How to teach machines, how to program programming language, how to manage engineers or how NASA prevented the end of the world. More inside.
IT
Teacup – Once upon a time, there was a machine learning researcher who tried to teach a child what a “teacup” was.
Why we use SCM systems – I’m watching a newly-minted co-op student dealing with her first encounter with Git, unhelpfully shepherded by a developer to whom everything below is already second nature, so deeply that the reasoning is hard to articulate.
Compiler bug? Linker bug? Windows Kernel bug. – Flaky failures are the worst. In this particular investigation, which spanned twenty months, we suspected hardware failure, compiler bugs, linker bugs, and other possibilities.
The Science of Software Estimation – Estimating software development effort is tricky and can often be a point of contention in the team.
A Programmable Programming Language – In the ideal world, software developers would analyze each problem in the language of its domain and then articulate solutions in matching terms.
Flavors of Engineering Management – What is like to be an engineering manager vs. an individual contributor?
An argument for passwordless – The concept behind passwords is quite simple. You present the user with a “password” field and imply the instruction: “Please come up with a secret phrase that you’ll have to remember and protect indefinitely.”
Futures of distributions – Seems Debian is talking about why they are unable to package whole categories of modern software, such as anything using npm. It’s good they’re having a conversation about that, and I want to give a broader perspective.
Society
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority – How Europe will eat Halal — Why you don’t have to smoke in the smoking section — Your food choices on the fall of the Saudi king –How to prevent a friend from working too hard –Omar Sharif ‘s conversion — How to make a market collapse
Ján Kuciak’s last story: Italian mafia’s tentacles reach into Slovak politics – The final, unfinished article by the Slovak journalist murdered with his partner last week.
Work
Overconfident Students, Dubious Employer – A new study identifies the gaps between graduates’ views of their skills and the views of those who hire them.
Science
How NASA averted the 2060 apocalypse | Michelle Thaller
Miscellaneous
Small b blogging – There’s an idea that starting a blog is harder than it used to be.
Beginner’s guide to visualization literacy – Heat maps, stacked area plots, mosaic plots, choropleths – oh my!
The Most Disturbing Painting
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