"From 1950 to 1990, Tinsley had been the world champion of checkers whenever he wanted to be. He’d occasionally retire to work on mathematics or devote himself to religious study, but he’d eventually return, beat everyone and become champion again. In that 40-year span, he lost five total games and never once dropped a match." Brilliant article from Alexis Madrigal on the race to solve draughts/checkers, one man and his computer, and another man and his faith.

"I think for a while journalism thought it couldn’t afford the difficult bits, the investigations, the new technology skills, the legal teams, the time for the more complicated problems. We could only secure our survival with automatically generated dancing hamsters and robot-written press releases.

Now when we look at the mighty new networks of our age, I hope we all realise, Us and Them, that these are the very things we can’t afford not to do."

P6: DIY, virtual-analog polysynth; €200 with case in a kit. Looks really nice – sounds good, too, and has a warmth to it.

Yet another entry in the weird, wonderful world of "why I like fighting games and their community". The vast amount of jargon that the streams lead to is weird, hilarious, and entirely befuddling for an outsider. McCormick's article is nice because it captures the excitement of the weird end of the community, and explains it to an outsider well.

"I could argue back and forth forever, but what I really want to do as a developer, is to work on games in tiny, tiny teams. It means less compromise when it comes to design. It means more freedom when it comes to implementation."

"Shim is a node.js-based browser-compatibility tool that lets you synchronize several devices/browsers and surf the same pages simultaneously on all of them." Wow.

An Impressive list of notable examples of programmatic journalism from Dan Sinker; something I must return to.

"It’s a bit like augmented reality, a layer inserted between what leaves the server and what hits your brain." Yes. Also: see Ben's comment about the browser as weapon.

Alan is writing the Guardian's crosswords blog, looking at crosswords from all publications. Brilliant.

"EON has a full-time staff of six, headed up by editor Zapatero (known to his grandma as Richie Shoemaker), who told Wired.co.uk that around two-thirds of the content of the magazine is written by EVE players, who are paid in in-game currency for their work. It acquires the reserves of in-game cash to pay its writers by selling ads to in-game organisations, like banks or insurance companies, which pay their ad bills in the game's currency too. The setup means that gamers who play EVE have more ways to make in-game cash than just mining or trading in the game universe. They can also be a journalist, reporting on galactic events." This is completely brilliant/nuts. Also: I love the idea that people want to collect the historiography of the universe.

"Trust is the key to breaking [this cycle]. And I think Talese’s method shows us how we might gain it: by checking with our subjects and making sure we understand what they’re trying to express, beyond what they actually say. Because if our subjects are interesting enough to report on, they’re deserving of respect. And if we respect them, they will respect us. That’s a much more virtuous circle." I think Alex is right, you know.

Madden isn't very big over here at all; it's hard to underestimate its cultural standing in the US. This article goes a long way to both explaining that and looking at the history of a juggernaut franchise that once started out very small. I really liked it as a piece of journalism.

Strictly speaking, "The Best of *American* Journalism", but there's lots on here I'd like to read sometime.

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Magick is all about naming and control. So is journalism, and software engineering—related disciplines." yes yes yes a thousand times yes (the most wonderful sentence in James' write-up of a non-conference I didn't attend).