The Flawed History of Graphical User Interfaces – Member Feature Stories – Medium
The most useful thing we can do, when trying to imagine a desirable future for computing, is to try to forget the entire Macintosh legacy and send our minds back to 1976—because that’s when all the innovation and meaningful design stalled out in favor of a paternalistic approach that’s perpetuated ever since.

How the Artificial Intelligence Program AlphaZero Mastered Its Games | The New Yorker
In one section of the AlphaGo Zero paper, the DeepMind team illustrates how their A.I., after a certain number of training cycles, discovers strategies well-known to master players, only to discard them just a few cycles later. It is odd and a little unsettling to see humanity’s best ideas trundled over on the way to something better; it hits close to home in a way that seeing a physical machine exceed us—a bulldozer shifting a load of earth, say—doesn’t.

Review: Azul, board game of the year? | Ars Technica
This week, Azul won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres, a "game of the year" award given out by an association of German critics. To my mind, the win was well-deserved—and one I expected ever since I first played Azul last November. That's because Azul features a truly minimal rule set (and one with almost no exceptions), quick setup and teardown time, and gorgeous production. Are we looking at a new "instant classic" for gateway board games? Yes, we are.

Google’s $350 Billion Haircut – Which Half Is Wasted? – Medium
The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues. That could mean a massive devaluation for both Google and Facebook.

Jean Bourgain | What’s new