Speaking of PGP and security, this self-described best PGP tutorial for Mac OS X, ever actually lives up to the promise. Check it out, makes encrypting and decrypting things on the fly super easy.

There’s a great write-up of the human side of WordPress.com’s 2014 as well as some impressive numbers.

This article on the amazing rise of bacon was one of my favorite articles I read last year. About bacon.

Developing an API is hard. Here’s Automattician Demitrious Kelly On API Correctness.

Avleen Vig wrote a great case for distributed teams that covers many of the high-level highlights I’d agree with.

Shubhro Saha on why software engineers should write. Hear hear.

Longreads has just published their best of 2014 list which has plenty to keep you entertained and read for hours.

Performance As Design, by Brad Frost. Great thoughts and links. Performance is going to be a big focus for me in 2015.

“Because the most-popular songs now stay on the charts for months, the relative value of a hit has exploded. The top 1 percent of bands and solo artists now earn 77 percent of all revenue from recorded music, media researchers report. And even though the amount of digital music sold has surged, the 10 best-selling tracks command 82 percent more of the market than they did a decade ago. The advent of do-it-yourself artists in the digital age may have grown music’s long tail, but its fat head keeps getting fatter.” — The Shazam Effect.

Munchery is Eating the Restaurant, a cool write-up of Munchery which I’ve been a long-time fan of and is an Audrey company. Whenever I’m in SF I order from Munchery.

As open source goes mainstream, institutions collaborate differently.

9 Reasons Why News Media Sites Should Embrace HTTPS in 2015.

From Novice to Master, and Back Again, by David Mackenzie.

Mother Jones covers the results in Texas of the election in a harsh but fair way: Wendy Davis Spent $36 Million and All She Got Was This Lousy Landslide. Now What?. I think Texas will be the focal point of American politics in years to come, but this was not the year it started.

What It’s Like to Carry Your Nobel Prize through Airport Security. Hat tip: Guillermo Rauch.

Not One Artist’s Album Has Gone Platinum In 2014.

A brief history of spam and email crypto by someone who used to work on Gmail. Hat tip: Donncha O Caoimh.

Luca Sartoni writes How I fell into the rabbit hole: life and work at the distributed wonderland.

“The biggest misconception engineers have when thinking about moving into management is they think it’s a promotion.” — Lindsay Holmwood writes It’s not a promotion – it’s a career change. Hat tip: Gary Pendergast.

Bill McKibben writes from Among the Marchers of the climate change march the other week. Hat tip: Chip Giller.