I’ve spent a lot of time this month learning about what all happened on election night. I felt that both sides were exaggerating quite a bit so I tried to really hear them out and see what the underlying events may have been. Although it’s easy to see that many…

Mark Zuckerberg visited Congress again to discuss a cryptocurrency project and give some testimony about his business and strategy at Facebook. After his brief presentation, several representatives got to grill him, and as usual, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received a lot of attention and admiration for her focused discussion. …

Over the years, Apple has gotten more restrictive about who can legally repair their devices, and has built things in a mode where they are simpler to replace than to fix. This approach to repairs has been frustrating for a lot of customers. While the devices generally work well and…

In my short book, Expressive Voting, I dedicate the first chapter to exploring why I think our election would function better if voters could select more than one candidate. Since we are accustomed to selecting one, for many people it is intuitive to rank their preferred candidates. However, my proposal…

Apple has raised a lot of eyebrows with the announcement of this price point for what appears to be a rather low-tech accessory. Although no information is available, I have some ideas about why this price may have been chosen. Most Apple products are positioned to garner a profit margin…

The NPVIC is a series of legislation dedicating electors to the winner of the nationwide popular vote, rather than the votes in a given state. The legislation currently on the books is inactive until enough states are dedicated to add up to 270. However, this waiting clause is not needed, since the popular candidate would also get electoral votes from other states. For instance, if the threshold was 100, then the states having already passed legislation could activate it, and the popular vote winner could prevail with 170 votes from other states.

Tim Cook was a big cog in Apple’s comeback, when the company pared down to iMac, PowerMac, iBook and PowerBook. Since then, the products generally offer just two or three configurable options, which makes purchasing less intimidating, and contains manufacturing costs. …

As a kid I shopped for Magic cards at Albany bookstore Flights of Fantasy. This year I had the opportunity to return there for a prerelease event: where participants compete with a deck built on the spot from fresh packs of mostly-unreleased cards. …

This year I learned about the technique for plotting the Mandelbrot set. It’s pretty simple: an iterative process of adding and squaring a complex number. The number can be treated as two-dimensional since it has a real part and an imaginary part. While being squared, though, the two parts interact…