"Simple things work"

James Hamilton: "The FriendFeed technique to deal with the schema change issue is arguably a bit heavy handed: they simply don’t show the schema to MySQL and, instead, use it as a key-value store where the values are either JSON objects or Python dictionaries."

"My experience with frameworks is that the first 90% is breezy, the final 10% a horror." And all sorts of other great advice.

This is great. Like what you should get out of a CompSci class but probably didn't.

"an overview of high-performance computers which are currently available or will become available within a short time frame from vendors; no attempt is made to list all machines that are still in the research phase". Circa 2004.

"a service for coordinating processes of distributed applications"

"a family of protocols for solving consensus in a network of unreliable processors. Consensus is the process of agreeing on one result among a group of participants."

Photographs of abandoned and "historical" places.

A directory of prefab houses.

This seems like a good idea.

Tim Bray sez: "message-queuing systems will inevitably end up at the center of everything serious."

Hell, everyone else has bookmarked this.

"The fact that Ajax lets you interact with a server without a full refresh puts the option of a stateful client back on the table." O RLY?

beautiful libraries from around the world