Writing & field notes
Essays on data investigations, tech and the questions it raises, plus slower notes on football, travel, and the things I point a camera at.
I benchmarked India's official statistics server, and got twelve things wrong
India's statistics ministry shipped a server that connects AI assistants directly to official data. I spent two weeks testing it. Nothing I checked contradicted an …
How many Lok Sabha seats will Tamil Nadu get?
Tamil Nadu has 39 seats. Under the options now being discussed it ends up with anywhere between 32 and 64. The …
The rule India wrote down in 1963
India divides Lok Sabha seats among its states using a method a Commission wrote down in 1963. It has a name, …
How I worked out India's seat rule: sources, code and corrections
The method note behind the delimitation piece. Every source with a full citation, every model choice, what …
The darkness-per-hour map: ranking SoCal's dark skies by drive time from Orange County
Southern California's best dark-sky sites for stargazing, ranked by drive time from Orange County: …
IBM Just Had Its Worst Day Ever. It Was Not About Mainframes Failing.
IBM shares crashed 25 percent in a single day after an earnings warning. The mainframe took the blame, but the …
Fly Well, Daisy and Dandi: The Day the Nest Went Empty
The final chapter of Honey's story: her two chicks, Daisy and Dandi, learn to fly, start sleeping in the …
Daisy and Dandi: Honey's Chicks Hatched on My Daughter's Birthday
Honey the hummingbird's two eggs hatched into chicks named Daisy and Dandi, on our daughter's birthday. A …
Who stops first? Anthropic just asked the hardest question in AI
Anthropic says the world should have the option to slow down AI before it starts building itself. The idea …
Google is releasing millions of mosquitoes. Here is what that actually means
Alphabet's Verily wants to release up to 32 million lab-bred mosquitoes across Florida and California. A …