Texas, in some locations gas prices shot …

I shared my previous post on Reddit, and I got some very useful feedback which pointed out the irrelevance of what I was measuring (and also a scientific paper pointing out many statistical errors in a "real" GitHub study).

So, I figured I'd measure something more relevant: bugs.

Caveats

Sadly …

I decided to review some programming languages, by comparing their popularity with their Rosetta Code implementation terseness.

I measured terseness as the average of implementations' estimated zipped code filesize.

Update 2021-01-17: After another enlightening Reddit discussion, I realized an even worse caveat of just looking at Rosetta Code snippets is …

On the surface, CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) present a great way of speeding up the loading of websites.

Without a CDN, requests take longer for users that are far away network-wise, but not a lot longer if users are near the server (perhaps on the same continent). Here are some …

If you're an Android user, you've probably seen more and more "glitches" lately, where you get delayed notifications, events, or even alarms.

Hello again, dear reader!

As I promised you last post, I have reviewed some cryptocurrencies, and I will publish my fact-based heavily-biased opinions on them. Take this post with a grain of salt, and mind that investment (or speculation) is risky. However, I hope you find it useful.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin …

A friend of mine recently asked me about cryptocurrencies. I gave him the short story, but I'll post the long story here as well, for anyone interested.

What's the point?

In its most basic form, a cryptocurrency is a list of balances in accounts. Only people that have the password …

Thermal shutdown

I started playing some games on my Debian laptop. After some time of intense fan blowing, the laptop shut down. I figured this was likely a thermal shutdown - the device turning itself off to protect itself.

I started monitoring the temperature - and it was getting to 100ºC at …

The Venus Project is a vague "solution" to current problems of civilization. They claim that through a "Resource Based Economy", coupled with advanced science and engineering, everyone can reach a very high standard of living.

This "Resource Based Economy" claims that "all resources must be declared as the common heritage …

Updated 2019-11-18.

The GDPR is legally convenient, in case you are a private person, and want the illusion of control over data gathered from you.

However, when considering its actual impact, and looking at it from different perspectives, it can appear strange, and perhaps even scary.

Broad definitions

I had …