Author Archives: gx

Microservices: Why Are We Doing This?

I’ve written something like this before on my old (defunct) blog before, but new thoughts and realizations required that I revisit it. The topic? Microservices. The trend to build every single application as a series of tiny web services that talk to each other is growing in prominence, and starting to be picked up by aContinue reading “Microservices: Why Are We Doing This?”

Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

Selecting embryos based on such screening is premature, other researchers warn A California company says it can decipher almost all the DNA code of a days-old embryo created through in vitro fertilization (IVF)—a challenging feat because of the tiny volume of genetic material available for analysis. The advance depends on fully sequencing both parents’ DNAContinue reading “Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo”

Qualcomm: From Satellites to CDMA to Snapdragons

Qualcomm is the world’s largest fabless semiconductor designer. The name Qualcomm is a mashup of Quality and Communications and communications has been a hallmark of the company since its founding. They began in satellite communications and today most every smartphone has a Qualcomm chip. The ubiquity of communications in our devices and everyday lives hasContinue reading “Qualcomm: From Satellites to CDMA to Snapdragons”

How The Inca Used Knots To Tell Stories

The Inca are most often remembered not for what they had but for what they didn’t have: the wheel, iron, a written language. This third lack has given rise to a paradox, the Inca paradox. Could it be that the largest pre-Columbian empire in the Americas existed without a jot of linguistic notation? Could someoneContinue reading “How The Inca Used Knots To Tell Stories”

The Steamboat Inventors: The First Generation

The idea that a fuel-burning engine could drive a vehicle over land, through the water, or even into the sky, was already old by the time of Watt’s triumphs. Leibiniz, Huygens, and Papin had all dreamed of vehicles powered by gunpowder or steam. The horseless carriage was the most popular concept; machinery to turn wheelsContinue reading “The Steamboat Inventors: The First Generation”

This scientist wrote the ultimate guide to alien weapons, music, and sex

Robert Freitas shares the story behind the Xenology. Robert Freitas was still in college when he started his now-legendary handbook to alien life. Published in 1979, Xenology offered some of the first — and still among the only — serious academic discussion of potential extraterrestrial biology, culture, and more, including, yes, ray guns and orgasms.Continue reading “This scientist wrote the ultimate guide to alien weapons, music, and sex”

Food Packaging

Every time you open the refrigerator, a heroic engineering effort looks back at you. The global market for plastic caps and closures is worth $40 billion per year–and growing. Sophisticated packaging keeps consumers safe from foodborne illness, reduces spoilage and waste, makes it possible to deliver food to faraway markets, and provides distinctive experiences forContinue reading “Food Packaging”

Kaitai Struct: A new way to develop parsers for binary structures

Kaitai Struct is a declarative language used to describe various binary data structures, laid out in files or in memory: i.e. binary file formats, network stream packet formats, etc. The main idea is that a particular format is described in Kaitai Struct language (.ksy file) and then can be compiled with ksc into source filesContinue reading “Kaitai Struct: A new way to develop parsers for binary structures”

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