On Not Being the Free Alternative

We realize that free and open source apps often do have the mission of mimicking the features of some one or several commercial apps, as if they’re Prometheus bringing features to the common computer user — but that is not our mission. Our mission is to make the best RSS reader that we like making. […]

Why do we love word puzzles and games?

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything it’s that, given large stretches of time confined mostly inside our homes, we will eventually experience the desire to do something besides binge-watch television. Many people have long been daily devotees of crossword puzzles and games, but others turned to them as a comforting distraction from a […]

You can stop the New York Times taking Wordle from you

The news that the New York Times is buying Wordle is a concern for those of us who spend a couple of minutes playing it every day. It has been something free and simple to play, and to compete with people if you choose to. Jo and I discussed Wordle in the latest podcast episode […]

100 seconds to midnight

Every January, the scientists assess how close the world is to ending, in their view, and use knowledge of how things have changed to move the clock either closer or farther away from midnight. To quote Prince’s prescient 1999 lyrics, the idea is that when the clock strikes 12, it’s party over, oops, out of […]

Famous for cajoling killers into confessing to their crimes

The woman was Bobbie Sue Hill. Nearly a decade before this conversation, kids had stumbled upon her body in a creek bed under a bridge, less than a mile from Driskill’s home. Investigators pieced together that she was a 29-year-old mother of five whose husband had died in a car accident. She had been struggling […]

‘Impossible’ mathematics problem cracked

The mathematics problem is a bit like Sudoku on steroids. It’s called Euler’s officer problem, after Leonhard Euler, the mathematician who first proposed it in 1779. Here’s the puzzle: You’re commanding an army with six regiments. Each regiment contains six different officers of six different ranks. Can you arrange them in a 6-by-6 square without […]

The sixth mass extinction may have already started

Over the past 450 million years, life on Earth has been devastated by at least five mass extinctions, which are typically defined as catastrophes that wipe out more than 75 percent of species in a short amount of time. Many scientists have proposed that we are entering a Sixth Mass Extinction, this time driven by […]

When you attack the BBC, the NHS and the Queen you are not patriotic, and you will lose

‘One day, we’ll have a PM who isn’t a monstrous arse. There won’t be knighthoods for failure. The Culture Secretary won’t be a vain moron. The Home Secretary won’t be a dullwitted bully. The govt won’t need to be under investigation and the country will start to be happy again.’ Tweeted here. You will likely […]

You can’t replace the feel of turning a real page

That trend undermines the tech companies’ seductive promises that apps and platforms will always and inevitably eclipse physical objects. The unexpected triumph of printed books – partly a result of their enhanced design values – proves that not all upgrades represent progress… More here. I kind of like this trend, but it most certainly does […]

Why is the bar so low for men?

No shade at all to Christensen for sharing the content in question. She’s a regular gym goer and has probably had plenty of experience of men staring, making comments, offering unsolicited advice, invading her space and generally making her feel uncomfortable. When a man chooses not to treat you with the sort of humdrum, casual […]