Jon Evans
Jon Evans is a novelist, journalist, and software engineer. His novels have been published around the world, translated into several languages, and praised by The Times, The Economist, and the Washington Post. His journalism has appeared in Wired, Reader’s Digest, The Guardian, The Globe & Mail, and The Times of India, and he writes a weekly column for TechCrunch. Jon also has a degree in electrical engineering and a decade of experience as a software developer, building everything from smartphone apps to billion-dollar asset-allocation services.
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Latest from Jon Evans
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VR is terrible for traditional storytelling
“But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in a steel sphere which he could never take off. There was only one eyehole through which he could look, and welded to that eyehole were six feet of pipe… He was also strapped to a steel lattice which was bolted to a flatcar on rails, and there was no way he could turn his head.” — Kurt Vonnegut… Read More
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Crunch Network
On the dark art of software estimation
“How long will it take?” demand managers, clients, and executives. “It takes as long as it takes,” retort irritated engineers. They counter: “Give us an estimate!” And the engineers gather their wits, call upon their experience, contemplate the entrails of farm animals, throw darts at a board adorned with client/manager/executive faces, and return–a… Read More
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Crunch Network
The FBI is working hard to keep you unsafe
Did you know that the US government is sitting on its own Strategic Zero-Day Reserve? A “zero-day” is a software vulnerability that allows adversaries to bypass or reduce security restrictions; lets them hack systems which use that software, basically. These are not restricted to shady criminal hackers. They are strategic weapons in the hands of nation-states, including America. Read More
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Crunch Network
We should be worried about job atomization, not job automation
In the future, machines will do tedious, repetitive work for us, and do more of it than humans ever could, simultaneously increasing economic output and liberating humans everywhere from drudgery. We all know what that means: Disaster! Dystopia! Catastrophe! Everybody panic, the robots are stealing our jobs! We’re dooooooomed! Read More
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Crunch Network
Dear Facebook, why are Facebook Comments so unremittingly terrible?
For long months now, Facebook Comments have been riddled by some of the most transparent, eye-roll-inducing “I make a good salary working from home” spam you’ve ever seen. Every mail service can filter it out; but Facebook? Home to cutting-edge AI research, massively scalable services, some of the smartest software people in the world? Nope, spam appears to be beyond… Read More
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Crunch Network
Hollywood vs. VR
Let us all take a moment to celebrate the remarkable resilience of Hollywood. As “the music industry finds itself fighting over pennies while waving goodbye to dollars,” to quote the New York Times; as the publishing industry finds itself increasingly eclipsed by Amazon; as “the number of people watching TV is falling off a cliff,” as Business Insider puts it —… Read More
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Crunch Network
This war on math is still bullshit
In the wake of Paris, San Bernardino, and now Brussels, the encryption debate has become such a potent cocktail of horror, idiocy, and farce that it has become hard to tease out any rational threads of discussion. There is so much stupidity that I hardly know where to begin; but let’s start with the farce. Everybody loves a farce, right? Read More
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Crunch Network
These are testing times: mavericks vs. ice people
One of my earliest engineering jobs, before I fled hardware in favor of the (relative) ease and lucre of software, was in chip design. I remember being shocked when I learned just how much of the processor in question was devoted to test circuitry. Why waste so much on testing, I thought, instead of just getting it right the first time? Oh, how young and incredibly stupid I was. Read More
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Crunch Network
Technology and the laws of power
Is the tech industry partly responsible for the rise of Donald Trump? That’s what John Robb, who’s always worth reading, suggests in a series of recent posts, citing the great Nassim Taleb in support. His vision: “The nation-state as we’ve known it is rapidly hollowing out … this century’s spike in globalization, financialization, and technological change… Read More
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Crunch Network
On the war between hacker culture and codes of conduct
Did you know that a Code of Conduct war is underway in the world of open-source software development? I realize that this sounds ridiculous. Codes of Conduct boil down to: “a) don’t be an asshole, b) this is how we define ‘asshole’ around these parts”. Who could argue with that? And yet this has become eruptively controversial — and with good reason. Read More
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Crunch Network
After The Gold Rush
The startup gold rush of the last ten years is over. Sorry. Those hordes of ambitious entrepreneurs still stampeding to the Bay Area in the hopes of building their Minimum Viable Product, getting into Y Combinator, and growing their app into the Next Big Thing–they’re already too late. That era is behind us. It was a good run, even a legendary one, but it is over. Time for the new… Read More
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Crunch Network
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Cyberpunk Dystopia
Apple will lose this battle with the US government. Maybe not this year, or next, but soon enough, and for the rest of our lives. It is folly to pretend otherwise. Most ordinary people, and most powerful people, don’t care about abstruse theoretical arguments against back doors and weakened security. They care about—or want to exploit—the raw visceral fear of terrorist violence. Read More
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Crunch Network
When Data Goes Bad
So I know this guy Sulemaan from my Toronto days. Really good guy, despite being a Spurs fan. Sulemaan has a son, Syed, who is flagged as a security risk, a suspected terrorist, every time he flies. Syed is six years old. This is, of course, completely insane. But the data has been parsed; the algorithm has spoken; and so others must suffer from the idiocy of those who built the system. Read More
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Crunch Network
How To Fix Tech’s H-1B Problem
I’m a Canadian who has spent a sizable fraction of his adult life working in the USA, so immigration, especially as it relates to the tech industry, is a pretty personal subject. I was at a Waterloo Engineering alumnus event in San Francisco this week, and, inevitably, the arc of every conversation bent towards immigration, and how Kafkaesque it can be, even for us fortunate Canadians. Read More
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Crunch Network
The Great White Fail Whale
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago–never mind how long precisely–having nothing particular to interest me in meatspace, I thought to visit the Vale of Silicon. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen. Whenever my meds get such an upper hand of me, that I yearn to troll passersby–then, I account it high time to get to cyberspace. Read More
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Crunch Network
Bitcoin Is Dead (Again), Long Live Bitcoin (Again)
Oh, the drama, such drama. Last week, longtime Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn declared “the Bitcoin experiment…has failed,” and resigned from that community with a fusillade of verbal grenades (and a New York Times profile of his dissent.) This in turn provoked a whole torrent of hot takes and reactions, which mostly had one thing in common: contempt for all who disagree. Read More
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Crunch Network
Book It, Baby
Remember e-books? Those were the days, weren’t they? Those crazy few years when the fad of reading on a Kindle swept the nation. Now, of course, that fit of mass hysteria is behind us. E-book sales are falling, down more than 10% in 2015 — YA down 44%! — while used bookstores are coming back. Yes, that’s right; print is regaining its regal primacy; e-books are dead. Right? Read More
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Crunch Network
The Cruel Inequities
There are few people in technology more infuriating than Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, who earlier this month dropped a brilliant summary and analysis of the ongoing refragmentation of modern societies, followed immediately by a blinkered, muddled, wrong-headed essay on technology’s role in economic inequality. The response from his fellow tech VCs was remarkable. Read More
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Crunch Network
Why Bitcoin Matters
The most epochal financial transaction of this century, to date, occurred on May 22, 2010. It did not involve Wall Street, or the City of London; it took place in Jacksonville, Florida. It did not feature collateralized debt obligations, or credit default swaps. It was a purchase of two Papa John’s pizzas, in exchange for a payment whose present value currently exceeds US $4 million. Read More
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Crunch Network
It’s The Jons 2015!
Merry Christmas! 2015 was a truly great year in technology, bringing us self-driving electric cars, reusable orbital rockets, the rise of precision gene editing… and some lesser achievements. Since nothing of interest will happen in the next four days, I have decided to jump the gun; today I announce my annual dubious achievement awards, named, in a fit of awe-inspiring humility… Read More
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