When explaining the cloud to my relatives, I typically explain it as "people running computers on your behalf that you can reach over the internet". That's enough to get the point

A relative just visited whose current technology consists of a Windows computer and a flip-phone. It was one of those situations where someone was coming to me as a blank slate for a

[edited on 2014-11-07 to mention cordless phones that work with mobile phones] Making voice calls using the telephone network is now antiquated. There are practically no good financial reasons to have a landline

I'm one of those programmers that does not hold great nostalgia for old programs. I'm always willing to toss aside some part of my software toolkit if something better comes along. This basically

Recently I wrote a blog post about how I don't worry about Python losing users. Within minutes I had people asking about Python's usage, which the post was not about and is a

I just had a need to read two files that were line-delimited lists of domains, consolidate the data, and then output the domains sorted and all lowercased to a new file. It took

When I posted on Google+ about Python 3.4.1 being released it led to various comments on the post and it made me realize how far we have come with Python 3

TL;DR: What do you get when you design a dynamic programming language that is fast, familiar to programmers, and meant to compile down to JavaScript? Dart. Why does Dart exist? Dart is

A co-worker recently gave a talk that explained how Bitcoin worked and it was interesting to hear how you should protect your bitcoins. When you think of cash, it's basically some physical good

With the assumption that everyone in my family has a smartphone of some kind, the question becomes whether members of my family should buy a laptop or a tablet as their primary computing

UPDATED on 2014-03-28 TL;DR When it comes to phones I advise my family to buy (in order of preference): The latest Google Nexus phone from Google Play or the latest iPhone Other

Depending on which government body is talking, Canada is aiming for either 100% broadband access by the end of 2014 or 77% broadband subscriptions by 2019. Now Canada has a population density of

With the purchasing of WhatsApp for $19 billion, the visibility of the various messaging apps has been raised (e.g. WhatsApp, Hangouts, Kik, Line, WeChat, Viber, Facebook Messenger, SnapChat, BBM, Skype). Apps like

I just released caniusepython3 1.1.0 to PyPI. Various tweaks and fixes as is usual with a N.1 release, but there is one neat, new feature: python setup.py caniusepython3 If

Having been so heavily involved with the creation of Python 3, I'm constantly trying to figure out ways to help more of the community make the switch. While doing what I can to

Re/code has an essay entitled, "Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over". I think I agree. Our 1st generation Nexus 7 tablet lives underneath our sofa. I originally put

My consistent password generator project -- Oplop -- started life as a Python script, became a website, got packaged up as a Chrome extension, which then morphed into a Chrome app. There are

UPDATED on 2014-03-13 Every few months you read a news story about how another website has suffered a data breach and all of their login information has been stolen (i.e. email addresses

TL;DR: Family should buy Chrome OS devices (e.g. Chromebooks) unless they have special needs which aren't supported on that platform, in which case they should get a single Mac and Chrome

When Justin Trudeau announced liberal senators were removed from the caucus, I thought it was a good idea. The Canadian Senate is meant to act as a check against Parliament to make sure

While writing my blog post on 4K UHD TVs I started to go off on a tangent about what it would take for physical media to become obsolete and lose any benefit to

Now that CES 2014 is over, one of the obvious themes of the show was 4K UHD televisions. Being somewhat of an AV nut (as demonstrated by my blog post about choosing a

TL;DR Scala is fine and I would definitely use it over vanilla Java, but I still prefer Go if I'm not able to use Python. My Impressions Why did I even look

The idea of making the planet harder to live on because I and my fellow human beings can't keep their fossil fuel burning under control feels like children who are addicted to candy:

I have been involved with Python’s development process as an official core developer of the language for a decade over Python’s 24 years in existence and we are still trying to