"In this way, Dynamic Yield is part of a generation of companies whose core technology, while extremely useful, is powered by artificial intelligence that is roughly as good as a 24-year-old analyst at Goldman Sachs with a big dataset and a few lines of Adderall."

This is good – and largely well written, bar an unnecessary cheap shot at one point. It overlaps with lots of what I have to teach students about AI: namely, those letter have become this huge suitcase concept for anything from gnarly machine learning problems and recurrent neural networks down to applied statistics and a splash of arithmetic. And meanwhile, everyone just keeps adding to this cyclone of nonsense as they try to out-claim one another. It's exhausting, and it pollutes the public sphere, such that inexperts – politicians, policymakers – get themselves tangled up about all the wrong things. Sigh.

"A year with a single Leica and a single lens, looking at light and ignoring color, will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist." This is not a bad point.

"It will [violent metaphor] you." Mitch has seen one too many press releases, methinks.

"High-resolution renders of gameplay from Shadow of the Colossus, including earlier versions of the game (where the colossi had differently-shaped eyes, as one example). Most of the screenshots are at or around 2048×1526 resolution – perfect for making wallpapers of any size." Ooooh.

"…to prove I could, I made a small desktop application. It’s called Clarke. It’s really not very exciting — don’t get your hopes up. It’s just a toolbar thing that sits there, quietly, using Skyhook’s API to triangulate your location from nearby wifi points, pushing it to Fire Eagle. Yes, it’s YAFEU (Yet Another Fire Eagle Updater)." Tom makes Proper Software. He is smart.

"Cracking the bus network is really the key to most cities, and we’re nearly at the point of directed bus serendipity. In London, at least."

Joel Johnson rounds on Wired for the gulf between their online and printed formats; the comments thread turns into a much more rational, and reasonable, discussion from many Wired staff, past and present.

"Boxer plays MS-DOS games on your Mac. It’s based on the robust DOSBox emulator, with a lot of magic sprinkled on top. Run DOS programs from Finder. Wrap your games into tidy packages that launch like Mac apps. Painlessly install games from CD—then bundle the CD with your game so you don't even need it in the drive."

"The lesson to be learned here is that when something screws with your careful plans, you take control of that thing, warp it to your every demand, and channel it into a concentrated stream of Awesome. That is how you do PR." Pretty much. Valve have handled this brilliantly – the achievement they awarded themselves being the icing on the cake – and not only have they been on-brand for a savvy, internet-enabled company, they've also been spot on-brand for TF2.

"…this is a good time to consider zzt’s library – not because it’s changing, but because it’s probably complete. the long-running game archive z2 just declared zzt dead, and why not – it’s served its purpose: allowing people who aren’t programmers or digital artists an avenue to game creation before game maker or construct existed. now they do." ZZT must have been one of the first games I played, and I poked around its level editor. This retrospective both fascinates and arouses nostalgia in equal measures.

"Today, I made a little application using the Spore API." Specifically, rendering the skeletons of creatures in Processing. Nice.

"LSL is a 2-D arena shooter featuring a robot that falls in love with several lovely female robots each with her own unique abilities and atmosphere… The longer our heroes stay together, the more their relationship will evolve, making them stronger; but this increases the difficulty of the game, too. When they "break up," the enemies are cleared, but so is the score multiplier. Throughout the game, the robot recalls memories of a love before…" This sounds – and looks – delightful.

"For use on days with uninteresting skies." I should like one of those very much.

"Majini have gone through a small part of London, leaving behind a trail of remnant body parts from their victims. Find the bodies on the morning of Thursday March 12th and win a vacation to Africa." Um. Really not sure this is the best kind of live event, chaps.

Seriously, the UI customisation that some players go through amazes me. And yet: the level of customisation possible also amazes me. There's some good stuff in here not just on customising your UI, but also making it look functional and useful; UI design is still possible in the sea of plugins.

"Just because a line is functional doesn’t mean it can’t be clever, funny, insightful, or dramatic. The real art of videogame writing is being aware of the context: understanding how, when and where the line is going to be used, and how to compensate for the times you have no control over when the line is played." A nice piece on writing for games, and brevity (or a lack of it).

Touché.