The two hardest problems in computer science are people, and convincing people that people are the hardest problem in computer science.

I thought a lot about how the code looked — but not about how it evolved with a team of squishy humans.

Similar to the technical architecture of classic colonialism, digital colonialism is rooted in the design of the tech ecosystem for the purposes of profit and plunder. If the railways and maritime trade routes were the "open veins" of the Global South back then, today, digital infrastructure takes on the same role: Big Tech corporations use proprietary software, corporate clouds, and centralised Internet services to spy on users, process their data, and spit back manufactured services to subjects of their data fiefdoms.

The underlying guiding idea of a “trustworthy AI” is, first and foremost, conceptual nonsense. Machines are not trustworthy; only humans can be trustworthy (or untrustworthy). If, in the future, an untrustworthy corporation or government behaves unethically and possesses good, robust AI technology, this will enable more effective unethical behaviour.

a programming language should, above all, be malleable. A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen. Static typing would be a fine idea if people actually did write programs the way they taught me to in college. But that's not how any of the hackers I know write programs. We need a language that lets us scribble and smudge and smear, not a language where you have to sit with a teacup of types balanced on your knee and make polite conversation with a strict old aunt of a compiler.

For a company like Basecamp, you’d be mad to make your choice of programming language and web framework on anything but a determination of what’ll make your programmers the most motivated, happy, and productive. Whatever the cost, it’s worth it. It’s worth it on a pure cost/benefit, but, more importantly, it’s worth it in terms of human happiness and potential.

This is why websites are so important. They allow the author to create not only works (the “objects”) but also the world (the rooms, the arrangement of rooms, the architecture!). Ideally, the two would inform each other in a virtuous, self-perfecting loop. This can be incredibly nurturing to an artist’s practice.

there’s potential for a self-reflexive feedback loop: when you put energy into a website, in turn the website helps form your own identity.

However, clarity is one of many possible intentions for a website. There are other legitimate states of mind capable of communication—a surprising, memorable, monumental, soothing, shocking, unpredictable, radically boring, bizarre, mind-blowing, very quiet and subtle, and/or amazing website could work. You also need not limit yourself to only one website—as perhaps you’d like to confuse or surprise with multiple.

At one end of the continuum, you have your comfort zone where you perform effortlessly. You don't level up in your comfort zone, because you're doing stuff you already know how to do. At the other end of the scale you have your panic zone, where you don't level up, because you're busy freaking out. Between the two there is a space where your ability and the challenge barely overlap. This is where you level up.

Sometimes, they also hope to bestow good luck on deceased family members.

When you’re doing a biopic, it’s very hard to shake the cradle-to-grave structure that audiences are so familiar with. People are going to come into the theater knowing that first we’re going to see a little boy with his father, and he’s looking into the window of the electronics store, and then we’re going to hit these famous signposts along the way in Steve Jobs’ life. Also, I’m not really a screenwriter; I’m a playwright who pretends to be a screenwriter. I’m most comfortable writing in claustrophobic pieces of geography and periods of time.

So, the UN forecasting model inputs three things: fertility rates, migration rates, and death rates. It doesn’t take into account the expansion of education for females or the speed of urbanization (which are in some ways linked). The UN says they’re already baked into the numbers. But when I went and interviewed [the demographer] Wolfgang Lutz in Vienna, which was one of the first things we did, he walked me through his projections, and I walked out of the room gobsmacked. All he was doing was adding one new variable to the forecast: the level of improvement in female education. And he comes up with a much lower number for global population in 2100, somewhere between 8 billion and 9 billion.

I don’t want to live a life where “staying up to date” is a priority. I don’t need that. I don’t need to always know what’s going on everywhere and with everyone.

To me it comes down to two things: simplification and awareness.

but the primary means of navigation would be something called “LEAP Keys,” wherein a modifier key would switch the behavior of typing from insertion to search.