Category Archives: Computer science

Non-hierarchical file system

Long ago, as the design of the Unix file system was being worked out, the entries . and .. appeared, to make navigation easier. I’m not sure but I believe .. went in during the Version 2 rewrite, when the file system became hierarchical (it had a very different structure early on). Rob Pike —Continue reading “Non-hierarchical file system”

Software updates – part I

This essay is about how the internet has accelerated aspects of software development. The net is a means for much faster, more widespread propagation of software and software updates than previously available. Before the net, when software was mainly distributed via physical media, updates could only be delivered via similar means: magnetic discs, CD-ROMs, printedContinue reading “Software updates – part I”

After Facebook

I don’t have a great reason for not having a Facebook account, for deleting mine, as I did, a couple of months ago. But I’m okay with that. I’m not particularly interested in convincing other people to follow my lead, at least not right now. But I do think Facebook is rather bad. Here’s someContinue reading “After Facebook”

Love in the age of decentralised personal computing

How will the distributed network revolution impact online dating? Services like OKCupid, Tinder and Match.com operate on centralised, client-server models. Daters sign up to a service and give it some personal information: photos, biography text, age, sex, location, and preferences. The service stores the info, and gives the user an interface for checking out profilesContinue reading “Love in the age of decentralised personal computing”

Hacking on Holochain: first impressions

Here’s an exciting player in the ascendant decentralised computing space: Holochain. It’s a ‘post-blockchain’ platform for apps that communicate peer-to-peer, with secure user identities and cryptographically-validated shared data. This week, key Holo people and creative collective darVOZ are running a sprint-athon in London. This is where I met them (people in both groups) for the firstContinue reading “Hacking on Holochain: first impressions”

Using nginx to give your Urbit page a nice URL

Here’s the newest component of my little media empire, a chat room: chat.operatingspace.net (dead link removed) It runs on Urbit, which is a fascinating, complex project which I’ll sum up here as: a decentralised, programmable social network. This blog post is a tutorial for something I just learned how to do: set up nginx toContinue reading “Using nginx to give your Urbit page a nice URL”