Pinboard (guardiantech)

Brain Corporation offers a way to train robots by demonstration, not coding >> MIT Technology Review

guardiantech — 2014-09-24T17:12:59+00:00

Izhikevich’s startup, Brain Corporation, based in San Diego, has developed an operating system for robots called BrainOS to make that possible. To teach a robot running the software to pick up trash, for example, you would use a remote control to repeatedly guide its gripper to perform that task. After just minutes of repetition, the robot would take the initiative and start doing the task for itself. “Once you train it, it’s fully autonomous,” says Izhikevich, who is cofounder and CEO of the company. Izhikevich says the approach will make it easier to produce low-cost service robots capable of simple tasks. Programming robots to behave intelligently normally requires significant expertise, he says, pointing out that the most successful home robot today is the Roomba, released in 2002. The Roomba is preprogrammed to perform one main task: driving around at random to cover as much of an area of floor as possible.

The face recognition algorithm that finally outperforms humans >> The Physics arXiv Blog

guardiantech — 2014-05-18T21:29:47+00:00

The best systems can beat human performance in ideal conditions. But their performance drops dramatically as conditions get worse. So computer scientists would dearly love to develop an algorithm that can take the crown in the most challenging conditions too. Today, Chaochao Lu and Xiaoou Tang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong say they’ve done just that. These guys have developed a face recognition algorithm called GaussianFace that outperforms humans for the first time. The new system could finally make human-level face verification available in applications ranging from smart phone and computer game log-ons to security and passport control.

Impressive.

Introduction to the Quorum Programming Language >> Quorum Programming Language

guardiantech — 2014-05-13T10:33:10+00:00

Traditional programming languages have been designed predominately with technical concepts and machines in mind. While such concerns are obviously critical, human beings ultimately use such tools in the broad development community. In evidence-oriented programming, human factors evidence takes a first-class seat in the language's design. All factors related to programming are considered, up for debate, and are subject to change if a community member shows rigorous evidence that another approach is better. This is true both for technical and human factors considerations. To our knowledge, Quorum is the first programming language to attempt this.

Designed essentially for scientific use, so that programs can be peer-reviewed.

I often get angry when writing code in this language >> Programming Languages | Hammer Principle

guardiantech — 2014-04-01T14:56:28+00:00

Based on responses from 1764 people, we've built up the following picture of how well "I often get angry when writing code in this language" describes different programming languages.

Brilliant list (also very funny, though it's completely serious, compiled from a survey). Also shows which ones you get for "developers who primarily use this [language] often burn out after a few years."

Stephen Wolfram's Introduction to the Wolfram Language >> YouTube

guardiantech — 2014-02-26T06:59:33+00:00

Wolfram shows off the new symbolic language. If you don't have a couple of moments where your jaw drops in amazement at what it can do.. you should. (It runs on the Raspberry Pi, too.) Try this preview and scroll down to the "plug sockets" example.

Seven reasons why the Year of Code is just Am Dram… >> Emma Mulqueeny

guardiantech — 2014-02-09T23:13:45+00:00

Mulqueeny has been running the Young Rewired State program for some years, and has just resigned from the board of the "Year of Code":

IMHO this is damaging two very important movements:
• girls and tech: a PR girl who has no idea
• computational skills for young people
So I just do not want to know, and if the Year of Code becomes the *thing* that pivots this whole movement – I will celebrate its success obo the next gen, my daughters and yours (and sons too :))
And I do not support this government policy.

The Year of Code is turning into a car crash, and it's only been a week. (Via @adrianshort.)

Kinda fixing badge truncation >> David Smith

guardiantech — 2013-10-10T11:52:11+00:00

Smith had an iOS dev problem.

I got to wondering which values get truncated and which do not. It turned out that not all values greater than 10k get shortened, any number that happens to include two 1 digits is shown in full.
So that led me to the workaround solution that will be shipping in version 1.1.1. Whenever the step count gets over 10k I will change the step count to force it to include two 1s.

Go for the full post, stay for its postscript. (Via @alexhern.)

The shittiest project I ever worked on >> The Universe of Discourse

guardiantech — 2013-09-25T14:06:44+00:00

Mark Dominus:

Anyway, we finally got it just right, and it had been approved by multiple layers of management and given a gold star by the Compliance Department, and my clients took it to the Prudential Real Estate people for a demonstration.

His day was about to get worse.

iOS7 Redesign - Before and After Pics >> Tapfame

guardiantech — 2013-09-18T21:45:02+00:00

Should really be called "iOS 6 and 7, before and after", but hey. The lack of a "Back" target in many of the updated apps is because going back a screen can now be accomplished by a left-to-right swipe gesture.

Making Google’s CalDAV and CardDAV APIs available for everyone >> Google Developers Blog

guardiantech — 2013-06-05T22:35:12+00:00

Piotr Stanczyk, Tech Lead:

In March we announced that CalDAV, an open standard for accessing calendar data across the web, would become a partner-only API because it appeared that almost all the API usage was driven by a few large developers. Since that announcement, we received many requests for access to CalDAV, giving us a better understanding of developers' use cases and causing us to revisit that decision. In response to those requests, we are keeping the CalDAV API public. And in the spirit of openness, today we're also making CardDAV - an open standard for accessing contact information across the web - available to everyone for the first time.

Can we have a Google Reader reprieve too?

VIM Adventures

guardiantech — 2013-05-10T14:11:58+00:00

Need to learn vim (the command-line text editor)? Like learning via games? This is the one for you then.

Teaching Programming on iOS >> Fraser Speirs's blog

guardiantech — 2013-04-03T11:37:06+00:00

I'm a huge fan of strategic outsourcing. We are rapidly moving towards a situation at Cedars where we will have essentially no infrastructure in the school except for WiFi (and possibly not even that). This is deliberate: I am the only technician, systems administrator and network manager in the school. I simply don't have time to deal with deploying and looking after servers on the premises. Neither do I want to. I would much rather spend my expensive and valuable time working on things educational rather than things technical.
In order to run my class with computing resources on-site, I would have to manage a suite of laptops or desktop computers, with some kind of file server and directory infrastructure. Alternatively, I can pay Amazon a penny an hour and I don't have to care about hardware at all.

Try guessing the cost of his Amazon EC2 instance over a school year.

Back when not every question had an answer >> Hyperorg.com

guardiantech — 2013-04-02T20:46:56+00:00

David Weinberger:

My program was going to look for anything between a “[[" and a "]]”,, which would designate an in-place end note. The manual assumed I knew more than I did, what with its file handlers and strange parameters for what type of file I was reading and what types of blocks of data I wanted to read.
I spent hours and hours and hours, mainly trying random permutations. I was so lacking the fundamental concepts that I couldn’t even figure out what to play with. I was well and truly stuck.
“Simple!” you say. “Just go on the Internet…and…oh.” So, it’s 1982 and you have a programming question. Where do you go? The public library? It was awfully short on programming manuals at that time, and S-Basic was an oddball language. To your local bookstore? Nope, no one was publishing about S-Basic. Then, how about to…or…well…no…then?…nope, not for another 30 years.
I was so desperate that I actually called the Boston University switchboard, and got connected to a helpful receptionist in the computer science division (or whatever it was called back then), who suggested a professor who might be able to help me. I left a message along the lines of “I’m a random stranger with a basic question about a programming language you probably never heard of, so would you mind calling me back? kthxbye.” Can you guess who never called me back?

Did you know how hilarious the patch notes to The Sims are? >> a place for posts to go

guardiantech — 2013-01-26T23:28:18+00:00

"Sims who are on fire will no longer be forced to attend graduation before they can put themselves out", and other treasures of the imaginary world. (Not a hoax; sources confirmed by this posting.)

Portal’s physics engine rebuilt in 25KB — on a graphing calculator >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2012-12-06T20:57:00+00:00

A 20-year-old college student has rebuilt Portal, Valve's 2007 space-bending game, from the ground up, on — wait for it — a graphing calculator. In a display that puts the old calculator versions of Mario and Tetris to shame, Alex Marcolina posted to a gaming forum and reddit on Sunday about his re-engineered version of Portal. It took three years to build and cannot, due to resource constraints on TI-83/84 calculators, execute more than 16 kilobytes of code.

WOW.

The secret of a successful programming language? A really great beard >> Wired.com

guardiantech — 2012-11-26T16:32:52+00:00

Two academics at Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley are combing through mountains of data trying to tackle this mystery of the modern world. They think the answer may lie with how well a language is documented. Or with the reality that the average programmer doesn’t have the time or the inclination to learn more than a handful of programming tools. Or even with the age-old tendency of academics to build stuff that’s gloriously clever but completely impractical.
But a man named Tamir Kahson has a different answer. He thinks it’s all about the beard.

Brace yourself for Beardcember.

I am worried about the future of Python >> Iron Froggy

guardiantech — 2012-09-27T16:32:55+00:00

Three salient points where the world is changing and Python isn't - or not fast enough.

No-cost desktop software development is dead on Windows 8 >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2012-05-24T22:35:34+00:00

Microsoft wants Windows developers to write Windows 8-specific, Metro-style, touch-friendly applications, and to make sure that they crank these apps out, the company has decided that Visual Studio 11 Express, the free-to-use version of its integrated development environment, can produce nothing else.
If you want to develop desktop applications—anything that runs at the command line or on the conventional Windows desktop that remains a fully supported, integral, essential part of Windows 8—you'll have two options: stick with the current Visual C++ 2010 Express and Visual C# 2010 Express products, or pay about $400-500 for Visual Studio 11 Professional. A second version, Visual Studio 11 Express for Web, will be able to produce HTML and JavaScript websites, and nothing more.

Flipping heck. Former Microsofties are appalled.

Just say "No." >> Dustin Curtis

guardiantech — 2012-05-24T22:13:44+00:00

Yahoo has just announced Axis, a browser extension thing and mobile app that “redefines what it means to search and browse the Web [sic].”

Curtis explains why it shouldn't have, and how this tells us more (as if we needed it) about Yahoo right now.

Oracle-Google verdict signals need for copyright reform >> InfoWorld

guardiantech — 2012-05-08T21:44:24+00:00

It's hard to imagine another, similar case on the scale of Oracle versus Google, so it's remarkable that an almost identical one came to resolution in Europe at almost the same time. SAS Institute sued World Programming for copyright infringement in what seems like a much more clear-cut case than Oracle versus Google. World Programming copied the SAS programming environment with the intent of direct competition, yet the court did not find against World Programming.
Although the case has nuances, the court was clear that although software itself could be copyrighted, its externalities -- the function it performs, the programming interfaces it exposes, and the data structures it uses -- cannot be. This is entirely reasonable. Without such a division, interoperable technology markets would be impossible.

In tech, some bemoan the rise of 'brogrammer' culture >> CNN.com

guardiantech — 2012-05-07T21:36:12+00:00

At one of the world's biggest gatherings of Web culture, a 28-year-old executive talks about landing a tech job by sending a CEO "bikini shots" from a "nudie calendar" he created.
On campus at Stanford University, a hot startup attracts recruits with a poster asking if they want to 'bro down and crush some code.'"
And the world's largest Internet registration company entices Web entrepreneurs with a Super Bowl ad in which two female celebrities paint its logo onto the body of an apparently naked model. Forget what you think you know about the benignly geeky computer programmer who lives for the thrill of finding a single misplaced semicolon in thousands of lines of code.
And welcome to the world of the "brogrammer."

Typically useless headline ("some" bemoan? Why add the "some"?), but interesting article.

Make background music for when you work >> Incredibox

guardiantech — 2012-04-27T21:39:48+00:00

Enormous fun. (Requires Flash.)

Our Culture of Exclusion >> Ryan Funduk

guardiantech — 2012-04-18T06:12:16+00:00

On the hey-have-a-drink-it's-a-conference-about-programming-sorta culture:

It's sort of like high school is repeating itself. We have an isolated population, and within it we've got the cool kids making life (real life, this time) difficult, frustrating and miserable for people who don't deserve to be walked all over.
Consider for a moment that while you might love binge drinking – and listen, I've done my share in the past... so I know it can be a blast – not everyone is into it, and it has nothing to do with code.

Google BBS Terminal >> Masswerk

guardiantech — 2012-04-13T22:26:23+00:00

Hilariously brilliant: if Google had been around in the 1980s, it would be a BBS like this. With appropriate dialup noises.

OH HAI SEXISM: discussion >> Hacker News

guardiantech — 2012-03-23T06:38:58+00:00

Following a Storify about sexism based on a Twitter row, Hacker News (you know, where all the bro-grammers gather) discusses whether there is or is not sexism in programming, and if so whether it's good/bad/indifferent.

The day I tried teaching primary school kids to code (and succeeded) >> Martin Saunders

guardiantech — 2012-03-15T22:31:06+00:00

Inspirational. This is what we want from teachers.

Why You Need To Back Young Rewired State Right Now >> TechCrunch UK

guardiantech — 2012-03-12T23:07:48+00:00

Mike Butcher:

Even as the UK government seems keener than ever to promote the technology sector as an engine of much needed growth – especially startups – there’s a programme right under its nose which has been running for years which needs help, and now. Young Rewired State has been running annually on very low funding for a while.

Yes, get involved. We'll do some flagwaving presently, but this is one to back now.

Kaspersky: Duqu Trojan uses 'unknown programming language' >> ZDNet

guardiantech — 2012-03-11T20:51:10+00:00

Faintly worrying:

The sophistication of the worm is one thing, but the fact that an entirely new programming language may have been created for it, points to some seriously deep pockets backing the project. Security experts have suggested that a state must have been involved in its development, and Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky supports this speculation on Twitter:
The mystery of #Duqu framework http://bit.ly/w5BrzP <- seems the state behind #Duqu sponsored the development of a new progr language

That's slightly worrying. A whole new programming language for something to attack Windows?

Tell Gove what you think (the easy way) >> Emma Mulqueeny

guardiantech — 2012-01-19T04:19:08+00:00

"This is a very important consultation and opens a whole new door to open education and should not be ignored. But the consultation is in the formal format and requires you to answer specific questions, and not see what anyone else has said.

"So, Craig Snowden @CraigSnowedIn, a 17 year old developer from Scotland who answered a twitter call to open the consultation, popped it into Google docs.

"In Google docs you can read and comment, and see others’ comments, and properly understand what this might be saying.

"Now, this is not the formal process, but there is no reason why the comments cannot be fed into the formal process and I will volunteer to do that."

All of a part with the Guardian's Digital Literacy campaign - get stuck in.

Software bug fingered as cause of Aussie A330 plunge >> The Register

guardiantech — 2012-01-01T22:15:01+00:00

"The final report into the 2008 Qantas flight QF72, which unexpectedly dived twice during a routine flight, has blamed a combination of software and hardware errors for the incident. "On 7 October 2008, the Australian-owned A330-303 aircraft was cruising at 37,000 feet when the autopilot disengaged and the aircraft rose, before plunging downwards sharply, injuring 110 of the aircraft’s 303 passengers and three-quarters of the cabin crew. Three minutes later the aircraft did it again, and the flight crew was bombarded with warnings from the instrumentation – almost all of them false." More tales from the cockpit.

It’s insanely hard to make a kick-ass iPhone app >> Skritter

guardiantech — 2011-12-09T06:30:33+00:00

"…we get it. Mobile is hot. Mobile is irreplaceable. And most importantly, mobile is the future. But this mobile future takes software for granted. "We at Skritter are learning that because we’re building a version of our app for iOS. We have found that there are so many apps that the they have been devalued to the point of monetary irrelevance [1]. That’s sad because a good app is a piece of art. The buttons, the interface, the streamlined backend, all the pieces of a finely-tuned app take so much time and energy to perfect that I wanted to write a post to call attention to the level of software perfection that most people have acclimated to without even knowing it. Here are three reasons why it’s insanely hard to make a kick-ass iPhone app."

Tangle: a JavaScript library for reactive documents >> Bret Victor

guardiantech — 2011-11-16T06:27:27+00:00

"Tangle is a JavaScript library for creating reactive documents. Your readers can interactively explore possibilities, play with parameters, and see the document update immediately. Tangle is super-simple and easy to learn." Tangle is HTML5 goodness. Swallow it whole.

Codify: coding on the iPad >> TwoLivesLeft

guardiantech — 2011-10-27T05:45:59+00:00

"Codify for iPad lets you create games and simulations — or just about any visual idea you have. Turn your thoughts into interactive creations that make use of iPad features like Multi-Touch and the accelerometer." Brilliant. Watch the video.

Run, Python, Run! >> Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

guardiantech — 2011-09-20T05:32:47+00:00

"I still can’t figure out exactly which operations are expensive in Python. My C/C++ can’t help me much because it seems that things aren’t implemented like I’d've expected—like lists that aren’t lists, but array lists, leading to for operations you would otherwise expect to be .
"But a friend of mine—Olivier—showed me a simple, basic, yet rather effective tool to profile Python programs (I’m not sure if I should say script or not).

"The tool, RunSnakeRun, inserts hooks in the Python interpreter to build a report of where time is spent, a bit à la Valgrind/Kcachegrind but much simpler, and to display the results using both tables and a rectangular tree-structured inclusion graph (a “SquareMap”)."

Neat.

The infinite version of Google Chrome >> Coding Horror

guardiantech — 2011-09-17T23:12:23+00:00

Jeff Atwood considers how Google Chrome now needs to download only the tiniest bit of code for its updates - but how work remains to be done: "Since the version updates are relatively small, they can be downloaded in the background. But even Google hasn't figured out how to install an update while the browser is running. Yes, there are little alert icons to let you know your browser is out of date, and you eventually do get nagged if you are woefully behind, but updating always requires the browser to restart."

node knockout heatwave >> The Universe of Discord

guardiantech — 2011-09-07T15:50:46+00:00

"This weekend I took part in node knockout along with Peteris Krumins, David Wee, and Josh Holbrook on team replicants.
"Our entry, heatwave, uses node-heatmap to draw a heatmap over your code in realtime to show the parts that are most active as the code executes.
"Heatwave accomplishes this trick using bunker to add hooks around every expression. When these hooks get called, the heatmap gets updated!"

Smart.

An iOS developer takes on Android >> Nick Farina

guardiantech — 2011-09-05T16:08:43+00:00

Fascinating description of the good and the bad about programming for Android v iOS. (thanks @1723985 for the link.)

How to initiate kids (or anyone) in coding >> Emma Mulqueeny

guardiantech — 2011-08-22T21:16:20+00:00

Interesting roundup of languages to let your ...eight-year-old upwards?.. teach themselves with. (Perhaps with a little help.)

Problems >> Project Euler

guardiantech — 2011-06-08T21:24:29+00:00

We mentioned Project Euler yesterday; here are the problems to consider before you kick in. First one: "Add all the natural numbers below one thousand that are multiples of 3 or 5."

Remember, you're looking to get a computer to do this. If you can get it to play FizzBuzz while you do it, bonus points.

How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code - James Somers - Technology - The Atlantic

guardiantech — 2011-06-07T21:17:57+00:00

" I went through this cycle several times: I saw people programming and thought it looked cool, resolved myself to learn, sought out a book and crashed the moment it got hard.
"For a while I thought I didn't have the right kind of brain for programming. Maybe I needed to be better at math. Maybe I needed to be smarter.
"But it turns out that the people trying to teach me were just doing a bad job. Those books that dragged me through a series of structured principles were just bad books. I should have ignored them. I should have just played."

Links to Project Euler, which is interesting too.

Of Data Scientists, Big Data, the City and Dancers >> Rev Dan Catt's Blog

guardiantech — 2011-06-05T17:31:36+00:00

"You can’t just turn your Data Scientist eye onto something and say 'Oh we’ll throw this into MapReduce, it’ll be awesome', you need to have been part of that data, to have lived it. We don’t have Big Data where I work at the Guardian, we have lots-of-data, we look at Big Data out there and attempt to consume the signals. I came from Flickr which had fairly big fast data, the Guardian is positively quaint in comparison (in terms of what it generates). I set myself the task of getting immersed in the flow of news, trying to understand how the organization worked, the signals, the input, the output. The difference between news on a Monday to news on a Friday, the waves that Google and other sites can throw at you and so on. Living in the data, watching its rhythms, the pulse, the flow. I’m getting there, it takes a while, maybe I’m just old :)
"To deal with big data you have to have been in it, not a Scientist but as a Dancer."