Posts

Runner’s World tells the storie of Ellie Pell, who won the overall first place in a 50K Ultra Marathon. The organizers of the event had assumed that the overall winner would male. While there was an award made for the first place female, there was no award prepared for the first place male. Instead, there was only a trophy for the overall winner, which was predicted to be a man. Read more...

Online security is more relevant than ever. News from hackers breaching massive number of user accounts from an online service no longer surprises anyone. Two important things that you should do today to improve the security of your online accounts are setting up two-factor authentication and using a password manager. Two-factor Authentication Two-factor authentication means that each time you log into an online service, before you can get access to your account, you’ll be asked to enter an additional code after you enter your password. Read more...

Cory Doctorow and the urge to write: I’m the coeditor and co-owner of a website called Boing Boing, and I’ve spent the past ten years writing about ten blog posts a day, every day. I often find myself unable to think about anything in any depth without writing a blog post about it to check whether I understand it sufficiently to convey it to someone else. — Cory Doctorow, Information Doesn”t Want to Be Free Read more...

Neal Stephenson writes speculative fiction. In his books, he explores subjects such as mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. Read more...

Stephen King advises that you designate someone you know, you trust, and whom you think represents the audience of your work to act as “The Reader.” Then, write for that person. They don’t even have to know that you’re doing this. In his case, it’s his wife, and she eventually does read his drafts, but he always keeps her in mind when writing and directs everything he creates at her. Read more...