YTechnology

  I had the good fortune to witness the 2026 Solar Eclipse in Spain.  Instead of appearing high up in the sky as a singular cosmic event, this eclipse showed itself low in the horizon, as if to join and partake in the lights and life of the town of Salou. I felt awestruck... and gratitude. I also want to thank the astronomers who sent me to the correct space-time coordinates. Predicting the time and place of the total eclipse is a remarkable achievement and a testament to mathematics. Often taken for granted, the Fields Medals and International Mathematical Union (IMU) Awards gives math its due every four years.  I wrote about the 2022 winners here . The 2026 winners are listed and honored on the  Simons Foundation  webpage. As a computer programmer I want to highlight the three IMU Awards winners because, to a small degree, I can relate to parts of their work. Abacus Medal to Shayan Oveis Gharan . His work revolutionized our understanding of Markov Chain Monte ...

  Beautiful Code was published nearly 20 years ago in 2007. The blurb on the back cover promises an over-the-shoulder look of leading developers creating elegant solutions to hard problems. Some of those shoulders belong to well-known heavyweights of an earlier period, including Brian Kernighan and Jon Bentley . A bit closer to the present, Yukihiro Matsumoto, nicknamed Matz and inventor of Ruby, writes "Treating Code As An Essay."  Notably, Matz argues that code is meant to be read by humans. Ideally, beautiful code would be simple, balanced, and make developers happy and productive. In contrast, I must point out, AI generated code is meant to be, at most, corrected. Separately, Bjarne Stroustrup had this to say when asked by  Lex Friedman  on how can you tell when your code has reached the Einstein level of  simplicity : "It's easier to recognize ugly than to recognize beauty in code. . . sometimes beauty comes from something that is innovative and unusual,...

Back in December, I reviewed the Keychron Q3 Pro.  I liked it... mostly.  What I didn't like were the keycaps which were sharp, sculpted, high, and deep. Designed to guide and cradle your fingers, the aggressive shape captured your fingers and tortured them. It took energy, focus, and deliberation to type on the OEM keys. 

Kevin O’Leary — multi-millionaire and host of Shark Tank — is backing the Stratos Project in Utah. A planned AI data center, it’s big, expensive, power hungry and wastes precious water. Read more about this in The Salt Lake Tribute . Meanwhile, feel free to add more verses. *     *     *     *     * Old McLeary built a farm, AI-AI-Oh! And lo' this farm was very big, AI-AI-Oh! 8 miles here, and 8 miles there, Here 8, there 8, 40,000 acres Old McLeary built a farm, AI-AI-Oh! Old McLeary built a farm, AI-AI-Oh! And lo' this farm made lots of noise, AI-AI-Oh! Giant fans here, and giant fans there, Here noise, there noise, 24/7 noise-noise Old McLeary built a farm, AI-AI-Oh! Old McLeary built a farm, AI-AI-Oh! And lo' this farm was always parched. AI-AI-Oh! Slurp slurp here, and slurp slurp there, Here slurp, there slurp, six million gallons daily slurped, Old McLeary built a farm, AI-AI-Oh! Old McLeary built a farm, AI-AI-Oh! And on this farm he had ...

In the 1983 movie " WarGames ," a young Matthew Broderick and a likeable AI come to a tense nuclear moment. The AI concludes "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." Today, in 2026, amidst a tense AI spend and scramble, Apple has come to the same conclusion: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." An article in Yahoo Finance -- Apple Skipped the AI Arms Race ...  -- shows how Apple is thinking different .  Instead of spending billions like Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, Apple will use its platform to host AI assistants -- Claude, Gemini, Copilot -- and let the user choose among them. Apple, with its M series chips and unified memory, can support AI locally and privately on the device, rather than remotely, in a data center somewhere. Admittedly, success is also partly luck. Apple avoided the AI scramble because it struggled to upgrade the foundations of Siri. Viewed as a running race, Apple was still lacing up its sne...

Every written and spoken word about the Apple Studio Display is true. The brushed aluminum hardware is beautiful. The panel, sharp and vibrant, is stunning.  And the price, starting at $1599, is crazy high. Back in 2022, I was merely  thinking about getting one. By 2025, those thoughts turned into reality. I purchased the display and maxed it out with the height adjustable stand and the nano texture glass. Now in 2026, my heart is a little heavy because Apple just released a new 2026 Studio Display . More on that later. My old iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch) had a very glossy panel, and I struggled during the day with mirrored sunlight from my windows and a skylight, and at night with reflections from a lamp. The nano texture glass effectively neutralized them all without sacrificing image quality. It was well worth the added cost. Over time, I discovered two things not discussed much: The ambient light sensor is not in or near the camera lens. The display continuously draws 11-1...