AI-generated cartoon of the new emojis strutting down a runway like models: the Orca, the Hairy Creature, the Fight Cloud, the Trombone, the Treasure Chest, the Ballet Dancer, the Landslide, the Distorted Face. The audience is confused but applauding politely.

Coding matters: The Emoji Effect

Jacqui Coosner 2026-07-17

Happy Emoji Day! Here are some things you never knew you wanted to know about emojis. Including the newest emojis to keep you on trend.

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AI-generated cartoon of a car with angry eyebrows. The car is glaring at an ice cream vendor holding out a bucket of vanilla ice cream.

Coding matters: No bungee today

Jacqui Coosner 2026-07-10

AI news is like bungee jumping: up and down until you get whiplash. Instead, here are two stories about ways only humans could experience technology. Could an AI support agent have handled these problems?

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AI-generated cartoon of a two people on top of a cliff. The man is taking a selfie as he steps off the edge of the cliff. The woman is trying to take a flirty selfie of herself with a big angry looking bear in the background.

Coding matters: Selfies, stupidity and survival

Jacqui Coosner 2026-06-12

21 June is National Selfie Day. Do you suffer from selfitis? Before you take another selfie to post on social media, make sure you will not fall off a cliff, drown, be electrocuted, or get eaten by a wild animal.

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AI-generated cartoon. A woman detective with a laptop and a magnifying glass is crouched, examining a trail of 0s and 1s. The trail disappears off into a misty graveyard. Three of the graves display the words "Enquiry form", "Call Data" and "Human Operative".

Coding matters: The curious case of the vanishing data

Jacqui Coosner 2026-05-29

In the rush to embrace all things AI, there’ve been some sad casualties. Customer service is limping along with broken bones. And POPIA must be on life support, because my data keeps disappearing into a digital graveyard.

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AI-generated cartoon of a set of mock election posters for Chance (Claude), Gerit (Gemini), Oracio (OpenAI), and Grace (Grok).

Coding matters: If AI ran South Africa

Jacqui Coosner 2026-05-15

What if AI ran South Africa? Based on the results of Emergence World, here are our 4 candidates for an AI president. Things could stay the same, they could actually get worse. In an ideal world, we could become another Sweden.

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AI-generated cartoon of a robot throwing eggs at 4 people, who are all wearing suits. One of them is holding a document marked "Policy".

Coding matters: Eish Intelligence

Jacqui Coosner 2026-05-08

The South African government made the international news, but not in a good way. It has lots of AI-flavoured egg on its face. Its National AI Draft Policy contained AI-generated errors. Could anything be more embarrasing?

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AI-generated cartoon. On one side is a person offering a huge bunch of flowers to the robot. The robot is on the other side and looks very confused.

Coding matters: Please, thank you, and good spelling

Jacqui Coosner 2026-04-17

Do you thank your AI? Does politeness get you better results? A quick look at the confusing research, and what 3 LLMs claim.

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AI generated image of a see-saw with Jakarta EE 12 on one end and Spring on the other.

Jakarta EE versus Spring

Lewis Coosner 2026-04-09

Jakarta EE and Spring Boot are the two de facto frameworks when developing enterprise Java applications. They are both very powerful frameworks. However, they have different design philosophies and cater to different development needs.

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