Events

VW will stop making the original People's Car later this year: The streets of American cities were once carpeted in Bugs. From 1968 to 1973, more than a million were sold every year. In 1972, when it passed the 15 million mark, the Bug overtook the Ford Model T as the best-selling vehicle on the planet. Yesterday, the German automaker announced that it would be killing the Beetle brand for the 2019 model year, news that surprised zero industry observers—these plans have been known for years—but still...

I'm just starting the process of moving, today, by signing a ton of papers in an office somewhere in Chicago. I get to do this two more times before the end of September. But mid-October, Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters will have a new home. Parker has no idea how disrupted his life is about to become.

James Fallows will spend the next 54 days (until the next Congressional election in the US) talking about the 51 people who each have the power to stop President Trump: The 51 senators who now make up the GOP’s governing majority represent about 30 million fewer constituents than do the 49 Democrats and independents. And thanks to gerrymandering and similar factors, a 1-percent GOP edge in House of Representatives voting in 2016—just over 63 million total votes for Republican candidates, versus just...

Via Raymond Chen, Eric Shlaepfer built a 6502 emulator out of full-size components: The MOnSter 6502 A dis-integrated circuit project to make a complete, working transistor-scale replica of the classic MOS 6502 microprocessor. How big is it? It's a four layer circuit board, 12 × 15 inches, 0.1 inches thick, with surface mount components on both sides. Can you hook it up inside an Apple ][ and run Oregon Trail? No, not directly. It's neat to think of plugging the MOnSter 6502's in-circuit emulator (ICE)...

Before diving back into one of the most abominable wrecks of a software application I've seen in years, I've lined up some stuff to read when I need to take a break: DARPA claims to have developed a microchip, that goes in your brain, that can control a swarm of drones. You read that right. The Republican Congress are set to float a budget bill that would add $2 trn to our national debt (only $2,000 bn to my UK readers) over the next 10 years, a move that Thomas Friedman calls "heating up our economy by...

While trying to debug an ancient application that has been the undoing of just about everyone on my team, I've put these articles aside for later: Using the example of an automated process that sends out emails that your inbox subsequently deletes without any intervention on your part, Raymond Chen discusses Le Chatelier's Principle. Demonstrating that a stopped clock is correct twice a day, it turns out the Trump tax cuts have given a (temporary) boost to craft distilling. Whisky Advocate name-checks...

Just an historical note: as of today, I've been working with Microsoft .NET for 17 years. The first time I picked it up was 10 September 2001, which, if you think about it, is a very easy date to remember.

Researchers at the City University of New York have discovered that Yelp data can show rising incomes with remarkable precision: First, in testing a popular theory about signs of the gentry’s arrival, they pulled out all the Starbucks listings on Yelp across the United States dating back to 2007. Combining that information with Federal Housing Finance Agency data by zip code, they found that the arrival of every new Starbucks into a given area was associated with a 0.5 percent rise in local housing...

Atlantic editor Adam Serwer draws a straight line between the ways the Redemption court of the 1870s paved the way for the Gilded Age and Jim Crow, and how the Roberts court now (and especially with Brett Kavanaugh on it) is returning to those halcyon days: The decision in Cruikshank set a pattern that would hold for decades. Despite being dominated by appointees from the party of abolition, the Court gave its constitutional blessing to the destruction of America’s short-lived attempt at racial equality...

Sometimes, on Saturday afternoon, you just have to binge-watch Netflix while going through old boxes. I haven't told Parker that there will soon be more boxes. And then more boxes. And then nothing but boxes. He'll find that out on his own in good time. For now, I'll just let him believe that I'm rearranging things because that's what humans do sometimes. But he's eyeing the boxes warily. I think he suspects that his life is about to get disrupted. To the extent that he can suspect anything, or...