The Guy With The Model Was Right
Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight model called all fifty states right while cable pundits called it a toss-up. A win for showing your work.
Tech News
Tech News
327,452 Tweets a Minute
Twitter posted its election night numbers yesterday — 327,452 tweets per minute at the peak. That's the story I actually want to talk about, not who won.
327,452 Tweets a Minute (And I Refreshed Anyway)
Twitter hit a record 327,452 tweets per minute during last night's election coverage. A look at what that traffic spike actually says about web infrastructure, plus a tangent about the iPad mini.
The Basement That Broke Half the Internet
A flooded basement at a Manhattan data center knocked Gawker, BuzzFeed, and chunks of Huffington Post offline this week, and it's a small, clean example of how fragile "the cloud" actually is.
Nobody At The Microsoft Store Could Explain Windows RT
Windows 8 and Surface RT launched today, and a trip to the Microsoft Store made it obvious nobody, including the staff, can clearly explain what Windows RT actually is.
Seven Months Later, My New iPad Is Already the Old One
Apple's iPad mini event was the big story this week, but the part that actually bugs me is that my seven-month-old "new" iPad is already the old one.
Google's Earnings Leaked Two Hours Early and It Was Kind of Amazing to Watch
Google's Q3 earnings leaked two hours early this week thanks to a filing screwup at its outside print vendor, and it says more about how fragile Wall Street's plumbing is than about Google's quarter.
The Real Record From the Space Jump
Everyone's talking about Felix Baumgartner falling from the stratosphere last Sunday, but the number stuck in my head is the 8 million people who watched it live on YouTube at once.
I'm Not Preordering the Surface Yet
Microsoft opened Surface preorders this week with zero real reviews out yet, and I'm not clicking buy until someone else finds the problems first.
Watching the Stratos Jump Livestream
A few days late, some thoughts on watching the Red Bull Stratos space jump livestream from my desk, and why the fact that 8 million people could watch at once without it collapsing feels like the real story.
Watching Stratos on a Buffering Stream
Felix Baumgartner's Stratos jump was the story everyone watched today, but what stuck with me was the YouTube stream itself buckling under something like 8 million concurrent viewers.
Dragon Docks, Engine Falls Off, Nobody Panicked
SpaceX's first operational cargo run to the ISS survived a mid-flight engine failure and still nailed the docking this week, and I think that's a way better story than another headline about user counts.