The Parable of the Languages
I was reminded this week of an Internet classic from the early 00s by Shelley Powers: The Parable of the Languages. It’s a delightful exploration of anthropomorphised programming languages, and if you’ve not read it, I’d really suggest setting side the 5-10 minutes it takes to read it.
I won’t spoil the story for you, but I will say that on my re-read of it this week after a decade of not thinking about it, I found myself thinking that in a modern context, JSON might be referenced in the same way as XML.
GUIdebook Gallery
While I’m on the subject of Internet things from the early 00s, I want to point out the GUIdebook Gallery, which was last updated October 2006. This is a loving collection of screen grabs (and more) from a vast number of historical GUIs. To this day I still love periodically revisiting the site and reviewing interfaces I used to use, and also wished I had used (I’m looking at you, Workbench/Amiga).
If you love computer history, and you love UIs, you’ll love the GUIdebook Gallery.
Biological Backups
The thylacine was tragically hunted to extinction by early Australian colonial settlers, destroying a carnivorous marsupial that had survived in Tasmania for thousands of years (hence the common title – Tasmanian Tiger).
Over the past 20 years or so there has been increasing chatter about trying to bring the thylacine back from extinction, but as is always the case, such options are highly dependent on having sufficient data – in this case, biological data.
You can liken this to a worst case scenario for data recovery – sometimes as a result of catastrophes and cascading failures you thought could never happen, you end up in a scenario where all your conventional techniques won’t work and you have to cobble together data reconstruction like a forensic data scientist. In an article in The Guardian today, such a scenario is outlined for the thylacine with the unexpected finding of a remarkably preserved head:
Aesthetics aside, the specimen had a lot going for it. It contained material the scientists thought would be impossible to find, including long RNA molecules crucial to reconstructing an extinct animal’s genome.
How a ‘putrid’ find in a museum cupboard could be the key to bringing the Tasmanian tiger back to life: Adam Morton, Guardian, 17 October 2024.
I find this remarkable – and it gives me hope. I’d love to hope before I shuffle off my mortal coil that we’ve restored this species to life. At the rate of extinctions happening across the globe, we need to learn how to do this and every win is a huge gain for recovery.
Oh my
Also spotted in The Guardian today is something that also resonates. As a person who specialises in backup, I’m acutely aware of the ignominy of losing data, which is why I’m so paranoid about having a multi-layered backup strategy. And this was like my idea of a worst case scenario:
A state-of-the-art fire station in western Germany that was completed last year at a cost of tens of millions of euros has burned to the ground because it had not been equipped with a fire alarm.
Blaze destroys multimillion-euro German fire station that had no alarms: Kate Connolly, Guardian, 17 October 2024.
International Monetary Fund wants to tell you about Remote Work
The IMF, so often touted as a global authority on all things money, and so often referred to by federal government financial departments when setting austere or challenging economic policies, published a report in September on remote work – hybrid and working from home. And for a group you’d normally associate more with stodgy Edwardian era attitudes, they’re highly enthusiastic:
In an article titled Working From Home is Powering Productivity by Nicholas Bloom, we’re told:
- In the USA alone, WFH has enabled approximately two million differently abled people to enter the workforce.
- Saving time on commuting to the office is making a big impact in how (and where) people can live their lives, gives more time back, and is effectively valued by employees as being like an 8% increase in salary.
- The release of office space in cities will open that space up for other uses, effectively increasing the usable land supply available particularly in congested cities.
- With people able to work closer to or at home, it reduces traffic infrastructure requirements.
- Remote work in particular opens up jobs to a much larger and potentially even global talent pool.
Internet Archive is coming back online
The Internet Archive was recently significantly impacted by first a massive DDoS attack, and then a cyber attack stealing user details. It’s finally getting back online. A hacker group had claimed responsibility for some of these attacks and … honestly, that seems to be like claiming responsibility for setting fire to a library.
An epic re-read
For the last 4 months or so I’ve been doing a re-read of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen Donaldson. All ten volumes. I’m finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and have about 50% of the final book to go.
This was a book series that I really struggled with when I first tried to read the first trilogy in my teenager years, and I didn’t return to it until I was an adult – indeed, until my now-husband convinced me back in 1997 to give it another go.
This is a complex series – Donaldson loves to present flawed anti-heroes and this series perhaps exemplifies that more than all others; and I will say the final quartet of books could have perhaps used a little more editorial jurisprudence. Yet, there are some books you can read multiple times as you age and your life circumstances change, and on every such re-read you discover something new.
Having yawned my way through the first two seasons of Rings of Power, I’d say this: my re-read of Covenant shows that we need to look further afield for more TV than just a tiny set of authors like Tolkien.