John Gruber of Daring Fireball took a big shot at Google Duplex recently. He basically said that the way the demo was conducted should make us doubt the legitimacy of the tech. Why not demo it live? Why only play recordings? When is it rolling out to actual customers? Was there a hands-on after the event where members…

The best definition I’ve ever heard for DevOps is the ability to practice frequently and well. I prefer DevOps to DevSecOps because I feel security should be part of both development and operations, but I also see the merit in calling it out where this isn’t regular practice. I think there is a powerful analog here to professional…

There are few technologies as misunderstood right now as Machine Learning. Some think it’s 100% hype, sales, and marketing, and others think it’s humanity’s Messiah in the form of math and code. Unfortunately, there’s currently not a lot of space between those two extremes. Here’s how I think about it. Machine Learning is much like Love and Sex.…

Gizmodo just did an article about how silly smart homes are, how broken the tech is, and how it’s all annoying and creepy. This type of journalism seriously annoys me. It’s the equivalent of looking at an R&D lab at CalTech in 1973 and saying, “Wow, computers are stupid.” It’s quite sad to see a tech magazine throwing…

I wrote The Real Internet of Things to answer the question of where all this consumer tech was eventually going to lead us. I think I mostly captured it there, but wanted to summarize here. I’m not sure where Microsoft is in this, and neither is anyone else. Right now we basically have Apple and Google fighting for…

These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. Thanks to Saša Zdjelar, Andrew Ringlein, and Jason Haddix for reading various versions and fragments of this text. Your input and support throughout this precarious first-book experience was deeply felt and appreciated. Thanks especially to Saša for enthusiastically talking through many…

These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. San Francisco CA, London UK, Newark CA 2016 macOS Sierra Vim Markdown Pandoc Zomby, Glitch Mob, Technoboy, Ratatat, Cryptex, Behemoth, Opeth, Gojira CHAPTER NAVIGATION

These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. There are many who will read this book and see nothing but dystopia. In certain moods, I’m one of those people. What’s important to understand, however, is that I’m not conjuring this reality into existence. I’m not enabling it to happen.…

These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. So we’ve talked through the various concepts. But what does this all get us? How is this the future of technology and humanity? There have been three main themes throughout this book: That we can predict the future of technology through…

These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. We covered a lot of ideas here, so let’s just review the main points. There are basic trends in technology that we can see crystallizing: centralized to peer-to-peer, forced to natural, obvious to invisible, manual to automatic, periodic to continuous, scheduled…