Jane Austen wrote fast and died young. Her life on paper may have spanned three decades, but all six of her celebrated novels made their public appearance between 1811 and 1817. The phrase “tell-tale compression,” self-consciously applied by the narrator towards the end of Northanger Abbey (1817), captures something of Austen’s authorial career, too. Indeed, in her case it is appropriate that the word “career” can mean a short gallop at full speed, as well as the potentially slower progress of an individual’s working life. Novelists are more usually seen as long-distance runners than as sprinters, and Austen’s mature fiction has been cherished for the gradual emergence into consciousness of its heroines’ thoughts and feelings. Yet speedy progress—described in Emma (1815) as the “felicities of rapid motion”—remained central to this writer’s craft from start to finish.

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Freya Johnston — Prospect

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“Moore’s law refers to an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965. He noticed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention. Moore’s law predicts that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future.”

This might be ending.

I think the end of Moore’s Law, as I have defined the end, will bring about a golden new era of computer architecture. No longer will architects need to cower at the relentless improvements that they know others will get due to Moore’s Law. They will be able to take the time to try new ideas out in silicon, now safe in the knowledge that a conventional computer architecture will not be able to do the same thing in just two or four years in software. And the new things they do may not be about speed. They might…

A good way to start the month with this needull. Today’s needull is the story of an underdog. Not quite Rocky Balboa, but there are similarities. A tennis player who is about to give up tennis, ranked 772, meets a woman. She inspires him to change. He does change. Qualifies for Wimbledon. Beats world rank 54 to reach second round. Plays Roger Federer in 2nd round. Even though he loses, he does win the heart of the spectators.

The story of Marcus Willis’s wild ride at Wimbledon almost wrote itself. Willis, a twenty-five-year-old from Slough, England, is ranked seven-hundred-and-seventy-second in the world. Before he attempted to qualify for Wimbledon, his only earnings as a professional tennis player this year were the three hundred and fifty-six dollars he made at a low-level tournament. He worked by giving private lessons—to seniors, toddlers, whomever—at the Warwick Boat Club, charging thirty pounds an hour…