March 2011
57 posts
Rule of Least Power - Wikipedia, the free... →
In web programming, the rule of least power is a design principle which “suggests choosing the least powerful [computer] language suitable for a given purpose”.[1] Stated alternatively, given a choice among computer languages, classes of which range from descriptive (or declarative) to procedural, the less procedural, more descriptive the language one chooses, the more one can do...
“JavaScript is really, really terrible. Like, literally unusably bad; i.e. there...”
– Comment on Ian Bicking: a blog :: Javascript on the server AND the client is not a big deal
“you can’t continue to pivot faster than your infrastructure, if...”
– High Scalability - High Scalability - 8 Lessons We Can Learn from the MySpace Incident - Balance, Vision, Fearlessness
“the operation of the project is dominated by people who fit into a very specific...”
– tending the garden › Where meritocracy fails
“AI is whatever we can’t yet automate”
– A.I. is Whatever We Can’t Yet Automate - Bob Carpenter (via llimllib)
The Real Reason Women Quit Engineering →
In Stemming The Tide: Why Women Leave Engineering, two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professors report on their survey of over 3,700 women with engineering degrees. They found that just one in four women who had left the field reported doing so to spend more time with family. One third left “because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture,” while...
Americans smile all the time as if they are... →
“The paradox is: the Russians smile less because they are more open to others. The Russian seriousness is a habit not to conceal people’s feelings and emotions. Historically, the Russians are mostly in a bad mood, but they are not hiding it,” the professor believes.
Indeed, when the Russians smile, they show a sincere and an open smile. The American smile does not mean...
What Women Told Us: Pay and Promotion Disparities... →
abbyjean:
Quotes about the stereotype that men work to support families, while women work for spare change:
“I once was beat out for a promotion and raise by a man at [a public university], in the School of Medicine. I was told by my supervisor, ‘It’s OK, don’t feel badly, he has a family to support and really needs the promotion.’ At the time I was a single mother raising two children. I was...
High Scalability - High Scalability - Aztec Empire... →
It’s fun to think about how even 600 years ago how it was built with high availability in mind. We find engineers being engineers, no matter the age
“Yes, it’s true: Jogging, long thought to hurt knees with all that pounding and...”
– Put Those Shoes On: Running Won’t Kill Your Knees : NPR (via tballardbrown)
Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Into Finance →
I was shocked—and upset—when the majority of my students became investment bankers or management consultants after they graduated. Hardly any became engineers. Why would they, when they had huge student loans, and Goldman Sachs was offering them twice as much as engineering companies did?
Indeed, why is the problem with finance companies? It looks to me like engineering companies are the...
Nate Dogg Tribute: The Next Episode » Passion of... →
Perhaps the greatest singles artist in the history of hip-hop, Nate Dogg has been practically the one constant in almost every great West Coast hip-hop song ever. Yet his appeal stretches far beyond the insular world of hip-hop. If you play any American under 40 a rap song featuring Nate Dogg, made between the years 1992 and 2000, they can’t help but like it.
In fact, as American society...
Nate Dogg Tribute: The Next Episode - Jeff Weiss →
There’s more to Nate Dogg than just the fact that he looks the same in every goddamned picture. A close inspection of his career reveals the fact that he was probably responsible for America’s glorious economic boom during the 1990′s. 1992 was notable for a variety of reasons: the election of Bill Clinton, the Los Angeles riots, the invasion of Somalia. But most importantly, 1992 was notable for...
When the Movement Disappoints — Feministe →
imagine my excitement when over the course of a few months, I landed interviews at many of the big pro-choice organizations here. I don’t have to name them. You know who they are. I interviewed for jobs at these places that fit my experience, jobs at which I could’ve kicked ass. But each interview ended with some version of this: “I’m sorry, but you are too radical/too much of an activist to...
2105:
Bloomberg: Personalizing the News for 20 Million People - GigaOm publicmedia:
The approach that most traditional news services take, Krim said — in which editors select and present the news that they think matters most to a generic reader — “doesn’t really scale very well.” But by using analytical tools on the data about those web visitors and their reading patterns and usage, Krim...
“I voted for him because I wanted some restraint on frivolous spending,” Blaha...”
– Scott Walker’s Proposed Budget Cuts To Schools Raise Doubts Among Some GOP Voters (via dixiecupua)
“Although a big component of building a recommendation system is the math,...”
– Building a recommendation engine, foursquare style | Foursquare Engineering Blog (via iamdanw)
Gonna brag for a second here. About a year ago, Justin (from 4sq who built this) sat down with me over a burger and I told him that a huge part of Amazon’s success in recommendations is due to explaining...
“I relied on my connections with taxonomists for guidance and information, but...”
– The Mass Extinction of Scientists Who Study Species | Wired Science | Wired.com
For example there are ~40,000 named species of snails and around 10 people in the US who study them. Maybe 75 people worldwide.
(via dixiecupua)
Overview: Extracting article text from HTML... →
“There is no actual or imminent threat to America from Libya. I supported Obama...”
– A Clarification - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (via johncarney)
He provided support to allies acting under the mandate of the United Nations Security Council. Get over yourself.
(via mikehudack)
vruz: yes! war! war! more war! get over yourself! we want more war!
(via vruz)
Rafer...
ketralnis comments on Why reddit was down for 6 of... →
reddit’s been trying very hard to avoid bad-mouthing Amazon in public (in fact I was fascinated to see that jedberg was willing to see them mentioned at all here) but the fact is that their EBS product alone accounts for probably 80% of reddit’s downtime. Note that with 80% of reddit’s downtime removed, they’d be on par with services of a similar size.
The root of...
Haiti cholera 'far worse than expected', experts... →
The cholera epidemic affecting Haiti looks set to be far worse than officials had thought, experts fear. Rather than affecting a predicted 400,000 people, the diarrhoeal disease could strike nearly twice as many as this, latest estimates suggest. Aid efforts will need ramping up, US researchers told The Lancet journal.
“Saying he wants Wisconsin to be “on the side of Arizona,” state Representative...”
– WI legislators consider an Arizona-like anti-immigrant bill | Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice (via dixiecupua)
Higher costs of more nutritious diets contribute... →
barthel:
Socio-economic disparities in diet patterns and nutrient intake are well documented in research. People with lower incomes and less education typically have less healthful eating habits than people with higher incomes and more education. But little is known about the extent to which those disparities are driven by higher monetary costs of nutritious foods.
Now, a new study from...
Identifying With God: Jay-Z's Power to Profit |... →
Serving God and money is Jay-Z’s way of addressing the contradiction that comes from living in a neighborhood where there are a thousand ways of believing and little evidence that conditions are improving. Jay-Z lyrically balances the external forces of poverty and oppression with the adrenaline rush and capitalist successes of the hustler’s life, and then with the hustler’s private...
» [storytime] Sex communication case studies... →
All my most extraordinary sexual connections have benefited from everyone involved taking ownership of their desire, and talking about it directly at least a little bit.
[…]
Learning how to talk about sex more directly and exactly might be hard or embarrassing or complicated, but it is seriously worth it. Not just BDSM; all sex.
Le Nouvelliste en Haiti - Haïti au coeur de la... →
Haïti joue un rôle très important dans notre organisation. C’est grâce à Haïti que le français a pu être utilisé comme langue de travail au sein des Nations unies. Haïti est le pays qui comprend le mieux le terme de diversité culturelle. On trouve dans ce pays le métissage de ses racines au niveau des personnes. On retrouve aussi le métissage au niveau des langues comme en Afrique. Mais...
Clay Travis :: Claynation →
No reasonable person who reads these emails can justify Jim Tressel still having a job. Yet as of now the vast majority of sports fans haven’t even read these emails. Why? Because ESPN hasn’t used them at all in its television coverage. Not a single email! That’s a complete and utter indictment of the network. But, to be fair, two days ago the Miami Heat coach did say that a couple of his...
Haïti reçoit de Washington son "carnet" annuel... →
Haïti fait partie, pour la énième année consécutive, des vingt “principaux pays de production et/ou de transit” de la planète avec d’autres pays voisins, dont la République Dominicaine, selon le rapport annuel américain sur le trafic de drogue. Le document officiel, acheminé jeudi au Congrès par le département d’Etat, désigne la Birmanie, la Bolivie et le Venezuela comme les trois...
The “Precariat,” the New Working Class »... →
new international labor markets have weakened the power of labor and strengthened that of employers. The result is more jobs that are part time, with unpredictable hours, low wages, and few benefits. This has been good for employers in that the risk inherent in capitalist enterprises has been transferred to the workers. For example, if the hotel isn’t full, then the managers simply bring...
Geeking with Greg: Personal navigation and... →
This paper presents an algorithm that predicts with very high accuracy which Web search result a user will click for one sixth of all Web queries. Prediction is done via a straightforward form of personalization that takes advantage of the fact that people often use search engines to re-find previously viewed resources. Different people often use the same queries to navigate to different...
“
Consider these figures from polls of white Americans: 71 percent were...”
– The Land of the Color-Blind? » Citings and Sightings
“Your web framework - what you use to fill up your memcache.”
– Unknown
“I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone....”
– Bjarne Stroustrup, Danish computer scientist (via mattlehrer)
Not only is Bjarne the inventor of C++, but his son Nick was a classmate & friend. He also has crazy mad scientist hair, which is awesome.
(via caterpillarcowboy)
This is funny because the even inventor of C++ thinks cell phones...
“Ohio State has suspended football coach Jim Tressel for the first two games of...”
– Ohio State coach Jim Tressel gets two-game suspension, $250K fine - NCAA Football - SI.com (via dixiecupua)
This is a slap in the right direction. These suspensions are lethal in football. Now all we need are consistent rules for these infractions
