Author: Gregor J. Rothfuss

Selfdriving Investment

self-driving is an 8T / year opportunity, and some pioneers now feel that the ground was a mistake, and personal transport is going to move to the air. Sebastian Thrun, the most respected pioneer in the self-driving car space, has largely abandoned it and now preaches that the air is where the action will be, thanks to computerized electric vertical take-off aircraft. Air travel offers almost unlimited “lanes” of traffic in 3 dimensions, with trivial costs in infrastructure compared to the ground and is considerably faster. This is just one of the things which might happen when you start trying to predict decades out. There are others which people are yet to think of which may change all these numbers in even more dramatic ways.

Ancient Games

Long before Settlers of Catan, Scrabble and Risk won legions of fans, actual Roman legions passed the time by playing Ludus Latrunculorum, a strategic showdown whose Latin name translates loosely to “Game of Mercenaries.” In northwest Europe, meanwhile, the Viking game Hnefatafl popped up in such far-flung locales as Scotland, Norway and Iceland. Farther south, the ancient Egyptian games of Senet and Mehen dominated. To the east in India, Chaturanga emerged as a precursor to modern chess. And 5 ka ago, in what is now southeast Turkey, a group of Bronze Age humans created an elaborate set of sculpted stones hailed as the world’s oldest gaming pieces upon their discovery in 2013.

East river swimming?

East river swimming could become a reality. The city’s rivers, harbors, and bays are cleaner than they’ve been since the Civil War.

“Why couldn’t we envision this kind of waterfront, not as an amenity in exchange for building, but for its own sake?” she asks. “This is the kind of waterfront we should have a lot more of, whether or not it’s residential.” 2 Trees representatives say the River Street plan addresses both of those concerns: It would help bring more life back to the waterfront by creating marshes, oyster beds, and feeding and nesting places for species such as Atlantic blue crab, blue fish, and mussels. And from a resiliency standpoint, the design of the public park would help stem flooding in the towers because its expanded soft shoreline and pier will break wave action and absorb flood waters, while the towers will keep sensitive electrical and mechanical equipment above the floodplain. The plan also could also help unlock new uses for the city’s waterfront, which advocates and city officials have called the “6th borough” because of its untapped potential. Even politicians gotten in on it: In 2011, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a plan for new waterfront parks and a ferry service, saying, “Our waterfront and waterways—what we are calling New York City’s ‘Sixth Borough’—are invaluable assets. And when our work is complete, New York City will again be known as one of the world’s premier waterfront cities.”

CSS history

I first got into web design/development in the late 90s, and only as I type this sentence do I realize how long ago that was. And boy, it was horrendous. I mean, being able to make stuff and put it online where other people could see it was pretty slick, but we did not have very much to work with. I’ve been taking for granted that most folks doing web stuff still remember those days, or at least the decade that followed, but I think that assumption might be a wee bit out of date. Some time ago I encountered a tweet marveling at what we had to do without border-radius. I still remember waiting with bated breath for it to be unprefixed! But then, I suspect I also know a number of folks who only tried web design in the old days, and assume nothing about it has changed since. I’m here to tell all of you to get off my lawn. Here’s a history of CSS and web design, as I remember it.