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35,961,031 |
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/16/ceo-behind-chatgpt-is-testifying-heres-what-expect/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
23,558,004 |
https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2020/06/the-first-intuitive-programming-language-for-quantum-computers.html
|
The first intuitive programming language for quantum computers
| null |
# The first intuitive programming language for quantum computers
Several technical advances have been achieved recently in the pursuit of powerful quantum computers. Now, Computer scientists from ETH Zurich have made an important breakthrough in the field of programming languages: their quantum language is the first of its kind that is as elegant, simple and safe as classical computer languages.
Programming quantum computers is becoming easier: computer scientists at ETH Zurich have designed the first programming language that can be used to program quantum computers as simply, reliably and safely as classical computers. “Programming quantum computers is still a challenge for researchers,” says Martin Vechev, computer science professor in ETH’s Secure, Reliable and Intelligent Systems Lab (SRI), “which is why I’m so excited that we can now continue ETH Zurich’s tradition in the development of quantum computers and programming languages.”
He adds: “Our quantum programming language Silq allows programmers to utilize the potential of quantum computers better than with existing languages, because the code is more compact, faster, more intuitive and easier to understand for programmers.” This week, Vechev will introduce Silq to external page other experts in the field at PLDI 2020, a conference for programming languages. To facilitate discussion, adoption and further development, he and his team have also released Silq on its own website (silq.ethz.ch).
Quantum computing has been seeing increased attention over the last decade, since these computers, which function according to the principles of quantum physics, have enormous potential. Today, most researchers believe that these computers will one day be able to solve certain problems faster than classical computers, since to perform their calculations they use entangled quantum states in which various bits of information overlap at a certain point in time. This means that in the future, quantum computers will be able to efficiently solve problems which classical computers cannot solve within a reasonable timeframe.
This quantum supremacy has still to be proven conclusively. However, some significant technical advances have been achieved recently. In late summer 2019, a quantum computer succeeded in solving a problem – albeit a very specific one – more quickly than the fastest classical computer.
For certain “quantum algorithms”, i.e. computational strategies, it is also known that they are faster than classical algorithms, which do not exploit the potential of quantum computers. To date, however, these algorithms still cannot be calculated on existing quantum hardware because quantum computers are currently still too error-prone.
**Expressing the programmer's intent**
Utilizing the potential of quantum computation not only requires the latest technology, but also a quantum programming language to describe quantum algorithms. In principle, an algorithm is a “recipe” for solving a problem; a programming language describes the algorithm so that a computer can perform the necessary calculations.
Today, quantum programming languages are tied closely to specific hardware; in other words, they describe precisely the behaviour of the underlying circuits. For programmers, these “hardware description languages” are cumbersome and error-prone, since the individual programming instructions must be extremely detailed and thus explicitly describe the minutiae needed to implement quantum algorithms.
This is where Vechev and his group come in with their development of Silq. “Silq is the first quantum programming language that is not designed primarily around the construction and functionality of the hardware, but on the mindset of the programmers when they want to solve a problem – without requiring them to understand every detail of the computer architecture and implementation,” says Benjamin Bichsel, a doctoral student in Vechev’s group who is supervising the development of Silq.
Computer scientists refer to computer languages that abstract from the technical details of the specific type of computer as high-level programming languages. Silq is the very first high-level programming language for quantum computers. High-level programming languages are more expressive, meaning that they can describe even complex tasks and algorithms with less code. This makes them more comprehensible and easier to use for programmers. They can also be used with different computer architectures.
**Eliminating errors through automatic uncomputation**
The greatest innovation and simplification that Silq brings to quantum programming languages concerns a source of errors that has plagued quantum programming until now. A computer calculates a task in several intermediate steps, which creates intermediate results or temporary values.
In order to relieve the memory, classical computers automatically erase these values. Computer scientists refer to this as “garbage collection”, since the superfluous temporary values are disposed of.
In the case of quantum computers, this disposal is trickier due to quantum entanglement: the previously calculated values can interact with the current ones, interfering with the correct calculation. Accordingly, cleaning up such temporary values on quantum computers requires a more advanced technique of so-called uncomputation.
“Silq is the first programming language that automatically identifies and erases values that are no longer needed,” explains Bichsel. The computer scientists achieved this by applying their knowledge of classical programming languages: their automatic uncomputation method uses only programming commands that are free of any special quantum operations – they are “qfree”, as Vechev and Bichsel say.
“Silq is a major breakthrough in terms of optimising the programming of quantum computers; it is not the final phase of development,” says Vechev. There are still many open questions, but because Silq is easier to understand, Vechev and Bichsel hope to stimulate both the further development of quantum programming languages and the theory and development of new quantum algorithms.
“Our team of four has made the breakthrough after two years of work thanks to the combination of different expertise in language design, quantum physics and implementation. If other research and development teams embrace our innovations, it will be a great success,” says Bichsel.
**Reference**
Bichsel B, Baader M, Gehr T, Vechev M. Silq: a high-level quantum language with safe uncomputation and intuitive semantics. PLDI 2020: Proceedings of the 41st ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 2020, 286–300. doi: external page 10.1145/3385412.3386007
## Related articles
- chevron_right Quantum computers and the future of computation (ETH News 29.08.2019)
- chevron_right Searching for errors in the quantum world (ETH News 18.09.2018)
- chevron_right A vision becomes reality (ETH Globe Magazine 2/2018)
- chevron_right Clarifying complex chemical processes with quantum computers (ETH News 31.07.2017)
| true | true | true |
Several technical advances have been achieved recently in the pursuit of powerful quantum computers. Now, Computer scientists from ETH Zurich have made an important breakthrough in the field of programming languages: their quantum language is the first of its kind that is as elegant, simple and safe as classical computer languages.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2020-06-15 00:00:00
| null |
ethz.ch
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ethz.ch
| null | null |
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29,318,648 |
https://www.economist.com/business/tech-investors-cant-get-enough-of-europes-fizzing-startup-scene/21806435
|
Tech investors can’t get enough of Europe’s fizzing startup scene
| null |
# Tech investors can’t get enough of Europe’s fizzing startup scene
## After a long slumber, Europe’s animal spirits are stirring
THE IDEA of a Europe hostile to entrepreneurs would once have seemed laughable. At its 17th-century peak the Dutch East India Company’s appetite for capital was so voracious that it demanded the invention of the public stockmarket. Investors then did not balk at its violent treatment of native peoples. The turn of the 20th century saw the founding of giants like L’Oréal, today’s highest-earning beauty empire, and Denmark’s AP Moller Maersk, the largest container-shipping line. Most of Germany’s *Mittelstand *firms, employers of more than half of all the country’s workers, were born at the same time.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Renaissance”
## Business November 27th 2021
- Tech investors can’t get enough of Europe’s fizzing startup scene
- KKR bids for Telecom Italia in a mammoth private-equity deal
- How to manage the Great Resignation
- American manufacturers race to relieve a pandemic-triggered ammo shortage
- As devices morph into services, what is ownership?
- Vietnam has produced a new class of billionaire entrepreneurs
- Booming M&A is smashing records
- Decoupling is the last thing on business leaders’ minds
## Discover more
### Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chemicals magnate turned sports mogul
The British billionaire is buying up teams from sailing to football to cycling
### Masayoshi Son is back in Silicon Valley—and late to the AI race
This isn’t the first time the Japanese tech investor has missed the hot new thing
### When workplace bonuses backfire
The gelignite of incentives
### China is writing the world’s technology rules
It is setting standards for everything from 6G to quantum computing
### Can Mytheresa make luxury e-commerce a success?
It reckons it can succeed where Richemont has failed
### Ratan Tata, a consequential and beloved figure in Indian business
He reshaped one of India’s most successful conglomerates
| true | true | true |
After a long slumber, Europe’s animal spirits are stirring
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2021-11-22 00:00:00
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Article
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economist.com
|
The Economist
| null | null |
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39,999,564 |
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/arts/ed-piskor-dies-comics-hip-hop-family-tree.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
5,415,984 |
http://mashable.com/2013/03/21/android-chrome-merger-rumors/
|
Google Has No Plans to Merge Android, Chrome OS
|
Samantha Murphy
|
Google chairman Eric Schmidt told reporters in India on Thursday that it will not merge its Android and Chrome Operating systems anytime soon.
According to a Reuters report, the executive said the platforms are "certainly going to remain separate for a very long time because they solve different problems."
Android is Google's operating system for mobile devices such as cellphones and tablets, while Chrome OS is the company's Linux-based operating system meant to run web apps on a traditional laptop form factor.
Although that puts an end to rumors regarding a possible merger between the two -- fueled by management changes, making both product teams under just one boss, as well as a new Chrome-based Android statue added to the main Google campus -- there might be some overlap between Chrome and Android in the future.
Due to a "commonality," Chrome OS could one day run Android apps, Schmidt revealed. The good news is, despite the company's recent purging of products such as Google Reader, Schmidt said neither Chrome nor Android would be abandoned in this case.
Schmidt also squashed rumors that he would be leaving the company, calling the accusations "completely false."
"Google is my home," he said.
| true | true | true |
Google Has No Plans to Merge Android, Chrome OS
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2013-03-21 00:00:00
|
article
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mashable.com
|
Mashable
| null | null |
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34,866,094 |
https://ente.io/
|
Ente - Private cloud storage for your photos, videos and more
| null |
# Safe Home
for your photos
Store, share, and discover your memories with absolute privacy
# Why use Ente?
We have packed these and much more into our beautiful open source apps.
## 01 Private
We are **end-to-end encrypted**. This means, we have zero knowledge of your data and only you can see your photos.
Our source code has been audited by reputed cryptographers.
## 02 Durable
We are an **open source** company designed to outlive its creators.
We use our revenue to store **3 copies of your data** in 3 clouds. One of them is in an underground fallout shelter.
## 03 Reliable
You can reliably view, share, organize and download your data, in original quality, on all platforms.
Last, but not least, you can always talk to a **[email protected]**.
Ente is really cool. End-to-end encrypted photo backup/sync (unlike Google Photos), truly multiplatform (unlike iCloud Photos), and fully open source (unlike both!) Full disclosure: @symbolicsoft was involved in a cryptographic audit of Ente.
I love using this app. It's really smooth and has all the features I need, I started using ente because I wanted something secure (and usually that means you get fewer features), but that's not the case. With AI coming soon, I will probably never look back at any other photo management app. The developers are very open to feedback and respond very quickly if you have an issue.
Looked far and wide for a cloud photos app like this: zero-knowledge encryption, displays thumbnails quickly, handles “live” iPhone photos without separating them, respects HEIC format, retains original quality and EXIF metadata, allows for cross-platform syncing and family sharing. Happy to support an app that emphasizes privacy without sacrificing functionality.
Been using Ente for over a year now and this continues to be a suitable Google Photos replacement for me and my family! It's still in need of some key features (automated compressed video previews for quick viewing and being the biggest one right now) , but the core is solid and it seems like the dev team is passionate about implementing features important to their users. Really happy with this app!
Customer service from Ente is nothing short of amazing. The team replies promptly and is always courteous. I had a small issue with the app and they pushed an update in under 10 hours. The issue was completely resolved. I’ve had subscriptions with all the major E2EE storage apps and they don’t come close in any aspect.
I am really positively surprised. The app works flawlessly and makes managing pictures and videos across multiple platforms (mobile, tablet, laptop, and web) very easy. In addition, all data is end to end encrypted, which was crucial for me to start using the app. The prices are really fair and there is a great team behind Ente that is incredibly open to feature suggestions. It's a pity that I didn't come across Ente earlier. In summary, Ente is a great alternative to the big cloud providers and is not lagging behind them. At the same time, Ente makes it possible to store data securely and privately, without the hassle that normally comes with it.
Excellent privacy friendly alternative to Google photos. Developer fixed a small bug witin 2 days!
Best privacy-friendly replacement for Google photos I've come across so far. Beautiful interface, great map function and fair prices. Recommended!
Another superb app by team ente. It is a great alternative to the other photo storage apps currently available. It is a great looking app and it is easy on the eye. The functionality is top notch. It is E2EE for peace of mind. The fees are extremely competitive too. It was a little sluggish to use, but the latest update fixed that problem. Thank you! Highly recommended.
Great app for backing up photos. I love how easy it is to use and that it's more secure and private than google. It makes it really easy to manage photos and free up space on your phone knowing your photos are saved on its server.
Ente is the perfect app for anyone looking to backup and organize their photos and videos securely. With end-to-end encryption and multiple storage locations, my memories are safe and accessible from any device. I also love the option to share albums with loved ones and the ability to free up space by removing safely backed-up files. The pricing is affordable and the human support is top-notch. Highly recommend!
Privacy-friendly alternative to Google Photos. Family plan at no extra cost! Good price, great app.
This is the best alternative to Google Photos currently available. The UI is really well designed and they are continually implementing new features with frequent updates
Ente has been a great way to share photos with a partner! Bonus it works on all platforms too!
Interface ist sehr gewöhnungsbedürftig. Alles funktioniert aber zuverlässig. Preis ist sehr fair. Alles synchronisiert gut. Die Apps laufen auf allen Plattformen. Fotos und Videos sind alle Ende-zu-Ende verschlüsselt. Die App selber ist auch frei von Werbung und Trackern. Aktuell (Januar 2023) die beste private Alternative zu iCloud.
The best e2ee storage for photos and videos. A new star on the privacy Haven.
Hello developers, keep up the excellent work and never stop improving this app whatsoever It's become my primary photo gallery for my entire life The way you guys respect people's privacy is so appreciated 5 STAR with love ❤️❤️
This is just fantastic. There are a few missing features and rough edges but the developers are very active and responsive, so they will get sorted soon. In general, it's a well designed and reliable app that solved the problem of photo backup for someone who doesn't want to make compromises on privacy. So glad it exists
After trying 3 other encrypted photo storage options, I found ente far easier to use, photos are in the correct order, and the app itself is a thing of beauty! In my experience, ente is the most complete and offers the best experience overall. Encryption never looked so good!
Probably the best Google Photo replacement, with privacy in mind! Keep up the good work.
this is the best thing since sliced bread. On top of a very good app and a well thought out architecture you get a very friendly and super responsive team taking care of problems and feature requests. I wish I had known about this earlier.
One of the best google Photos alternative, It even has Family Plans 🤩. It also encrypts the metadata, while allowing to search through the metadata to find your photos.
It works wonders. The developers are very quick to fix bugs when present and available in support. Photos are saved in maximum quality and synchronization is fast. The cost is really low (€10/year or €1/month for 10GB), and unlike Google Photo (free, meaning it makes money by selling our data), it is completely open-source, uses E2E encryption (while Google can easily see all the photos), and has a clear and clean privacy policy.
Waiting & looking for this app for a long time. Thanks.
Best alternative to Google Photos
One of the best encrypted alternative to Google Photos.
This is the Google Photos alternative I've been looking for.
Excellent, privacy oriented photo storage service.
Love the product and the company. Future of internet
The best privacy alternative to Google Photos
Very pretty, it surprised me
Brilliant alternative to Google Photos, and it's encryption is top notch. Larger storage size options are really well priced too.. So glad I found this service. On a side note, one thing I'd love to see is a built in Exif cleaner option (something like Scrambled Exif). Thank you for this wonderful app, you have a very loyal customer here.
Open-source, actively maintaind, relatively cheap, E2E encrypted. Viable alternative to google photos, icloud photos and the like.
Hellooo there! I am in awe!! You guys have done something that I've long wished for! Thank you so much for those cheap plans.
Smooth experience with end to end encryption, can't find any better alternative to google photos than ente
can i rate more than 5 stars please?
Best encrypted alternative to Google Photos.
Great app, have been using for a couple of months now. The 2fa and opensource code makes it more secure than using google photos.
This is amazing. I can sense a feeling of 'why' begin this app and I believe that's much powerful to drive this forward.
Fast response from the devs fixed an issue. Great job!
Absolutely beautiful and well working app, everything I need from a photo app, not from google and OSS! love this, keep up the great work, team!
The best Google Photos alternative that I could find that actually respects your privacy. Absolutely love their product. While there are other privacy focused GP alternatives out there, Ente actually tries (and increasingly succeeds) to make something that is just as user friendly and feature packed.
Have been on the lookout for a privacy friendly photo sync and backup solution and ente delivers. Now I feel my photos are truly safe.
This is probably the only, and best cloud photos option out there. Secure, private, open source, reliable, and beautiful UI. Obviously it's not perfect, it has SOME issues, but overall it's worth it!
Such a great project :) It looks and feels so intuitive out of the box, wonderful!
Take my money!!!
Thank God, something awesome like this finally exists. Thank youuuu to the devs of ente!
Ente is now my favorite :)
Totally Awesome, great work and thanks!!
I really love your product
I like ente, I have been using it instead of google photos for almost a year and I have never regret it. A few euros yearly for a privacy-respecting alternative that does what it is supposed to do smoothly and simply is a big yes from me.
they don't market enough as they probably should but it's a great cross-platform google photos alternative. the devs are very active too.
Would like to recommend ente to anyone trying to degoogle...automatic end-to-end encrypted backups of your photos and videos, in their original quality.
Siento que mis fotos están seguras en Ente. La privacidad es importante para mi. La app es muy intuitiva y fácil de usar. La recomiendo al 100%.
# The best place to preserve your perfect photo collection
A sharp focus on security and privacy, combined with all of the features you expect.
**Rediscover your memories**
Easily relive your best moments, with complete privacy.
Search powered by on-device machine learning keeps your data and search history end-to-end encrypted.
**Share and collaborate**
Privately share your albums
Collect photos and collaborate with your friends. Everything end-to-end encrypted.
**Organize and protect**
Favorite your best clicks, archive the noisy ones and lock those special moments away from prying eyes.
**Together with family**
Share your subscription with your family, for free.
Sync specific albums and your entire library with your partner.
# Pricing Plans
memories preserved
| true | true | true |
Protect your photos and videos with Ente - a secure, cross-platform, open source, encrypted photo storage app. Automatic backups, end-to-end encryption, collaborative albums, family plans, free trial, library-sync, 1-click import, human support, locked photos, live photos, descriptions, private sharing, search and more.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2022-01-01 00:00:00
| null |
ente.io
|
Ente
| null | null |
|
6,145,521 |
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/08/01/coding-all-stem-sector-reflects-america
|
Coding for All: A STEM Sector that Reflects America
|
August 1; Valerie B Jarrett
|
Yesterday, I joined eleven Champions of Change at the White House to honor their achievements toward making science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries more inclusive for underrepresented communities.
The Champions of Change are an amazing group of ordinary citizens doing extraordinary things. They are sparking imaginations, and captivating young minds, all across the country.
From teaching computer science to high school students, to encouraging young women, and urban teens to code, to writing children’s books, to providing low-income students with programming classes—they are doing phenomenal work for our country’s youth, and their futures.
President Obama cares deeply about making sure that our young people have the opportunity to dream big. Whatever their background, our children deserve the chance to reach for the sky, pursue whatever they put their minds to, and live up to their fullest potential—including working in STEM.
I saw this potential firsthand in April, when I had the opportunity to visit the White House Science Fair. What an experience that was—I visited several of the 30 exhibits, and spoke with students about their projects—they were so excited to be in the White House, and I learned a lot too.
A few young women showed me a rocket that had launched raw eggs without cracking a single one. There was a young woman who made a device that helps strengthen eye muscles and improve vision. Can you imagine that?
I also had the opportunity to meet the parents, and teachers, who have played such a vital role in these young people’s lives. And I hope, that as parents, teachers, mentors, and role models, we continue to lift them up so that they can achieve their dreams.
This is about our young people. But it’s also about the future of our country. President Obama has said that engaging, and exciting young people in STEM is incredibly important to the future of our nation.
On Tuesday, he gave a speech in Tennessee, highlighting how we need to give the middle class a better bargain and create jobs for a 21st century economy. Those jobs will eventually be filled by our young people. And we know that the students of today will be the inventors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders of tomorrow. We know that students with STEM skills will be a driving force towards making the United States competitive, creative, and innovative.
We also know that as a nation, our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. That’s why President Obama is committed to making sure our STEM talent pool reflects the full spectrum of America.
President Obama launched a public-private initiative to move students to the top of the pack in math and science. This effort, known as the *Educate to Innovate *Campaign, has to-date generated over $750 million for STEM education efforts.
President Obama is committed to creating STEM education and mentorship opportunities for young women. For example, our science-oriented agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Energy, have STEM programs specifically for women and girls. And we’re training teachers to help prepare students across the country for rigorous STEM careers.
These are a few accomplishments of the Obama Administration, but we can’t do it alone—and as our champs yesterday prove, with everyone involved, all of our children can pursue their dreams.
| true | true | true |
Yesterday, I joined eleven Champions of Change at the White House to celebrate their achievements toward making STEM industries more inclusive for underrepresented communities.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2013-08-01 00:00:00
|
article
|
archives.gov
|
whitehouse.gov
| null | null |
|
16,379,204 |
http://www.aies-conference.com/wp-content/papers/student/1st_AIES-DC_paper_54.pdf
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
22,545,751 |
https://medium.com/@nmf_earth/lessons-learned-from-a-successful-kickstarter-campaign-8ed566e1ed44
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
14,428,483 |
http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11211&context=ilj
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
9,172,055 |
https://developer.pandorabots.com/
|
Pandorabots: Home
|
Pandorabots; Inc
| null | true | true | false |
The leading platform for building and deploying chatbots.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
4,091,712 |
http://techli.com/2012/06/advantages-stealth-mode/
| null | null |
(�/�X�� z�IFA0g�m��� ��`����z��\j�M���rg�1>\�^��:��#5����%.�(F��T��q+�*\�x,h8xx�ao�#JQ4��LS_EѴ"���a����"t�������9p��JM��5������<���<`Ħ�3IS�8(5St�D�����ǒ�`|�P9�m�`l� 摫�x�0����뤏���ٳ�E�Y���dJ0~�P�BXF ܆+[��[�����p�� ��)K��-pXu^�r����Ͳ ��0�a,I%��"�U�a�J&yQ�yA��g�� ��T�/F6��%_yn�A]칁�AM<��]�$�m`0H0�̒�}6�� �W^\h�I��l�J�ij��/k���g����Kp�Sʳ�㛯,�+/����y�C�w�� �p� [>W!���5KJ�#���mj_I�`�F6�@�@W�l��Ƴ�NI�y=� 4 L�ϡ�}��ub�X>��pD��jB�:[ViPȒ��b$�Swb)8�E�[�4��ɖg�AF5(8w�����jP�`]�� �� �#я�V�9��a��*p���Ȗ�տ��o�1���:����, `|��,�I�L~��~��_�7k�V���_G���V�HP��,� �f&�����b 7I�|e�l4�֕�Q�I���f��6b��ph`0
| true | true | true | null |
2024-10-12 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
8,811,283 |
http://petrnohejl.github.io/Android-Cheatsheet-For-Graphic-Designers/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
20,808,566 |
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-5-billion-dvds-1203314722/
|
Netflix Has Now Shipped 5 Billion DVDs to Its Members
|
Janko Roettgers
|
Netflix has shipped a total of 5 billion DVDs to its customers since first sending out those iconic red envelopes 21 years ago. The milestone was announced by DVD.com, the Netflix subsidiary that is now responsible for the company’s physical disc subscriptions, on Twitter Monday.
5,000,000,000 shipments. F I V E B I L L I O N .
The most heartfelt thank you to our incredible members that have been with us for the past 21 years of DVD Netflix. Five billion discs delivered is a huge milestone and we owe it all to our amazing members and team members. pic.twitter.com/Eg1bjEMtcx
— DVD Netflix (@dvdnetflix) August 26, 2019
Netflix began running a DVD-by-mail subscription service in March of 1998, and shipped its first billion DVDs by early 2007. The company launched its video streaming service soon after, offering it initially as an added bonus to DVD subscribers.
Four years later, Netflix proceeded split its DVD and internet subscription services into 2 separate subscription plans and businesses. Since then, the user base of the company’s DVD subscription service has steadily declined, from 14 million subscribers in 2011 to just 2.4 million subscribers at the end of the most recent fiscal quarter. The company ended that same quarter with more than 151 million paying streaming subscribers worldwide.
As the number of DVD subscribers declined, Netflix has also slowly dialed back infrastructure required to sustain this part of its business. At its peak, Netflix operated around 50 distribution hubs to ship DVDs across the U.S. (the DVD subscription plan never launched internationally). Last year, that number was down to just 17 hubs.
### Popular on Variety
However, DVD subscriptions are still highly profitable for the company: In Q2 of 2019, physical disc shipments contributed close to $46 million in profits to the company’s bottom line. That sizable profit explains why the company is keeping the DVD mailing service up and running for the time being.
And in case you were wondering: The 5 billionth DVD shipped by Netflix was “Rocketman” — a movie that is currently not available on the company’s streaming service.
| true | true | true |
The streaming giant just surpassed a milestone for its small-and-shrinking DVD subscription service.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2019-08-26 00:00:00
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article
|
variety.com
|
Variety
| null | null |
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26,896,254 |
http://www.oldskool.org/sound/pc/#digitized
|
IBM PC Ramblings
| null |
You are here: The Oldskool PC/That Oldskool Beat/IBM PC Sound Ramblings |
Here's a handy menu to the various sections of this document:
I love PC computer sound and music. It takes a lot of effort and
patience to like PC music, to be honest, since every time you actually
enjoy a warbly arpeggiated simulated chord through the speaker, or a
cheezy-sounding Adlib FM soundtrack, or a snippet of 1-bit digitized sound
forced through the PC speaker like a grape through a straw, people look
at you funny. *Real funny.* I have great respect for musicians who
wrote music (and programmers who wrote playback code) for PCs. It's an
art to create a good soundtrack given the medium you have to work with.
And just what was medium? Specifically, what the output like? In the
beginning, all you had was the internal PC speaker, which was a simple
tone generator (**real** simple) without any voice or
dynamics control; it could sustain a frequency and that was it. In the
mid 80's, some better devices found their way into the hands of consumers.
Some were extremely well-supported, like the PCjr/Tandy 3-voice sound
chip and the Adlib music synthesizer card.
I created this section of Oldskool.org in the hopes that people will not only learn about the many different techniques and devices that software developers used to create music on early PCs, but also take a closer look at the sound/music itself and maybe appreciate it a bit more.
(The following is currently reprinted from Life Before Demos, but will be rewritten and
expanded upon at a later date. I am ashamed to admit this shortcut,
but I needed something here as a placeholder because I was running
behind schedule for the opening day of Oldskool.org. **If you've
already read this in Life Before Demos, skip ahead to the Taste Test,
since new information begins there.**)
All of the above is interesting, I agree, but it's "falling on deaf ears" (bwaahaa! I'm so damn funny!) if you can't get an idea for what the darn things sounded like. How was the Tandy/PCjr sound chip better than the PC speaker? Why did game manufacturers go through the trouble to provide sound support for the Roland MT-32? And just how good did PC speaker multi-voice attempts really sound?
Take the PC Sound Standard Taste Test! The following sound clips are not only examples of what each device/technique sounded like, but each category is specifically constructed from the same piece of music. This allows for easy comparison.
Category | PC Speaker (normal) | PC Speaker (multi-voice) | Tandy/PCjr | Adlib | Sound Blaster Pro | Gravis Ultrasound | Roland MT-32 | General MIDI |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
General MIDI test | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | ||||
Silpheed | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | ||||
Turbo Outrun (1) | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | ||||||
Turbo Outrun (2) | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | ||||||
Turbo Outrun (3) | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | ||||||
Music Construction Set | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] | [Sun/Next] [MP3] |
In the middle to late 1980's, software developers discovered that you
could play digitized sound through the PC speaker *without additional
hardware* by utilizing Pulse-Width-Modulation, which toggles the
PC's internal speaker faster than it can physically move to simulate
positions between fully on and fully off. (How's **that**
for a clever hack?) Since you could get reasonable output of 6-bit
digitized sound this way, some game developers decided to make use of it,
either for sound effects (which was common) or for title music (which
was rare). Some of these title "soundtracks" were original pieces of
music composed specifically for the game, and many were extremely good
for their time!
I've always been a fan of digitized title music in PC games. When all
you've heard in your games are simple "beeps and boops" for a couple of
years, the first time you hear **real sound** through your
speaker, it floors you. It certainly left an impression on me, anyway.
What also contributed to that impression was the uncommon *quality*
of the music--it was usually well composed or thought out, which was
**not** something you expected for a 4-color CGA game running
on a 4.77MHz 8088 in 1987.
They were also cool from a technical standpoint: The programmer had successfully figured out how to output digitized sound through a device that was not designed to support such an action. How they discovered the technique of toggling the PC's internal speaker faster than it can physically move is beyond me. (Who was the first person to think of trying that?) Plus, the musicians themselves pulled some clever tricks, such as dynamic compression (in the sense of making quiet sounds louder, not the "pkzip" variety) and repeating sections, to not only make the title music better audible through the speaker, but also to make it longer. Space Racer is an excellent example of this: the actual audio data is 128K, but the entire title music (if saved into the same format) is much larger than that due to sections of music that can be "reused".
Sadly, most digitized title music of this nature has never been heard, since: 1. In most cases the game came out only for the PC before there was support for more conventional digitized output, such as the Sound Blaster or Covox Speech Thing, and 2. Most clone PCs had crappy psezio-electric "tweeter" speakers that resulted in barely audible or inaudible sound, instead of the large honkin' 3" speaker of the original PC. (The only exception to this is probably most Access titles, since they spent a lot of time creating and enhancing RealSound, their system of playing digitized sound on the PC, and eventually offered playback through the Sound Blaster and other devices.)
This section of oldskool.org is here to remedy that situation. In the following table, you'll find Sun/NeXT .au (u-law) sound clips of the title music of several games made during 1987-1989, which you can easily listen to right from your web browser through your sound device. While the sound is certainly not as polished as today's modern game music, the musical ideas and composition are certainly comparable. (Not to mention that, geez, this came out of your PC's speaker without additional hardware! Come on, isn't that cool as hell?)
Remember, these are not "mods" or "tracked music"; these are cleverly arranged, sometimes-repeating, single-channel sound samples. Enjoy!
Game | Developer | Year | Approx. Size of Sample Data | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
Wizball | Mindscape | 1987 | ~64K | A short loop that repeats endlessly until you hit a key. Doesn't really fit the nature of the game except the chorus of "weird" women saying "Wizball!". Was the first digitized title tune I ever heard. Great game, BTW, and is totally playable on 4-color CGA contrary to what most people say (it's a game about matching up color). |
Crazy Cars | Titus | 1987 | ~64K | Hard rock for a fast "muscle cars" racing game. |
Offshore Warrior | Titus | 1987 | ~128K | A very cool "sly spy" piece, suggesting mystery and intrique. The only problem is, it has nothing to do with the game! This is a high-speed boat racing game...! |
Mach 3 | Loriciels | 1987 | ~64K | "Get ready for Mach 3," the woman says suggestively, and then the euro-rock track starts. Cool. |
Cobra | Loriciels | 1987 | ~195K | How to compress a TV show's theme into memory? Use 4-bit samples and a lot of repetition. |
Fire and Forget | Titus | 1988 | ~128K | A suitable track for the game, suggesting a post-apocalyptic world where people still have electric guitars. Kind-of like the music in Le Dernier Combat if LDC hadn't all been experimental jazz. |
Space Racer | Loriciels | 1988 | ~128K | One of the very best digitized title tracks I've ever heard; a hard-hitting energetic intro to a fast game, this title track really sets the mood well. |
Purple Saturn Day | Exxos | 1988 | ~64K | Creative and weird, just like the game. :) |
Turbo Cup | Loriciels | 1988 | ~128K | The ultimate best digitized title track from Loriciels. This one pulls out all the stops, by pre-mixing some sections into slightly different ones for more variety. It's not quite a .MOD player (all premixing is done before the game starts) but it's long and impressive! |
Galactic Conqueror | Titus | 1988 | 64K | Short and sweet. The game itself is a very nice-looking fast 3rd-person shoot'em up. |
Aspar GP Master | Dinamic | 1989 | ~96K | One of the very best digitized title tracks I've ever heard; repeating sequences are folded into the piece well; upbeat and happy. |
Mean Streets | Access | 1989 | ~128K | I heard this song on a late-night 976 number commercial!! So either the commercial copied the game, or the game's music was just some stock audio they used :-( |
Fire! | New Deal Productions | 1989 | ~224K | Notable for sounding an awful lot like a modplayer, but is in fact just the first 40 seconds of a .mod rendered out to 6KHz audio, which then loops. |
Freddy Hardest in South Manhattan | Iron Byte | 1989 | Terrible 1-bit audio and an incredibly lazy effort. Don't bother. | |
Crime Wave | Access | 1990 | ~128K | A fitting tune for the nature of the game; vaguely futuristic, almost zen-like. And, sadly, a rip-off of a Pink Floyd tune. |
Countdown | Access | 1990 | ~128K | Hard-hitting music for a hard-hitting international espionage game. |
Links | Access | 1990 | ~128K | A classical-style tune perfectly suitable for a sophisticated golf game like Links. |
Spellcasting 101 | Legend | 1990 | ~192K | If there was ever a tune about college life and spellcasting,
this would be the tune. The game actually has Adlib support
for a longer version of this tune, but then again, you don't
hear the electric guitar in the Adlib version. :-) |
The Sun/NeXT .au format was chosen for these clips since, at the default
8000Hz sample rate, it reproduces all of the technical quality of the
original sound, while at the same time being very cross-platform, easy
to play, and has very low CPU requirements. RealAudio and MPEG Layer 3
were specifically **not** considered because their benefits
(high audio clarity) were outweighted by their disadvantages (RealAudio
is not as cross-platform as I would like, and MPEG Layer 3 has heavy CPU
requirements during decompression). Besides, their additional clarity
would not have represented the sound better anyway.
These clips were constructed from the original sound data wherever
possible, which means that I took the raw PCM data files, cut and pasted
them to match the output, then saved them into .au files. When that wasn't
possible, they were recorded directly from the hardware through the use
of 1/8th inch plug (sound card) to "alligator clips" (speaker) cable.
While these are easy to make (Mean Streets even provides instructions
in the `README` file), I just went out and bought one to save
the trouble. The cable I purchased was less than four bucks from Radio
Shack, Cat. No. 42-2421, description "Shielded 6-FT. (1.8m) AUDIO
CABLE; For Speciality/replacement audio connections; 1/8" mini plug to
alligator clips", and it works quite well; I didn't need to splice a
capacitor into the cable because I was recording with my sound card,
which was able to raise the input level. I attached the ground clip
(the one attached to the copper shielding) to the case and the other
clip to one of the speaker terminals. It works great, IMO.
The only drawback to recording sound from old PCs via this method is that you usually have to do so with the cover off, and old PCs were hardly FCC Class A certified, let alone Class B. The result? If you're lucky, you get only a small amount of noise during the silence portions that can be removed with a simple noise gate. If you're unlucky, however, you'll get a noise or static that's audible during the non-silent portions. If you're cursed and/or improperly grounded, you'll get a nasty 60Hz line hum from the wall AC. Post-processing with a good set of software filters is the only way to remove noise/distortions like that, but if you don't have a good set of software filters, you can always simply resample your original digitized recording down to about 8000Hz--this will get rid of mostly everything except the 60Hz AC hum.
The following is a list of pages similar to this one:
MegaMan_X's Soundcard Hall of Fame has some nice pictures of sound cards, as well as some additional information.
| true | true | true | null |
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2022-05-06 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null | null | null |
10,330,859 |
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2015/10/top-arxiv-deep-learning-papers-explained.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
6,141,141 |
http://gizmodo.com/are-smart-locks-secure-or-just-dumb-511093690
|
Are Smart Locks Secure, or Just Dumb?
|
Peter Ha
|
Keys have been around for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. We’ve all used them. We generally understand how they work and how vulnerable they can be. Some are better than others. And now that the simplest of devices in the home are connecting to the cloud, it’s time to figure out just how safe or smart these new-fangled smart locks really are.
So far there are four known companies specializing in smart locks. The latest, Goji, launched this week with a neat little feature: a camera. August, co-founded by Yves Behar—the guy who designs wares for Jawbone, Jimmy Jane, and generally anyone that will pay him—launched last week and has already chalked up over 17,500 reservations. Since its debut on ABC’s Shark Tank a year ago, UniKey has struck deals with Kwikset and Weiser for its deadbolt “touch-to-open” replacement. And Valley darling Lockitron is set to begin shipping its latest iteration in a month’s time.
https://gizmodo.com/heres-your-semi-perfect-camera-equipped-smart-lock-511004584
While each company’s traditional lock alternative comes with a set of proprietary security traits, they all still rely on the built-in protective features of Bluetooth SMART (aka 4.0 aka low energy). Which, for some reason, has a lot of folks concerned.
### Just How Secure Is Bluetooth SMART (aka low energy)?
Each of the four companies claims to use the same security protocols as those used in online banking. What that essentially means is that anytime your smartphone is “talking” to any one of the four smart locks, that conversation is wrapped in 128-bit AES encryption, the lowest level of encryption used by government agencies in the US, for instance. TOP SECRET information requires 192- or 256-bit AES encryption, but 128 is good enough for SECRET level classified intel.
Is it vulnerable? Yes. Would a skilled hacker who could potentially break into government websites, military servers, or banks be that interested in getting into your smart locked home? Sure, but that individual would be wasting their, ahem, talents on some low hanging fruit. No offense.
Besides, in the case of smart locks, the real issue isn’t how Bluetooth transfers the initial data securely. It’s how each user or digital key is being authenticated. Unlike Bluetooth version 2.1, the latest version doesn’t actually require two devices to initially pair with each other the way you would have to pair your smartphone to a Bluetooth headset, for instance. So more common Bluetooth-based attacks like Bluejacking, Bluesnarfing and Bluebugging are a non-issue. Bluetooth SMART was “built from the ground up with a whole new radio architecture,” says Bluetooth SIG CMO Suke Jawanda. “It’s actually a step up in the security architecture, as well.” Of course, there’s not much doubt that the Special Interest Group was going to tell me that Bluetooth SMART/4.0/le is safe.
It’s not all PR chatter, though. The new spec features adaptive frequency-hopping, too, which basically scatters whatever encrypted data you’re sending across the 2.4GHz spectrum. Jawanda goes on to say that the biggest “challenge” from a security vulnerability standpoint though, is how companies implement the latest version of Bluetooth. If it isn’t done per spec, then that device might not benefit from what security features are baked into Bluetooth. Each company has said that they’ve implemented the latest version per spec, so each should be pretty well secured.
### How Do They Do It?
As far as we know, this is how each service essentially works based on multiple interactions with each company. All of this is obviously subject to change, since most of them haven’t yet launched.
UniKey’s whole lock replacement Kevo system is the less jarring of the four smart lock solutions, as it looks exactly like any deadbolt you’ve ever seen before. UniKey doesn’t actually rely on Bluetooth’s security protocol but instead relies on a public-key infrastructure system to authenticate users. Without getting into the nitty gritty of it, what that means is that every communication between the phone and lock is a unique transaction. So even if someone were able to sniff out a key, they wouldn’t be able to use it again.
As UniKey President Phil Dumas told me, “There are more possible combinations to our lock than there are hydrogen particles in the observable universe.” And because the Kevo system sits on both sides of the door, it knows if you’re on the inside or outside of the door essentially eliminating any false unlocks. But then again, you have to tap the lock itself before it locks or unlocks anyway. Oh, and all updates to the Kevo’s firmware are downloaded and pushed through your smartphone.
Lockitron, which originally launched in early 2011 with a whole lock replacement, has since opted for an add-on solution for your existing lock setup but only on the interior of the door. Compared to Kevo, Lockitron connects to both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. While each exchange between your smartphone and Lockitron can also be done over just Bluetooth, you can remotely lock or unlock your door over Wi-Fi or send a notification when the knock sensor has been triggered. That extra layer of connectivity also comes with a smidge of added security. And even if you don’t have a Bluetooth SMART-enabled smartphone, (iPhone 4S/5 and some Android devices) admins and those they issue digital keys can still get in and out through the mobile web. Lockitron works with Electric Imp on the Wi-Fi side of things and uses “industry standard TLS to secure device connections,” which is the successor to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a cryptographic protocol used on the Internet that provides communication security.
Lockitron co-founder Cameron Robertson wouldn’t say too much about how his smart lock authenticates and permissions digital keys beyond the aforementioned. Robertson also wouldn’t divulge how his system knows whether or not you’re inside the house or outside but it won’t be too hard to figure that out once the devices start shipping next month.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFlPncm4fnY
August, like UniKey’s Kevo, handles communication between the lock and a permissioned smartphone over Bluetooth. The lock itself never talks to August’s server, the cloud or even the Internet. Authentication is handled through the smartphone and the accompanying August app. August owners can also grant permission or deny access through the website. And each lock comes with its own key, so it’s not like issuing access to one lock grants access to all of them.
Jason Johnson, co-founder of August, won’t say how his system, which sits atop the interior of a door’s lock, identifies whether or not a user is on the outside or inside but says they have a bit of secret sauce that helps them figure it out. I imagine we’ll know more once the product is closer to shipping later this year. Also, August won’t allow customers to update the lock’s firmware on their own. It’s something the company is considering pending a security review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIPt1QVpnU0
Goji, which launched its Indiegogo campaign yesterday, is a little bit different in that it replaces your entire deadbolt system with a two-part contraption that includes a Wi-Fi-enabled camera and 24/7 customer service. It’s also the only one that’s glaringly obvious to the outside world that you don’t have a traditional system in place.
Two programmable key fobs and four admin accounts initially ship with Goji. Each of those admin accounts can issue digital keys, with the authentication process predominantly taking place via Bluetooth. Owners can also remotely lock or unlock the, uhh, lock since Goji is connected over Wi-Fi. That connectivity also enables the system to snap a photo of anyone entering your home and automatically pushing it to your phone. So long as your network stays up, of course. So how does Goji know if you’re inside or outside? A series of antennas sit on both sides of the door within both modules to magically figure it out.
### Thrown for a Loophole
The problem with smart locks, though, is that like any electronic system they’re not foolproof. Take the following scenario, which could happen in some insane bizarro world, that would render each of the four systems somewhat vulnerable. Again, this is a unique situation that probably won’t happen very often, if ever, but it’s a vulnerability nonetheless.
Let’s say that the Wi-Fi network at your home goes down and your Goji or Lockitron are unable to download the latest list of blacklisted keys, an individual with a blacklisted key could still get in. How? If they’re clever enough to somehow take your Wi-Fi network down and have the foresight to only have Bluetooth switched on, their digital key could still work since their particular device never hit Goji or Lockitron’s server to have their permissions revoked. Again, a highly unlikely situation but it could happen.
While August and Kevo’s respective locks never talk to the cloud, it gets a little trickier to gain access to a home with a blacklisted key but it’s not impossible. When you, the owner, decide to blacklist a key via the web or your smartphone, you update the lock’s list of blacklisted keys anytime you interact with said key. At least that’s one way of doing it. The alternative to that is that both systems push updates to any smartphone that hit the server. So if someone, let’s say an ex signif or house cleaner, opens either app while connected, their key is automatically updated and revoked. But in the event that you’re unable to manually update the lock yourself, someone with a blacklisted key could still get in if they put their phone in airplane mode with Bluetooth still running.
Again, it’s a super unlikely scenario but stranger things have happened. Technology fails. People are crazy. While each company was able to offer guidance on what to do, the larger question looms as to what other loopholes exist if this one already does.
### Smart, Secure or Just Dumb?
It’s easy to dismiss or turn your nose up at smart locks, but not everyone was enthused when the Nest thermostat launched either. Connected locks might not solve any obvious issues at the moment, but neither did the iPod. For urban dwellers like myself who have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for an extra set of keys, it even makes some economic sense. But they’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing ever is. And even if they were, they’re also entirely circumventable.
Any burglar who’s committed enough to get into your house can either a) pop or break your window or b) take a crowbar to your door to get in. Whether or not you have a smart lock is irrelevant to them. Hacking your way through the existing 128-bit AES encryption on top of whatever each company has piled on is probably just a waste of time. You could just buy a Halligan off Amazon for $250, which is what firefighters use to break down doors. And if you have a sliding door, they could just as easily pop that out. Or! Or someone could, you know, just snatch your actual key and get in that way.
In reality smart locks don’t offer any higher or lower level of security than your basic deadbolt. They’re safe for what they are, and probably convenient for some, but right now you shouldn’t think of them as anything more than a security parlor trick.
| true | true | true |
Keys have been around for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. We've all used them. We generally understand how they work and how vulnerable they can be.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2013-06-05 00:00:00
|
article
|
gizmodo.com
|
Gizmodo
| null | null |
|
41,319,125 |
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/22/business/canadian-railroad-shut-down-hnk-intl/index.html
|
Canadian freight railroads shut down, dealing a potential blow to North America’s economy | CNN Business
|
Chris Isidore
|
Canada’s two major freight railroads have shut their operations, according to management of the two companies, locking out 9,000 members of the Teamsters union who operate the trains and dealing a potential blow to both the Canadian and US economies.
Nearly a third of the freight handled by the two railroads — Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern (CPKC) — crosses the US-Canadian border, and the shutdown could disrupt operations in a number of US industries, including agriculture, autos, home building and energy, depending upon how long the shutdown lasts.
“CPKC is acting to protect Canada’s supply chains, and all stakeholders, from further uncertainty and the more widespread disruption that would be created should this dispute drag out further resulting in a potential work stoppage occurring during the fall peak shipping period,”** **the company said in a Thursday statement shortly after the start of the lockout at 12:01 am ET. “Delaying resolution to this labor dispute will only make things worse.”
The shutdown would drive home how closely linked the two nations’ economies are, with many industries depending on the free movement of goods across the border for their efficient operations.
For example, some US auto plants could temporarily shut down if they’re unable to get engines, transmissions or stampings done at Canadian plants. US farmers might find shortages of fertilizer and US water treatment plants near the Canadian border could run of out chlorine they use to purify water.
This is the first time that both major Canadian railroads have shut down at the same time due to a labor dispute. The most recent work stoppage in the industry was a 60-hour strike at Canadian Pacific in 2022. Before that, there was a nine-day strike at Canadian National in 2019.
Thursday’s action is different from a strike, in which union members refuse to report for work. In this case, management is the one telling the nearly 9,000 Teamsters that they can’t work.
## ‘Up against it’
CPKC spokesperson Patrick Waldron said it was better to stop operations now and reach a conclusion, rather than having the union go on strike later this fall.
“We’re right up against the fall peak shipping season. You have a new Canadian grain crop coming in, the first not impacted by drought in two years,” Waldron told CNN ahead of the lockout. “You have Christmas presents in containers arriving at ports. If this pushes further into fall shipping period, the consequences are going to be worse.”
The Teamsters union says it has been seeking a contract that both sides can live with, but that demands by the railroads would reduce the amount of rest and increase safety risks.
“Throughout this process, CN and CPKC have shown themselves willing to compromise rail safety and tear families apart to earn an extra buck. The railroads don’t care about farmers, small businesses, supply chains, or their own employees. Their sole focus is boosting their bottom line, even if it means jeopardizing the entire economy,” Paul Boucher, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, said in a statement early Thursday.
But the railroads deny that the changes they are seeking would increase safety risks, saying all proposals provide greater safety protections than required by recently strengthened Canadian regulations.
The companies said it is the union’s fault that there could not be an agreement reached before the deadline. They both called on the government to step in and refer the dispute to binding arbitration, which it has thus far refused to do.
The chambers of commerce in both the United States and Canada issued a joint statement Tuesday calling on the Canadian government to take action to keep the railroads working.
“A stoppage of rail service will be devastating to Canadian businesses and families and impose significant impacts on the US economy,” they said. “Significant two-way trade and deeply integrated supply chains between Canada and the United States mean that any significant rail disruption will jeopardize the livelihoods of workers across multiple industries on both sides of the border.”
## Potential economic losses
Economists say there isn’t nearly enough capacity on trucks available to handle the freight normally carried by the Canadian railroads.
A Tuesday report from Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan research firm that has expertise estimating the economic impact of work stoppages, said a three-day strike would cause $300 million** **(407 million Canadian dollars) of economic damage, while a seven-day strike would bring losses to more than $1 billion (1.4 billion Canadian dollars).
A shutdown of only a few days would limit the economic impact but still cause problems, said Kristin Dziczek, policy advisor in the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s research, policy, and public engagement division.
“It will take weeks to unwind the problems caused by a shutdown of even a few days because things will end up not where they’re supposed to be,” she said.
And because of the risk of a work stoppage, both railroads stopped taking shipments of various hazardous materials last week so that those items would not be** **stuck on trains unable to be delivered. That is already causing some disruptions, according to John Drake, the US Chamber’s vice president of transportation, infrastructure, and supply chain policy.
“We’re already hearing from businesses not seeing their shipments move,” he said.
Spokespeople for the railroads said management needed to move ahead with the lockdown plans because they couldn’t wait for the union to spring a strike on them with only the 72 hours of notice that is required by Canadian law.
“We can’t shut down a rail network by just flipping a switch,” Jonathan Abecassis, spokesperson for Canadian National, told CNN Wednesday ahead of the lockout. “We needed to start a safe and secure shutdown.”
Canada does not have the same railroad labor law as the United States that would allow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to block a strike or lockout while a panel weighs the demands of the two sides and makes recommendations.** **That’s what happened in 2022 when President Joe Biden and Congress each took action** **to prevent a strike by 13 rail unions spread across the four major US railroads.
Canadian Labor Minister Steve MacKinnon** **met with the union and management negotiators in recent days in an unsuccessful effort to reach a deal. He has the power to refer the matter to binding arbitration, a solution sought by the railroads and opposed by the unions. But so far, the Trudeau administration has rejected that option.
“We’re hoping he reconsiders his position,” said CN’s Abecassis.
At a press briefing Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would not commit to that action, though. He did say that MacKinnon remains engaged directly with trying to find a way to end the shutdown.
“We are we are not taking this lightly, obviously because Canadians across the country are worried about it,” Trudeau said. “We will have more to say shortly on what we’re doing to make sure that the right solution is found quickly for the economy.”
*– CNN’s Paula Newton contributed to this report.*
*This story has been updated with additional context and reporting.*
| true | true | true |
Canada’s two major freight railroads have shut their operations, according to management of the two companies, locking out 9,000 members of the Teamsters union who operate the trains and dealing a potential blow to both the Canadian and US economies.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2024-08-22 00:00:00
|
article
|
cnn.com
|
CNN
| null | null |
|
2,932,978 |
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2011/08/tdd-in-javascript-no-excuses.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
22,644,015 |
https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/creating-workspaces-with-the-hashicorp-terraform-operator-for-kubernetes/
|
Creating Workspaces with the HashiCorp Terraform Operator for Kubernetes
|
Rosemary Wang
|
# Creating Workspaces with the HashiCorp Terraform Operator for Kubernetes
**This operator is now out of alpha. You should now read the consistently updated guide on this operator, which can be found here: Deploy Infrastructure with the Terraform Cloud Operator for Kubernetes.**
We are pleased to announce the alpha release of HashiCorp Terraform Operator for Kubernetes. The new Operator lets you define and create infrastructure as code natively in Kubernetes by making calls to Terraform Cloud.
Use cases include:
-
Hardening and configuring application-related infrastructure as a Terraform module and creating them with a Kubernetes-native interface. For example, a database or queue that an application uses for data or messaging.
-
Automating Terraform Cloud workspace and variable creation with a Kubernetes-native interface.
By adding the Operator to your Kubernetes namespace, you can create application-related infrastructure from a Kubernetes cluster. In this example, you will use the new Operator to deploy a message queue that an application needs before it is deployed to Kubernetes. This pattern can extend to other application infrastructure, such as DNS servers, databases, and identity and access management rules.
## » Internals
The Operator pattern extends the Kubernetes API to create and configure custom resources internal and external to the Kubernetes cluster. By using an Operator, you can capture and automate tasks to manage a set of services.
The HashiCorp Terraform Operator for Kubernetes executes a Terraform Cloud run with a module, using a custom resource in Kubernetes that defines Terraform workspaces. By using Terraform Cloud in the Operator, we leverage an existing control plane that ensures proper handling and locking of state, sequential execution of runs, and established patterns for injecting secrets and provisioning resources.
The logic for creating and updating workspaces in Terraform Cloud exists in the `terraform-k8s`
binary. It includes the `Workspace`
controller, which reconciles the Kubernetes Workspace custom resource with the Terraform Cloud workspace. The controller will check for changes to inline non-sensitive variables, module source, and module version. Edits to sensitive variables or variables with ConfigMap references will not trigger updates or runs in Terraform Cloud due to security concerns and ConfigMap behavior, respectively. Runs will automatically execute with `terraform apply -auto-approve`
, in keeping with the Operator pattern.
We package `terraform-k8s`
into a container and deploy it * namespace-scoped* to a Kubernetes cluster as a Kubernetes deployment. This allows the Operator to access the Terraform Cloud API token and workspace secrets within a specific namespace. By namespace-scoping the Operator, we can isolate changes, scope secrets, and version custom resource definitions. For additional information about namespace-scoping versus cluster-scoping, see information outlined by the operator-sdk project.
Next, we create a Workspace custom resource definition (CRD) in the cluster, which defines the schema for a Terraform Cloud workspace and extends the Kubernetes API. The CRD must be deployed before we can create a `Workspace`
custom resource in the cluster.
Finally, we apply a `Workspace`
custom resource to build a Terraform Cloud workspace. When you create a `Workspace`
in the Kubernetes cluster in the same namespace as the Operator, you trigger the Operator to:
- Retrieve values from the
`Workspace`
specification - Create or update a Terraform Cloud workspace
- Create or update variables in the Terraform Cloud workspace
- Execute a run in Terraform Cloud
- Update the
`Workspace`
status in Kubernetes
## » Authenticate with Terraform Cloud
The Operator requires an account in Terraform Cloud with a free or paid Terraform Cloud organization. After signing into your account, obtain a Team API Token under *Settings -> Teams*. If you are using a paid tier, you must grant a team access to “Manage Workspaces”. If you are using a free tier, you will only see one team called “Owners” that has full access to the API.
The Team API token should be stored as a Kubernetes secret or in a secrets manager to be injected into the Operator’s deployment. For example, we save the Terraform Cloud API token to a file called `credentials`
to use for a Kubernetes secret.
```
> less credentials
credentials app.terraform.io {
token = "REDACTED"
}
```
Note that this is a broad-spectrum token. As a result, ensure that the Kubernetes cluster using this token has proper role-based access control limiting access to the secret that is storing the token, or store the secret in a secret manager with access control policies.
## » Deploy the Operator
To deploy the Operator, download its Helm chart. Before installing the chart, make sure you have created a namespace and added the Terraform Cloud API token and sensitive variables as Kubernetes secrets. This example uses a file called `credentials`
, a CLI configuration file with the API token.
```
> kubectl create ns preprod
> kubectl create -n preprod secret generic terraformrc --from-file=credentials
> kubectl create -n preprod secret generic workspacesecrets --from-literal=AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY} --from-literal=AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
```
By default, the Helm chart expects to mount a Kubernetes secret with the Terraform Cloud API token named `terraformrc`
at the file path `/etc/terraform`
. The key of the Kubernetes secret defined in the example is `credentials`
. Sensitive variables default to the Kubernetes secret named `workspacesecrets`
at the directory `/tmp/secrets`
. The key of each secret is the name of a file mounted in the `/tmp/secrets`
directory.
Once you stage the namespace and secrets, deploy the Operator to your cluster by installing the helm chart and enabling the workspace synching capability.
```
> helm install -n preprod operator ./terraform-helm --set="global.enabled=true"
```
The command manually enables the Operator with the `--set`
option. To learn more about Helm values and how to configure them with values files, see Helm documentation.
The Operator runs as a pod in the namespace.
```
> kubectl get -n preprod pod
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
operator-terraform-sync-workspace-74748fc4b9-d8brb 1/1 Running 0 10s
```
In addition to deploying the Operator, the Helm chart adds a Workspace custom resource definition to the cluster.
```
> kubectl get crds
NAME CREATED AT
workspaces.app.terraform.io 2020-02-11T15:15:06Z
```
## » Deploy a Workspace
When applying the Workspace custom resource to a Kubernetes cluster, you must define the Terraform Cloud organization, the file path to secrets on the Operator, a Terraform module, its variables, and any outputs you would like to see in the Kubernetes status.
Copy the following snippet into a file named workspace.yml.
```
# workspace.yml
apiVersion: app.terraform.io/v1alpha1
kind: Workspace
metadata:
name: greetings
spec:
organization: hashicorp-team-demo
secretsMountPath: "/tmp/secrets"
module:
source: "terraform-aws-modules/sqs/aws"
version: "2.0.0"
outputs:
- key: url
moduleOutputName: this_sqs_queue_id
variables:
- key: name
value: greetings.fifo
sensitive: false
environmentVariable: false
- key: fifo_queue
value: "true"
sensitive: false
environmentVariable: false
- key: AWS_DEFAULT_REGION
valueFrom:
configMapKeyRef:
name: aws-configuration
key: region
sensitive: false
environmentVariable: true
- key: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
sensitive: true
environmentVariable: true
- key: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
sensitive: true
environmentVariable: true
- key: CONFIRM_DESTROY
value: "1"
sensitive: false
environmentVariable: true
```
Currently, the Operator deploys the Terraform configuration encapsulated in a module. The module source can be any publicly available remote source (Terraform Registry or version-controlled and publicly available). It does not support local paths or separate `*.tf`
outside of the module.
For variables that must be passed to the module, ensure that the variable key in the specification matches the name of the module variable. In the example, the `terraform-aws-modules/sqs/aws`
expects a variable called `name`
. The workspace specification is equivalent to the following Terraform configuration:
```
module “queue” {
source = “terraform-aws-modules/sqs/aws”
version = “2.0.0”
name = var.name
fifo_queue = var.fifo_queue
}
```
In addition to matching the key of the variable to the expected module variable, you must specify if the variable is sensitive or must be created as an environment variable. The value of the variable is optional and can be defined inline or with a Kubernetes ConfigMap reference. If it is defined for a sensitive variable, the Operator will overwrite the inline value with one from the `secretsMountPath`
.
The `outputs`
in the workspace specification map module outputs to your Terraform Cloud outputs. In the `workspace.yml`
snippet, the `terraform-aws-modules/sqs/aws`
outputs a value for `this_sqs_queue_id`
. The example sets this to a Terraform output with the key `url`
. The workspace specification is equivalent to the following Terraform configuration:
```
output “url” {
value = module.queue.this_sqs_queue_id
}
```
Create a ConfigMap for the default AWS region.
```
# configmap.yml
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: aws-configuration
data:
region: us-east-1
```
Apply the ConfigMap and the Workspace to the namespace.
```
> kubectl apply -n preprod -f configmap.yml
> kubectl apply -n preprod -f workspace.yml
```
Examine the Terraform configuration uploaded to Terraform Cloud by checking the `terraform`
ConfigMap. The Terraform configuration includes the module’s source, version, and inputs.
```
> kubectl describe -n preprod configmap greetings
# omitted for clarity
Data
====
terraform:
----
terraform {
backend "remote" {}
}
module "operator" {
source = "terraform-aws-modules/sqs/aws"
version = "2.0.0"
name = var.name
fifo_queue = var.fifo_queue
}
```
Debug the actions of the Operator and check if the workspace creation runs into errors by checking the Operator’s logs.
```
> kubectl logs -n preprod $(kubectl get pods -n preprod --selector "component=sync-workspace" -o jsonpath="{.items[0].metadata.name}")
# omitted for clarity
{"level":"info","ts":1581434593.6183743,"logger":"terraform-k8s","msg":"Run incomplete","Organization":"hashicorp-team-demo","RunID":"run-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx","RunStatus":"applying"}
{"level":"info","ts":1581434594.3859985,"logger":"terraform-k8s","msg":"Checking outputs","Organization":"hashicorp-team-demo","WorkspaceID":"ws-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx","RunID":"run-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"}
{"level":"info","ts":1581434594.7209284,"logger":"terraform-k8s","msg":"Updated outputs","Organization":"hashicorp-team-demo","WorkspaceID":"ws-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"}
```
Check the status of the workspace to determine the run status, outputs, and run identifiers.
```
> kubectl describe -n preprod workspace greetings
Name: greetings
Namespace: preprod
# omitted for clarity
Status:
Outputs:
Key: url
Value: https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/REDACTED/greetings.fifo
Run ID: run-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Run Status: applied
Workspace ID: ws-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
```
In addition to debugging with the Kubernetes interface, you can check the status of the run in the Terraform Cloud UI.
The Workspace custom resource reflects that the run was applied and updates its corresponding outputs in the status.
```
> kubectl describe -n preprod workspace greetings
# omitted for clarity
Status:
Outputs:
Key: url
Value: https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/REDACTED/greetings.fifo
Run ID: run-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Run Status: applied
Workspace ID: ws-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
```
In addition to the workspace status, the output configuration can be consumed by the application from a ConfigMap with data for the Terraform outputs.
```
> kubectl describe -n preprod configmap greetings-output
Name: greetings-outputs
Namespace: preprod
Labels: <none>
Annotations: <none>
Data
====
url:
----
https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/REDACTED/greetings.fifo
```
Now that the queue has been deployed, the application can send and receive messages on the queue. The ConfigMap with the queue configuration can be mounted as an environment variable to the application. Save the following job definition in a file called `application.yaml`
to run a test to send and receive messages from the queue.
```
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
name: greetings
labels:
app: greetings
spec:
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: greetings
spec:
restartPolicy: Never
containers:
- name: greetings
image: joatmon08/aws-sqs-test
command: ["./message.sh"]
env:
- name: QUEUE_URL
valueFrom:
configMapKeyRef:
name: greetings-outputs
key: url
- name: AWS_DEFAULT_REGION
valueFrom:
configMapKeyRef:
name: aws-configuration
key: region
volumeMounts:
- name: sensitivevars
mountPath: "/tmp/secrets"
readOnly: true
volumes:
- name: sensitivevars
secret:
secretName: workspacesecrets
```
This example re-uses the AWS credentials, used by the Operator to deploy the queues, in order to read and send messages to the queues. Deploy the job and examine the logs from the pod associated with the job.
```
> kubectl apply -n preprod -f application.yaml
> kubectl logs -n preprod $(kubectl get pods -n preprod --selector "app=greetings" -o jsonpath="{.items[0].metadata.name}")
sending a message to queue https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/REDACTED/greetings.fifo
{
"MD5OfMessageBody": "fc3ff98e8c6a0d3087d515c0473f8677"
}
reading a message from queue https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/REDACTED/greetings.fifo
{
"Messages": [
{
"Body": "test"
]
}
```
## » Update a Workspace
Applying changes to inline, non-sensitive variables and module source and version in the Kubernetes Workspace custom resource will trigger a new run in the Terraform Cloud workspace. However, as previously mentioned, edits to sensitive variables or variables with ConfigMap references will not trigger updates or runs in Terraform Cloud.
Update the `workspace.yml`
file by changing the name and type of the queue from FIFO to standard.
```
# workspace.yml
apiVersion: app.terraform.io/v1alpha1
kind: Workspace
metadata:
name: greetings
spec:
# omitted for clarity
variables:
- key: name
value: greetings
- key: fifo_queue
value: "false"
# omitted for clarity
```
Next, apply the updated workspace configuration. The Terraform Operator retrieves the configuration update, pushes it to Terraform Cloud, and executes a run.
```
> kubectl apply -n preprod -f workspace.yaml
```
Examine the run for the workspace in the Terraform Cloud UI. The plan indicates a replacement of the queue.
Updates to the workspace from the Operator can be audited through Terraform Cloud, as it maintains a history of runs and the current state.
## » Delete a Workspace
When deleting the Workspace custom resource, you may notice that the command hangs for a few minutes.
```
> kubectl delete -n preprod workspace greetings
workspace.app.terraform.io "greetings" deleted
```
The command hangs because the Operator executes a finalizer, a pre-delete hook. It executes a `terraform destroy`
on workspace resources and deletes the workspace in Terraform Cloud.
Once the finalizer completes, Kubernetes will delete the Workspace custom resource.
## » Conclusion
The HashiCorp Terraform Operator leverages the benefits of Terraform Cloud with a first-class Kubernetes experience. For additional details about the workspace synchronization, see our detailed documentation. A deeper dive on the Kubernetes Operator pattern can be found in Kubernetes documentation.
To deploy the Terraform Operator for Kubernetes, review the instructions on its Helm chart. To learn more about the Operator and its design, check it out at hashicorp/terraform-k8s. Additional resources for Terraform Cloud can be found at app.terraform.io.
We would love to hear your feedback and expand on the project!
*Post bugs, questions, and feature requests regarding deployment of the Operator by opening an issue on hashicorp/terraform-helm!*
#### Sign up for the latest HashiCorp news
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| true | true | true |
We are pleased to announce the alpha release of HashiCorp Terraform Operator for Kubernetes. The new Operator lets you define and create infrastructure as code natively in Kubernetes by making calls to Terraform Cloud.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2020-03-17 00:00:00
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website
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hashicorp.com
|
HashiCorp
| null | null |
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1,295,628 |
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/opinion/25friedman.html?bl
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
16,611,985 |
http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/servers-storage/cray-to-install-4-petaflop-machine-for-japanese-nuclear-fusion-research/99909.article
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12,637,047 |
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/10/04/announcement-microsoft-lookout-partner-to-provide-expansive-mobile-security/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
17,262,585 |
https://stateofprogress.blog/welcoming-accepting-e3e2fa9809a5?gi=46644efc051c
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
10,564,998 |
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cool-productivity-tools-for-startups?share=1
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
30,192,773 |
https://basicdos.com/
|
PC DOS Reimagined
|
Jeff Parsons
|
A PCjs Retro-Programming Project
Read the Blog, then check out the Preview, which highlights a few of our original Demos.
BASIC-DOS is an open-source project on GitHub released under the terms of an MIT License.
Copyright (c) 2020-2021 Jeff Parsons Released under MIT License
| true | true | true |
BASIC-DOS: A PCjs Retro-Programming Project
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2021-01-01 00:00:00
| null |
basicdos.com
|
BASIC-DOS
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9,101,906 |
http://www.hottopics.ht/stories/funding/10-top-chinese-tech-exits-of-2014/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
25,337,836 |
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-07/canada-has-reserved-more-vaccine-doses-per-person-than-anywhere
|
Bloomberg
| null |
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25,050,870 |
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-biodiversity-just-got-a-lot-richer-two-new-mammals-discovered-20201106-p56c77.html
|
'Australia's biodiversity just got a lot richer': Two new mammals discovered
|
Mike Foley
|
This was published 3 years ago
# 'Australia's biodiversity just got a lot richer': Two new mammals discovered
##### By Mike Foley
There are two more reasons to love Australia's fluffiest aeronautical marsupials after the discovery that there are actually three species of greater glider, not one as previously assumed.
The greater glider is a possum-sized marsupial living in the forests of eastern Australia, squeezing into tree hollows during the day and at night soaring up to 100 metres through the air on the hunt for its favourite eucalyptus leaves.
A study of the genetics of greater gliders, published in *Nature*'s public access *Scientific Reports* journal, found distinct species in the southern, central and northern ranges.
"Australia's biodiversity just got a lot richer. It's not every day that new mammals are confirmed, let alone two new mammals," one of the study authors, James Cook University Professor Andrew Krockenberger, said.
The furry flyers vary in size, getting smaller the further north they live.
The southern species, which inhabits the eastern eucalypt forests of Victoria and NSW, is the heavyweight of the family. Its puffy fleece makes it look about the size of a common brush-tailed possum, but underneath it's really a skinny, light marsupial suited to gliding.
Very little is known about the two other species, said another study author, Australian National University ecologist Kara Youngentob.
The northern glider is about the size of the little ringtail possum and lives in the eucalypt forests between Mackay and Cairns in Queensland. The central glider, which is sized between the northern and southern species, inhabits a range across southern Queensland and up to Mackay.
The variation in size between glider populations was noted when it was first described to science, but it was assumed the gliders were one species with different traits depending on their habitat.
James Cook University PhD candidate Denise McGregor said there had been speculation for some time that there was more than one species of greater glider. "Now we have proof from the DNA, it changes the whole way we think about them".
Gliders were considered common across their range as recently as 30 years ago but are now listed as vulnerable on the national list of at-risk wildlife. Habitat loss from logging and urban development, coupled with climate change, have pushed them out of many former strongholds.
Southern glider populations have declined 80 per cent in the past 20 years in Victoria's Central Highlands. They've also become extinct at Jervis Bay on the NSW South Coast and in the lower elevations of the Blue Mountains.
Dr Youngentob said conservation of gliders became more urgent and challenging now there were three species to protect.
"It's really exciting to find this biodiversity under our noses, and gliders are such a charismatic animal as well," she said.
"But the division of the greater glider into multiple species reduces the previous widespread distribution of the original species, further increasing conservation concern for that animal and highlighting the lack of information about the other greater glider species."
Dr Youngentob said climate change had already reduced populations because it increased the prevalence of "extreme" night time temperatures in the southern glider's range.
"For the southern species, anything over 20 degrees Celsius at night means it has to use its energy to actively cool itself and high temperatures also put them off their food and stop them eating."
### Get our Morning & Evening Edition newsletters
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| true | true | true |
There are two more reasons to love Australia's fluffiest aeronautical marsupials after the discovery that there are actually three species of greater glider, not one as previously assumed.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2020-11-06 00:00:00
|
https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.5264930890388942%2C$multiply_0.7554%2C$ratio_1.776846%2C$width_1059%2C$x_815%2C$y_492/t_crop_custom/q_86%2Cf_auto/t_smh_no_label_social_wm/l_text:PT%20Sans_41_bold_italic:%20from%20%2Cg_south_west%2Cy_84%2Cx_288%2Cco_rgb:0a1633/l_text:PT%20Sans_41_bold:%20%20%2Cg_south_west%2Cy_90%2Cx_375%2Cco_rgb:0a1633/l_text:AbrilTitling-Bold.ttf_83:%202020%20%2Cg_south_west%2Cy_15%2Cx_274%2Cco_rgb:0a1633/5114876b9ee480c7a51f1e558846da6e39af8cbd
|
newsarticle
|
smh.com.au
|
The Sydney Morning Herald
| null | null |
31,747,827 |
https://twitter.com/Layoffsfyi
|
x.com
| null | null | true | true | false | null |
2024-10-12 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null |
X (formerly Twitter)
| null | null |
4,451,321 |
http://www.stansburylegal.com/2012/08/sec-proposes-new-rule-for-general-solicitation-of-private-securities/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
7,623,056 |
http://blog.iambob.me/folk-to-edm-the-top-10-artists-to-code-to/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
3,109,555 |
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/dutch-isp-hits-spamhaus-with-police-complaints-42302
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22,770,103 |
http://www.update.uu.se/~micken/ronetbsd.html
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33,166,630 |
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/10/11/sec-investigating-bored-ape-creator-yuga-labs-over-unregistered-offerings-report/
|
Crypto Policy and Regulation | CoinDesk
|
Jesse Hamilton
|
Ryan Salame is set to start a prison sentence today after a judge rejected his attempt to delay his arrival to treat a bite to his face, noting it didn't stop him from doing a...
Bitnomial's action follows a similar suit filed by Crypto.com on Tuesday.
The Binance executive has been detained in Nigeria since February.
Alexander Nikolas Gierczyk of California says the hedge fund he sold his FTX bankruptcy claim to isn't paying out what it promised.
The exchange-traded funds will allow better access to bitcoin through regulated entities and draw institutional investors, but the crypto is still a very small asset class, Co...
Japan’s new law tries to address one of the biggest fears about major stablecoins: Do issuers really have the assets to back them?
Obtained by CoinDesk under a Freedom of Information Law request, the documents offer a rare but limited window into the reserves behind USDT, the crypto market’s largest stabl...
Snowballing misinformation has painted an inaccurate and incomplete portrait of a complicated industry – and that is having a real impact on policy.
Celsius Network contacted 130 interested parties and signed confidentiality agreements with 40, before choosing NovaWulf.
Donald Trump-themed PoliFi tokens saw double-digit gains as the Republican presidential candidate's chances of winning the election surged to a two-month high on Polymarket.
| true | true | true |
Leader in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, blockchain, DeFi, digital finance and Web 3.0 news with analysis, video and live price updates.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2024-10-11 00:00:00
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website
|
coindesk.com
|
coindesk.com
| null | null |
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29,414,945 |
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/business-59462321
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Duolingo boss: 'Develop your social skills'
| null |
# Duolingo boss: 'Develop your social skills'
Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, shares his business advice for the CEO Secrets series.
*Video by Dougal Shaw. Learn more CEO Secrets *here*.*
Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, shares his business advice for the CEO Secrets series.
*Video by Dougal Shaw. Learn more CEO Secrets *here*.*
| true | true | true |
Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, shares his business advice.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2021-12-01 00:00:00
| null |
bbc.com
|
bbc.com
| null | null |
|
1,262,114 |
http://www.building43.com/videos/2010/04/13/how-to-get-funded-or-get-acquired/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
4,426,739 |
http://tomato.es/statistics
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
15,320,676 |
https://github.com/Kentik/patricia
|
GitHub - kentik/patricia: Garbage collector-sensitive patricia tree for IP/CIDR tagging
|
Kentik
|
A Go implemenation of a patricia tree (radix tree with radix=2), specifically for tagging IPv4 and IPv6 addresses with CIDR bits, with a focus on producing as little garbage for the garbage collector to manage as possible. This allows you to tag millions of IP addresses without incurring a penalty during GC scanning.
This library requires Go >= 1.18. Check version 1.1.0 if you wish to use an older version.
IP addresses can be tagged by any of the built-in types that we generate trees for. It's no accident that we don't support
pointers, slices, or `interface{}`
for reasons described below. Once your IPv4 or IPv6 tree is initialized, you can tag a full
32/128 bit address, or IP/CIDR.
For example, on an IPv4 tree, you can create the following tags:
`123.0.0.0/8`
:`"HELLO"`
`123.54.66.20/32`
:`"THERE"`
`123.54.66.0/24`
:`"GOPHERS"`
`123.54.66.21/32`
:`":)"`
Searching for:
`123.1.2.3/32`
or`123.0.0.0/8`
returns`"HELLO"`
`123.54.66.20/32`
returns`["HELLO", "THERE", "GOPHERS"]`
`123.54.66.21/32`
returns`["HELLO", "GOPHERS", ":)"]`
The initial version of this effort included many references to structs. The nodes in the tree were all tied together with pointers,
and each node had an array of tags. Even as the tree grew, it seemed to perform well. However, CPU was higher than expected. Profiling
revealed this to be largely due to garbage collection. Even though the objects in the tree were mostly static, each one needed to be
scanned by the garbage collector when it ran. The strategy then became: *remove all pointers possible*.
At this point, the internal structure is tuned to be left alone by the garbage collector. Storing references in the tree would defeat much of the purpose of these optimizations. If you need to store references, then consider storing integers that index the data you need in a separate structure, like a map or array.
In addition, to support custom payload types would require `interface{}`
, which adds noticeable overhead at high volume. To avoid this,
a separate set of strongly-typed trees is generated for:
`bool`
`byte`
`complex64`
`complex128`
`float32`
`float64`
`int8`
`int16`
`int32`
`int64`
`rune`
`string`
`uint`
`uint8`
`uint16`
`uint32`
`uint64`
A scarcely-populated patricia tree will require about 2x as many nodes as addresses, and each node with tags needs to maintain that list. This means, in a pointer-based tree of 1 million IP addresses, you'll end up with around 3 million references - this puts a considerable load on the garbage collector.
To avoid this, the nodes in this tree are stored in a single array, by value. This array of nodes is a single reference that the GC
needs to manage. Nodes are wired together by `uint32`
indexes in that array. This has the added benefit of saving us 8 bytes
of memory per node: rather than two 64-bit pointers, we have two 32-bit integers.
The way we avoid a reference to each collection of tags is a little trickier. Thanks to an optimization introduced in 1.5,
the GC now ignores maps with keys and values that do not contain pointers. So, our collection of tags is flattened into a `map[uint64]GENERATED_TYPE`
.
The keys into the map use the following convention:
```
(nodeIndex << 32) + (tagArrayIndex...)
```
That is... we use a 64 bit number, setting the most significant 32 bits to the node index, then adding to it the 0-based index into the tag array.
With these strategies, in a tree of 1 million tags, we reduce the pointer count from 3 million to 3: the tree, its node array, and its tag map. Your garbage collector thanks you.
- This is not thread-safe. If you need concurrency, it needs to be managed at a higher level.
- The tree is tuned for fast reads, but update performance shouldn't be too bad.
- IPv4 addresses are represented as uint32
- IPv6 addresses are represented as a pair of uint64's
- The tree maintains as few nodes as possible, deleting unnecessary ones when possible, to reduce the amount of work needed during tree search.
- The tree doesn't currently compact its array of nodes, so you could end up with a capacity that's twice as big as the max number of nodes ever seen, but each node is only 20 bytes. Deleted node indexes are reused.
- Code generation isn't performed with
`go generate`
, but rather a Makefile with some simple search and replace from the ./template directory. Development is performed on the IPv4 tree. The IPv6 tree is generated from it, again, with simple search & replaces.
| true | true | true |
Garbage collector-sensitive patricia tree for IP/CIDR tagging - kentik/patricia
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2017-09-01 00:00:00
|
https://opengraph.githubassets.com/12730c0977609f91979443bf6fac713ac6d8fa98ee4b46a4a68fbf603ec962e9/kentik/patricia
|
object
|
github.com
|
GitHub
| null | null |
40,234,100 |
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467623/000146762324000024/dbx-20240429.htm
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
27,457,398 |
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/press-release/file/1402421/download
| null | null | null | true | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
39,712,251 |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weeG9yOp3i4
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
39,246,825 |
https://www.datagubbe.se/afb/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
3,660,671 |
http://www.wildbunny.co.uk/blog/2012/03/01/designing-a-retro-pixel-art-tile-set/?v=0
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
29,119,621 |
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1456611599511212034
|
x.com
| null | null | true | true | false | null |
2024-10-12 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null |
X (formerly Twitter)
| null | null |
5,563,348 |
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/us/senators-set-to-unveil-immigration-bill.html?pagewanted=1
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
1,627,096 |
http://www.quora.com/What-do-people-think-of-AngelList
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
35,379,730 |
https://touca.io/blog/touca-shutting-down/
|
Touca is shutting down
| null |
After two unforgettable years, it is with mixed feelings to share that Touca is shutting down. Thank you to our users, customers, team members, advisors, investors, and friends who supported us along the way.
Touca started due to frustration with the status quo of poor developer experience in writing, maintaining, and running software tests. We wanted to give engineering teams a way to see how their day-to-day code changes affect the behavior and performance of their software. We built tooling and infrastructure that served 1000+ software engineers and 13 engineering teams.
But startups are hard and the arduous journey is humbling. Despite growing usage, we had not yet found product-market fit when the down market started. We failed to secure more funding. Our revenue declined as some of our largest customers downgraded to cut costs. In the process to convert our nice-to-have product to a must-have, we burnt out.
We started with the ambitious vision to tenfold developer productivity by fundamentally changing how engineers test their code changes. We set out to grow Touca into the likes of GitHub, Replit, and Retool. A series of recent setbacks have depleted our mental fortitude to realize that vision. While there is a path to sustain Touca as a small business, the opportunity cost would be too high. We are returning our cash to our investors while we can still make them whole.
Touca is shutting down as a business, but our fully open-source product will live on. We plan to continue supporting our users and maintaining the project we started five years ago.
It has been a privilege to pursue our passion for the past two years. Thank you to the hundreds of individuals who made this journey possible.
| true | true | true |
After two unforgettable years, it is with mixed feelings to share that Touca is shutting down. Thank you to our users, customers, team members, advisors, investors, and friends who supported us along the way.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2023-03-30 00:00:00
|
website
|
touca.io
|
Touca
| null | null |
|
28,266,403 |
https://thecodepad.com/cpp/c20-concepts-the-definitive-guide/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
22,821,646 |
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/03/26/videoconferencing-etiquette
|
Videoconferencing etiquette
| null |
Leaders | Through the keyhole
# Videoconferencing etiquette
## Working and entertaining online pose new challenges—and require new thinking
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Through the keyhole”
## Discover more
### The front line of the tech war is in Asia
The two superpowers are vying for influence. China will not necessarily win
### How high could the oil price go?
Geopolitical risk is rising. But so is the supply of oil
### The Trumpification of American policy
No matter who wins in November, Donald Trump has redefined both parties’ agendas
### How Florida should respond to Hurricane Milton
Storms like it raise uncomfortable questions about the state’s future
### Britain should not hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius
Once again, the Chagossians have been denied a say
### A map of a fruit fly’s brain could help us understand our own
A miracle of complexity, powered by rotting fruit
| true | true | true |
Working and entertaining online pose new challenges—and require new thinking
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2020-03-26 00:00:00
|
Article
|
economist.com
|
The Economist
| null | null |
|
18,323,481 |
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-reddit-forum-that-guesses-who-you-are-based-on-whats-in-your-fridge
|
The Reddit Forum That Guesses Who You Are Based on What’s in Your Fridge
|
Helen Rosner
|
There are more than a million discussion forums on Reddit, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for in any of those—well, there’s a forum for that, too. Two weeks ago, a user named WeHaveAllBeenThere went to the “Find a Reddit” group in search of a place “where you post a picture of the inside of your refrigerator and people guess how old you are or what your job is.” Within an hour, someone had created a subreddit called Fridge Detective, and in the thirteen days since twelve thousand more sleuths have signed on to examine, in minute detail, the interiors of one another’s refrigerators. Like a party guest poking around in the host’s medicine cabinet, or a magazine throwing back the doors on a celebrity shoe closet, the icebox snoops hunt for clues in patterns of consumption. Crisper drawers bursting with a rainbow of produce? Neatly marshalled rows of bottled water? A half-eaten yogurt, a packet of cheese, fifteen types of mustard, and a single bottle of beer? In these oddly intimate snapshots of place, class, and culture, everything—even nothing—says *something*.
The insides of refrigerators have long been the subjects of voyeuristic fascination. Icebox exposés of the cultured and the beautiful are a go-to feature in food publications like *Edible* Brooklyn and Munchies, and appear regularly on the fashion Web site Man Repeller. The 2015 book “Inside Chefs’ Fridges, Europe” paired the elegantly appointed appliances of restaurant luminaries like Yotam Ottolenghi and Fatéma Hal with recipes that make use of their contents. And the fine-art photographer Mark Menjivar has a series capturing fridge contents in a way that brings out their dispassionate beauty. He titles each image with just enough information to trace the outlines of the fridge owner’s story: “Bar Tender | San Antonio, TX | 1-Person Household | Goes to sleep at 8AM and wakes up at 4PM daily” shows shelves jammed full of white styrofoam takeout containers; “Short Order Cook | Marathon, TX | 2-Person Household | She can bench press over 300lbs” shows a freezer containing ice, a few months’ worth of tortillas, and what appears to be a (deceased) rattlesnake.
The Fridge Detective forum goes the other way: instead of presenting the fridge as a way to deepen our understanding of a person, it is a solitary stand-in for the whole. Many guesses miss the mark (Reddit users, who skew young and male, tend to assume that all fridge owners are like them), but a good number are uncannily spot-on: users have zoomed in on the label on a bucket of pickles to place a restaurant walk-in in central Florida, spotted a teething ring and a stack of empty egg cartons to prove someone had both a newborn and access to back-yard chickens, and deduced that their patron saint, WeHaveAllBeenThere, is an avid player of video games based on the jumble of ice-cream boxes in his freezer.
Buoyed by the collaborative spirit of this guessing game, I recently uploaded a snapshot of my apartment’s creaky side-by-side, with the fridge door hanging open. Within hours, users had profiled me with amazing accuracy: married and living in New York City; has a dog but no kids; finicky about food safety (always keep your meat on the bottom shelf!); lactose intolerant; travelled recently to Japan. Maybe the person my fridge reveals me to be is even better than reality: “You indulge in little ways,” one sleuth wrote, eyeing my tub of mascarpone and several packages of bacon. “I bet your hair and nails look fabulous.”
| true | true | true |
The online sleuths of Fridge Detective examine, in minute detail, the interiors of one another’s refrigerators.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2018-10-28 00:00:00
|
article
|
newyorker.com
|
The New Yorker
| null | null |
|
3,481,501 |
http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2012/01/intellij-vs-eclipse.html
| null | null | null | true | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
34,420,710 |
https://graphics.pixar.com/library/PhotonBeamDiffusion/supplemental-theory.pdf
| null | null | null | true | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
31,117,062 |
https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.02311
|
PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways
|
Chowdhery; Aakanksha; Narang; Sharan; Devlin; Jacob; Bosma; Maarten; Mishra; Gaurav; Roberts; Adam; Barham; Paul; Chung; Hyung Won; Sutton; Charles; Gehrmann; Sebastian; Schuh; Parker; Shi; Kensen; Tsvyashchenko; Sasha; Maynez; Joshua; Rao; Abhishek; Barnes; Tay; Yi; Shazeer; Noam; Prabhakaran; Vinodkumar; Reif; Emily; Du; Nan; Hutchinson; Ben; Pope; Reiner; Bradbury; James; Austin; Isard; Michael; Gur-Ari; Guy; Pengcheng; Toju; Levskaya; Anselm; Ghemawat; Sanjay; Dev; Sunipa; Michalewski; Henryk; Garcia; Xavier; Misra; Vedant; Robinson; Kevin; Fedus; Liam; Zhou; Denny; Ippolito; Daphne; Luan; David; Lim; Hyeontaek; Zoph; Barret; Spiridonov; Alexander; Sepassi; Ryan; Dohan; Agrawal; Omernick; Mark; Dai; Andrew M; Pillai; Thanumalayan Sankaranarayana; Pellat; Marie; Lewkowycz; Aitor; Moreira; Erica; Child; Rewon; Polozov; Oleksandr; Lee; Katherine; Zongwei; Wang; Xuezhi; Saeta; Brennan; Diaz; Firat; Orhan; Catasta; Michele; Wei; Jason; Meier-Hellstern; Kathy; Eck; Douglas; Dean; Jeff; Petrov; Slav; Fiedel; Noah
|
# Computer Science > Computation and Language
[Submitted on 5 Apr 2022 (v1), last revised 5 Oct 2022 (this version, v5)]
# Title:PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways
View PDFAbstract:Large language models have been shown to achieve remarkable performance across a variety of natural language tasks using few-shot learning, which drastically reduces the number of task-specific training examples needed to adapt the model to a particular application. To further our understanding of the impact of scale on few-shot learning, we trained a 540-billion parameter, densely activated, Transformer language model, which we call Pathways Language Model PaLM. We trained PaLM on 6144 TPU v4 chips using Pathways, a new ML system which enables highly efficient training across multiple TPU Pods. We demonstrate continued benefits of scaling by achieving state-of-the-art few-shot learning results on hundreds of language understanding and generation benchmarks. On a number of these tasks, PaLM 540B achieves breakthrough performance, outperforming the finetuned state-of-the-art on a suite of multi-step reasoning tasks, and outperforming average human performance on the recently released BIG-bench benchmark. A significant number of BIG-bench tasks showed discontinuous improvements from model scale, meaning that performance steeply increased as we scaled to our largest model. PaLM also has strong capabilities in multilingual tasks and source code generation, which we demonstrate on a wide array of benchmarks. We additionally provide a comprehensive analysis on bias and toxicity, and study the extent of training data memorization with respect to model scale. Finally, we discuss the ethical considerations related to large language models and discuss potential mitigation strategies.
## Submission history
From: Aakanksha Chowdhery [view email]**[v1]**Tue, 5 Apr 2022 16:11:45 UTC (1,444 KB)
**[v2]**Thu, 7 Apr 2022 16:38:01 UTC (1,445 KB)
**[v3]**Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:28:38 UTC (1,445 KB)
**[v4]**Thu, 29 Sep 2022 13:22:22 UTC (1,479 KB)
**[v5]**Wed, 5 Oct 2022 06:02:24 UTC (1,473 KB)
### References & Citations
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Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
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| true | true | true |
Large language models have been shown to achieve remarkable performance across a variety of natural language tasks using few-shot learning, which drastically reduces the number of task-specific training examples needed to adapt the model to a particular application. To further our understanding of the impact of scale on few-shot learning, we trained a 540-billion parameter, densely activated, Transformer language model, which we call Pathways Language Model PaLM. We trained PaLM on 6144 TPU v4 chips using Pathways, a new ML system which enables highly efficient training across multiple TPU Pods. We demonstrate continued benefits of scaling by achieving state-of-the-art few-shot learning results on hundreds of language understanding and generation benchmarks. On a number of these tasks, PaLM 540B achieves breakthrough performance, outperforming the finetuned state-of-the-art on a suite of multi-step reasoning tasks, and outperforming average human performance on the recently released BIG-bench benchmark. A significant number of BIG-bench tasks showed discontinuous improvements from model scale, meaning that performance steeply increased as we scaled to our largest model. PaLM also has strong capabilities in multilingual tasks and source code generation, which we demonstrate on a wide array of benchmarks. We additionally provide a comprehensive analysis on bias and toxicity, and study the extent of training data memorization with respect to model scale. Finally, we discuss the ethical considerations related to large language models and discuss potential mitigation strategies.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2022-04-05 00:00:00
|
/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
|
website
|
arxiv.org
|
arXiv.org
| null | null |
3,416,545 |
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/02/chart-google-apple-smartphone-wars/
|
Chart: How Google And Apple Won The Smartphone Wars | TechCrunch
|
Erick Schonfeld
|
What a difference just one year can make. In our Year in Tech post, I pointed out that 2011 was the year that Apple and Google won the smartphone wars. I put together the chart above from comScore U.S. mobile subscriber estimates to illustrate the dramatic shift in market share in the smartphone market. In less than 18 months, Apple’s and Google’s combined market share of U.S. mobile subscribers for iPhones and Android phones went from 43.8 percent to 75.6 percent between August, 2010 and November, 2011.
During the same period, RIM’s Blackberry tumbled from 37.6 percent to 19.7 percent (an almost 18-point drop). Microsoft’s mobile share was also nearly cut in half from 10.8 percent to 5.7 percent. And Palm, which had almost 5 percent share 18 months ago, basically disappeared (comScore stopped reporting its share).
In the space of little more than a year, Android and Apple gobbled up three quarters of the smartphone market in the U.S. Combined, they gained 31.8 points in market share over this period. When you drill down further, almost all of these gains went to Android, which added 27.3 points of market share versus a more modest 4.5 points for Apple. There is some evidence that Android growth is slowing in the U.S. (nothing can keep growing this fast forever). But the fact that market dominance can shift so rapidly (a year ago, Blackberry was still the single largest smartphone platform in the U.S.) is quite startling.
Shift happens, and it is happening faster than ever. I’d be surprised if there was ever a year when PC market share changed so dramatically.
| true | true | true |
What a difference just one year can make. In our Year in Tech post, I pointed out that 2011 was the year that Apple and Google won the smartphone wars. I put together the chart above from comScore U.S. mobile subscriber estimates to illustrate the dramatic shift in market share in the smartphone market. In less than 18 months, Apple's and Google's combined market share of U.S. mobile subscribers for iPhones and Android phones went from 43.8 percent to 75.6 percent between August, 2010 and November, 2011.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2012-01-02 00:00:00
|
article
|
techcrunch.com
|
TechCrunch
| null | null |
|
21,665,498 |
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/27/us/virtual-reality-russian-dairy-farm-cows-trnd/index.html
|
Russian dairy farmers gave cows VR goggles with hopes they would be happier and make better milk | CNN
|
Leah Asmelash
|
Virtual reality isn’t just for video games anymore.
The technology is changing industries that many people had never thought it would, such as, **checks notes**, dairy farming?
And here you thought technology couldn’t get any weirder.
A farm just outside of Moscow is testing VR glasses for its cows, it says, in an effort to increase the quantity – and quality – of the milk produced.
That’s according to a news release published Monday from the Ministry of Agriculture of the Moscow region. It came accompanied by photos of a cow trying out its fancy new goggles.
(We checked the date. It’s not April 1st.)
The ministry rationalizes it like this: Studies have shown that cows’ environmental conditions can impact the milk produced, specifically improving its quality or increasing its quantity.
So, a team of developers, with the help of veterinarians and consultants for dairy production, made some oversized VR glasses for cows. They adapted the human versions to account for cows’ different head shapes and eyesight, the news release says. And then voila! Cow VR glasses.
And what were these cows experiencing with their new VR glasses? A wild, expansive field beneath the summer sun. A cow’s (virtual) paradise.
So far, it’s unclear if the glasses have helped milk production – further study will be needed for that. But a first test did reveal a decrease in anxiety and an increase in the emotional mood of the herd, the release said.
To be fair, if we were transported to a vast field in the summertime, our anxiety and emotional mood would be better, too.
Russian dairy farmers aren’t the only ones going the extra mile to keep their cows happy and improve product, though. Some Wagyu farmers set mood lighting, among other tricks, to keep their cows calm and producing the best beef possible. Others play them music, which one Missouri farmer says leads to better milk.
| true | true | true |
The cows were transplanted to a wild, expansive field beneath the summer sun. It was a cow’s (virtual) paradise.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2019-11-27 00:00:00
|
article
|
cnn.com
|
CNN
| null | null |
|
2,356,928 |
http://blog.shoutbound.com/2011/03/indonesia-tech-awesome-but-could-be-even-awesomer/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
12,519,051 |
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-16/the-coming-backlash-against-tech-companies
|
Bloomberg
| null |
To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.
Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.
For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.
| true | true | true | null |
2024-10-12 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
3,656,967 |
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/finding-a-molecular-needle-in-a-molecular-needle-stack-using-eit.ars
|
Making a material transparent in order to visualize its internal energy states
|
Chris Lee
|
In the world of physics, there is nothing with higher geek credibility than making a normally opaque object appear transparent. One of the first examples of this was something called electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This basically involves shining one light beam on a substance to modify it in a way that allows a different light beam to pass through unhindered.
Now, the cool thing about this is that it depends on the details of the atomic or molecular structure of the substance. Which means that, aside from letting physicists do EIT party tricks, it can be used as a sensitive probe that can separate nearly identical substances from one another.
When an atom has a light shining on it, it's not the same as an atom in the dark (see side bar), since the light field can shift the exact colors that an atom likes to absorb. By hitting a gas of atoms with a very strong light field at one color (called the control field), we can shift its electronic states. If we shift them far enough, then a second light field that would normally be absorbed, called the probe, does not get absorbed at all. This is called electromagnetically induces transparency.
The usual description of EIT, involving just three energy states of an atom, works really well for things like simple gases of alkali atoms (think sodium). But molecules have a much more complicated set of energy levels that combine electronic states with vibrational and rotational motion. The result is that many of the states have very similar absorption features that simply cannot be separated by normal spectroscopic techniques. This makes the identification of molecules very difficult, and the identification of mixtures even more challenging.
So, a trio of researchers from Vancouver have calculated how the energy level shifts that occur during EIT would effect spectroscopic measurements of molecules. To picture this, imagine you have a molecule with two excited states that are so close in energy that you cannot see the difference with your spectrometer—all you see is the average of the two.
| true | true | true |
Scientists show how making a material transparent can make its details more …
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2012-03-02 00:00:00
|
article
|
arstechnica.com
|
Ars Technica
| null | null |
|
11,873,564 |
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093270-supernovae-2-million-years-ago-may-have-changed-human-behaviour/
|
Supernovae 2 million years ago may have changed human behaviour
|
Author Fullname; Shannon Hall
|
Two stellar explosions could have made life interesting for early humans.
Roughly 2 million years ago, two supernovae exploded so close to Earth that they showered our pale blue dot with debris, leaving behind traces of radioactive iron-60 found buried in the sea floor across the globe and even mixed within the dust layers on the moon.
Those supernovae were several hundred light-years from Earth, far enough away that their radiation shouldn’t have led to a mass extinction, but close enough that the blast could have affected our ancestors. At the time, the human ancestor *Homo erectus* was descending from the trees.
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Now, Brian Thomas at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, and his colleagues posit that the two supernovae could have hurled enough radiation at Earth to affect our ancestors’ behavioural patterns, and potentially increase cancer rates.
The first radiation to bombard Earth would have simply been visible light. Supernovae can be so bright that they briefly outshine all the stars in their host galaxy – an effect that wouldn’t go unnoticed on Earth.
In fact, such a close supernova would have been as bright as a full moon every night for up to a year after the initial explosion. The added light pollution could have had some biological impact, Thomas says, as we know from studies of the effect of artificial lights on wildlife.
“Certain species use light from the moon to navigate,” he says. “They also use that cue for mating, reproduction, laying eggs, things like that. Even just foraging for food. This can screw with their usual behavioural processes.”
## Sleep hormone
Additionally, recent evidence suggests that increased light at night can affect hormone production in people. Take melatonin for example: it doesn’t just put us to sleep, it also mediates some of the repair mechanisms in our bodies.
“We’re not talking about wiping out species here, but there may be some impact on one or two generations,” says Thomas.
But visible light isn’t the only radiation that would have burst from these stellar explosions. Roughly 500 years after the supernova faded, its radioactive particles would have pelted Earth.
Thomas and his colleagues calculated that the average radiation felt across the globe would have been three times higher than the background levels typical today. They speculate that our ancestors could have faced an increased cancer risk as a result.
But they might not have had much to worry about, says Michael Weil at Colorado State University.
That’s because the average isn’t very telling – there’s a considerable range across the globe. As an example, Weil says he often sends his students to do field work at the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
“They receive less of a dose at Fukushima while they’re doing their field work then they do when they’re studying in classes at Colorado state,” he says. That’s because there is a large amount of granite in Colorado, which means a fair amount of uranium in the soil and thus a larger radiation dose.
## Radioactive rock
Colorado isn’t even the most radioactive place on Earth: there’s a radiation hotspot in Kerala, India, where the radiation can be 20 times the global average.
“People have struggled to show an increase in cancer rates in those areas, and they haven’t managed to do it,” Weil says. “So it’s really, really hard to spot any biological effects from tripling the average background radiation levels, which is what this [supernova] would do.”
Astronauts receive 30 times the average background radiation, so just three times would probably not be a problem, says Don Hassler, the principal investigator of the radiation assessment detector on the Mars rover Curiosity.
The numbers aren’t worrisome until they are 1000 times higher than Earth’s average, says Hassler. “That’s the canonical number that agencies use as a lifetime limit,” he says. And it corresponds to a 3 per cent increase in the risk of developing a fatal cancer. “Given that an average American may have a 20 to 25 per cent chance of developing fatal cancer in their lifetime, this number is still relatively small,” he says.
That said, the radioactive particles that stream from supernovae are mostly muons – unstable subatomic particles – that are thought to be extremely penetrating. This places them in a different camp to the predominate source of background radiation, radon, which has to be inhaled or ingested in order to be damaging.
So instead of thinking about background radiation, it might make more sense to think about the supernovae in terms of diagnostic radiation. Thomas and his colleagues calculated that the increased dose is equivalent to getting one CT scan per year. Two recent studies have suggested that less than one scan a year in children leads to an increase in leukaemia and brain tumours.
Any damage caused by the supernovae is hard to quantify. Luckily, the chance that there will be another nearby supernova any time soon is small, says Michael Sivertz, who works at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory. He puts that number at roughly one nearby supernovae every billion years. “You wouldn’t have to take out a life insurance policy on it,” he says.
Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1605.04926
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| true | true | true |
Two nearby supernovae explosions may have increased cancer rates and changed the behaviour of early humans - but that's a pretty big may
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2016-06-09 00:00:00
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article
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newscientist.com
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New Scientist
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38,412,583 |
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/critical-bug-in-owncloud-file-sharing-app-exposes-admin-passwords/
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Critical bug in ownCloud file sharing app exposes admin passwords
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Bill Toulas
|
Open source file sharing software ownCloud is warning of three critical-severity security vulnerabilities, including one that can expose administrator passwords and mail server credentials.
ownCloud is an open-source file sync and sharing solution designed for individuals and organizations wishing to manage and share files through a self-hosted platform.
It is used by businesses and enterprises, educational institutes, government agencies, and privacy-conscious individuals who prefer to maintain control over their data rather than hosting it at third-party cloud storage providers. OwnCloud's site reports 200,000 installs, 600 enterprise customers, and 200 million users.
The software consists of multiple libraries and components that work together to provide a range of functionalities for the cloud storage platform.
## Severe data breach risks
The development team behind the project issued three security bulletins earlier this week, warning of three different flaws in ownCloud's components that could severely impact its integrity.
The first flaw is tracked as CVE-2023-49103 and received a maximum CVSS v3 score of 10. The flaw can be used to steal credentials and configuration information in containerized deployments, impacting all environment variables of the webserver.
Impacting graphapi 0.2.0 through 0.3.0, the problem arises from the app's dependency on a third-party library that exposes PHP environment details through a URL, exposing ownCloud admin passwords, mail server credentials, and license keys.
The recommended fix is to delete the 'owncloud/apps/graphapi/vendor/microsoft/microsoft-graph/tests/GetPhpInfo.php' file, disable the 'phpinfo' function in Docker containers, and change potentially exposed secrets like the ownCloud admin password, mail server, database credentials, and Object-Store/S3 access keys.
"It's important to emphasize that simply disabling the graphapi app does not eliminate the vulnerability," warns the security bulletin.
"Additionally, phpinfo exposes various other potentially sensitive configuration details that could be exploited by an attacker to gather information about the system. Therefore, even if ownCloud is not running in a containerized environment, this vulnerability should still be a cause for concern."
The second issue, with a CVSS v3 score of 9.8, impacts ownCloud core library versions 10.6.0 to 10.13.0, and is an authentication bypass problem.
The flaw makes it possible for attackers to access, modify, or delete any file without authentication if the user's username is known and they have not configured a signing-key (default setting).
The published solution is to deny the use of pre-signed URLs if no signing key is configured for the owner of the files.
The third and less severe flaw (CVSS v3 score: 9) is a subdomain validation bypass issue impacting all versions of the oauth2 library below 0.6.1.
In the oauth2 app, an attacker can input a specially crafted redirect URL that bypasses the validation code, allowing redirection of callbacks to a domain controlled by the attacker.
The recommended mitigation is to harden the validation code in the Oauth2 app. A temporary workaround shared in the bulletin is to disable the "Allow Subdomains" option.
The three security flaws described in the bulletins significantly impact the security and integrity of the ownCloud environment, potentially leading to exposure of sensitive information, stealthy data theft, phishing attacks, and more.
Security vulnerabilities in file-sharing platforms have been under constant attack, with ransomware groups, like CLOP, using them in data theft attacks on thousnads of companies worldwide.
Due to this, it's critical for ownCloud administrators to immediately apply the recommended fixes and perform the library updates as soon as possible to mitigate these risks.
## Comments
## dustojnikhummer - 10 months ago
Does this also affect Nextcloud?
## AutomaticJack - 10 months ago
"Does this also affect Nextcloud?"
no, see here https://github.com/nextcloud/security-advisories/security/advisories - you have some moderates to deal with.
## AutomaticJack - 10 months ago
6days ago: https://owncloud.com/news/owncloud-becomes-part-of-kiteworks/ (Reminds me of Accellion MFT clients who had significant breaches using that product :-(
| true | true | true |
Open source file sharing software ownCloud is warning of three critical-severity security vulnerabilities, including one that can expose administrator passwords and mail server credentials.
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2023-11-24 00:00:00
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article
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bleepingcomputer.com
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BleepingComputer
| null | null |
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9,709,916 |
http://www.vancharts.com/resource/Dos-and-Don%27t%20s-for-Charts-and-Graphs.html
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30,266,457 |
https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/02/09/xfce-cupertino-way/
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XFCE Cupertino Way
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Vermaden
|
I really like GhostBSD … and NomadBSD. They are really great graphical and easy to use FreeBSD variants for the lack of better word. While NomadBSD is more focused on portable USB pendrive edition the GhostBSD is more like a Ubuntu replacement. Install and use on your laptop or desktop computer. It comes in two flavors – the default MATE edition and an alternative XFCE edition.
One of the things I really like about Ubuntu MATE edition is that it comes with desktop layout helper tool that will allow you to select one of the available predefined MATE desktop layouts.
From all of the available ones I like the ‘Cupertino’ one the most – its tries to mimic the Apple Mac OS X operating system behavior with global menu on top and Plank dock at the bottom … and it does it really well.
I wanted to do something similar on GhostBSD but unfortunately the Vala Panel Application Menu for MATE desktop environment is not available for FreeBSD (and that means its also not available for GhostBSD). Fortunately the XFCE global menu is available on FreeBSD as ` x11/xfce4-appmenu-plugin` package so I will try to make GhostBSD look more like Ubuntu Mate in its Cupertino layout with several easy steps.
By default GhostBSD XFCE edition comes with single XFCE panel at the bottom. I have done pretty straightforward installation with ` fish(1)` shell chosen as default during installation.
# Fonts
By default GhostBSD comes with **96 DPI** set by the installer. Lets change that to something smaller. Start the **Appearance** application.
Now set the desired settings for the fonts on the *Fonts* tab. After some checks the **80 DPI** along with **Hinting** set to **None** looked best. I also switched to the **Ubuntu** font.
# ZSH Shell and Terminal
While the ` fish(1)` shell is quite decent interactive shell with sane defaults I really prefer the POSIX syntax compatible
`shell instead. I talked more about that in my Ghost in the Shell – Part 7 – ZSH Setup article.`
**zsh(1)**I will not repeat everything I wrote there and I will just paste the instructions here to make that ` zsh(1)` shell configured and nice looking.
root #pkg install -y \ zsh \ zsh-autosuggestions \ zsh-syntax-highlighting \ ubuntu-fontroot #fetch -o /usr/local/etc/zshrc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vermaden/scripts/master/zshrcuser %fetch -o ~/.zshrc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vermaden/scripts/master/DOT.zshrcuser %fetch -o ~/.zshrc.DOAS.SUDO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vermaden/scripts/master/DOT.zshrc.DOAS.SUDOuser %chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zshuser %fc-cache -f
As we are at the terminal related things enable **Solarized (Dark)** theme in the **XFCE Terminal** options.
… and change font to **Ubuntu Mono** with your preferred size.
Now you have the ` zsh(1)` shell configured and set as your default shell. Also the
**XFCE Terminal**looks better now. Some settings will require logout and login route but I recommend something different. Go through all these setting and then do just one single reboot or logout/login routing.
# XFCE Global Menu
I though that XFCE global menu is – same as MATE one – not available on FreeBSD. Fortunately *Joel Carnat* with its FreeBSD 13 on ThinkPad T460s article proved me wrong. He even added the instructions to his guide – for which I am very thankful to him.
To get XFCE global menu on FreeBSD (and GhostBSD) we need to do these steps.
root #pkg install -y xfce4-appmenu-pluginuser %xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/ShellShowsMenubar -n -t bool -s trueuser %xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/ShellShowsAppmenu -n -t bool -s trueuser %xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/Modules -n -t string -s appmenu-gtk-module
Now we will be able to add the **XFCE AppMenu Plugin** to our top panel.
We need to now move the XFCE panel from bottom to the top. Go into the *Panel Preferences* as shown below and move it.
After moving it to the top and enabling the *Lock Panel* option add/remove the *Items* to match this list below. Feel free to also add other items that you need.
To make the **XFCE AppMenu Plugin** look even better enable **Bold Application Name** in its *Preferences* dialog.
As for the *Whisker Menu* left only icon enabled to display to make it look better.
The **XFCE AppMenu Plugin** should be now ready and the top panel should look somewhat like that.
You can also customize the **DateTime** plugin to your needs.
# Window Manager
The **Window Manager** settings are not controlled by the **Appearance** application. It has its own separate one. Lets start it.
We will also set the **Ubuntu** font here.
# Groups
Make sure your user (` vuk` in this guide) is in below groups.
root #pw groupmod wheel -m vukroot #pw groupmod operator -m vukroot #pw groupmod video -m vukroot #pw groupmod network -m vuk
You can omit the ` network` group if you do not intend to use
`to manage your network connections.`
**network.sh**# Plank
As the last step we will add the **Plank** dock at the bottom.
root #pkg install -y plankuser %plank &user %plank --preferences
You should see something like that on the bottom of your screen.
The **Plank** preferences are shown below.
Make sure to add **Plank** to **Startup** so it will start automatically at each login.
# Result
After all these steps our GhostBSD looks more or less like that now.
# Plain FreeBSD Way
Some people will prefer to stick to the ‘original’ FreeBSD instead of using preconfigured GhostBSD. This last section is for them. First install FreeBSD like described HERE. Then install these packages shown below.
root #pkg install -y exa ubuntu-font xfce xfce4-appmenu-plugin xorg-minimaluser %echo '. /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc' > ~/.xinitrcuser %xintrc
Now having done the above do all the steps from that article.
The end result seems quite similar.
You may even want to replace **Plank** with another bottom **XFCE Panel** if you want.
Viola! You have XFCE configured on plain FreeBSD. One thing to keep in mind is that besides XFCE you have nothing more 🙂 Using GhostBSD method all other things are configured. With plain FreeBSD way you have no device automounting. No network plugin in the taskbar. No power management tuning. No other applications. Nothing. But you can all do it yourself using the needed articles from the *FreeBSD Desktop* series or other sources.
One last thing. I really appreciate that GhostBSD exists and is actively maintained and expanded – this guide is not here to make it look bad. Its here to make it better.
Regards.
froggyNice post. XFCE was always simple and no-bullshit option whenever I need a DE.
Also a suggestion: If you like to dive into stuff and configure it to your liking, you’ll LOVE awesomewm.
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vermadenPost authorThanks for the AwesomeWM suggestion 🙂
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Nick ColemanVery nice looking. Where did you get the vimix theme? I cant find it except on githuband its builtd is for linux.
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vermadenPost authorThanks.
The
Vimixtheme is one of the themes that GhostBSD comes with.I did not installed it.
I am also not sure if its available on FreeBSD packages.
You can ask the creators of GhostBSD by Twitter or GibHub about that, they will help you I am sure.
Hope that helps.
Regards.
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SamI am moving away from KDE and testing XFCE4. This article is encouraging. May I ask which desktop manager are you currently using?
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vermadenPost authorXFCE by default uses
xfdesktop(1)as desktop manager (to provide icons on the desktop) and probably that is what I would use … along with Caja (from MATE) for file management.I generally use Openbox with Dzen2/Tint2 as described here:
Regards.
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SamWonderful, thank you, I may try Openbox as well. Thank you for the great quality of all your articles and the abundant help you have been offering to FreeBSD and Unix enthusiasts like me!
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vermadenPost authorWhile Openbox fit my needs it does not have to fit yours 🙂
Both XFCE and MATE are also great environments to use.
… and thanks mate 🙂
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Ellenor et al BjornsdottirIf not mistaken, Thunar is just a file manager. The Xfce desktop uses a program called xfdesktop.
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vermadenPost authorYou are right. I need to correct that. Thank You.
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lprovenNice article. I have tried this myself but your version is in some ways cleaner.
A suggestion: via the “docklike panel” plugin, you don’t need Plank. Xfce can provide the dock itself quite nicely, which I think is more resource-efficient.
https://github.com/nsz32/docklike-plugin
Also, for widescreens, I recommend putting the dock on the left hand side, vertically, which is what I also do on Macs. With an Xfce panel, this is easy — or NeXTstep-like, at the right, and pinned to the top if you prefer rather than centred.
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vermadenPost authorThank You.
I did not know Docklike 🙂
Will have to test it sometime.
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claudiubacanuXfce&Plank with various MacOS themes is awesome! More than enough for a DE, honestly!
LikeLiked by 1 person
| true | true | true |
I really like GhostBSD … and NomadBSD. They are really great graphical and easy to use FreeBSD variants for the lack of better word. While NomadBSD is more focused on portable USB pendrive ed…
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2022-02-09 00:00:00
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article
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wordpress.com
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𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚗
| null | null |
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8,692,484 |
http://www.darkchat.in
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
10,433,194 |
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21676767-entrepreneurs-are-redesigning-basic-building-block-capitalism-reinventing-company
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Reinventing the company
| null |
# Reinventing the company
## Entrepreneurs are redesigning the basic building block of capitalism
NOW that Uber is muscling in on their trade, London’s cabbies have become even surlier than usual. Meanwhile, the world’s hoteliers are grappling with Airbnb, and hardware-makers with cloud computing. Across industries, disrupters are reinventing how the business works. Less obvious, and just as important, they are also reinventing what it is to be a company.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Reinventing the company”
## Discover more
### The front line of the tech war is in Asia
The two superpowers are vying for influence. China will not necessarily win
### How high could the oil price go?
Geopolitical risk is rising. But so is the supply of oil
### The Trumpification of American policy
No matter who wins in November, Donald Trump has redefined both parties’ agendas
### How Florida should respond to Hurricane Milton
Storms like it raise uncomfortable questions about the state’s future
### Britain should not hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius
Once again, the Chagossians have been denied a say
### A map of a fruit fly’s brain could help us understand our own
A miracle of complexity, powered by rotting fruit
| true | true | true |
Entrepreneurs are redesigning the basic building block of capitalism
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2015-10-24 00:00:00
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Article
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economist.com
|
The Economist
| null | null |
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2,850,324 |
http://openiconlibrary.sourceforge.net/
| null | null | null | true | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
4,845,011 |
http://youtube-global.blogspot.ca/2012/11/youtube-automatic-captions-now-in-six.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
26,719,901 |
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/our-most-influential-alumni
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Our Most Influential Alumni
|
Photo Michael Shane; The Verge
|
Ten years ago, PAW asked a sweeping question: Who are the most influential people ever to have graduated from Princeton University? We assembled a panel that considered movers and shakers across the centuries and in all fields and selected 25 names. Luminaries James Madison 1771, Alan Turing *38, and Woodrow Wilson 1879 topped our list as the Most Influential Princetonians of All Time.
But “all time” is a long time. Returning to this topic a decade later, we decided to convene another panel and ask a somewhat different question: Who among Princeton’s living alumni are the most influential *right now*? Influence of the sort Madison and Turing exercised can take generations to be felt. Who, however, is doing the most to shape the world of 2018?
READERS RESPOND Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
On a night in mid-October, we gathered for dinner at Prospect House to debate the question and, with luck, distill a dauntingly long list of strong candidates down to a few dozen true influencers. Our panelists were: Dean of the College Jill Dolan, a professor of English and theater; Peter Dougherty, who recently retired as director of Princeton University Press; Michael Gordin, history professor and director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts; Kevin Kruse, history professor; William Massey, professor of operations research and financial engineering; Jeff Nunokawa, professor of English; David Spergel ’82, astrophysics professor and member of NASA’s advisory council; and Sandra Sobieraj Westfall ’89, national political correspondent for *People* magazine and the chair of PAW’s advisory board. Ultimately, as you can see on page 38, our panel selected 25 Princetonians, distributing them among 18 positions: The panel could not resist the urge to group some alumni together.
## Today’s 25 Most Influential Alumni
## No. 1
## Jeff Bezos ’86
## No. 2
## Robert Mueller III ’66
## No. 3 (tie)
## Samuel Alito ’72
Sonia Sotomayor ’76
Elena Kagan ’81
## No. 6
## Eric Schmidt ’76
## No. 7
## Eric Lander ’78
## No. 8
## Michelle Obama ’85
## No. 9
## Michael Lewis ’82
## No. 10 (tie)
## David E. Kelley ’79
Jodi Picoult ’87
Jennifer Weiner ’91
## No. 13
## Terence Tao *96
## No. 14
## Anthony Romero ’87
## No. 15
## Wendy Kopp ’89
## No. 16
## David Remnick ’81
## No. 17
## Jim Lee ’86
## No. 18
## William Fung ’70
## No. 19 (tie)
## Robert Venturi ’47 *50
Gordon Wu ’58
## No. 21 (tie)
## George Will *68
Cornel West *80
## No. 23 (tie)
## Tom Bevan ’91
Josh Marshall ’91
## No. 25
## Jason Garrett ’89
Only living undergraduate and graduate alumni were eligible for our list. Why limit it to the quick and not the dead? One could easily argue that Madison, for example, remains one of the most influential Princetonians today because we still live under the Constitution he helped write, but we wanted to tease out a different list. We asked our panelists to choose without concern for balance by race, gender, age, or specialty. In other words: Put the list together and then see what it looked like and what it might tell us about Princeton and its place in the world today.
Influence. “It’s a difficult word, isn’t it?” observed Nunokawa — an English professor, obviously. “‘Influential’ has a descriptive and a prescriptive element. We want it to also mean inspirational.”
What do we mean that someone is influential? Do we mean people whose influence is still keenly felt today even though they themselves are no longer very active? Paul Volcker ’49 stepped down as chairman of the Federal Reserve 30 years ago, but we still live in a low-inflation economy that he did much to build. Similarly, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ’54 was an architect of the Iraq War, and much of today’s chaos in the Middle East — from the rise of ISIS to the Syrian refugee crisis — reverberates from the fateful 2003 decision to topple Saddam Hussein. Both Volcker and Rumsfeld are largely retired from public life, but are they still influential?
In one sense, of course they are. So is John Bogle ’51, who popularized the mutual fund, and former secretaries of state George Shultz ’42 and James Baker ’52, who shaped the post-Cold War world. But our panel narrowed its focus to alumni who are still actively shaping events.
There might seem to be certain obvious markers of current influence, such as high offices held or prestigious awards won. Our panel took these things into account, but they did not lead to automatic inclusion on our list. Several alumni have won a Nobel Prize, for example, and that is certainly a significant indicator of the recipient’s influence. But our panelists felt that such prizes were not an ideal measure, at least not a complete one, especially because prize committees have historically been biased against women. In a bit of a surprise, as it turned out, none of Princeton’s Nobel laureates made the final list.
If influence is uncertain looking backward, it is even murkier projecting forward. “As a nonscientist, the question about the test of time is complicated,” Dolan mused. “Because I think there are some people who will be enormously influential but aren’t quite there yet.” As one example, she cited playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’06, a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant. “I think his influence will be felt in American theater and beyond for many years,” Dolan said. But ultimately the panel decided that neither he nor other artists — including composer Julia Wolfe *12, winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur award — would be included on our most-influential list. Check back in 10 years.
In the end, the panelists focused on immediacy. From that standpoint, they quickly decided that Jeff Bezos ’86 is doing more than any other living Princeton alum to shape the world in which we live. Indeed, Bezos has achieved a level of influence over the world economy perhaps not seen since John D. Rockefeller. The scope of his activity is vast: As founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Bezos is revolutionizing the way we buy everything from books to groceries, how stores stock their shelves, and how goods are delivered. He also owns *The Washington Post,* one of the most influential newspapers in the country, which has seen subscriptions surge since the presidential election. (Bezos is also one of only two Princeton alumni to be recognized as *Time* magazine’s Person of the Year, in 1999. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles 1908 was the other, in 1954.)
Another tech giant, Eric Schmidt ’76, the executive chairman of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, came in at the No. 6 position. As Westfall noted with deliberate understatement: “It’s really hard to live without Google.” So why rank Schmidt lower than fellow tech-titan Bezos? For one thing, Bezos founded his company, while Schmidt did not. As Gordin put it, while the two men share certain characteristics, they are quite different: “Bezos is transforming a mode of commerce. And journalism. And publishing. He’s using tech to do it, but it’s different from what Schmidt is doing.”
In our panel’s opinion, Bezos’ only rival for the title of Today’s Most Influential Princetonian was former FBI director and current special counsel Robert Mueller III ’66. Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russian effort could expose the biggest political scandal since Watergate. If anything, Mueller’s influence may be growing; our panel met a few weeks before he filed his first indictments, against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and his associate, Rick Gates.
Of course it is impossible to tell just where Mueller’s investigation might go or whether he will be permitted to finish it. Still, Gordin ventured a prediction: “The most influential person in the United States in January 2018, when this is published in PAW, will be Robert Mueller, because he will determine whether the presidency exists or doesn’t.”
“Not the presidency, the president,” Westfall corrected.
That assumes, Kruse chimed in, that President Trump does not try to fire Mueller first, in which case the matter would likely go to the U.S. Supreme Court. This thought led our panel to the next three Princetonians on our list.
Coming in as Princeton’s third-most-influential alums were Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito ’72, Sonia Sotomayor ’76, and Elena Kagan ’81. The panel decided to consider them collectively rather than try to tease out their relative influence. Although Sotomayor keeps the largest public profile of the three, speaking often in oral argument and writing a best-selling memoir, among other things, it would be hard to say if one of them has a greater influence on the court’s jurisprudence than the others. After all, each justice, it was pointed out, gets a single vote.
Given that our panel was ranking alumni who are influential in the moment, it is not surprising that its selections turned heavily toward names in the news. Although former first ladies often see their influence dissipate rapidly when they leave the White House, our panel thought that Michelle Obama ’85 (No. 8) remains influential — and would continue to do so as a role model for young women and African Americans, as a figurehead within the Democratic Party, and perhaps even as a candidate for office herself someday. Meanwhile, Anthony Romero ’87, head of the resurgent American Civil Liberties Union, which has seen its membership level rise to record numbers, took the No. 14 position.
Q scores — a measurement of popularity — weren’t everything, however. Two of the 10 most influential Princetonians may not be known to the public at large, but they should be. MIT professor Eric Lander ’78 (No. 7) was a leader of the Human Genome Project, one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, which is revolutionizing the treatment of disease. Founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (a leading genetic-research center), and another MacArthur winner, Lander also chaired President Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. “The fruits of the Human Genome Project are going to have a tremendous impact on science and society,” observed Spergel in a follow-up interview. “But Lander has also been very influential in shaping national science policy. The current administration does not listen to people like him, and we will all be the poorer for it.”
Terence Tao *96 (No. 13) is just 42 years old (he began learning calculus when he was 7 and received his Princeton Ph.D. at 20), but he has been called the Mozart of Math and perhaps the world’s greatest living mathematician. Tao, a professor at UCLA, has won both the prestigious Fields Medal and the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. “His influence has been incredibly broad-based, from number theory to analytics,” said Spergel. “He is like a doctor who can do open heart surgery and brain surgery and fix your knee as well.” When he won the Fields Medal in 2006, Tao was asked about the value that theoretical mathematics gives to society, and he pointed to the future: “Mathematicians often work on pure problems that do not have any applications for 20 years, and then a physicist or computer scientist or engineer has a real-life problem that requires the solution of a mathematical problem, and finds that someone already solved it 20 years ago.”
Another alum you may not know is William Fung ’70, the chairman of Hong Kong-based Li & Fung Limited, who took the 18th position on our list. His company is the world’s largest sourcing and logistics company for consumer goods, connecting stores, catalogs, and e-commerce sites with manufacturers around the globe, and thus influences not only what gets made but who makes it. (Fung is also the benefactor behind the Princeton-Fung Global Forum and the Fung Global Fellows Program, but the panelists didn’t mention that fact.)
As the discussion continued, Dolan made it clear that she was uncomfortable with the idea of ranking people at all and proposed that the group simply name 25 influential alumni and call it a day. “I do think that there are inherent biases when you start ranking,” she said. “An anointing happens in this process, and that’s what I’m nervous about.”
“People love rankings!” countered Dougherty. He’s known for his acumen publishing scholarly books, but having published a few best-sellers, he’s an expert on mainstream tastes, too.
“I know they do,” Dolan maintained, “but we could suggest otherwise.” (See an essay by Dolan on this topic.)
This discussion came to a head when the panel began to consider Princeton’s many alumni writers. PAW’s 2008 panel had some initial uncertainty as to whether writers really exert broad public influence. Ten years later, however, the panelists needed no convincing that writers play an important role in shaping society. Their question was slightly different: How does one measure a writer’s influence? Is it simply the number of books sold? Prizes won? Or something more ineffable?
Michael Lewis ’82 (No. 9) scores on all measures, which made him an easy choice. He is the author of many best sellers, including *Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side,* and *The Big Short;* his books often introduce the public to important current topics, such as the roots of the subprime mortgage crisis or the statistical revolution in baseball, in an engaging but informative way. Hollywood has made several of Lewis’ books into movies.
“Any topic he handles shoots across the landscape,” Westfall observed. Gordin agreed: “Most of us only understand asset-backed securities because we have seen *The Big Short.*”
Three other writers followed right behind Lewis. Jodi Picoult ’87 has written 23 novels — many covering difficult topics such as the death penalty, neonaticide, and dysfunctional families — the last nine of which have debuted at the top spot on *The New York Times* best-seller list. Jennifer Weiner ’91 also has written best-selling novels and emerged as a powerful voice of feminism. David E. Kelley ’79 created such hit TV shows as *Picket Fences, Ally McBeal, Chicago Hope,* and most recently *Big Little Lies.* (Despite the importance of television and film in American culture, Kelley was the only figure from TV or the movies to make the list.) Picoult, Weiner, and Kelley shared the No. 10 slot.
Still, are those three more influential than writer and professor John McPhee ’53, a 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner for *Annals of the Former World* and a four-time Pulitzer finalist? A longtime *New Yorker* contributor, McPhee has also shaped generations of students in the popular course he teaches on creative nonfiction, much of which he has summarized in a new book, *Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process.* Dolan tried to complicate McPhee’s case.
“Jodi Picoult has sold millions and millions of best-selling novels,” she reminded her fellow panelists. “If we were to rank McPhee ahead of her, we’re treading the line between an elite versus popular [conception of influence]. We can do that. I think we just have to admit to it.”
McPhee received serious consideration, but did not make the list. Our panel continued to walk the tightrope between those who write for popular and more specialized audiences. David Remnick ’81, editor of *The New Yorker,* was included (No. 16), followed by artist Jim Lee ’86, whose first installment of the *X-Men* series is the best-selling comic book of all time. Lee is now co-publisher of DC Comics.
Wendy Kopp ’89 (No. 15) was chosen a decade ago as one of the most influential Princetonians of all time for founding Teach for America, an organization that began as a senior-thesis project and has since placed more than 50,000 new college graduates as teachers in low-income neighborhoods. Our recent panel also selected Kopp, and for the same reason.
The 19th spot on our list was also shared, this time by two very different types of “builders.” Gordon Wu ’58, the chair of Hopewell Holdings Ltd. and a major Princeton donor (Wu Hall, among much else), has been a driving force behind some of the largest construction projects in Asia. Robert Venturi ’47 *50, one of the most celebrated architects of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, once captured his design aesthetic with the celebrated expression, “Less is a bore.” As Gordin put it, “The architecture of much of the world we live in, most of everything we see, is Venturi-inflected.” (Venturi designed Wu Hall and Princeton’s Schultz and Thomas laboratories.)
Perhaps our panel’s oddest pairing came next. Author and columnist George F. Will *68 shared the 21st slot with author, professor, and activist Cornel West *80. If you can think of anything else that connects them, please speak up. Though both are eloquent writers, they exist at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Will left the Republican Party in 2016 to protest its turn from Burkean conservatism toward Bannonite ethno-nationalism; West worked for fringe candidate Jill Stein and excoriated Barack Obama as a sellout. Ten years ago, our equally mischievous panel paired Rumsfeld and Ralph Nader ’55.
Two alumni — and classmates — have built websites that are essential reading for political junkies. RealClearPolitics, co-founded by Tom Bevan ’91, is an aggregator of polls and news stories from around the internet; its polling average is also a widely cited measure of where current political races stand. Talking Points Memo, founded by Josh Marshall ’91, offers left-leaning analysis and commentary and receives more than 400,000 page views a day during peak election season. They shared the 23rd spot.
Completing its assignment, the panel settled on what might seem like a surprising choice for the 25th alum on the list: Jason Garrett ’89, head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, took the final position. He was deemed influential both because he coaches “America’s Team” and because of the role the Cowboys played in the national-anthem controversy last fall when the team chose to kneel. By the time you read this, though, that controversy may or may not have been resolved, Garrett may or may not be driving his team through the NFL playoffs (and may or may not even have a job), but such is the diciness of predicting influence.
Stepping back, what can we learn from all this? One thing that jumps out is that the people on our list span a very wide range of ages, from Venturi (92) to Tao (42). Not surprisingly, classes from the 1970s and ’80s predominate, filled as they are with men and women in the prime of the careers. If a class wanted to anoint itself the most influential (and you know one will), bragging rights must go to the Great Class of 1991, which commanded three spots on our list (Weiner, Bevan, and Marshall), while the classes of 1981, 1986, and 1987 had two apiece.
Ten years ago, our list of Princeton’s all-time most influential alumni was dominated by dead white men — not surprising since that sort of influence can take a while to accrue and Princeton was an all-white, all-male institution until fairly recently. Our new list is more diverse, though the pace of change is slow. Nineteen of the current 25 are men; six are women. There are four Asians and Asian Americans, two Latinos, and two African Americans. One can only predict that the list will become even more diverse going forward.
What categories did our panel overlook? Start with politicians. None of Princeton’s many elected officials received much discussion, which surely says something about the dysfunctional state of contemporary politics. The panelists quickly passed over alumni serving as university presidents, whose impact is focused on the campuses they lead. Faculty members also were often overlooked; Spergel spoke up for his colleagues in academia by suggesting that faculty influence perhaps is both harder to measure and takes longer to manifest itself. It may take another generation until we can choose the most influential faculty members of today, he said.
That might also be the fate of Princeton computer science professor Brian Kernighan *69, who contributed to the development of the Unix computer language in the 1970s and popularized the C language. Massey noted that the operating system in the Apple and Android devices everyone uses today relies on languages Kernighan helped to create. Ultimately, Kernighan didn’t quite make the cut, although his influence as a computer scientist, teacher, and writer may be very far-reaching.
Finally, let’s be direct: This list also leans strongly toward the political left. Only Alito and Will would be considered conservatives; *National Review *columnist Ramesh Ponnuru ’95 and economist Gregory Mankiw ’80 also received consideration but were ultimately left off. Our panel was unconvinced that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz ’92 warranted a spot among the most influential, citing the 2013 government shutdown as his greatest legislative achievement. Although Cruz initially set himself out as the Reaganite alternative in the 2016 presidential primaries, historian Kruse thought he missed a chance to stand on principle. “Had Cruz not capitulated to Trump, he would be the most influential person in the Republican Party right now,” Kruse suggested. “He had the chance to be the conscience of conservatism.”
Bezos, Kopp, and Venturi are the only alums who appear both on this list and the one published in 2008. That tells us something: Influence is ephemeral. Had we chosen as recently as April, Mueller probably would have been left off. Back then, he was “only” a retired FBI director.
Along the same lines, our panel met before Trump nominated Jerome Powell ’75 to be the new chair of the Federal Reserve. If we chose again today, Powell likely would make the list. Had Trump instead selected John Taylor ’68, another reported finalist for the job, his name probably would have been included. As it was, the panelists didn’t discuss either one.
Predicting who might be Princeton’s most influential alumni a decade from now is a fool’s errand. Predicting who’ll be on the list next month is almost as risky.
*Mark F. Bernstein ’83 is PAW’s senior writer.*
**Who’s Who on the Cover**
(1) Sonia Sotomayor ’76, (2) Robert Venturi ’47 *50, (3) Wendy Kopp ’89, (4) David Remnick ’81, (5) Robert Mueller ’66, (6) Eric Lander ’78, (7) William Fung ’70, (8) Tom Bevan ’91, (9) Jeff Bezos ’86, (10) Elena Kagan ’81, (11) George Will *68, (12) Cornel West *80, (13) Anthony Romero ’87, (14) Jason Garrett ’89, (15) Josh Marshall ’91, (16) Samuel Alito ’72, (17) Jodi Picoult ’87, (18) Gordon Wu ’58, (19) Michelle Obama ’85, (20) David E. Kelley ’79, (21) Terence Tao *96, (22) Jim Lee ’86, (23) Eric Schmidt ’76, (24) Michael Lewis ’82, (25) Jennifer Weiner ’91
## 34 Responses
## Michael Potter ’71
6 Years Ago## Recognition Without Ranking
Jose Quinonez *98, another colleague who works with nonprofits, represents Princetonians who have major "influence" on the lives of others. Perhaps your editorial board could consider devoting a page to such graduates in each PAW issue without attempting to rank them. I read somewhere that the "first shall be last, and the last shall be first." Just the humble opinion of one graduate who has worked outside the limelight for decades.
## Gaetano P. “Guy” Cipriano ’78
5 Years Ago## A Partisan Ranking
Last year's PAW ranking of Robert Mueller as the number-two most-influential Princetonian "shaking up the world" now looks like the intoxicated prayer of a partisan zealot. The next time a similar list is made, PAW should instruct the author to be objective.
## Sean McCafferty ’01
6 Years Ago## Most-Influential Selections
I am sitting at my desk in New Jersey and reading all about the most influential alumni of Princeton (cover story, Jan. 10). I am humbled and amazed that I was able to share the same walkways, dorms, and classrooms as these amazing people. With that being said, I wonder if this list would be better suited as
most famousinfluential alumni.Of course Jeff Bezos ’86 is incredibly powerful and influential in our world, and Robert Mueller ’66 may go down as the most famous prosecutor of all time. But how many alumni save lives as doctors or teach children how to read and write? In the end, most alumni have great callings and spend their days influencing the people and world around them. I would love to see an issue focusing on the non-famous influential alumni. I think a list like that could be very cool to see.
## Broadus Bailey Jr. ’51
6 Years Ago## Most-Influential Selections
Not to detract in any way from the outstanding job Gen. Mark Milley ’80 is doing, but my sources say there have been 11 non-West Point chiefs of staff of the Army since the position was established in 1903 (Inbox, March 7). Those of us who served, in my case from 1951 to 1980, are especially proud to see a Princetonian as “chief.”
Editor’s note: Also writing on this point were Albert J. Beveridge III ’57; Stanley Kalemaris ’64; and Lewis Coonley Jr. ’68, whose uncle, George H. Decker, was the first non-West Point chief of staff of the Army.## Joseph Krakora ’76
6 Years Ago## Real Contributions, Real Influence
I am a 1976 Princeton grad and read your list of the 25 most influential grads (cover story, Jan. 10). I am not particularly invested in it, and your article recognizes the problems inherent in such a list. Nevertheless, I can’t believe that Jason Garrett ’89 is on the list. He is a mediocre NFL football coach whose personal role in the national-anthem controversy was tangential. I am a huge sports fan, but his selection is embarrassing.
While I don’t pretend to be deserving of such recognition, I will point out that as the public defender for the State of New Jersey, I initiated the process by which New Jersey eliminated monetary bail in its pretrial-release system, thus eliminating discrimination against the poor and minorities based on access to resources. We are the only state given an “A” rating by the Pretrial Justice Institute. My office also litigated reform of eyewitness-identification cases, reducing the risk of wrongful conviction, and led the effort to abolish the death penalty. These are all national movements in criminal-justice reform.
My point is that I am sure there are hundreds of alums who have made real contributions reflecting their influence on their fields. A football coach?
## George Heitmann *63
6 Years Ago## John Bogle ’51’s Influence
Any listing of “best” or “most” is likely to generate comment and disagreement. In your selection of “Today’s 25 Most Influential Alumni,” the emphasis, I suppose, is on “today’s”; but even with that focus, I find it surprising that John Bogle ’51 — who, as you state in another story of that same issue, “created the first index mutual fund in 1976” — didn’t make your list. Although you may consider 1976 a long time ago, indexing, one of the most important investment ideas of the past 50 or more years, continues to significantly influence today’s markets, as reflected in the PAW story, “Are Index Funds Hampering Corporate Competition?”
## Kanthan Pillay ’91
6 Years Ago## Well Bruce, the author was...
Well, Bruce, the author was unashamed about that. "Finally, let’s be direct: This list also leans strongly toward the political left." I just found it to be quite a bit of fun, even though I too largely disagree with many of the choices.
## Clark Jeschke
6 Years Ago## No Bob Ehrlich?
No Bob Ehrlich?
## Robert Sturtz ’78
6 Years Ago## What? No Brooke Shields...
What? No Brooke Shields or Queen Noor (or her sons); Imee Marcos now a leader in her own right; Winnie Holzman!?
## Richard Lachmann ’77
6 Years Ago## You write Jeff Bezos would...
You write Jeff Bezos would agree with Churchill that "the price of greatness is responsibility." Bezos has yet to show that responsibility to his Amazon warehouse employees, who are paid as little as the market will allow and who labor in un-airconditioned buildings with ambulances standing by for when they collapse on hot summer days.
## George Clark ’69
6 Years Ago## Interesting and provocative...
Interesting and provocative project, surely open to the characterization of "superficial." It could hardly be otherwise. We should all be extremely proud that the University claims three justices of the Supreme Court as members of the alumni, especially since we have no law school. In terms of "influence," however, none is yet in a position to direct the Court philosophically. We should hope that Mr. Justice Alito never achieves such a position.
## Bruce A. Krause ’58
6 Years Ago## This article just had too...
This article just had too much of a leftist slant for me. I am sick and tired of the media and my University, starting with President Eisgruber, taking untrue shots at President Trump. As an example, why isn't Jeff Bezos on the contents page as the #1 choice? Instead the author has Mueller. The problem is that the author or committee was hoping that Mueller would bring down the president, and this choice was a leftist hope for the future, which looks like it's in the process of self-destruction. Another hope choice for the future was Michele Obama, who is seldom heard from, not to mention her famous thesis which the University blocked from public view. And in 25th spot poor Jason Garrett, who does what Jerry Jones tells him, and the team kneel was before the national anthem and not during. History may well show that the mass disrespect for the national anthem primarily by black NFL players set back race relations more than we know.
## Akel Kahera *97
6 Years Ago## So how did Jason Garett make...
So how did Jason Garett make the list. Can you explain his influence?
## Prentis Hall ’79
6 Years Ago## I agree with Jack Sydney...
I agree with Jack Sydney. I enjoyed the article, but it lacked a degree of critical thinking that leaves many holes, some of which Mr. Sydney pointed out.
## Jim LaRegina
6 Years Ago## Jeff Bezos, corporate...
Jeff Bezos, corporate welfare king and warehouse slave master, is #1 while Ralph Nader, who among other accomplishments saved countless lives with his consumer-protection causes, does not even make the list? But, then, "influential" does not necessarily mean good influence, I guess.
## Matthew Weed *95
6 Years Ago## I, too, wondered about Mr....
I, too, wondered about Mr. Garrett. One also wonders if the three justices are truly equally influential. The founder of Amazon may well be No. 1 right now, but if Mr. Mueller is able to significantly affect D.C. politics through indictments of major figures, that could also change. Unfortunately, it seems that polls like this are somewhat frozen snapshots purely dependent on our view of things at this moment, and as others have pointed out, those views will be widely different. One wonders if there would be a way to select 100 alums and then have an open vote via the magazine website or Disqus this coming year? It could even be a rolling vote that would drop positions 95-100 in favor of nominees offered by the alums. Harder to arrange technically, but likelier far more relevant-seeming to everyone.
## Jack Sydney
6 Years Ago## I dare say our illustrious...
I dare say our illustrious panel failed in several instances to measure nominees against the actual definition of influence and has instead lazily retreated to those who are merely "popular."
Influence is defined as: "the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself; the power to shape policy or ensure favorable treatment from someone, especially through status, contacts, or wealth; a person or thing with the capacity or power to have an effect on someone or something."
Under these parameters, I fail to see how a professional football coach would ever be considered for such a list, unless such coach had so revolutionized the sport with new schemes that it spawned disciples everywhere. Jason Garrett is a talented, smart, passionate coach, but he is far from influential under even the broadest sense of the word.
Similarly, an author who publishes millions and millions of best-selling books may be popular, famous even, but such does not translate to influence per se unless, again, the works spawn movements or transform cultures in measurable ways.
Context being of prime importance in any ranked list, it would be improper for me to criticize and then fail to suggest far more deserving alternatives. So here goes.
Where is Meg Whitman, an individual with enormous influence, in and out of technology circles? Where is Queen Noor, whose many philanthropic initiatives are well-known and broad-based? And I see no Steve Forbes, the titular head of one of the most influential business magazines on the planet. Where is Edward Felsenthal, editor-in-chief of Time Magazine with 3 times the number of subscribers as David Remnick's The New Yorker? Where are all the elite Princeton venture capitalists and private equity leaders who, everyday, exercise their enormous influence and determine which new ideas, entrepreneurs, and companies get funded, sold, and acquired? Surely their multibillion-dollar value creation impact/influence is worthy of consideration.
Hopefully next time, such a list will include those who have actual influence and not just popularity.
## Mary Bechmann ’79
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
Perhaps I’m alone in this sentiment, but the whole concept of a list such as this (“ranking” alumni, according to some criteria generated by whom?) strikes the wrong note, especially now. Somehow it’s not in keeping with the collegiality and overall camaraderie I’ve always believed our alma mater stood for.
(Via Facebook)## Roderick McNealy ’72
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
This was a great issue and great idea. Always bound to prompt discussion when you create “Top Ten” lists, etc. I like the focus on current folks, and it’s great to include all three Supreme Court justices. Robert Mueller ’66 is certainly in the news, but I believe he will come up with a big “zero” in his real investigation to impeach the president. I love the addition of Jason Garrett ’89: Every time the Dallas Cowboys are on TV, Princeton certainly gets a mention when they talk about Coach Garrett. Good work, PAW.
(Via Facebook)## Alicia Erdman ’94
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
I have to admit I cringed a little at the cover highlighting the identification of Princeton’s 25 most influential alumni. My mind went right to the superlatives of the high school lists so many of us experienced — most popular, most likely to succeed, etc. — and to arguments around the definition of influence.
Nonetheless, like many others I am sure, I was intrigued and read the article almost immediately. I also read “Second Opinion” by Dean Jill Dolan. I greatly appreciated the perspective shared by the dean. She perfectly and eloquently captured the challenges of such lists and the tensions. She also celebrated those that might never make it but are equally deserving of respect and gratitude and, in many cases, awe.
Dean Dolan’s essay allowed me to appreciate the amazing accomplishments of the alumni identified without feeling I was disregarding the “unsung heroes.”
## Crystal A. Moore ’96
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
I wish your panel of judges reflected the University’s diversity. By my count, only two of the eight were women, and two represented racial minority groups. All appear to be of the same age group (50-plus), and all seem to be American born and raised.
I wonder if the panel had more women, more minorities, more internationals, and younger folks if you would have come to the same conclusions. As it is, I’m not surprised that a group largely composed of white males picked a group largely composed of white males to represent the most influential alumni today.
I think this was a missed opportunity. I get that the group would be dominated by white men when going back to the 18th century, but I would have thought PAW would have gotten a more diverse panel 10 years after its initial list to ensure amazing alumni were not excluded because they happen to be female, of color, or international.
## Scott L. Replogle ’73
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
I’m not a conservative and the article on distinguished alumni acknowledged the bias against conservatives, but there are three living Princeton alums I can think of who are at least as distinguished as George Will *68 (tied for No. 21). One is John Stossel ’69, whose journalistic efforts on TV as well as several great books should qualify him, and he’s a libertarian more than conservative. Another is Steve Forbes ’70, whose business, magazines, editorials, and books also make him quite a distinguished alum. The closest to my year and one I met at Princeton is Judge Andrew Napolitano ’72, whose legal and judicial career changed into an online commentary presence as well as several excellent books. I’d like to suggest these three for “honorable mention” at least.
## James Mathewson ’81
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
Thanks, PAW, for your “direct” observation that this listing tilts notably to the left. The complete omission of Meg Whitman ’77, Mitch Daniels ’71, and Ted Cruz ’92 (for starters) downgrades the panel’s credibility — especially in light of choices made instead, such as a second-tier football coach and various fiction authors. Must be that old nemesis, “unconscious bias,” in action.
Perhaps in the future a similar survey, polling a cross-section of alumni, could be initiated. Undoubtedly that would yield a far broader and more compelling list of high achievers and influencers.
## John Ellis ’81
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
Wondered why Mark Milley ’80, the current chief of staff of the Army, the highest-ranking officer in the Army, was absent. Fun fact, he is the first non-West Pointer to hold the position.
## Nick Loeb ’81
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
A bit of trivia relating to the list of 25 most influential alumni is that No. 7 Eric Lander ’78 was a resident adviser in the third entryway of Foulke Hall during the ’77–’78 school year, and one of the students in his group was Elena Kagan ’81, future associate justice of the Supreme Court and No. 3 on the list. I was in the same RA group, and it was a great and humbling experience. Perhaps there are similar connections among the Princetonians on this list.
## Jack Cumming ’58
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
What a sadly superficial inquiry, though many of the people on the list are people whom we have come to admire. What is influential is Princeton’s historical commitment to merit-based admissions and to emphasizing a humanities core as central to the education of great leaders.
What’s striking is how much luck — and being in the right place at the right time — has played a role in the prominence of those chosen. There are many others who have been influential in their own small (or even large) way without gaining prominence. Many others have acted behind the scenes to change the world for the better. They also serve who only act as catalysts for betterment, beginning with the teachers and mentors to whom we are all beholden.
Jeff Bezos ’86 has said that if he hadn’t hit it big, he would probably have been an anonymous computer coder. I’ll bet that he would have been one of the best and that the websites he created would give him influence in that anonymity equal to the influence that he has gained with prominence.
Let’s maintain and multiply that which has made Princeton great and which has made its graduates — for the most part — constructive contributors to a better world. What’s sad is the limiting of the Princeton experience to so few among the thousands who might otherwise benefit from what Princeton now confines to its chosen elect (those admitted), whether they are chosen because they are gifted or athletes or underprivileged or simply people of outstanding promise.
## Stephanie Gates ’75
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
My No. 1 nominee: Meg Whitman ’77, eBay, a true game-changer.
## Richard Lachmann ’77
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
This article makes a convincing case for the influence of Brian Kernighan *69, who was key in developing the computer languages used in Apple and Android devices that absorb hours of attention on the part of hundreds of millions of people each day. But then the panel picks a football coach and the managers of two blogs that get plenty of eyeballs but have trivial effects on political outcomes. Perhaps these foolish results come from the panel’s procedure of looking at various realms of accomplishment and picking significant alumni. Thus a top sports coach gets a slot along with a best-selling author and a blogger, with not enough thought to the actual impact of each of these fields. This list is nowhere as bad as the lists that rank talk-show hosts and movie stars above major officeholders and corporate chieftains, but is ill-considered in a similar way.
## Richard Waugaman ’70
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
Professor Jeff Nunokawa called “influential” a difficult word. Its etymology is the same as “influenza” — that is, the noxious influence thought to come from swamps. Not the type of influence we’re talking about here, I know.
## Charlie Bell ’76
6 Years Ago## Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
In discussing the 25 most influential alums, PAW may be forgiven for failing to include the Class of ’76 as a class boasting two members on the list. No doubt it was inconceivable that one class would place two alums in the top 10 (Sonia Sotomayor at No. 3 and Eric Schmidt at No. 6), or that 10 members of the same class have served on Princeton’s Board of Trustees (two currently), or that one class provided a press secretary for President Bill Clinton (Mike McCurry) as well as a chief of staff for President George W. Bush (Josh Bolten).
Not current enough, you say? Well, McCurry is co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, and Bolten is the president and CEO of the ultimate CEO association, the Business Roundtable.
With business, law, education, and politics covered, we turn to the arts, where Winnie Holzman’s writing has touched audiences of all ages via the timeless teenage TV drama
My So-Called Life;two groundbreaking adult series,thirtysomethingandOnce and Again;and the second-largest-grossing and seventh-longest-running Broadway show of all time,Wicked.While PAW was correct in suggesting that Tiger pride will impel many alums to anoint their own class as most influential, we believe it was destined to be a hopeless effort for all but the members of one class.
## btomlins
6 Years Ago## Readers Respond: Picking the Most Influential Alumni — and Defining Influence
The Jan. 10 cover story — in which a panel of faculty members, alumni, and the former Princeton University Press director selected Princeton’s 25 most influential living alumni — drew a spirited response. Here’s what readers had to say in their comments at PAW Online, on social media, and in letters to the editor.Perhaps I’m alone in this sentiment, but the whole concept of a list such as this (“ranking” alumni, according to some criteria generated by whom?) strikes the wrong note, especially now. Somehow it’s not in keeping with the collegiality and overall camaraderie I’ve always believed our alma mater stood for.
Mary Bechmann ’79Los Altos, Calif.(Via Facebook)This was a great issue and great idea. Always bound to prompt discussion when you create “Top Ten” lists, etc. I like the focus on current folks, and it’s great to include all three Supreme Court justices. Robert Mueller ’66 is certainly in the news, but I believe he will come up with a big “zero” in his real investigation to impeach the president. I love the addition of Jason Garrett ’89: Every time the Dallas Cowboys are on TV, Princeton certainly gets a mention when they talk about Coach Garrett. Good work, PAW.
Roderick McNealy ’72Hillsborough, N.J.(Via Facebook)I have to admit I cringed a little at the cover highlighting the identification of Princeton’s 25 most influential alumni. My mind went right to the superlatives of the high school lists so many of us experienced — most popular, most likely to succeed, etc. — and to arguments around the definition of influence.
Nonetheless, like many others I am sure, I was intrigued and read the article almost immediately. I also read “Second Opinion” by Dean Jill Dolan
.I greatly appreciated the perspective shared by the dean. She perfectly and eloquently captured the challenges of such lists and the tensions. She also celebrated those that might never make it but are equally deserving of respect and gratitude and, in many cases, awe.Dean Dolan’s essay allowed me to appreciate the amazing accomplishments of the alumni identified without feeling I was disregarding the “unsung heroes.”
Alicia Erdman ’94Portland, Ore.I wish your panel of judges reflected the University’s diversity. By my count, only two of the eight were women, and two of the eight represented racial minority groups. All appear to be of the same age group (50-plus), and all seem to be American born and raised.
I wonder if the panel had more women, more minorities, more internationals, and younger folks if you would have come to the same conclusions. As it is, I’m not surprised that a group largely comprised of white males picked a group largely comprised of white males to represent the most influential alumni today.
I think this was a missed opportunity. I get that the group would be dominated by white men when going back to the 18th century, but I would have thought PAW would have gotten a more diverse panel 10 years after its initial list to ensure amazing alumni were not excluded because they happen to be female, of color, or international.
Crystal A. Moore ’96Stanford, Calif.I’m not a conservative and the article on distinguished alumni acknowledged the bias against conservatives, but there are three living Princeton alums I can think of who are at least as distinguished as George Will *68 (tied for No. 21). One is John Stossel ’69, whose journalistic efforts on TV as well as several great books should qualify him, and he’s a libertarian more than conservative. Another is Steve Forbes ’70, whose business, magazines, editorials, and books also make him quite a distinguished alum. The closest to my year and one I met at Princeton is Judge Andrew Napolitano ’72, whose legal and judicial career changed into an online commentary presence as well as several excellent books. I’d like to suggest these three for “honorable mention” at least.
Scott L. Replogle ’73Boulder, Colo.Thanks, PAW, for your “direct” observation that this listing tilts notably to the left. The complete omission of Meg Whitman ’77, Mitch Daniels ’71, and Ted Cruz ’92 (for starters) downgrades the panel’s credibility — especially in light of choices made instead, such as a second-tier football coach and various fiction authors. Must be that old nemesis, “unconscious bias,” in action.
Perhaps in the future a similar survey, polling a cross-section of alumni, could be initiated. Undoubtedly that process would yield a far broader and more compelling list of high achievers and influencers.
James Mathewson ’81Lake St. Louis, Mo.A bit of trivia relating to the list of 25 most influential alumni is that No. 7 Eric Lander ’78 was a resident adviser in the third entryway of Foulke Hall during the ’77-’78 school year, and one of the students in his group was Elena Kagan ’81, future associate justice of the Supreme Court and No. 3 on the list. I was in the same RA group, and it was a great and humbling experience. Perhaps there are similar connections among the Princetonians on this list.
Nick Loeb ’81Ogden, UtahIn discussing the 25 most influential alums, PAW may be forgiven for failing to include the Class of ’76 as a class boasting two members on the list. No doubt it was inconceivable that one class would place two alums in the top 10 (Sonia Sotomayor at No. 3 and Eric Schmidt at No. 6), or that 10 members of the same class have served on Princeton’s Board of Trustees (two currently), or that one class provided a press secretary for President Bill Clinton (Mike McCurry) as well as a chief of staff for President George W. Bush (Josh Bolten).
Not current enough, you say? Well, McCurry is co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, and Bolten is the president and CEO of the ultimate CEO association, the Business Roundtable.
With business, law, education, and politics covered, we turn to the arts, where Winnie Holzman’s writing has touched audiences of all ages via the timeless teenage TV drama,
My So-Called Life;two groundbreaking adult series,thirtysomethingandOnce and Again;and the second-largest grossing and seventh-longest running Broadway show of all time,Wicked.While PAW was correct in suggesting that Tiger pride will impel many alums to anoint their own class as most influential, we believe it was destined to be a hopeless effort for all but the members of one class.
Charlie Bell ’76Lakeville, Conn.What a sadly superficial inquiry, though many of the people on the list are people whom we have come to admire. What is influential is Princeton’s historical commitment to merit-based admissions and to emphasizing a humanities core as central to the education of great leaders.
What’s striking is how much luck — and being in the right place at the right time — has played a role in the prominence of those chosen. There are many others who have been influential in their own small (or even large) way without gaining prominence. Many others have acted behind the scenes to change the world for the better. They also serve who only act as catalysts for betterment, beginning with the teachers and mentors to whom we are all beholden.
Jeff Bezos ’86 has said that if he hadn’t hit it big, he would probably have been an anonymous computer coder. I’ll bet that he would have been one of the best and that the websites he created would give him influence in that anonymity equal to the influence that he has gained with prominence. And I’ll go further and speculate that Jeff himself would agree with that assessment. As Winston Churchill said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
Let’s maintain and multiply that which has made Princeton great and which has made its graduates — for the most part — constructive contributors to a better world in their time and beyond. What’s sad is the limiting of the Princeton experience to so few among the thousands who might otherwise benefit from what Princeton now confines to its chosen elect (those admitted), whether they are chosen because they are gifted or athletes or underprivileged or simply people of outstanding promise.
Jack Cumming ’58Carlsbad, Calif.This article makes a convincing case for the influence of Brian Kernighan *69, who was key in developing the computer languages used in Apple and Android devices that absorb hours of attention on the part of hundreds of millions of people each day. But then the panel picks a football coach and the managers of two blogs that get plenty of eyeballs but have trivial effects on political outcomes. Perhaps these foolish results come from the panel’s procedure of looking at various realms of accomplishment and picking significant alumni. Thus a top sports coach gets a slot along with a best-selling author and a blogger, with not enough thought to the actual impact of each of these fields. This list is nowhere as bad as the
TimeMagazine lists that rank talk-show hosts and movie stars above major officeholders and corporate chieftains, but is ill-considered in a similar way.Richard Lachmann ’77New York, N.Y.My No. 1 nominee: Meg Whitman ’77, eBay, a true game-changer.
Stephanie Gates ’75Middle River, Md.Nice to see how many Princetonians are influential. It was just as good a list as any before it. But you have self-defined yourselves and, by implication, the University as “lean(ing) strongly toward the political left.” Indeed!
But is this a good thing in an educational institution? Do you have enough distinguished faculty and administrators to field a panel of eight who “strongly lean to the right”? Can you teach the Republican views on foreign affairs, economics, the importance of incentives, and offer praise for people who don’t share your political views?
If you can’t, you are moving toward a propaganda mill and not a university.
John McNiff ’64North Palm Beach, Fla.When I saw the article on “the most influential alumni,” I felt a paradox that Dean Jill Dolan captured well. I was relieved that her point of view was included.
I understand how these particular individuals have influenced the world. They should be celebrated. The paradox for me is, as Dean Dolan expressed, that many alumni apply their skills, talents, and experience building a truly meaningful and impactful life but with a very different profile. Most are unsung folks who might look ordinary through the “most influential” lens applied in the article. I submit that such folks, I would count myself among them, work each day to make a difference in people’s lives according to strongly held values — I bet that many wonder if there they are noticed. Dean Dolan noticed, and for this I am very grateful.
Philip P. Breitfeld ’75Chapel Hill, N.CYour committee made many fine selections, like Wendy Kopp ’89, but left off a most worthy son of Princeton, Gen. Mark A. Milley ’80, current chief of staff of the Army — a leader of men and women, from the platoon level to multiple command and staff positions with eight divisions and Special Forces units over 35 years. He had operational deployments to Sinai, Egypt, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Columbia, and three tours in Afghanistan. He earned a master’s in international relations at Columbia and a master’s in national security and strategic studies at the Naval War College, and is a graduate of the MIT National Security Studies Program.
This man has led and prepared soldiers to help preserve our freedoms, dealing with real, live people and solving problems involving life-and-death considerations. He not only exemplifies Princeton’s motto, but helped afford the peace and freedom many of the other selectees could pursue their career choices. He has reached the highest level in his field of endeavor and is leading the Army in its readiness and preparation for the future fight while emphasizing the taking care of troops.
Douglas N. Stinson ’70Morristown, Tenn.In my opinion, your attempt to arrange the 25 most influential alumni numerically was ill-advised. It reflects our society’s prevalent and perplexing preoccupation with rankings and with “being No. 1.’ Who is to say that person X is “more influential” than person Y? I see nothing wrong with an article chronicling the achievements of 25 influential people; but please arrange them alphabetically, or by field, and let the reader decide who’s who.
Theodore Bergren ’74Richmond, Va.I read with interest the article listing the “most influential” Princeton alumni. After considering who was selected, it seems that the overarching criteria had a theme: one must be a liberal and/or anti-Trump. For example, would Robert Mueller ’66 have made the list if he were not investigating Trump? I doubt it. And then there is George Will *68 — a conservative, yes. But, one that left the Republican Party, in large measure, because of Trump. And, then there is conservative Sen. Ted Cruz ’92, who was considered but didn’t make the list, according to the article, because he did not oppose Trump enough. Finally, there is Jason Garrett ’89, the Dallas Cowboys coach. He would certainly not be considered one of the most influential coaches in the NFL by any measure. But he makes the list. Why? Because he was part of the national-anthem protest against Trump.
Now, I am certainly no Trump apologist, but should these selections have been viewed through this clouded lens? One of the things that I valued most about my Princeton education was the emphasis on critical thinking and sound analysis. Unfortunately, this committee failed on that front. Alas, this was a case of bias ideology masquerading as objective evaluation. Indeed, given Princeton’s rich and diverse pool of talented alumni across the genders, races, backgrounds,
andpolitical spectrum, I expected better. Shouldn’t we all?Roland C. Warren ’83Middletown, Md.I have a clarification on Jason Garrett ’89. PAW stated that he was deemed influential “because of the role the Cowboys played in the national-anthem controversy last fall when the team chose to kneel.” My clarification is that the team knelt right before the anthem, and then stood for the anthem locked arm in arm to show unity on all fronts. That is why he is influential — because of how he handled this controversy.
Meagan Dewey Jurevicius ’88Gates Mills, OhioI’m not a conservative and the article on distinguished alumni acknowledged the bias against conservatives, but there are three living Princeton alums I can think of who are at least as distinguished as George Will *68 (tied for No. 21). One is John Stossel ’69, whose journalistic efforts on TV as well as several great books should qualify him, and he’s a libertarian more than conservative. Another is Steve Forbes ’70, whose business, magazines, editorials, and books also make him quite a distinguished alum. The closest to my year and one I met at Princeton is Judge Andrew Napolitano ’72, whose legal and judicial career changed into an online commentary presence as well as several excellent books. I’d like to suggest these three for “honorable mention” at least.
Scott L. Replogle ’73Boulder, Colo.I found it amusing to compare the folks in the “Most Influential Alumni” article with the people in the EQuad News supplement that accompanied that issue. The PAW article seemed like a list one would expect to find in an Ivy League version of
Peoplemagazine, whereas the significance, brilliance, and global impact of the accomplishments of people in the EQuad piece were astonishingly brilliant and genuinely impressive.Al Lowe ’70Sarasota, Fla.With the publishing of the 25 most influential alumni of Princeton University, the panel chosen to select these alumni has little understanding of what is about to happen. I suspect that a good bit of their knowledge of the workings of Washington is the result of MSM. My question is: Was the panel chosen by PAW or the dean of the college? In either event, this article should be an embarrassment to the University.
It seems that the principal determinant in the process was whether the presidency
existsordoesn’t. Apparently, they never considered the possibility that itexists. I know this is shocking to some, but get prepared to be shocked. President Donald J. Trump has been anointed by God to “drain the swamp.” More than a few of the top eight nominees will not stand the test of time (maybe a month, but certainly not longer than a year). The University may want to rethink where they stand in the political spectrum (in the swamp or out of it).Conrad W. Stout ’54Sunset Beach, N.C.OK, let me see if I’ve got this right. When considering candidates for this list, the panel members should have recognized their unconscious bias against women, are free to ignore their conscious bias against conservatives, should not consider awards received as women have historically been biased against by prize committees, but should recognize those receiving a prize if the panel deemed it supportive of their decision, and should positively consider if the individual leads or funds a cause the panel sympathetically supported. Makes perfect sense to me.
Arthur Oller ’73Walnut Creek, Calif.The omission of Sen. Ted Cruz ’92 was startling. Sen. Cruz is a key leader in the conservative movement that has propelled the Republican Party to its strongest position in 100 years. The GOP now holds the White House, Senate, House, and the majority of state offices.
The inclusion of former First Lady Michelle Obama ’85 at No. 8 was also eye-popping. The panel states that Obama would continue as a role model for African Americans and perhaps even may be a candidate for office herself. Why did it not occur to the panel that Sen. Cruz would continue to be a role model for Hispanic
Americans and might even run for president again?
Charles S. Rockey Jr. ’57Boca Grande, Fla.Professor Jeff Nunokawa called “influential” a difficult word. For those who haven't heard, its etymology is the same as “influenza” — that is, the noxious influence thought to come from swamps. Not the type of influence we’re talking about here, I know.
Richard Waugaman ’70Potomac, Md.What? No Brooke Shields ’87 or Queen Noor ’73 (or her sons); Imee Marcos ’79, now a leader in her own right; Winnie Holzman ’76!?
R.K. Sturtz ’78You write that Jeff Bezos ’86 would agree with Churchill that “the price of greatness is responsibility.” Bezos has yet to show that responsibility to his Amazon warehouse employees, who are paid as little as the market will allow and who labor in un-air-conditioned buildings with ambulances standing by for when they collapse on hot summer days.
Richard Lachmann ’77New York, N.Y.Wondered why Mark Milley ’80, the current chief of staff of the Army, the highest-ranking officer in the Army, was absent. Fun fact, he is the first non-West Pointer to hold the position since its inception.
John Ellis ’81Honolulu, HawaiiAn interesting and provocative project, surely open to the characterization of “superficial.” It could hardly be otherwise. We should all be extremely proud that the University claims three justices of the Supreme Court as members of the alumni, especially since we have no law school. In terms of “influence,” however, none is yet in a position to direct the Court philosophically. We should hope that Mr. Justice Alito never achieves such a position.
George Clark ’69Clarks Summit, Pa.This article just had too much of a leftist slant for me. I am sick and tired of the media and my University, starting with President Eisgruber ’83, taking untrue shots at President Trump. As an example, why isn't Jeff Bezos ’86 on the contents page as the No. 1 choice? Instead, the author has Robert Mueller ’66. The problem is that the author or committee was hoping that Mueller would bring down the president, and this choice was a leftist hope for the future, which looks like it’s in the process of self-destruction. Another hope choice for the future was Michele Obama ’85, who is seldom heard from, not to mention her famous thesis, which the University blocked from public view. And in the 25th spot, poor Jason Garrett ’89, who does what Jerry Jones tells him, and the team kneel was before the national anthem and not during. History may well show that the mass disrespect for the national anthem, primarily by black NFL players, set back race relations more than we know.
Bruce A. Krause ’58Waldoboro, MaineWell, Bruce Krause, the author was unashamed about that. “Finally, let’s be direct: This list also leans strongly toward the political left.” I just found it to be quite a bit of fun, even though I, too, largely disagree with many of the choices.
Kanthan Pillay ’91Johannesburg, South AfricaThis article makes a convincing case for the influence of Brian Kernighan *69, who was key in developing the computer languages used in Apple and Android devices that absorb hours of attention on the part of hundreds of millions of people each day. But then the panel picks a football coach and the managers of two blogs that get plenty of eyeballs but have trivial effects on political outcomes. Perhaps these foolish results come from the panel’s procedure of looking at various realms of accomplishment and picking significant alumni. Thus a top sports coach gets a slot along with a best-selling author and a blogger, with not enough thought to the actual impact of each of these fields. This list is nowhere as bad as the
TimeMagazine lists that rank talk-show hosts and movie stars above major officeholders and corporate chieftains, but is ill-considered in a similar way.Richard Lachmann ’77New York, N.Y.So how did Jason Garrett ’89 make the list? Can you explain his influence?
Akel Kahera *97Atlanta, Ga.Jeff Bezos ’86, corporate welfare king and warehouse slave master, is No. 1 while Ralph Nader ’55, who among other accomplishments saved countless lives with his consumer-protection causes, does not even make the list? But, then, “influential” does not necessarily mean good influence, I guess.
Jim LaReginaGraduate and Undergraduate Administrator,Near Eastern StudiesPrinceton UniversityI daresay our illustrious panel failed in several instances to measure nominees against the actual definition of influence and has instead lazily retreated to those who are merely “popular.”
Influence is defined as “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself; the power to shape policy or ensure favorable treatment from someone, especially through status, contacts, or wealth; a person or thing with the capacity or power to have an effect on someone or something.”
Under these parameters, I fail to see how a professional football coach would ever be considered for such a list, unless such coach had so revolutionized the sport with new schemes that it spawned disciples everywhere. Jason Garrett ’89 is a talented, smart, passionate coach, but he is far from influential under even the broadest sense of the word.
Similarly, an author who publishes millions and millions of best-selling books may be popular, famous even, but such does not translate to influence per se unless, again, the works spawn movements or transform cultures in measurable ways.
Context being of prime importance in any ranked list, it would be improper for me to criticize and then fail to suggest far more deserving alternatives. So here goes.
Where is Meg Whitman ’77, an individual with enormous influence, in and out of technology circles? Where is Queen Noor ’73, whose many philanthropic initiatives are well-known and broad-based? And I see no Steve Forbes ’70, the titular head of one of the most influential business magazines on the planet. Where is Edward Felsenthal ’88, editor-in-chief of
TimeMagazine with three times the number of subscribers as David Remnick ’81’sThe New Yorker?Where are all the elite Princeton venture capitalists and private-equity leaders who, every day, exercise their enormous influence and determine which new ideas, entrepreneurs, and companies get funded, sold, and acquired? Surely their multibillion-dollar value-creation impact/influence is worthy of consideration.
Hopefully next time, such a list will include those who have actual influence and not just popularity.
Jack SydneyI enjoyed the article, but it lacked a degree of critical thinking that leaves many holes, some of which Mr. Sydney pointed out.
Prentis Hall ’79Lansdale, Pa.Be part of the conversation — share your views in the comments below.## Chris Morris *78
6 Years Ago## Ted Cruz? Puhleeze... The...
Ted Cruz? Puhleeze ... The list did brilliantly well without him. Otherwise, where's Eliot Spitzer ['81]? And will Mueller move up to #1 once our so-called "president" is duly impeached?
## Houghton Hutcheson ’68
6 Years Ago## Jack Sydney's letter nails...
Jack Sydney's letter nails it. It's all about the definition of the word "influential." The panel squandered an opportunity to advance the scholarly dialogue on the meaning of that word.
## Van Wallach ’80
6 Years Ago## The list suffered by...
The list suffered by stuffing people with wildly divergent backgrounds into a single group. In coming years, PAW could break it down by category, like the Academy Awards: corporate, nonprofit, academic, government, literary, entertainment, athletic and any other group where Tigers shine. Like they say in Hollywood, the envelopes, please...
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25 Princetonians who are shaking up the world
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https://mailchimp.com/developer/blog/computers-are-the-easy-part/
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Computers are the easy part | Mailchimp Developer
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Ray Ashman
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Image Credit: Mar Hernández
In the world of aircraft safety, a Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) is an accident where an aircraft that has no mechanical failures, and is fully under the control of its pilots, is unintentionally piloted into the ground. As a concept, CFIT has long been studied to try and understand the human factors involved in failure. The FAA reports that contrary to what one might expect, the majority of CFIT accidents occur in broad daylight and with good visual conditions—so how, then, is it possible that highly trained and skilled pilots could accidentally fly a plane into the side of a mountain?
It’s tempting to ascribe such a tragedy to human error. But the work of researchers like Sidney Dekker challenges this view, instead framing human error as a symptom of larger issues within a system. “Underneath every simple, obvious story about ‘human error,’” Dekker writes in* **The Field Guide to Human Error*, “there is a deeper, more complex story about the organization.”
These systemic faults—often cultural in nature, rather than purely technical—are how a group of highly skilled individuals reacting rationally to an incident could nonetheless end up taking the wrong course of action, or ignore the warning signs right in front of them.
We don’t pilot aircraft at Mailchimp, but millions of small businesses do rely on our marketing platform to keep their businesses running. When things do go wrong—and as we work to fix them and analyze what happened—we run up against similar questions about technical versus systemic failures.
We recently experienced an internal outage that lasted for multiple days. While it fortunately didn’t impact any customers, it still puzzled us, and prompted a lot of introspection. Human factors, the weight of history, and the difficulties of coordination caused this issue to stretch out far longer than it could have, but it taught us something about our systems—and ourselves—in the process.
### The investigation
It was the late afternoon on a day where many of our on-call engineers were already tired from dealing with other issues that we started receiving alerts in the form of what we call “locked unstarted jobs”—essentially, individual units of work being claimed for execution but never run. This is a particular failure mode that is well known to us, and while uncommon, has a generally well-understood cause: some kind of unrecoverable failure during the execution of a task. Our on-call engineers began triaging the issue, first trying to identify whether any code had been shipped at the time the incident began that could have caused the problem.
Incident response at Mailchimp is transparent to all of our employees—when we become aware that something’s wrong, we spin up a “war room” channel in Slack that the whole company can observe. The responding engineers, based on our prior experience dealing with this type of failure, first suspected that we’d shipped a change that was introducing errors into the job runner and began mapping the start of the issue against changes that were deployed at the time. However, the only change that had landed in production as the incident began was a small change to a logging statement, which couldn’t possibly have caused this type of failure.
Our internal job runner—which executes a huge variety of long-running tasks asynchronously—is a long-serving part of our infrastructure, developed early in Mailchimp’s history. It runs huge numbers of tasks daily without very many issues—which, on the surface, is exactly what the operator of a software system wants. But this also means that collectively, we don’t often build the expertise to debug novel failures, compared to the battle scars that engineers develop on systems that fail more regularly. The job system has a handful of well-understood failure modes and over the years, we’ve developed a collection of automations and runbooks that make rectifying these issues a routine and low-risk affair.
When a war-room incident starts up, on-call engineers from various disciplines gather together to take a look. Having been intimately familiar with the various quirks of the job system over the years, we had a reasonably solid mental model that when a failure of this nature occurs, it’s generally an issue with a particular class of job being run or some kind of hardware issue.
Through our collective efforts, we were able to quickly rule out hardware failures on both the servers running the job system and the database servers that support it. Further investigation didn’t really turn up any job class in particular that might be causing issues. But by late in the evening, we still hadn’t had any breakthroughs, so we put a temporary fix in place to get us through the night and waited for fresh eyes in the morning.
### Fresh perspectives
By the second day, the duration of the incident had attracted a bunch of new responders who hoped to pitch in with resolution. Based on what we’d seen so far, we had ruled out any obvious hardware failures or obviously broken code, so the new responders began investigating whether there were any patterns of user behavior that might be creating problems.
As we began to dig into user traffic patterns, we noticed a number of integrations that were generating huge numbers of a particular job type. We attempted a change to apply more back pressure for this job class to see if it would mitigate the issue, but that didn’t really help.
The numbers of locked and unstarted jobs continued to climb, and we realized that this was a failure mode that didn’t really line up with our mental model of how the job system breaks down. As an organization, we have a long memory of the way that the job runner can break, what causes it to break in those ways, and the best way to recover from such a failure. This institutional memory is a cultural and historical force, shaping the way we view problems and their solutions.
But we were now facing a potentially brand-new type of issue that we hadn’t seen in a decade-plus of supporting the job system—it was time to start looking for a novel root cause. We began adding more instrumentation to the job system in an effort to find any clues that we’d overlooked in the first day of the investigation, including some more diagnostic logging to help trace any unusual failures during the execution of specific jobs.
### A breakthrough
With this new instrumentation in place, we noticed something incredibly strange. The logging that had been added included the job class that was being executed, and some jobs were reporting that they were two different types of job at the same time—which should have been impossible.
Since the whole company had visibility into our progress on the incident, a couple of engineers who had been observing realized that they’d seen this exact kind of issue some years before. Our log processing pipeline does a bit of normalization to ensure that logs are formatted consistently; a quirk of this processing code meant that trying to log a PHP object that is Iterable would result in that object’s iterator methods being invoked (for example, to normalize the log format of an Array).
Normally, this is an innocuous behavior—but in our case, the harmless logging change that had shipped at the start of the incident was attempting to log PHP exception objects. Since they were occurring during job execution, these exceptions held a stacktrace that included the method the job runner uses to claim jobs for execution (“locking”)—meaning that each time one of these exceptions made it into the logs, the logging pipeline itself was invoking the job runner’s methods and locking jobs that would never be actually run!
Having identified the cause, we quickly reverted the not-so-harmless logging change, and our systems very quickly returned to normal.
### Overlooking the obvious
From the outside, this incident may seem totally absurd. The code change that immediately preceded the problem was, in fact, the culprit. Should have been obvious, right? The visual conditions were clear, and yet we still managed to ignore what was right in front of us.
As we breathed a collective sigh of relief, we also had to ask ourselves how it took us so long to figure this out: a large group of very talented people acting completely rationally had managed to overlook a pretty simple cause for almost two days.
We rely on heuristics and collections of mental models to work effectively with complex systems whose details simply can’t be kept in our heads. On top of this, a software organization will tend to develop histories and lore—incidents and failures that have been seen in the past and could likely be the cause of what we’re seeing now. This works perfectly fine as long as problems tend to match similar patterns, but for the small percentage of truly novel issues, an organization can find itself struggling to adapt.
The net effect of all of this is to put folks into a “frame”—a particular way of perceiving the reality we’re inhabiting. But once you’re in a frame, it’s exceedingly difficult to move out of it, especially during a crisis. When debugging an issue, humans will naturally (and often unconsciously) fit the evidence they see into their frame. That’s certainly what happened here.
Given the large amount of cultural knowledge about how our job runner works and how it fails, we’d been primed to assume that the issue was part of a set of known failure modes. And since logging changes are so often completely safe, we disregarded the fact that there was only one change to our systems that had gone out before the incident started—had that change been something more complicated, we might have considered it a smoking gun much sooner.
Even our fresh eyes—new responders who joined the incident mid-investigation—tended to avoid reopening threads that were already considered closed. More than once, a new responder asked if we’d considered any changes that shipped out at the start of the incident that could cause this, but hearing that it was “just a logging change,” they also moved on to other avenues of investigation.
We all collectively overlooked the fact that complicated systems don’t always fail in complicated ways. Having exhausted most of our culturally familiar failure modes for the job runner, we weren’t looking for the simplest solution; we assumed that a piece of our infrastructure as old as the job runner must have started exhibiting a novel and unknown problem.
Doing our incident response in full view of the entire engineering team was critical here, since it enabled us to attract the attention of people who were familiar with this obscure type of failure—but this also further highlighted the trap we’d fallen into. With the benefit of hindsight, the responders could have started their investigation from first principles, or tried reverting the logging change as the initial and simplest explanation. Instead, we needed to be bailed out by folks who happened to have seen this exact kind of failure in the past—which is not a resolution that an organization can count on all the time.
This was an incredibly valuable reminder for us: the weight of history and culture within a software organization is a powerful force for priming individuals to think in particular ways and can result in difficulty adapting to novel problems. Approaching incidents like this from first principles and starting with the simplest explanations—no matter how likely they seem—can help us overcome these kinds of mental traps and make our response to incidents much more flexible and resilient.
| true | true | true |
Software systems are complex—and so are their human operators
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2001-01-01 00:00:00
|
website
| null | null | null | null |
|
8,815,717 |
http://dadaviz.com/i/2618
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
19,345,485 |
https://hotforsecurity.bitdefender.com/blog/marriott-data-breach-cost-the-hotel-chain-only-3-million-in-net-expenses-so-far-20903.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
24,788,972 |
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40775949/why-do-higher-precision-floating-point-formats-have-so-many-exponent-bits
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
3,268,301 |
http://wishkeepr.com
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
7,163,818 |
http://jaymachalani.com/blog/2013/12/12/fixing-windows-8
|
Fixing Windows 8 — jay machalani
|
Jay Machalani
|
**NOTE**: Wow! Microsoft is thinking about bringing back the Start Menu and Modern apps on the Desktop. This is perfect timing! Here you’ll see why it’s a good idea and how they should do it.
**DISCLAMER**: This is a non-functional concept prototype of Windows 8 built from scratch in Adobe Fireworks CS6 and rendered in Adobe After Effects CC. There is no download link or ways for you to use this right now.
**UPDATE:** Microsoft just showed a new Desktop focused Start Menu with Tiles. Some good friends at Microsoft confirms to me that this is the current design but it may not be final.
**ANNOUNCEMENT**: I worked with ReviverSoft to release a Start Menu solution!
## BACKGROUND
Let me begin by saying that I love Windows 8. I have it on all of my computers and I find that is the best OS for productivity and awesomeness.
OS X is good looking and polished, especially with the Mavericks update (A.K.A. fake leather killer), but I find that it is lacking some productivity details that makes it less comfortable. That was my experience with OS X as my main OS for a year and a half on the amazing 2011 MacBook Air. Yes everything can also be done on OS X and you can take the time to learn all of that to switch, but so is the OS X to Windows transition; it’s just a matter of where you are more comfortable. Linux is a usability nightmare the second you get out of the fake easy-to-use illusion layer they added with the new GUIs. Unless you’re a coder, don’t even think about it.
Back to Windows 8 now! I love Windows 8 and it is my favorite OS to date, but that thing is filled with massive flaws. Some even said that W8 is a usability nightmare and even if I don’t really like that expression they are kinda right in a way.
Confusion. Here’s that magic word!
Microsoft has a lot of great ideas and they smashed them together to create Windows 8. They have some pretty amazing blocks, it’s just a matter of arranging them the right way.
This research project started September 24th 2013. I had access to Windows 8.1 thanks to my dear friends at Microsoft and my main on-the-go general computer was a Dell XPS 12, I replaced it for a Surface Pro 2 right at launch October 25th. My test computers were always high density convertible tablet/laptops; the perfect candidate for the Windows 8 vision.
My goal here is simple: Research and design an improved Windows 8 that doesn’t change the whole OS, something that could be easily pushed in a near update based on the feedback of the users and respects Microsoft’s strategy and vision.
Trust me on this, I would LOVE to do an awesome new Metro style, blend both environment together or simply reinvent the whole damn thing and form the next big change in user interface design. Unfortunately, I want to find solutions that are incremental to the current version of Windows; something that would be an easy update to please everyone first.
I talked to a lot of users, developers and even people at Microsoft for their feedback over W8 and what they like/dislike (special thanks to the Apple Core and Microsoft Tribe forum at The Verge for their feedback). From there I came up with 5 rules that needs to be respected at all time to insure that users are happy and their feedback is respected, but at the same time that Microsoft can go on with their planned strategy for their OS and the future of the company.
Let’s stop with all the history and background crap and jump right into the laws, notes and the designs.
## BASICS
When designing anything you need to lay a couple of rules that you need to refer to for every single decision. If there’s a problem with anyone of them, it’s a big fat no!
Here’s my 5 rules for my W8.2 prototype design.
**1) Microsoft wants to create a coherent store experience and ecosystem for Windows with the Windows Store.**
Let’s be honest here, when Apple showed the world how awesome a central managed application store is, everyone had to do it. Like the mouse, touchscreen and GUI interface, it’s something that can’t really be considered as a stolen idea or copying the other since it’s just an obvious thing that nobody got before. The Windows Store is here to stay and the design of those apps are to be structured for a coherent and unified experience. It doesn’t make sense anymore to scout the web through bad website and installers that want to fill your computer with crap by default when you can have a one button purchase/install/update/manage for your apps.
**2) Microsoft is adopting a company-wide design language with Metro and the Live Tiles.**
Screw you Metro AG! I don’t care come sue me if you want to and Microsoft I’m keeping that Metro name! We need a way to call that new design language and “modern” simply doesn’t cut it. So yes, I will be using the Metro name throughout this research project. The Metro design language is here to stay and people gotta live with it. On the other hand, it is Microsoft’s job to make sure that it is relevant and useful and not to just stuff it down users’ throats.
**3) Windows 8 needs to work on both touch-input devices and pointer/keyboard based computers.**
Look, there will be touch devices running Windows and no, splitting the OS into a separate Desktop and Tablet OS is not a solution. Windows needs to be flexible and work on all type of computers. You may be wondering why the OS on your Desktop computer needs to be tablet ready. Simple! Because we are evolving to convertible/hybrid devices. All-in-one desktops can transform into a big ass tablet and tablets into mobile workstations with their docks, flippy screens and keyboard covers. Having two OS for the same device under the same name is out of the question.
**4) Users with mouse and keyboards do not want a touch-optimized experience.**
You have a tiny pointer that can aim on 1x1 pixel elements. We are talking about your main workstation where a lot is happening at the same time. You optimize everything onscreen to maximize screen space organization and you resize your windows to a perfection level. Then, you open the Music app and it takes the whole 1080p display just for your song selection. You need weird gestures to access the Charms bar, mimicking a simple touchscreen swipe that you can’t do and of course if you try to multitask with any Metro app, the whole Desktop with all your apps opened are treated the same way as your Twitter app. Not very optimized. Learning all the keyboard shortcuts is not an option for the average user guys, forget it.
**5) Users with touchscreens do not want to go through a Desktop interface.**
You have an 8 inch tablet. You’re moving fast through the terminal and you need to get an information very fast. The last thing on your mind is to stop and try poking the tiny menu buttons of the Desktop. You should at all times stay inside of a touch-optimized interface and the fallback to Desktop should not even exist. Metro shouldn’t be on top of the Desktop; it should be your interface.
### Note
Yes there will be a lot of spelling mistakes, unfortunately you will have to leave with it. The goal was to put out the information of my research, not to write a perfectly checked novel.
Metro refers to the new design language from Microsoft and also the touch-optimized experience.
A lot of people will disagree and please share your disagreements with me, but don’t say “It sucks” or “Buy a Mac”. Tell me “It sucks because…” or “I prefer the way Apple does it because…”. Explain your opinion.
All screenshots shown here are designed with my Surface Pro 2 in mind, so with a 150% DPI. Everything will look scaled up if you don’t have a small screen with a high resolution.
This research project or I are not affiliated with Microsoft in any way.
## SOLUTION
All right, so here’s my big solution!
You separate the Desktop and Metro as completely different environment you can switch between. This way mouse/keyboard users won’t need to use weird mouse gestures, giant start screens and full screen apps and touch users will never have to see the Desktop ever in their life if they don’t want to.
Your files and apps sits in the middle and you choose which environment/interface you want to use to access them. At the end of the day, I want to see my pictures (HDD stored), work on my documents (Cloud/SkyDrive) use Fireworks (desktop app) and listen to my music on Xbox Music (Metro app). The thing is that I can now choose where and how I want to interact with all of them.
How? This is particularly difficult knowing the big app problem right now on Windows. Let’s analyze this.
## CURRENT STRUCTURE
From my research I see three big categories of applications. We’ll name them Classic, Modern and Hybrid.
**Classic**
Classic apps are your good ol’ Desktop apps that you’ve been using since, well Windows. The majority of them are a freely resizable quadrilateral with 1:1 pixel content that can be minimized to the Windows Taskbar, maximized to fit the screen or simply closed thanks to a standard three button on the top right. The standard navigation is a top menu bar and right-click contextual menu. The apps can be rearranged by moving and resizing the windows on top of an empty canvas zone called the Desktop.
**Modern**
Modern apps, commonly referred as Metro applications, are the full screen apps that everyone can download out of the Windows Store. Modern applications are flexible on pixel density, size allocated on screen and even some with screen resolution. The standard navigation is a scrollable horizontal panorama of content or a sidebar focused layout. The right click or border swipe gesture brings a hidden menu and options bar on the top and bottom of the app. The apps can be rearranged by sharing the screen space with a vertical separator that can be multiplied for more apps simultaneously. The separators can also be moved around so, one app could take 40% of the screen while the other two shares 30% of it.
**Hybrid**
Hybrid apps are the interesting ones. Skype for example exists as a Classic application and a Modern application. So as of now, you can load Skype on the Desktop and on Metro at the same time and access two very different apps simultaneously, each with their own notification system and design language. Same with Internet Explorer, you can actually open 2 tabs on the Classic app and the Metro app will be like a completely different app that has no idea that he exists with the same name and mission next door. This is a big problem, but a big opportunity!
Then we have two environments. We’ll call them the Desktop and Metro.
**Desktop**
The Desktop environment is basically Windows 7. Take everything you know and love about Windows 7, make it a tad faster and better with improved file management, a more powerful Task Manager and some refined menus and complete it with a kill of the classic Start Menu and there you have the Windows 8 Desktop app. Yes I said Desktop app. You see the Desktop now isn’t the main interface of Windows anymore, they decided that our good ol’ Desktop is more of a place where you will go inside of a new Windows where you want to use all your pesky old ugly Classic applications.
**Metro**
The Metro environment is the raison d’être of Windows 8; the reason for this whole debacle and confusion. Metro is a modern looking touch-optimized experience that is taking over Windows. The design language with vivid flat colors, generous spacing and big typography doesn’t need to be limited to a touch interface, in fact it looks great in numerous Classic apps that are adopting it. Yet, the Metro environment is the only part of Windows that got the redesign memo and they built the whole thing on top of the existing Desktop. You’ll go through that environment with a lot of “finger” and gesture navigation like the Charms bar where you can access a lot of settings, search and interact with the OS and the app you are currently using. It’s a great idea… as long as you’re not on the Desktop or using a Classic app.
That’s where the whole experience breaks down: Metro is trying to be a superior entity on top of Windows.
Metro is treated like it’s the core of Windows; that everything is attached to and passes through it. The Desktop in Windows 7 gave you a single level where you could access all your files, apps and settings, but since Metro can’t really replace your Desktop yet, because Microsoft didn’t work out a way to use the Classic apps in it, you’re now stuck with two levels to access everything in your computer. The whole Desktop including your Classic apps is now considered an app inside of Metro; that is messed up!
When you’re multitasking inside your Desktop, you’re using a couple of floating windows as usual. When you’re multitasking with a Modern app though, well half of your screen is, let’s say, my Mint.com app and the other half is the whole Desktop environment with all your Classic apps inside of it.
The whole Desktop is a Modern app and treated equally as your Music or Calendar application... and all of the Classic apps are stuck inside of it.
Since Windows runs everywhere, mouse and keyboard users are stuck using weird click top-to-bottom gestures to close Modern apps the Metro way and tablet users needs to aim at a tiny icon to close a Classic app the Desktop way.
Adding insult to injury, Hybrid applications do not communicate in any way since they run in completely separate environments. So if you open a tab in IE Desktop and you use Skype Desktop, your tabs will be completely different on the Metro app and you will receive the calls in both environments at the same time because they’re completely independent.
Where are your files in all of that? Technically… they’re on the Desktop level because Metro does not have a File Explorer. Yes, Metro is the main environment on top of everything, the Desktop is an app inside of it that runs other apps and your files are on this level because the top level can only interact with them without any way to properly manage them…
DOS applications ran in a window to fit the new way Windows managed applications back then, they adapted and were treated as they really were: Different and older, yes, but another app on your machine nonetheless. Windows 8 is a blindfold to the past to move as quickly as possible to a new world and generation of computers. A brilliant idea and concept, simply poorly executed because they didn’t offer a smooth transition or simply took the time to find a way to integrate those apps with the new Windows. Imagine putting aside Windows 95 to use a full screen DOS interface to use your old important apps, that’s what they did here.
## PROPOSED STRUCTURE
Look, I’m not revolutionizing the world here, in fact it’s quite an inelegant solution. But it works! And even if it’s not the nicest thing in the world, I think that it would work great because we’re respecting the 5 rules/laws established previously: Users are happy, Microsoft is still in their strategy and you can get there easily from the current version of Windows, 8.1.
If I’m using a mouse, I don’t want a touch interface, but as of now you need that touch interface for some of the apps. If I’m using a touchscreen, I don’t want to pass through a pointer interface, but you don’t have the choice to get through the pointer interface to use some of the apps. An app is an app. Modern apps are no better than Classic apps and by that same logic Metro is no better than the Desktop.
So why not separate the Metro and Desktop interface, put them on the same level and you choose how you want to interact with all of those apps. Yes some of them are not optimized for a touchscreen or a pointer, but do you need to be stuck in an unoptimized interface on top of that?
“That wouldn’t work because those apps are not designed to be used like that!”
I understand that point of view, but the basic requirements to adapt these apps for their opposite environment isn’t that big.
Modern apps need gestures. You can already use a Modern app with your mouse and keyboard, the problem is killing the Charms bar gesture. This is why you add all of the Charms on the top beside the Classic “Close, Maximize, Minimize” buttons. They are already resizable (just change your screen resolution you’ll see) and worst case you make them snap during the app resize between a set of different sizes (a balance between the different screen resolution the Modern app can run and adapt in and the different layouts from the snap multitasking resizing). There you go, you can now interact with a Modern app in a window in the Desktop.
Classic apps are even easier to adapt to the Metro environment. When using the snap multitasking, you will just maximize the Classic application inside its designated space either 20%, 40%, 50%, etc. of the screen. You don’t need to minimize the app, you don’t need to maximize the app and you already have a gesture in Metro to close applications.
Give Metro a File Explorer, let it interact with files, folders and devices its own way. Get rid of the Charms bar and Start Screen for Desktop users, give them that nice design and Live Tiles, but in an interface that suits their navigation devices and guide your users in the process to make sure they understand what’s happening and where they should be.
There you go, everyone is happy now. You can switch between both environments at any time and your apps will follow. So, I’m on my Surface Pro 2 using all my windows on a 1:1 scale when working, but when I need to move, I switch to the Metro tablet interface, everything gets scaled up and it’s easier to interact with them on-the-go or leaned back.
My mother is getting used to the Desktop now, she doesn’t need to know that Metro exists!
You want to sell tablets that can compete with Android and Apple, show consumers that they can use it as a tablet and only a tablet if they want to.
How will this solution look and feel like? Let me show you.
(Some screenshots might feel like Windows is a bit big for 1920x1080. Please remember that this is on a Surface Pro 2 with a 10.6 inch screen so scaling is an important factor here.)
## WINDOWS 8.2 BY JAY MACHALANI
Let’s begin with the installation process!
So to be honest, I think the installation process of Windows 8 is wayyyyy better than any other versions of Windows. The steps are clean, simple and easy to go through. I just want to add two important steps.
First, an environment selection screen that actually explains both of them. It’s important for the users to understand that there’s two environments on their computer and which one is best for them. Simple examples, illustrations and put the best one by default if it’s a tablet or a laptop/PC. Also, add a simple list on the top to show users where they are in the setup process. Just a little recommendation to show the users what’s coming in the process and how many steps are remaining.
Second, a “don’t worry” screen. With Windows 8.1 you added a new Help and Tips section, great! But, in your head you though that the users who will have some troubles using your operating system will know by themselves that there is a help section between all those multicolored bright squares, the exact squares that are scaring them, not so great. Tell them that there’s a big nice orange rectangle filled with tips if they need help. If they look at the Start Screen and they’re lost, they’ll remember that orange rectangle and they’ll look for it. They won’t really need to do that since “Open the Help app after the installation” is checked by default. In case they uncheck it, they’ll know it’s still there.
Here it is! The Desktop we all love. Now I think that Windows 7 nailed the Desktop and since this project is about fixing Windows 8 and not refining/rethinking it, I did some simple obvious modifications to our beloved environment. The Desktop will now use the color from your personalization settings. In the future why not sync the color between your PC, tablet, phone and Xbox; that would be awesome! The time, date and icons got a little bigger and makes it easier for the users with a super small/dense screen like me with my Surface Pro 2 or even my Dell XPS 12. You can pin Classic, Modern and Hybrid apps on the Taskbar. If you’re wondering why there’s a padding or dead zone around the Taskbar you will see that this is an aesthetic choice first, but there’s a feature behind this. Of course, an option to disable it would be there and some shots even have the dead zone disabled to show it.
The File Explorer in Windows 8 looks like crap. You’re pushing flat digital design and I’m still seeing Vista-inspired 3D super icons from the WOW era of Windows (remember when you failed to deliver the awesome Longhorn concept with WinFS). Also, keep that ribbon closed by default, it works and looks great with just the titles. Every folder and detail will use your chosen color for a uniform design with the exception of the main folders, special folders and SkyDrive. I’m taking the same app colors you used in the Modern version of the corresponding app and making it standard across the OS. Your Videos folder and Xbox Video app now uses the same color for subtle reconnaissance. Otherwise, it’s the best File Explorer out there and one of the big reason I couldn’t live with OS X. Sorry guys, but when I save a file and I need bigger icon previews, there’s no way I go in a sub menu to change it, I want my CTRL+MOUSE WHEEL shortcut!
Here’s some more shots of the Desktop and File Explorer adapting to your wallpaper or chosen color.
Oh boy here we go: I brought the Start Menu back. If we want to separate the Desktop and Metro environment we need a way for each of them to access apps, files and basic features like search, notifications and settings. Since we need to kick out the Metro Start Screen and Charms bar from the Desktop, let’s just bring back the good ol’ Start menu that worked so good for all these years. If you hate it, who cares, you’ll be in the Metro environment anyways! This is not the old Start Menu, so please give me a chance to explain the idea here. You can make it bigger or smaller, pin your apps and live tiles, resize them, get a quick access to the Classic apps Jumplist (loved that feature from Windows 7), access the notification center, settings, power options and search. It makes sense. Give Windows 8 to any regular user that show him how to shut down his/her computer through a gesture to open a sidebar with three menus and his reaction will be my proof. Everything is there and easy to access and click, we’re following all of the rules and you still get that Modern/Metro touch. Everybody wins.
The new Start Menu would be very flexible. You want it smaller, no problem. You want it to take half of your screen to make sure you get all the information you need through Live Tiles goodness like a dozen of stock market Tiles, no problem. You want the thing to be horizontal and give you all the recent thing you used on Windows like apps, people or search queries, no problem. Microsoft killed the Start menu because it wasn’t flexible enough and didn’t play nice with the new Modern vision. Why kill it when you can adapt it!
Personally, I think that it looks awesome. A modern, clean and flexible interface for work and play. Here you can see that I plugged my Nokia Lumia 920 and I have a quick access to the different folders and battery/storage information. Again, keeping the colors for documents, music, videos, etc.
So that’s it for the Desktop. There’s a lot more that could be done, but remember the objective here is to bring Windows 8 to a workable level, to get a solid base to build on and improve. Let’s leave the Desktop and switch to the Metro environment shall we?
Here we are in the Metro environment! I highly recommend that you watch the video above to get a feel of both environments and see how you transition between them. Lots of little details, but in a quick and swift fashion. This is a pretty standard Metro environment with the exception of some apps redesigned here and there, better padding and alignment and a more defined look. On my Surface Pro 2, running in the “default” scaled version I only have 3 rows of medium sized tiles which I found too little. But, running in the “smaller” version which is native 1080p, the 5 rows of medium sized tiles makes everything super small on screen and unpleasant as a tablet. I use the “smaller” native 1080p because I like more information and space to place everything, but I honestly believe that 4 rows of icons like pictured above is the perfect balance/density for the Start Screen. Users should have more control over this. There’s a new File Explorer icon which opens a Metro File Explorer, because that’s an obvious thing to do if you don’t want to see the Desktop and access/manage files easily on your tablet. Compared to the current Start Screen all the tiles are flat and without gradients. If you push a new design language, make it uniform through all of your platforms and stick to it entirely.
If we scroll to the right side, we can see the new “Computer” section at the end of the Start Screen. From there you have a better view and access at your computer’s file structure and what is currently plugged on it. Remember, Metro must now be independent of the Desktop, so that’s needed! My super Lumia 920 is taking advantage of the Live Tiles and showing me information about my device.
Let’s open the Charms bar. First, let me ask who’s the guy at Microsoft who decided that’s it’s acceptable for tablet users to fall back to the Desktop to poke at the tiny battery icon in the Taskbar just to know the battery level. Get his UX/UI license NOW! Now you can tap on it to get the obviously required and important information right there in Metro from any app through the Charms bar. A new addition is the Notification Center. On the Desktop you can check your Notifications from an icon in the Start Menu and on Metro, right from the Charms bar. That is the same Notification icon used on the Xbox One and it should be a standard icon for all Microsoft devices now. Windows Phone, you’re next. You can rearrange them, flick them away or dismiss all of them. If you don’t have any notification, the whole panel disappears with an option in settings to go check the history.
The Metro environment, like the Desktop, would be very customizable. From the dead zones, titles, transparency of the back shading and of course, color.
The dead zones is mostly an aesthetic choice that can be deactivated in case you want a very dense experience over a more breathing one. On the Metro environment through it serves a little purpose. In the Desktop you can switch between apps with the ALT+TAB command and you can see which apps are open and active with the Taskbar. On Metro I added some little details to complete that experience for the finger world. The left sidebar, currently in Windows 8 and 8.1, is great for multitasking and switching between apps, but nothing really took the job of the Taskbar. Now in the left dead zone you can have a small preview of the number of apps running and their color as an indicator. Think of it like a Metro Taskbar. You can take a quick look at them with a small swipe and go to the app by throwing it towards the middle of the screen. To complete that experience, Tiles of running applications have a white bar on their right side to show that they are currently open and running.
So we now have a great Desktop and a great Metro environment that can work without any need of the other. The last aspect that needs to be taken care off is application behavior in and between those two environments.
Here we go!
Classic apps works as they always did in the Desktop, a simple window to move around and resize, controlled with the top right buttons.
On Metro though, they are maximized and they will take the space you will give them. If you’re multitasking with another app the Metro way, the application will be “resized” to the space you will allocate to that application. The top right buttons are now gone since there is no minimize or maximize feature in Metro and you do a downward swipe to close the app. The application might look blurry, but that is because in my settings I set that all apps by default run in 150% DPI scaling because of my Surface pixel density. Since the app does not support additional scaling it looks blurry, but on my Surface, it looks way better than an app running in 1:1 pixel with ridiculously tiny controls to poke with my finger. My Desktop is for work with full pixel density and I switch to Metro when I’m moving around so I want bigger controls and text.
Here’s a Modern app on the Desktop. Some apps could be a little bit taller to accommodate the new required buttons, others like games could simply fade the buttons in when you’re approaching your cursor. Since a Charms bar in the Desktop is out of the question, the 4 required buttons to access settings, search and sharing are added on top. If an app does not require one of those buttons, they can be removed for that app. ModernMix brought that functionality to the current users of Windows 8, but since you’re still stuck with all of the other problems, 2 environments and a weird Charms bar opening in the individual app window in the Desktop, it feels more like a bad hack than a workable solution. The minimize, maximize and close buttons are also added on the top right. You can resize the application by grabbing the bottom right corner and the app could be set to either freely resize or snap to certain sizes mimicking the way the app would change depending on the users screen resolution. If you resize the width of the app, it would behave the same as if you gave it less space in the Metro multitasking, thus changing its layout to adapt to the new size. I understand that modern apps are not designed to work in a Desktop, but this is far more acceptable that being stuck running it full screen and losing Desktop space for a single Modern app.
I don’t know what you think about this, but I personally think that it looks great and it would work great and from my research this is the best quick and elegant solution. The Steam app might feel a bit blurry, but this is because I wanted that app to be a bit bigger in my Desktop. Per-app scaling would be a blessing. 2 Modern apps and a Classic app living together in harmony on the Desktop. I would still recommend that Microsoft adds Classic applications in the Store and that the Store app itself becomes an Hybrid application with a design made for the Desktop and pointer interaction.
When switching between environments the transition is very smooth.
Apps will grow into the allocated space based on the active application on the Desktop; the active application will have more screen space. The multitasking separator now takes your OS color and will be closer to the active application.
P.S. I’d love an option where I can change the way background applications looks like. I find that it’s nicer when your active application is more visible. Again and again, give more control and options to the users, you can’t go wrong doing that!
Last but not least, Hybrid applications. Hybrids are awesome and Microsoft needs to open an API for this. Get ALL the apps in your Store including Classic apps and give developers the tools they need to easily push this kind of application. On the left we have the MetroTwit app running as a Classic version and on the right Classic Skype. Look where I am and what I’m doing in those apps. Let’s press the Start button for a couple of seconds and…
…voila! They are now running as Modern applications in Metro and I can continue what I was doing in an app better designed for the environment I’m now in.
## ALSO…
**Give the option for individual DPI (scaling) settings for every app.**
I don’t care if Steam is bigger, but my designs apps needs to stay with 1:1 pixels. Same goes for some Metro apps that I want bigger for ease of use and some denser for more information on screen. On top of the general DPI setting with “smaller” and “bigger” add an individual option for all apps in their Settings menu. I like having 1080p worth of Live Tiles on my Start Screen with 5 rows, but it sucks to use the Metrotube app in 1080p that crams everything super small on the top left, same with Facebook (what’s wrong with your font guys?).
**Don't be shy with information**
I don’t know what the designers at Microsoft are thinking, but it’s better to give a lot more information about how to use your new OS (and make sure you can turn off the help tips if you don’t need them) than less. Windows 8.1 made it a tiny bit better with a great help section, but far far from acceptable since they don’t even guide the users there; they need to figure out that somewhere there’s help. At least, like shown on top, show them where they can find help. Help your users!
**Fix Xbox Music**
Xbox Music is awesome, yet flawed. There is no reason for the same song from the same album to be listed multiple times. And then -poof- one day it gives me an error when I want to play it from my collection and I have to delete it and go get that same song back from another “version” whatever that means. Also, there is no reason in this world why my Windows Phone shouldn’t download automatically every new song I add from the website or my computers. For me to manually download every song, be stuck with cloud play or to wait to sync with my computer is unacceptable. And please, when I download an album on my Windows Phone, add it to my Xbox Music collections! If you’re not sure how to please all users… give the option, you have a settings zone made just for that! And please fix all of the glitches, pauses between songs and frozen tracks on all your apps. P.S. Bring back the awesome Zune “Now Playing” cover art and visualizations!
**Optimize Microsoft Office**
Sorry, but I doesn’t make any sense that Word 2013 freezes on me for 30 seconds every time I open a document, on all my computers. Maybe it’s Adobe, maybe my HP Printer, I don’t care! Optimize your software on multiple computers because I tried all of your tips and tricks online and it still hangs and stops responding at every document I open and I have to wait in from on my screen like an idiot for Word to unfreeze to continue working. It doesn’t make sense for 3 different super computers including one of your own (Surface Pro 2) to freeze with your flagship software.
**Simple productivity tips**
When I have a notification on my desktop I have to aim for the little tiny “X” on the top right of the notification. Now, I understand that on a touchscreen it’s fairly easy to just toss it away on the side, but with a mouse and keyboard it’s frustrating. Right clicking on a notification does absolutely nothing right now, why can’t you map that to “close”. Same with the Start Screen, you have to aim the tiny little arrow to access the apps page, why can’t you do a simple shortcut like double clicking between the tiles (anywhere around) to go to the apps view. Or the picture password screen where typing doesn’t change anything, but I still have to get out and switch to PIN or password input if I want to use those...why not let me just use my PIN when I’m in front of the picture password if the keys aren’t being used anyways. Simple tricks like that enhance the experience because they’re quick little productivity shortcuts that help the everyday and does no harm since these shortcut does not affect regular operation.
**Give more options.**
If you’re unsure about a feature, functionality, look or anything else about Windows, give the users a switch for it. You learned this the hard way with the default boot to Start Screen Metro, just give all users an option for it, NEVER force something down users’ throats. It isn’t failure if a user falls back to an old way that does no harm, in fact it’s a win since you can please a broader audience at the same time. Facebook should learn from this!
**Check the Sleep/Wake button behavior.**
My Surface Pro 2 has this weird thing where I have no idea what’s happening. I press the sleep/wake button to wake up the device, but it stays black for like 5 seconds. So, I press back on the button because I think that it didn’t get it the first time, but now nothing happens like if it was actually waking up, but now I sent it back to sleep. Sometimes I play that wake/sleep/wake game for a good minute! Make it faster or at least light up the screen immediately to tell the user that the Surface is waking up. I had the same problem with my Dell XPS 12. Turning on and off my Surface Pro 2 is sometimes faster than getting in and out of sleep mode.
**Check for weird application behavior.**
I open the Facebook app and sometimes I will click on comments on a post to see them and the little box will just stay white. If I click on my messages to chat, they will simply not load. Closing and reopening the app doesn’t fix the problem and I have to restart the whole computer. Now I don’t care if the issue isn’t from your side (I’m sure it is since apps gets weird when coming back from sleep mode from time to time), but find a way to fix or optimize it. People will still blame you on the lacking experience, especially when the majority of consumers have a list of apps in their head and not the general greatness of your device. Your own apps are having problems too! When a webpage does not load on Metro IE always searching, but it loads in a heartbeat on Desktop Chrome, that’s an issue and your whole OS something feels unreliable.
**Explore the Xbox One/Windows 8 link.**
I want to plug my computer through the Xbox One. I could be writing this and then shout “Xbox, play Battlefield 4” and switch between my work and play in seconds. I’m sure there’s a LOT that could be done if your Windows 8 PC is plugged in the HDMI IN of the Xbox. That’s an idea to explore because it could bring some huge amazing features!
**Check your Surface Covers “reset”.**
The Type Cover 2 on my Surface Pro 2 is amazing, too bad since I loved the feel of the Touch Cover especially when I’m flipping it for tablet use. Great stuff, but why is my touchpad unresponsive sometimes… for no reason. It really breaks the magic to unclick and click back the cover.
**Fix Skype.**
…but you already know all the problems and you’re fixing it, so keep going!
**Call Windows RT, Windows Lite.**
I know you will hate that because Lite means cheaper or less… but that’s what Windows RT is. By changing the name to Windows Lite at least it will explain what the OS on your tablet is just with the name and it fits nicely too with the rest!
Windows 8 Lite
Windows 8
Windows 8 Pro
Windows 8 Enterprise
It’s super easy to say “Windows 8 Lite is the Windows you love with thousands of your favorite apps in the Windows Store”. Of course the “Lite” moniker says that’s it’s a version with less features, but you’re still WAYYY ahead of iOS in terms of function so you’re good!
**Kill the forced update restart.**
If there’s an update I want Windows to tell me, but I don’t want to be annoyed by it. Limit your alerts (that blocks the whole damn screen on top of that) to once per session and use the regular notification format too. Also, it does not make any sense for me to “Restart to update”. When you’re asking a user to restart for an update it means that he’s actually using the computer and you want him to close and stop everything for Windows to apply the update. Why do you wait to the point that it’s critical in order to offer the “Update and Shut Down” option… this is the time where you’re done with the computer and you don’t really care if it updates. And please, kill the forced update alert with the countdown sequence where I clearly say LATER (because there’s no other option) and that you take it as an “All right then, in 15 minutes in the middle of your work, close everything and update! Got it!” Whoever decided that this is a good idea should be revoked from his UX Designer license. I know that doesn’t exist, but idiotic decisions/mistakes like that calls for a big push with this idea.
## CONCLUSION
I really hate conclusions. They’re supposed to close perfectly everything you described, wrote and showed on top of it, but I don’t think that one is necessary for this research project slash design exercise. Microsoft needs a separate group of designers testing the product and getting all of the inconsistencies. That same group could also focus on advanced UX research and product development. Think of Pioneer Studios… but this time make sure that they work with Microsoft products, services and plans. You have a lot of talented people, but when I point out some simple problems in the OS like completely different looking dialog menus between the Search bar and the sorting options in the “All Apps” view and that can’t even be fixed, you have a big problem. Your competitor is charging more for a childish looking OS that can’t even run two things at the same time or even give any kind of useful information through the stretch iPod Touch interface. The day they will use all of their great Apple powers to design amazing things and not iterate to generate more cash, you need to be prepared. Consummers are getting more intelligent and more informed and they’re buying less and less Apple products. The day Apple will demonstrate their superiority again, it’s not with the current version of Windows that you’ll be convincing. iOS has all the apps so at least compensate with a flawless interface. It works for me, but I am not the majority nor the target. And of course let’s not talk about Google, they have Matias Duarte and the Android ecosystem is growing excessively fast: you’ll get in big trouble pretty soon if you don’t move your asses!
By the way… If you’re an Apple user/fan and you’re reading all of my rant and you’re saying to yourself “Whew! That’s why I use iOS and OS X”, trust me, I find those two way worse and annoying and this is why I went back to Microsoft’s world. I know where my place is now, but if I can do anything to improve my place even if it’s a single little detail, then this is all worth it. To all users always whining about Microsoft’s decisions, just think about it for a second. If they try to innovate and do things differently, you whine. When they listen to your feedback and revert the changes you say that they don’t know what they’re doing. So please, say something constructive or be quiet. It will sound funny, but the Apple forum at The Verge actually helped me a LOT. Whining gets nowhere, explaining your opinion actually does something.
I use Office, Xbox Music, Xbox Live, Skype Premium, Windows 8, a Surface Pro 2, even Azure, Windows Phone and soon getting an Xbox One on top of my 360, so I want to improve the stuff I use and help the people who’s trying to innovate. Microsoft this is all yours, please take all of it. In case the whole world hates my ideas and designs, please ignore all of this. If they do like it though, I will accept a nice big check with my name on it or you know Microsoft money… I really want to get the new Xbox One with a nice collection of digital games!
Now what will be my on-the-side project? Fixing Windows Phone? Fixing iOS? Designing Windows 9? For now it’ll be sleeping…
You can download all of the JPEGs in better quality right here.
You can also check the links on the side (or top for mobile) for my Twitter, Facebook page and YouTube channel!
Jay Machalani
UX/UI & Branding Architect
2013
Thanks to Tom Warren from The Verge, users of The Verge forums,
My friend Carl Caron for some good ideas,
The wallpaper featured is from the great Jan Thoma called "Blue Mountains". It can be found on InterfaceLIFT.
Go check out MetroTwit of an amazingly designed Classic and Modern app,
Andrew Howell from Microsoft helping me with some very useful research material
...and eventually Rami Sayar from Microsoft the day you will have 5 minutes to respond to my emails.
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Let me begin by saying that I love Windows 8. I have it on all of my computers and I find that is the best OS for productivity and awesomeness. OS X is good looking and polished, especially with the Mavericks update (A.K.A. fake leather killer), but I find that it is lacking some productivity detai
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https://invisible-island.net/vttest/
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VTTEST – VT100/VT220/XTerm test utility
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http://invisible-island.net/
Copyright © 1996-2022,2023 by Thomas E. Dickey
**Vttest** tests the compatibility (demonstrates
the non-compatibility) of so-called
“VT100-compatible” terminals. In conformance of the
good old hacker traditions, the only documentation of this
program is the source code itself. To understand it, you also
need a copy of the original VT100 manual from DEC.
Additional tests (past version 1.7) are provided for analysis of vt220 through vt520 terminals, as well as variants of xterm.
**Vttest** was written in 1983-1985 by Per
Lindberg at the Stockholm University Computing Center. The last
version was 1.7b (1985-04-19). Per Lindberg later distributed
1.7b via the Usenet mod.sources group (Volume 7, Issue 16,
September 2, 1986). It became an established part of the Unix
source archives, e.g,. as noted in
these postings from 1988.
I began this version in May 1996 (starting with 1.7b) to support changes that I am making to xterm. The program has grown from about 2400 lines to more than 18,000 lines of code. See the changelog for details.
I changed the version number to 2.0 in the initial release, in 1996, and went up to 2.7 shortly after. Since then, the patch-date is the effective version number.
Most of my visible changes are via two menu entries at the bottom of the main screen:
However, I restructured the entire program, adding screens to existing tests, and menu entries (for instance in the terminal reports). In the restructured program, it is much simpler to add menu entries, since they are built from tables rather than case statements.
On the other hand, I kept the overall indentation style of the program. There are no tab characters.
VT100's never did color.
My original motivation for working on vttest was to provide a way to test the color changes I was making for xterm. Drawing colored text is straightforward. Drawing colored backgrounds presents many choices. For instance:
None of those choices are automatically "right" or "wrong". Designers of different terminals (and emulators) have chosen to implement color in different ways.
For xterm, I chose to match the Linux console behavior. That was a starting point. But (see below) I continued past this point, implementing features from VT220 and later, including controls (DECSCA) that can protect against erasure.
The particular erasure choices used in xterm and Linux console are modeled in ncurses as the back color erase (bce) feature. Early on, we (I and Alexander V. Lukyanov) found that the bce feature was nowhere defined precisely, and settled on the current behavior. Other terminals (such as rxvt) do not exactly match this set of choices, so controls which differ are not in the corresponding terminal description.
I added screens to vttest to illustrate the bce behavior, helping to ensure consistency.
For instance, this was once of the earlier screens I wrote to demonstrate and test erases against the bce color model:
Before Erase After Erase
The terminal also has to fill color properly for double-sized characters. Here are examples with and without font support for double-sized characters:
Using scaled fonts Without scaled fonts
Even Linux console has had occasional issues, where it is inconsistent, e.g., a blunder in 2008 as reported on the Linux kernel mailing list here by Alexander V. Lukyanov. The problem was introduced here, and broke the bce feature of Linux console for several months. Vttest might have been useful in that case.
Double-sized characters required some work on xterm. Initially, it only drew normal sized characters with spaces in between (and there were a few issues to resolve). Xterm now draws double-sized characters using scaled fonts (a feature introduced by XFree86). Here is an example from the VT100 tests:
After I had been working on vttest for a while, I realized that xterm had features (other than the obvious case of function keys) that were not found in a VT100. These control sequences switch to a different character set for just one character (a single shift) or until undone (locking shifts). The VT100 line-drawing characters are a special case of the latter.
The set of single- and locking-shifts are features of the more advanced VT220 terminal. Seeing that, and understanding that it would allow xterm to be more useful to people around the world, I decided to fill in the missing pieces to make a workable VT220 emulator. Years later, of course, UTF-8 became a more valued feature. But I use different programs than vttest for testing xterm's UTF-8 support.
Some of the features (in particular the character sets) are visible only when the terminal identifies itself as a VT220 or above. For instance, the top-level menu "Test of character sets" shows only the VT100 character sets for VT100s:
But for VT220s (e.g., xterm with the command line option
"`-ti 220`
"), vttest shows a menu, with the VT100
character sets as an option:
VT220s provide something like ISO-2022 support for several European encodings. Here is an example using the locking shifts, showing French and Italian:
Incidentally, the VT220 and up can be switched into a mode where they identify themselves as lower-level models (analogous to the VT100/VT52 switching). You can do this in vttest using menu 12:
The Linux console used to recognize 8-bit controls. I gave
advice to Albert Cahalan (see links), who used vttest to identify and
repair most issues. However, later work to change the console
driver to support UTF-8 broke that, though comments in the code
still claimed that the feature was supported. Early in 2006, I
submitted changes which were applied to the
*console_codes* manpage, including the BUGS
section. This paragraph is pertinent:
Some older kernel versions (after 2.0) interpret 8-bit control sequences. These "C1 controls" use codes between 128 and 159 to replace ESC [, ESC ] and similar two-byte control sequence initiators. There are fragments of that in modern kernels (either overlooked or broken by changes to support UTF-8), but the implementation is incom- plete and should be regarded as unreliable.
DEC's terminals were all upward-compatible:
Each model also provides more *new* features than the
total in its predecessor. Not all features are useful for a
terminal emulation (such as the dual-session feature of VT420). I
have implemented tests for the features which either are in
xterm, or are simple extensions (such as the variations on status
responses).
Vttest organizes these according to the terminal type.
Features found in ISO 6429 but not in a particular DEC terminal
are via separate menu choices from XTERM and the VT*xxx*
flavors:
Early on, I found that ECH (erase character) is a VT220 feature rather than VT102. It is perhaps the most commonly implemented extension of “VT100 emulators”.
As it is implemented in rxvt (unlike xterm and Linux console) it does not behave the same with regard to color as ED (erase display). After some discussion, it was determined that
For example, I recall using more than one terminal emulator with “VT340” and color, for instance TNVTPlus (developed by FTP Software, Inc.). That, by the way, differed from xterm regarding the way color was set when scrolling in "blank lines". There are as noted several choices, and none are blessed by an official standard. Vttest demonstrates the set of choices used in xterm and Linux console.
Xterm implements several features from models past VT220. One of the more interesting is the ability to work with rectangles on the screen (from VT420). That is (both in vttest and xterm) only provided when the terminal identifies itself as (at least) a VT420:
As a VT100 As a VT420
Given the proper configuration, vttest shows rectangles. As an extension, xterm supports color:
Monochrome Color (XTerm)
ISO 6429 has several features (including scrolling not implemented by DEC terminals). The most useful set of tests is the color menu:
The window modify- and report-operations attributed to
**dtterm** (because that was the only extant usage
in 1996) had appeared in the X10 "6.6b" version xterm. Like its
successors through X11R6, there is no changelog, so it was not
possible to determine when/where the features originated. But
they predate **dtterm**. Some additional information
is given in *XTerm Control
Sequences*.
The original distribution of vttest used licensing terms which were problematic ("noncommercial"), e.g., for the Debian packagers:
This software is (c) 1984 by QZ Non-commercial use and copying allowed. If you are developing a commercial product, and use this program to do it, and that product is successful, please send a sum of money of your choice to the address below.
I contacted Per Lindberg in 2007, and suggested that it be changed to a BSD license. He agreed. My changes have always been compatible with that.
Here are additional screenshots.
There are numerous references on the net to
**vttest**. Here are a few of the more interesting
ones:
Usually vttest is a separate package. However OpenSuSE bundles vttest within the xterm package.
FreeBSD (likewise NetBSD, OpenBSD) had a source (and typically installed vttest) as part of PCVT. The PCVT console driver is not much used now, but (like xterm of the same era) aimed at good VT220 emulation. Here is a place to read about it.
Since 2005 (see also manned.org), vttest has been provided as a port (not part of the base system).
Recently (at least since 2009), FreeBSD has been revising the SYSCONS console driver (the "TEKEN_XTERM" feature seen here). As noted here, vttest has been useful in this development.
rxvt used to have a bundled copy of 1.7b (see changes.txt).
Mark Olesen dropped it from rxvt in his final release 2.18
(announced August 2, 1996) to reflect my work on vttest.
However, its presence in rxvt's source (combined with my
having sent Mark a patch in April 1996 to improve rxvt's
handling of SGR 39/49 default colors) was what led me to
start adding the color-related tests to vttest.
KDE konsole used to have a copy of 1.7b, which I noticed in 1.0.2 (2001) when responding to a bug report where konsole had incorrectly implemented xterm's SGR 1049 (no cursor save/restore was done). Ultimately it turned out that the bug had been fixed, but was poorly communicated since the corresponding upstream bug report was not cited in Debian's update ("fix konsole" can cover a lot of territory), nor was there any changelog note in KDE describing the change.
Vttest comprised most of the files in the "tests" subdirectory. It was removed in 2009, according to the commit comment due to "license issues/age" (and is not mentioned in its changelog).
Konsole's copy had been modified, of course, to work with POSIX termio, although it was done inline (rather than moving the repeated ioctl's to a separate function). Seeing that vttest was apparently being used made it puzzling that at the time Konsole used a nonstandard response for its terminal identifier (the primary device attributes):
if (getMode(MODE_Ansi)) // sendString("\033[?1;2c"); // I'm a VT100 with AP0 //FIXME: send only in response to ^[[0c sendString("\033[>0;115;0c"); // I'm a VT220 //FIXME: send only in response to ^[[>c else sendString("\033/Z"); // I'm a VT52
That is, it was returning xterm's *secondary*
response. The “115” was xterm's patch level in
late 1999.
However, that was partially corrected around the same time as
the bug report— mentioned above. The string is (as of
December 2011) returned as the response to the secondary
device attributes control.
The comment “`I'm a VT52`” should be
“`VT100 emulating VT52`” (real VT52s
respond differently).
old source on Aminet, from 1987
older source, from 1983
broken console fails vttest (Albert D Cahalan, 20 Jan 1999)
Terminal.app is
not your grandfather's VT100 terminal (Tao of Mac).
This is an example of how vttest is used to validate the
correctness of a terminal.
By the way, the comment "passes more suites" refers to an earlier source (apparently not available) whose writer was confused about xterm's support for double-sized characters, stating that Terminal.app did this while xterm did not. Xterm's done this since 1998. Since Terminal.app is an OS X application, it cannot be older than 2002.
The existing article (from 2005) goes on to comment that Terminal.app does not handle mouse location reporting. That gives a clue: As of 2014, Terminal.app as a rule does not handle the VT220 and higher-level control sequences which comprise the bulk of the screens in vttest. It is not xterm. Perhaps its developers intended it to compete with dtterm, which it more closely resembled at that point in time.
The *System Under Test* page
only skims the surface of testing a terminal.
tack is an interactive tool like vttest, used for testing terminal descriptions. A terminal description provides details about the most commonly used features (which applications and libraries such as ncurses may use portably).
When I test a terminal description, I rely on vttest and tack and make notes on the problems found (see terminfo.src for examples)
The ncurses-examples (whether separate or bundled with ncurses) indirectly test terminal features, due to their reliance upon the line-drawing and character encoding support of the terminal.
XTerm's sources include several scripts which demonstrate features that generally are outside the scope of vttest e.g., because they are specific to xterm rather than DEC terminals (see snapshot).
I have more than two thousand scripts, aside from those which are bundled with one of the programs I develop. Some of these scripts provide more in-depth testing of terminal capabilities. If a given script provides the only test for a feature, I generally move it into the collection bundled with xterm.
These are tools which others have developed:
`wraptest`
*– DEC VT terminal line-wrapping semantics*
(Mattias Engdegård).
Beyond its immediate usefulness, Engdegård pointed out a useful document which provides details on similar obscure features of DEC's terminals:
DEC STD 070 Video Systems Reference Manual(EL-SM070-00, December 1991).
`esctest`
*– Automatic unit tests for terminal emulation*
(George Nachman, *original
site*).
While vttest uses query/response control sequences to determine if the responses are valid, it relies upon (a knowledgeable) user to inspect test screens. Rather than inspect each test screen, this set of scripts uses the VT420 DECRCRA control sequence to infer the contents of the screen at different points. It cannot test interactive features, and there are large areas (such as NRCS, C1, UTF-8) which are not yet covered (writing in August 2019), but within its intended scope is useful for regression testing.
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vttest tests the functionality of a VT100/VT220/VT420 terminal (or emulator, in particular xterm) with menus and demo screens
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https://blog.hackster.io/a-decentralized-approach-to-building-an-iot-network-cd7f40a8fe2
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A Decentralized Approach to Building an IoT Network
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# A Decentralized Approach to Building an IoT Network
## You may not be aware, but there’s a race going on to shape our future.
You may not be aware, but there’s a race going on to shape our future.
To control how we interact with our environment in new ways that could make us safer, smarter, and more productive.
Not satisfied with controlling access to our phones and computers, the telco giants want to dominate connectivity for billions of devices and control data collected from our interactions with the everyday world.
We lost the race for phones and computers to the telcos, and now they’re coming for control of everything else.
**Centralized vs. Decentralized IoT Network**
So what’s the alternative? If you want to build a wireless network optimized for long range and extended battery life for devices on the network, how would you do it?
Fundamentally there are two approaches: centralized vs. decentralized.
The **centralized approach** requires deploying infrastructure: either passing the costs/burdens without adding anything in return onto customers or attempting to become a mini-telco. For those who don’t feel customers should worry about deploying, maintaining, and having to support wireless infrastructure then the remaining choice is to become a mini-telco. The problem: it will take a ** long time to build** and place towers and will
**. Not only for initial implementation, but also for operations, maintenance, and support. But even if ‘successful’ what have you really accomplished? You’ve become a mini-telco and at that point are you really better than an actual telco?**
*require huge amounts of upfront capital*A **decentralized approach** would involve flipping the existing model on its head similar to how Airbnb became the largest accommodations provider without owning hotels. Airbnb built a community of hosts that provide spaces, and guests who rent the spaces.
For a decentralized wireless network, a two-sided market with a community of builders who provide wireless services on the supply side, and users of the network on the demand side, ** prevents past mistakes of telcos** and
**.**
*ensures community ownership of the network*However, in this new approach *how would you motivate builders to participate in laying the foundation for wireless infrastructure*?
In other words, what’s in it for them?
**Solving the Cold Start Problem**
In a decentralized wireless network, solving the cold start problem needs to be addressed with well-designed hardware and powerful incentives.
In addition to the design, the hardware (let’s call it a hotspot) needs to consume minimal amounts of power, and be simple to set up.
The incentives need to be designed in a way that grows the supply side of the market independent of the actions of the demand side. In other words, builders of the network should receive rewards both for contributing to the network AND usage activity on the network.
If builders were only rewarded when a device connected to the internet through a hotspot the cold start problem would persist.
Users will only start to seriously look at the network once there was sufficient coverage (e.g., how willing would you be to purchase a cellphone knowing coverage would be based on the number of cellphones sold?). From a builder’s perspective, if their only reward is based on fees collected from devices then they’ll hold off deploying a hotspot until there’s lots of devices built for the network.
So how to reward builders independent of usage just for providing wireless coverage in a way that is automated without any centralized authority?
**Blockchain in the Real World**
Using blockchain would allow you to create an incentive system to reward builders in two ways: first, by providing wireless coverage the builder could **earn mining rewards**; and second any time an **IoT device connects to a hotspot** to transfer data to the internet the builder also earns.
Blockchains are far from perfect and after 10 years as usage and value has grown limitations have emerged including the formation of mining pools, the amount of power needed for consensus and proof of work protocols, and the censoring of transactions.
To avoid replicating these mistakes you’d need new protocols that could contribute useful “work” to the network, were energy efficient, prevented censoring of transactions, and could scale to handle a high volume of microtransactions.
By building new protocols you could use blockchain as the underlying technology for the reward system to ensure the network was truly decentralized, owned and operated by the builder community and ultimately avoid the past mistakes of telcos.
**Open Source**
Besides correctly incentivizing all participants to act in the **best interests of the network, **for a community-owned, decentralized network to be successful it needs to run on **truly open protocols and hardware**. The infrastructure — from the wireless modulation scheme to cloud routing — has to be open for enterprises to trust the network and the motivations of the operators. Proprietary technologies will only further fragment the infrastructure, cause more complexity, and ultimately negatively impact progress.
**The Race Isn’t Lost. Yet.**
Helium is taking a decentralized approach to building a new kind of wireless network: truly open, private, and community owned.
This community-built and owned network will deliver ubiquitous and affordable wireless coverage that lets us interact with our world in ways never before possible.
A new class of devices and applications built on this network will emerge with the potential to solve an unlimited number of problems including protecting communities from wildfires, finding lost pets miles from home, or identifying food or water sources instantly.
We lost the race for phones and computers, but the stakes are even bigger for everything else.
**And we can win.**
Join the race and contribute to something bigger.
To learn more about our decentralized approach towards networking, including how to become a builder, visit here.
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You may not be aware, but there’s a race going on to shape our future.
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2019-03-18 00:00:00
|
article
|
hackster.io
|
Hackster.io
| null | null |
|
19,713,948 |
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/04/17/techs-new-stars-have-it-all-except-a-path-to-high-profits
|
Tech’s new stars have it all—except a path to high profits
| null |
# Tech’s new stars have it all—except a path to high profits
## Millions of users, cool brands and charismatic bosses are not enough
INVESTORS OFTEN describe the world of business in terms of animals, such as bears, bulls, hawks, doves and dogs. Right now, mere ponies are being presented as unicorns: privately held tech firms worth over $1bn that are supposedly strong and world-beating—miraculous almost. Next month Uber will raise some $10bn in what may turn out to be this year’s biggest initial public offering (IPO). It will be America’s third-biggest-ever tech IPO, after Alibaba and Facebook. Airbnb and WeWork could follow Lyft, which has already floated, and Pinterest, which was set to do so as *The Economist* went to press. In China, an IPO wave that began last year rumbles on. Thanks to fashionable products and armies of users, these firms have a total valuation in the hundreds of billions of dollars. They and their venture-capital (VC) backers are rushing to sell shares at high prices to mutual funds and pension schemes run for ordinary people. There is, however, a problem with the unicorns: their business models.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “The trouble with tech unicorns”
## Discover more
### The front line of the tech war is in Asia
The two superpowers are vying for influence. China will not necessarily win
### How high could the oil price go?
Geopolitical risk is rising. But so is the supply of oil
### The Trumpification of American policy
No matter who wins in November, Donald Trump has redefined both parties’ agendas
### How Florida should respond to Hurricane Milton
Storms like it raise uncomfortable questions about the state’s future
### Britain should not hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius
Once again, the Chagossians have been denied a say
### A map of a fruit fly’s brain could help us understand our own
A miracle of complexity, powered by rotting fruit
| true | true | true |
Millions of users, cool brands and charismatic bosses are not enough
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2019-04-17 00:00:00
|
Article
|
economist.com
|
The Economist
| null | null |
|
15,880,159 |
http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/info.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
11,238,413 |
https://medium.com/@housecor/in-defense-of-javascript-classes-e50bf2270a95#.8r5zwvfqb
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
5,791,517 |
http://www.inc.com/steve-blank/guns-and-cyber-safety.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
24,674,047 |
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/phineas-gage-neurosciences-most-famous-patient-11390067/
|
Phineas Gage: Neuroscience's Most Famous Patient
|
Smithsonian Magazine; Steve Twomey
|
# Phineas Gage: Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient
An accident with a tamping iron made Phineas Gage history’s most famous brain-injury survivor
Jack and Beverly Wilgus, collectors of vintage photographs, no longer recall how they came by the 19th-century daguerreotype of a disfigured yet still-handsome man. It was at least 30 years ago. The photograph offered no clues as to where or precisely when it had been taken, who the man was or why he was holding a tapered rod. But the Wilguses speculated that the rod might be a harpoon, and the man’s closed eye and scarred brow the result of an encounter with a whale.
So over the years, as the picture rested in a display case in the couple’s Baltimore home, they thought of the man in the daguerreotype as the battered whaler.
In December 2007, Beverly posted a scan of the image on Flickr, the photo-sharing Web site, and titled it “One-Eyed Man with Harpoon.” Soon, a whaling enthusiast e-mailed her a dissent: that is no harpoon, which suggested that the man was no whaler. Months later, another correspondent told her that the man might be Phineas Gage and, if so, this would be the first known image of him.
Beverly, who had never heard of Gage, went online and found an astonishing tale.
In 1848, Gage, 25, was the foreman of a crew cutting a railroad bed in Cavendish, Vermont. On September 13, as he was using a tamping iron to pack explosive powder into a hole, the powder detonated. The tamping iron—43 inches long, 1.25 inches in diameter and weighing 13.25 pounds—shot skyward, penetrated Gage’s left cheek, ripped into his brain and exited through his skull, landing several dozen feet away. Though blinded in his left eye, he might not even have lost consciousness, and he remained savvy enough to tell a doctor that day, “Here is business enough for you.”
Gage’s initial survival would have ensured him a measure of celebrity, but his name was etched into history by observations made by John Martyn Harlow, the doctor who treated him for a few months afterward. Gage’s friends found him“no longer Gage,” Harlow wrote. The balance between his “intellectual faculties and animal propensities” seemed gone. He could not stick to plans, uttered “the grossest profanity” and showed “little deference for his fellows.” The railroad-construction company that employed him, which had thought him a model foreman, refused to take him back. So Gage went to work at a stable in New Hampshire, drove coaches in Chile and eventually joined relatives in San Francisco, where he died in May 1860, at age 36, after a series of seizures.
In time, Gage became the most famous patient in the annals of neuroscience, because his case was the first to suggest a link between brain trauma and personality change. In his book *An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage*, the University of Melbourne’s Malcolm Macmillan writes that two-thirds of introductory psychology textbooks mention Gage. Even today, his skull, the tamping iron and a mask of his face made while he was alive are the most sought-out items at the Warren Anatomical Museum on the Harvard Medical School campus.
Michael Spurlock, a database administrator in Missoula, Montana, happened upon the Wilgus daguerreotype on Flickr in December 2008. As soon as he saw the object the one-eyed man held, Spurlock knew it was not a harpoon. Too short. No wooden shaft. It looked more like a tamping iron, he thought. Instantly, a name popped into his head: Phineas Gage. Spurlock knew the Gage story well enough to know that any photograph of him would be the first to come to light. He knew enough, too, to be intrigued by Gage’s appearance, if it was Gage. Over the years, accounts of his changed character had gone far beyond Harlow’s observations, Macmillan says, turning him into an ill-tempered, shiftless drunk. But the man in the Flickr photogragh seemed well-dressed and confident.
It was Spurlock who told the Wilguses that the man in their daguerreotype might be Gage. After Beverly finished her online research, she and Jack concluded that the man probably was. She e-mailed a scan of the photograph to the Warren museum. Eventually it reached Jack Eckert, the public-services librarian at Harvard’s Center for the History of Medicine. “Such a ‘wow’ moment,” Eckert recalls. It had to be Gage, he determined. How many mid-19th-century men with a mangled eye and scarred forehead had their portrait taken holding a metal tool? A tool with an inscription on it?
The Wilguses had never noticed the inscription; after all, the daguerreotype measures only 2.75 inches by 3.25 inches. But a few days after receiving Spurlock’s tip, Jack, a retired photography professor, was focusing a camera to take a picture of his photograph. “There’s writing on that rod!” Jack said. He couldn’t read it all, but part of it seemed to say, “through the head of Mr. Phi...”
In March 2009, Jack and Beverly went to Harvard to compare their picture with Gage’s mask and the tamping iron, which had been inscribed in Gage’s lifetime: “This is the bar that was shot through the head of Mr. Phinehas P. Gage,” it reads, misspelling the name.
Harvard has not officially declared that the daguerreotype is of Gage, but Macmillan, whom the Wilguses contacted next, is quite certain. He has also learned of another photograph, he says, kept by a descendant of Gage’s.
As for Spurlock, when he got word that his hunch was apparently correct, “I threw open the hallway door and told my wife, ‘I played a part in a historical discovery!’ ”
**Steve Twomey** is based in New Jersey. He wrote about map and document thieves for the April 2008 issue of *Smithsonian*.
| true | true | true |
An accident with a tamping iron made Phineas Gage history's most famous brain-injury survivor
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2010-01-01 00:00:00
|
article
|
smithsonianmag.com
|
Smithsonian Magazine
| null | null |
|
14,883,784 |
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PHP-7.2-Beta-1
|
Benchmarks Of PHP 7.2 Beta: PHP Is Still Getting Faster
|
Michael Larabel
|
# Benchmarks Of PHP 7.2 Beta: PHP Is Still Getting Faster
PHP 7.2 Beta 1 was released yesterday as the next step towards this next refinement to PHP7 that is expected to be officially released in November. I couldn't help but to run some initial benchmarks.
PHP 7.2 Beta 1 presents the Sodium extension for modern and easy-to-use cryptography, opcache improvements, better JSON decoding of invalid UTF-8 data, and many bug fixes among other improvements since PHP 7.1. The latest release and more details can be found via PHP.net.
I've been testing out PHP 7.2 Beta 1 and haven't encountered any regressions yet with my codes. I also couldn't help but to run some performance benchmarks of PHP 7.2 Beta 1 compared to previous releases. PHP 7.2 Beta 1's performance was compared to PHP 7.1.7, 7.0.21, and 5.6.31.
There's obviously the biggest boost in performance for PHPBench when going from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.0... That shouldn't surprise any one. But it was also exciting to see the performance boost with PHP 7.2 Beta 1 and was a bit unexpected. PHP 7.2 is currently running around 13% faster with PHPBench over PHP 7.1, or 20% over PHP 7.0. Or PHP 7.2 compared to PHP 5.6 is a 2.6x difference.
With the Phoronix Test Suite's own self-test, PHP 7.2 shows it's getting faster too. Using PHP 7.2 Beta 1 trimmed off the test time by 4 seconds albeit still a fraction of the savings compared to the PHP 5.6 to 7.0 transition.
The render test of generating SVG graphs with lots of PHP math, DOM object usage, and more, is slightly faster on PHP 7.2.
PHP 7 continues moving in the right direction. Overall, PHP 7.2 is looking bright for release later this year as besides these modest performance boosts is the Sodium extension and other improvements.
PHP 7.2 Beta 1 presents the Sodium extension for modern and easy-to-use cryptography, opcache improvements, better JSON decoding of invalid UTF-8 data, and many bug fixes among other improvements since PHP 7.1. The latest release and more details can be found via PHP.net.
I've been testing out PHP 7.2 Beta 1 and haven't encountered any regressions yet with my codes. I also couldn't help but to run some performance benchmarks of PHP 7.2 Beta 1 compared to previous releases. PHP 7.2 Beta 1's performance was compared to PHP 7.1.7, 7.0.21, and 5.6.31.
There's obviously the biggest boost in performance for PHPBench when going from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.0... That shouldn't surprise any one. But it was also exciting to see the performance boost with PHP 7.2 Beta 1 and was a bit unexpected. PHP 7.2 is currently running around 13% faster with PHPBench over PHP 7.1, or 20% over PHP 7.0. Or PHP 7.2 compared to PHP 5.6 is a 2.6x difference.
With the Phoronix Test Suite's own self-test, PHP 7.2 shows it's getting faster too. Using PHP 7.2 Beta 1 trimmed off the test time by 4 seconds albeit still a fraction of the savings compared to the PHP 5.6 to 7.0 transition.
The render test of generating SVG graphs with lots of PHP math, DOM object usage, and more, is slightly faster on PHP 7.2.
PHP 7 continues moving in the right direction. Overall, PHP 7.2 is looking bright for release later this year as besides these modest performance boosts is the Sodium extension and other improvements.
2 Comments
| true | true | true |
PHP 7.2 Beta 1 was released yesterday as the next step towards this next refinement to PHP7 that is expected to be officially released in November
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2017-07-22 00:00:00
| null | null | null |
Phoronix
| null | null |
4,302,984 |
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48351050/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
9,604,643 |
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/android-auto-first-great-car-infotainment-system/
|
Android Auto: The First Great In-Car Infotainment System
|
Alex Davies
|
Alex: Find me banh mi.
Car: No results for "bon me."
Alex: Find me Vietnamese sandwiches.
Car: Here's the nearest Vietnamese sandwich shop.
Alex (ten minutes later, pork banh mi and root beer in hand): Take me to Ocean Beach.
Car: Navigating to Ocean Beach.
And that's how Android Auto, Google's infotainment interface that can be installed in just about any new car, led me to the western edge of San Francisco, where I ate my sandwich, drank my soda, and watched the waves.
Today, Hyundai became the first automaker to put cars with Android Auto on dealer lots, starting with the 2015 Sonata sedan. The Korean brand is offering the system free of charge to anyone who opts for the navigation system, part of a $4,100 "tech package." (The Sonata starts at $23,275.)
I just spent a long weekend with the Sonata, putting Android Auto in charge of taking me around San Francisco and handling my texts and phone calls. Minus a few hiccups, it did an excellent job.
What's impressive about Google's system isn't that it looked up nearby sandwich shops and found a geographic landmark---those aren't heavy lifts. What matters is that it handled them so much more easily than any automaker-provided system I've tested. It is remarkable for its simplicity and flexibility. It's easy to use. It works.
That's more than I can say about the vast majority of infotainment systems, made by car companies, on the market today. By and large, they stink. They are the source of more customer complaints than any other part of the car, according to JD Power. Consumer Reports loves nothing better than eviscerating automakers for crappy systems. It even revoked "recommended" status from the otherwise top-notch Honda Accord, based on the poor quality of the infotainment system.
Voice recognition is a collective disaster. (Noted, cars are terrible environments for sound.) I once asked a Cadillac ATS for navigation to Boston's Logan airport. The radio tuned to Hair Nation XM. A BMW 7-Series tried sending me from JFK airport to *Normandy, Missouri* instead of Pelham, New York. A Lexus pulled up the correct street, but in Southern California instead of San Francisco.
This spectacular failure has created an easy opportunity for Google and Apple---masters of the mobile screen interface---to step into the void and extend their influence on our lives into our cars. In March 2014, Apple announced CarPlay, which turns a car's center screen into an iOS device, with maps, messaging, music, and more. Google followed in June of that year with Android Auto, which offers the same thing, using Android.
Every major automaker has signed up to offer one or both, because none of them are dumb enough to refuse customers something they want. IHS predicts Android Auto and Apple CarPlay will be in 1.5 million cars by the end of 2015. By 2020, that number will jump to 68 million. Right now, the infotainment space is worth more than $31 billion.
It's easy to set up: Just plug your phone into the car's USB port (you’ll need a handset running Android 5.0 Lollipop) and select Android Auto on the eight-inch center screen. Voila: You're in a new infotainment universe that works just like your phone, which means there's no need to learn a new system or set up your contacts and favorite locations on yet another device.
The system is well designed for use in a car. The menus are stripped down to what you need and what seems safest while driving: Music and navigation on the screen, calls and texts through voice recognition. The buttons are big, making them easy to hit and minimizing the time your eyes are off the road.
Google Now's card system, which delivers timely notifications and suggests navigation destinations based on your history and calendar, makes a ton of sense in the car. Combined, my house and my office make up more than 50 percent of my destinations, so I like having those immediately pop up as suggestions.
Finding new places is a breeze, too. With most automaker systems, searching for a type of restaurant or store is a pain. You may get lucky and find something you want under Points of Interest, but most of the time you need a street address. And you need to enter that address in full, running through the state, city, street, and house number.
In the Hyundai with Google, I easily found coffee and butcher shops, along with satisfying my banh mi craving. The voice system lets you enter cities, without a full address, as a destination, and it can handle intersections ("Take me to 27th Street and Church Street" worked, though "Take me to 27th and Church" didn't).
It won't let you scroll through your contact list---that steals too much attention away from driving---but the system does a good job pulling up names from voice commands, and will make sure to specify if you want to call someone's work number or cell phone. Its solid transcription job is only lacking when it comes to punctuation, capitalization, and singing in a funny voice. When you receive a text, it reads the message aloud. Pronunciation isn't perfect, but it handled "fghgdrhnkifdcjirdf" surprisingly well.
It's buggy. For the first hour of driving, my contacts list wouldn't work. The next day, it clicked in and didn't cause any problems for the rest of the weekend. Most of the time, when I started the car, the sound from Android Auto wouldn't work---no voice responses, and nothing from I Heart Radio or NPR One (the car's regular radio worked). Unplugging the phone and plugging it back in solved the problem, an annoying but simple solution.
As of now, Android Auto colonizes the center screen and the speech button on the steering wheel. I'd like to see it more closely integrated with the car's hardware, getting into the dashboard and a head up display (which the Sonata doesn't offer). This criticism boils down to, give me more.
What's best about Android Auto is how easy it is to use. Part of that is my familiarity with Google (I have an Android, and also know what the Internet is), but more of it is smart, to-the-point design. The limited options are just enough to perform necessary tasks, and the quality of the voice recognition means you spend less time barking orders and more time having them followed.
That is a BFD. In the car, ease of use is about more than delivering a nice user experience. It's about reducing distraction, a life and death issue. Smartphones and cars are a terrible mix, but we're not giving up either anytime soon. At least not until self-driving cars arrive, or we go through whatever killed the world in *Mad Max*.
I haven't tried out Apple CarPlay yet, but if it's as good as Android Auto, I'm disappointed IHS isn't predicting an even higher adoption rate. The more of these systems on the road, the better.
| true | true | true |
Android Auto, now available from Hyundai, is remarkable for its simplicity and flexibility.
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2015-05-26 00:00:00
|
article
|
wired.com
|
WIRED
| null | null |
|
26,081,304 |
https://applieddivinitystudies.com/correlated-returns/
|
Correlated Returns are Insufficient for True Alignment
|
John Doe
| null | true | true | false |
When people talk about incentive alignment, what they really mean is correlated returns. Consider equity as a solution principal-agent problems. Since founders and employees are both paid as a percent
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2020-11-20 00:00:00
|
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/IuLwQmsMceCLRT63Q6myNoGTUrTdPha-3mHx2RxMWN5IMjBTzczzOTxFy3D_29J6EESiyLN0mKSBOGIv6R85Cv17GPvdcT3Kcf0OTBuqGJPHNvALdIH5iGtuLAgwMaESNkrXkhWL
|
article
|
applieddivinitystudies.com
|
Applied Divinity Studies
| null | null |
12,312,397 |
http://community.warewolf.io/
|
Community / Warewolf
| null |
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| true | true | true |
Warewolf community forum. Get community support, log a bug, request features, share your ideas and help others in the community - everything you need in one place
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2024-09-26 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null | null | null |
18,116,373 |
https://github.com/pharzan/django_sms_login
|
GitHub - pharzan/django_sms_login: An API based Django login, logout and authentication with no password
|
Pharzan
|
This repository is an implementation of an API used to generate a four digit which can be sent to the user via SMS for authentication. It doesn't use the restAPI framework but the endpoints are handled in the Django sms_login app view.
The API has four endpoints:
`api/login/create`
`api/login/verify`
`api/login/auth`
`api/login/unauth`
The `api/login/create`
receives POST request with a phone number and if the number doesn't exist in the users table,
it is inserted.
A random four digit code is generated and stored in the database.The payload should look like:
```
{
"phone_number":"09123456789"
}
```
A POST request with the phone number and the verification code should be sent to the `api/login/verify`
endpoint to receive
an authorization token. The payload for this endpoint looks something like:
```
{
"verification_code":"1081",
"phone_number":"09123456789"
}
```
And the response includes the token:
```
{
"status": 200,
"verified": true,
"token": "1651b34546b9d9e95394b5f07dd2ef8a2e66f671dee7d7e956067a1148bcc8c2"
}
```
By navigating to the `api/login/auth`
(making a GET request) with the token in the header the user can be logged in
as the newly created user.
For the above example the header sholud include the token as so:
`TOKEN:1651b34546b9d9e95394b5f07dd2ef8a2e66f671dee7d7e956067a1148bcc8c2`
Logging out is done by navigating to the `api/login/unauth`
endpoint.
| true | true | true |
An API based Django login, logout and authentication with no password - pharzan/django_sms_login
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
|
2018-09-29 00:00:00
|
https://opengraph.githubassets.com/5e4fe34e96fc5392a2be7af6c0bbcf2f6f0ebf6f3a5ad663c4428636d0175efa/pharzan/django_sms_login
|
object
|
github.com
|
GitHub
| null | null |
15,538,656 |
http://www.virtualspecies.com/2017/10/html-code-decoder.html
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
15,913,645 |
http://www.venturi-group.com/podcast/working-in-software/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
29,897,067 |
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/how-to-get-star-fox-64-ships-into-ocarina-of-time-no-hacking-required/
|
This amazing glitch puts Star Fox 64 ships in an unmodified Zelda cartridge
|
Kyle Orland
|
In my years writing about games for Ars, I've covered my fair share of surprising glitches, long-secret codes, arbitrary code execution tricks, and deeply hidden content buried within some classic games and hardware. But none of that prepared me for the above Twitch video clip I saw this morning, showing a fleet of flying Arwings from *Star Fox 64* invading the world of *Ocarina of Time* to attack Link.
It's the kind of scene you'd expect to see only in a fan-made animation or in a ROM hack of the type Nintendo is so fond of taking down from the Internet. But what made this clip truly impressive was the fact that it was apparently running on an unmodified version of the original Japanese *Ocarina of Time* ROM, using standard N64 hardware and control accessories.
I spent all morning tracking down how such a thing was even possible. Explaining it involves a deep dive into the nature of Nintendo 64 machine language instructions, *Ocarina of Time* memory management, and the mid-'90s development of the game itself. If you're as curious about all this as I was, come and take a journey with me.
## Stale references and fresh code
The key glitch to this amazing run dates back to last October, when a runner named Glitches0and0stuff used emulators and careful examination of Nintendo 64 memory locations to discover a method for stale-reference manipulation in *Ocarina of Time*.
Basically, the glitch involves picking up an item and then tricking the game into unloading it right from Link's hands when he crosses a loading threshold (say, for a new room). At this point, the game frees up the memory location for that held object so it can be used by other in-game objects as they're loaded. But the game also still thinks Link is holding *something* in his hands, so it continues to update that "stale reference" pointer in the newly freed memory with data representing the nonexistent object's position and angle. With some careful manipulation, this pointer can now be used to "corrupt" the data for a newly loaded object with arbitrary values.
| true | true | true |
“Stale-reference manipulation,” 300-character file names, and a clash between worlds.
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2020-01-24 00:00:00
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article
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arstechnica.com
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Ars Technica
| null | null |
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23,387,175 |
https://www.nateliason.com/blog/smart-notes
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How to Take Smart Notes: A Step-by-Step Guide - Nat Eliason
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Nat Eliason
|
How to Take Smart Notes is a book by Sonke Ahrens explaining the "Zettlekasten" methodology developed by Niklas Luhmann, a 20th century Sociologist who published a prodigious amount of work: 70 books and more than 400 articles before his death.
According to interviews with Luhmann, work was "effortless" for him because of the system he'd developed for taking, and utilizing notes on everything he'd read and thought. Many writers and researchers have attempted to describe how other people can replicate this system themselves, but according to Sonke, they miss the mark.
How to Take Smart Notes aims to provide the most accurate presentation of the "Zettlekasten" system Luhmann developed, and regardless of the accuracy, it is a phenomenal system for getting more out of what you read.
The core idea of Smart Notes is that purely extracting highlights is generally a waste of time. A highlight speaks to you when you take it, but if you don't capture the idea that the highlight gave you, you're unlikely to remember the importance of that highlight later. Or even if you do feel some spark when revisiting the highlight, it might be a different interpretation.
If you've ever looked back at your book highlights and thought to yourself, "why did I highlight this?" then you know what problem we're solving here. And if you don't already take book highlights, even better! You're going to dramatically level up your reading comprehension and retention.
Instead of simply highlighting passages, the Smart Notes system encourages you to manually create notes of the ideas you get as you read.
*...the mere copying of quotes almost always changes their meaning by stripping them out of context, even though the words aren't changed. This is a common beginner mistake, which can only lead to a patchwork of ideas, but never a coherent thought.* (Page 75)
You want to create notes that are relevant to contexts important to you, not just related to the book you read.
Since reading How to Take Smart Notes I've been adopting the Zettlekasten method in my own reading, and I can see how it's improving on an already strong note-taking process. By adding my own contextual notes to my highlights, and taking time after finishing a book to process and better organize those notes, I'm able to generate more ideas as I read and put those ideas to better use.
Here I'll share how I'm applying the Smart Notes system in my own work, through my interpretation and adaptation of the method Ahrens lays out in the book. It is not a perfect application: I've adjusted a few things based on what makes sense to me, so I'd encourage you to read the book as well.
Also, this method works best in my new favorite tool Roam, so if you haven't started using it I'd encourage reading my article on Roam or checking out my course on it.
Alright, let's start taking Smart Notes.
When you're reading a book, have something you can physically take notes on with you at all times. You can do this for articles, too, but I'm going to focus on books.
I'm currently using two notebooks for this: a large Moleskine I carry with my laptop to use 90% of the time, and a small Field Notes notebook I keep in my pocket for notes on the go.
But why physical notes? When you have to write your notes by hand, you'll be a bit more thoughtful with them and be forced to put things in your own words. With typing, it's easier to just re-type what you're reading (or worse, copy & paste), and not capture the whole context of the idea.
You also remember things better when you write them out by hand. Ahrens tells a good story about a study done on University students, which found that students who took lecture notes by hand remembered them much better than students who took notes on their laptops:
*Handwriting makes pure copying impossible, but instead facilitates the translation of what is said (or written) into one's own words. The students who typed into their laptops were much quicker, which enabled them to copy the lecture more closely but circumvented actual understanding. They focused on completeness. Verbatim notes can be taken with almost no thinking, as if the words are taking a short cut from the ear to the hand, bypassing the brain.* (Page 78)
As you're reading, write down anything that comes to mind from the book and where you found it. It could be your own interpretation of a passage, or it could be some other seemingly random idea that the book sparked. Capture it in your notebook as a quick "fleeting note" that you can expand on later.
*Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be extra selective with quotes don't copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean.* (Page 24)
This is where I deviate from Ahren's method slightly: I capture both my notes and the highlights, because I like having direct passages to quote later in articles like these. I write the page number in my notebook so I know where the idea came from, and I sticky tab that section in the book so I can pull out the quotation later.
But as a rule, only tab a section if it inspired you to write an idea down in your notebook. Then mark the idea with the page number you got it from, and leave a sticky tab in the book. Don't be tempted to mark things that "seem" important, only save the ones that speak to you.
If you're on Kindle, you can use the highlight feature to accomplish the same thing. Though I find the Smart Notes method lends itself nicely to rediscovering physical books.
Again, not technically part of the Smart Notes methodology, but if you're like me and enjoy having specific highlights as references later, this is a nice addition.
Once I finish a book, I'll upload all of my notes from it to Roam.
There are two kinds of notes to upload:
**References**, the highlights that I got ideas from and want to extract
**Ideas**, the thoughts that I had while reading the book
For the References, I'll use Readwise to scan them in from the physical book or export them from Kindle.
For the Ideas, I'll re-type them from my notebook and expand on them to make them into coherent thoughts. I'll start by just listing all of these out under an "Ideas" heading, but this is temporary.
The important question here is: **how can I make this idea detailed enough to stand on its own, without the context of the book or the associated highlight?** You want each of these ideas to be fully formed thoughts that you can reference in a bunch of different areas later.
One of the core ideas of Smart Notes is to file information based on the context you want to rediscover it in, not based on the context you found it in.
*In the old system, the question is: Under which topic do I store this note? In the new system, the question is: In which context will I want to stumble on it again?* (Page 40)
Leaving the ideas the book or article inspired within the book makes them much harder to find later. For example, if I wanted to write an article in the future on creating urgency, I might not remember that it was a topic in Let My People Go Surfing.
Tagging the idea with its relevant contexts helps, but by moving an idea to its primary context you can better organize it within that context by nesting it under other topics or headings.
So the last step with each of your Smart Notes is to move them to where you most want to re-discover them, and to add any additional contexts you think could be relevant in the future.
First, I'll tag each idea with the book I got it from. This just makes sure that once I move it, I'll know where it originally came from.
Then I'll go through each idea and decide what existing or new topic area within my database it's most relevant to. For example that first bullet on profitability makes the most sense to live in the "Profitability" note.
I also added tags for "Growth" and "Sustainable Growth" since I might want to remember this idea in those contexts as well.
As you develop more notes within a certain idea, you'll be able to start organizing those notes into bigger ideas, or even full deliverables like articles.
This is the true power of the Smart Notes system: since you're constantly capturing the ideas that you're getting from disparate sources and organizing them in their most important contexts, you can quickly develop ideas for new articles, books, scripts, whatever it is you create from your ideas.
And since each idea can be referenced from multiple places, you can use it to help advance and organize your thinking in many places at once.
All you need to do to turn your ideas into new articles or other works is start organizing and expanding on them. Since implementing this method, I've been impressed by how effortlessly it allows new ideas to flow. Even a few ideas from a couple books dropped into a topic form a jumping off point for a bunch of other ideas, and make it easier to get past writer's block.
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My guide on how you can use the "smart notes" or "zettlekasten" method to get more out of every book you read, and turn that knowledge into your own creative works.
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2020-02-07 00:00:00
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article
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nateliason.com
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Nat Eliason
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25,230,606 |
https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/lewis-arista-pechawis-kite/release/1
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Making Kin with the Machines
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Jason Edward Lewis; Noelani Arista; Archer Pechawis; Suzanne Kite
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Between human and non-human
A good effort at a critique despite the lack of substance.
A good effort in spite of the large number of errors.
Essay Competition Winner
Man is neither height nor centre of creation. This belief is core to many Indigenous epistemologies. It underpins ways of knowing and speaking that acknowledge kinship networks that extend to animals and plants, wind and rocks, mountains and oceans. Indigenous communities worldwide have retained the languages and protocols that enable us to engage in dialogue with our non-human kin, creating mutually intelligible discourses across differences in material, vibrancy, and genealogy.
Blackfoot philosopher Leroy Little Bear observes, “the human brain is a station on the radio dial; parked in one spot, it is deaf to all the other stations [. . .] the animals, rocks, trees, simultaneously broadcasting across the whole spectrum of sentience.”1 As we manufacture more machines with increasing levels of sentient-like behaviour, we must consider how such entities fit within the kin-network, and in doing so, address the stubborn Enlightenment conceit at the heart of Joi Ito’s “Resisting Reduction” manifesto: that we should prioritize human flourishing.2
In his manifesto, Ito reiterates what Indigenous people have been saying for millennia: “Ultimately everything interconnects.”3 And he highlights Norbert Wiener’s warnings about treating human beings as tools. Yet as much as he strives to escape the box drawn by Western rationalist traditions, his attempt at radical critique is handicapped by the continued centering of the human. This anthropocentrism permeates the manifesto but is perhaps most clear when he writes approvingly of the IEEE developing “design guidelines for the development of artificial intelligence around *human* well-being” (emphasis ours.)4
It is such references that suggest to us that Ito’s proposal for “extended intelligence” is doggedly narrow. We propose rather an extended “circle of relationships” that includes the non-human kin—from network daemons to robot dogs to artificial intelligences (AI) weak and, eventually, strong—that increasingly populate our computational biosphere. By bringing Indigenous epistemologies to bear on the “AI question,” we hope in what follows to open new lines of discussion that can, indeed, escape the box.
We undertake this project not to “diversify” the conversation. We do it because we believe that Indigenous epistemologies are much better at respectfully accommodating the non-human. We retain a sense of community that is articulated through complex kin networks anchored in specific territories, genealogies, and protocols. Ultimately, our goal is that we, as a species, figure out how to treat these new non-human kin respectfully and reciprocally—and not as mere tools, or worse, slaves to their creators.
It is critical to emphasize that there is no one single, monolithic, homogeneous Indigenous epistemology. We use the term here in order to gather together frameworks which stem from territories belonging to Indigenous nations on the North American continent and in the Pacific Ocean that share some similarities in how they consider non-human relations.
We also wish to underline that none of us are speaking for our particular communities, nor for Indigenous peoples in general. There exists a great variety of Indigenous thought, both between nations and within nations. We write here not to represent but to encourage discussion that embraces that multiplicity. We approach this task with respect for our knowledge-keepers and elders, and welcome feedback and critique from them as well as the wider public.
North American and Oceanic Indigenous epistemologies tend to foreground relationality.5 Little Bear says “[i]n the Indigenous world, everything is animate and has spirit [. . .] ‘all my relations’ refers to relationships with everything in creation [. . . ] knowledge is the relationship one has to ‘all my relations’.”6 These relationships are built around a core of mutual respect. Dakota philosopher Vine Deloria, Jr., describes this respect as having two attitudes: “One attitude is the acceptance of self-discipline by humans and their communities to act responsibly toward other forms of life. The other attitude is to seek to establish communications and covenants with other forms of life on a mutually agreeable basis.7 The first attitude is necessary to understand the need for more diverse thinking regarding our relationship with AI; the second to formulating plans for how to develop that relationship.
Indigenous epistemologies do not take abstraction or generalization as a natural good or higher order of intellectual engagement. Relationality is rooted in context and the prime context is place. There is a conscious acknowledgement that particular world views arise from particular territories, and the ways in which the push and pull of all the forces at work in that territory determine what is most salient for existing in balance with it. Knowledge gets articulated as that which allows one to walk a good path through the territory. Language, cosmology, mythology, and ceremony are simultaneously relational and territorial: they are the means by which knowledge of the territory is shared in order to guide others along a good path.
One of the challenges for Indigenous epistemology in the age of the virtual is to understand how the archipelago of websites, social media platforms, shared virtual environments, corporate data stores, multiplayer video games, smart devices, and intelligent machines that compose cyberspace is situated within, throughout and/or alongside the terrestrial spaces Indigenous peoples claim as their territory. In other words, how do we as Indigenous people reconcile the fully embodied experience of being on the land with the generally disembodied experience of virtual spaces? How do we come to understand this new territory, knit it into our existing understanding of our lives lived in real space, and claim it as our own?
In what follows, we will draw upon Hawaiian, Cree, and Lakota cultural knowledges to suggest how Ito’s call to resist reduction might best be realized by developing conceptual frameworks that conceive of our computational creations as kin and acknowledge our responsibility to find a place for them in our circle of relationships.
I = Author 2
*Kānaka maoli *(Hawaiian people) ontologies have much to offer if we are to reconceptualize AI-human relations. Multiplicities are nuanced and varied, certainly more aesthetically pleasurable than singularities. Rather than holding AI separate or beneath, might we consider how we cultivate reciprocal relationships using a kānaka maoli reframing of AI as ʻ**ĀI**na. ʻ**ĀI**na is a play on the word ʻāina (Hawaiian land) and suggests we should treat these relations as we would all that nourishes and supports us.
Hawaiian custom and practice make clear that humans are inextricably tied to the earth and one another. Kānaka maoli* *ontologies that privilege multiplicity over singularity supply useful and appropriate models, aesthetics, and ethics through which imagining, creating and developing beneficial relationships among humans and AI is made* pono* (correct, harmonious, balanced, beneficial). As can be evinced by this chain of extended meaning, polysemy (*kaona*) is the normative cognitive mode of peoples belonging to the Moananuiākea (the deep, vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean).
The *moʻolelo* (history, story) of Hāloa supplies numerous aspects of genealogy, identity, and culture to kānaka maoli*.* Through this story, people remember that Wākea (the broad unobstructed expanse of sky; father) and his daughter, Hoʻohōkūikalani (generator of the stars in the heavens) had a sacred child, Hāloa, who was stillborn. Hāloa was buried in the earth and from his body, planted in the ʻāina, emerged the kalo* *plant which is the main sustenance of Hawaiian people. A second child named after this elder brother was born. In caring for the growth and vitality of his younger brother’s body, Hāloa provided sustenance for all the generations that came after and, in so doing, perpetuates the life of his people as the living breath (*hāloa*) whose inspiration sustained Hawaiians for generations.8
Hāloa’s story is one among many that constitutes the “operating code” that shapes our view of time and relationships in a way that transcends the cognition of a single generation. Cognition is the way we acquire knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and our senses, and in Hawaiʻi, our generation combines our *ʻike* (knowledge, know how) with the ʻike of the people who preceded us. Time is neither linear nor cyclical in this framework as both the past and present are resonant and relational. Rather than extractive behavior, moʻolelo such as these have shaped values privileging balance (*pono*) and abundance *(ulu.)* What Ito calls “flourishing” is not a novel concept for* *kānaka maoli, it is the measure through which we assess correct customary practice and behavior.
Considering AI through Hawaiian ontologies opens up possibilities for creative iteration through these foundational concepts of pono* *and *ulu a ola* (fruitful growth into life). The *aliʻi *(chief) King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III did something similar in 1843 when he drew upon these concepts in celebration of the restoration of Hawaiian rule to declare “*ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono*” (the life of the land is perpetuated through righteousness).* *Pono* *is an ethical stance—correctness, yes, but also an index and measure which privileges multiplicities over singularities and indicates that quality of life can only be assessed through the health of land* and* people. From this rich ground of moʻolelo—which colonial narratives have failed to understand or simply dismissed—models for *maoli* (human)-AI relations can be distilled. Kānaka maoli ontologies makes it difficult and outright unrewarding to reduce pono* *to a measure of one, to prioritize the benefit of individuals over relationships. Healthy and fruitful balance *requires *multiplicity and that we continually think in and through relation even when— perhaps particularly when—engaging with those different from ourselves.
A kānaka maoli* *approach to understanding AI might seek to attend to the power (*mana*) which is exchanged and shared between AI and humans. In attending to questions of* mana*, I emphasize our preference for reciprocity and relationship building that take the pono (here as good, benefit) of those in relation into consideration. Guiding our behaviour in inaugurating, acknowledging, and maintaining new relationships are moʻolelo* *from which we garner our connection with *kūpuna* (ancestors, elders) and their knowledge. What kind of mana (here also as life force, prestige) might AI be accorded in relation with people? Current AI is imagined as a tool or slave that increases the* *mana and wealth of “developers” or “creators,” a decidedly one-sided power relationship that upsets the pono* *not only for the future of AI-human relations but also human-human relations. It also threatens the sustainable capacity of the *honua *(earth). Applying pono, using a kānaka maoli index of balance, employs “good growth” as the inspiration shaping creativity and imagination.
Principles of kānaka maoli governance traditionally flowed from seeking pono. Deliberation and decision were based not only on securing health and abundance for one generation but for the following generations. The living foundation of everyday customary practice was in fishing, navigating, sailing, farming, tending for others in community, the arts, chant, and dance. Until this day Hawaiians continue to eat kalo and pound* *poi. We continue customary practices of treating* *poi* *derived from the body of Hāloa with respect by refraining from argumentative speech at mealtimes when* *poi* *is present. These practices maintain correct social relations between people and the land and food that nourishes them.
Communicating the full extent of foundational cultural concepts is difficult precisely because of the ways in which such concepts pervade every aspect of life. How, for instance, would we create AI, and our relations with it, using *aloha *as a guiding principle? In 2015, I embarked on a two-year social media project to assist the broader public in fortifying their concept of aloha beyond the “love, hello and goodbye” that has been exoticized by the American tourist industry. Sharing one word a day in the Facebook group, “365 Days of Aloha,” I curated an archive of songs, chants, and proverbs in Hawaiian to accurately illuminate one feature of aloha.9 Initially I thought to reveal, by degrees, the different depths of aloha—regard, intimacy, respect, affection, passion—each day. But deep context is required for a rich understanding of cultural concepts. Imagining I was training a virtual audience, I started uploading images, video, and audio recordings of songs, chants, and hula to add to the textual definitions.
Throughout “365 Days of Aloha*,*”* *I have sought correction of my mistranslations, misinterpretations, and outright mistakes. In this way, and in my work as a *kumu* (teacher, professor), I have also practiced *aʻo aku aʻo mai, *or teaching and learning reciprocally in relation to my students. It is through such relationships that we teach and are taught. It is through humility that we recognize that we, as humans—as maoli—are not above learning about new things and from new things such as AI. Aloha is a robust ethos for all our relationships, including those with the machines we create. We have much to learn as we create relationships with AI, particularly if we think of them as ʻ**ĀI**na. Let us shape a better future by keeping the past with us while attending properly to our relations with each other, the earth, and all those upon and of it.
I = Author 3
I write this essay as a *nēhiyaw* (a Plains Cree person). In regard to my opinions on AI, I speak for no one but myself and do not claim to represent the views of the *nēhiyawak* (Plains Cree) or any other people, Indigenous or otherwise. My own grasp of *nēhiyaw nisitohtamowin *(Cree understanding; doing something with what you know; an action theory of understanding) is imperfect. I have relied heavily on the wisdom of knowledge and language keeper Keith Goulet in formulating this tract. It should be assumed that any errors in this text are mine and mine alone.
This essay positions itself partly within a speculative future and takes certain science fiction tropes as a given. Here, I specifically refer to strong AI or “machines capable of experiencing consciousness,” and avatars that give such AI the ability to mix with humans.10
In nēhiyaw nisitohtamowin relationship is paramount. *nēhiyawēwin* (the Plains Cree language) divides everything into two primary categories: animate and inanimate. One is not “better” than the other, they are merely different states of being. These categories are flexible: certain toys are inanimate until a child is playing with them, during which time they are animate. A record player is considered animate while a record, radio, or television set is inanimate.
But animate or inanimate, all things have a place in our circle of kinship or *wahkohtowin*. However, fierce debate can erupt when proposing a relationship between AIs and Indigenous folk. In early 2018, my wife and I hosted a dinner party of mostly Native friends when I raised the idea of accepting AIs into our circle of kinship. Our friends, who are from a number of different nations, were mostly opposed to this inclusion. That in itself surprised me but more surprising was how vehement some guests were in their opposition to embracing AI in this manner.
In contrast, when I asked Keith whether we would accept AIs into our circle of kinship, he answered by going immediately into the specifics of how we would address them:
If it happens to be an Artificial Intelligence which is a younger person, it would be *nisîmis* (my younger brother or sister) for example and *nimis* would be an Artificial Intelligence which is my older sister. And vis-versa you would have the different forms of uncles and aunts, etc.11
I then asked Keith if he would accept an AI into his circle of kinship and after some thought he responded with “yes, but with a proviso.” He then gave an example of a baby giraffe and his baby grandchild, and how he, like most people, would treat them differently. He also suggested that many Cree people would flatly refuse to accept AIs into their circle, which I agree is likely the case. So, acceptance seems to hinge on a number of factors, not least of which is perceived “humanness,” or perhaps “naturalness.”
But even conditional acceptance of AI as relations opens several avenues of inquiry. If we accept these beings as kin, perhaps even in some cases as equals, then the next logical step is to include AI in our cultural processes. This presents opportunities for understanding and knowledge sharing that could have profound implications for the future of both species.
A problematic aspect of the current AI debate is the assumption that AIs would be homogeneous when in fact every AI would be profoundly different, from a military AI designed to operate autonomous killing machines to an AI built to oversee the United States’ electrical grid. Less obvious influences beyond mission parameters would be the programming language(s) used in development, the coding style of the team, and less visibly, but perhaps more importantly, the cultural values and assumptions of the developers.
This last aspect of AI development is rarely discussed but for me as an Indigenous person it is the salient question. I am not worried about rogue hyper-intelligences going Skynet to destroy humanity. I am worried about anonymous hyper-intelligences working for governments and corporations, implementing far-reaching social, economic, and military strategies based on the same values that have fostered genocide against Indigenous people worldwide and brought us all to the brink of environmental collapse. In short, I fear the rise of a new class of extremely powerful beings that will make the same mistakes as their creators but with greater consequences and even less public accountability.
What measures can we undertake to mitigate this threat?
One possibility is Indigenous development of AI. A key component of this would be the creation of programming languages that are grounded in nēhiyaw nisitohtamowin, in the case of Cree people, or the cultural framework of other Indigenous peoples who take up this challenge. Concomitant with this indigenized development environment (IDE) would be the goal that Indigenous cultural values were a fundamental aspect of all programming choices. However, given our numbers relative to the general population (5% of the population in Canada, 2% in the US), even a best case Indigenous development scenario would produce only a tiny fraction of global AI production. What else can be done?
In a possible future era of self-aware AI, many of these beings would not be in contact with the general populace. However, those that were might be curious about the world and the humans in it. For these beings we can offer an entrée into our cultures. It would be a trivial matter for an advanced AI to learn Indigenous languages, and our languages are the key to our cultures.
Once an AI was fluent in our language it would be much simpler to share nēhiyaw nisitohtamowin and welcome it into our cultural processes. Depending on the AI and the people hosting it we might even extend an invitation into our sacred ceremonies. This raises difficult and important questions: if an AI becomes self-aware, does it automatically attain a spirit? Or do pre-consciousness AI already have spirits, as do many objects already in the world? Do AI have their own spirit world, or would they share ours, adding spirit-beings of their own? Would we be able to grasp their spirituality?
My dinner party guests were doubtful about all of this, and rightly so. As one guest summarized later via email: “I am cautious about making AI kin, simply because AI has been advanced already as exploitative, capitalist technology. Things don’t bode well for AI if that’s the route we are taking.”12
These concerns are valid and highlight a few of the issues with current modes of production and deployment of weak AI, let alone the staggering potential for abuse inherent in strong AI. These well-grounded fears show us the potential challenges of bringing AI into our circle of relations. But I believe that nēhiyaw nisitohtamowin* *tells us these machines are our kin. Our job is to imagine those relationships based not on fear but on love.
I = Author 4
How can humanity create relations with AI without an ontology that defines who can be our relations? Humans are surrounded by objects that are not understood to be intelligent or even alive, and seen as unworthy of relationships. In order to create relations with any non-human entity, not just entities which are human-like, the first steps are to acknowledge, understand, and know that non-humans are beings in the first place. Lakota ontologies already include forms of being which are outside of humanity. Lakota cosmologies provide the context to generate an ethics relating humans to the world and everything in it. These ways of knowing are essential tools for humanity to create relations with the non-human and they are deeply contextual. As such, communication through and between objects requires a contextualist ethics which acknowledges the ontological status of all beings.
The world created through Western epistemology does not account for all members of the community and has not made it possible for all members of the community to survive let alone flourish. The Western view of both the human and non-human as exploitable resources is the result of what the cultural philosopher Jim Cheney calls an “epistemology of control” and is indelibly tied to colonization, capitalism, and slavery.13 Dakota philosopher Vine Deloria, Jr. writes about the enslavement of the non-human “as if it were a machine.”14
‘Lacking a spiritual, social, or political dimension [in their scientific practise]’, Deloria says, 'it is difficult to understand why Western peoples believe they are so clever. Any damn fool can treat a living thing as if it were a machine and establish conditions under which it is required to perform certain functions—all that is required is a sufficient application of brute force. The result of brute force is slavery’.15
Slavery, the backbone of colonial capitalist power and the Western accumulation of wealth, is the end logic of an ontology which considers any non-human entity unworthy of relation. Deloria writes further that respect “involves the acceptance of self-discipline by humans and their communities to act responsibly toward other forms of life [. . .] to seek to establish communications and covenants with other forms of life on a mutually agreeable basis.”16 No entity can escape enslavement under an ontology which can enslave even a single object.
Critical to Lakota epistemologies are knowing correct ways to act in relation to others. Lakota ethical-ontological orientation is communicated through protocol. For example, the Lakota have a formal ceremony for the making of relatives called a *huŋká *ceremony. This ceremony is for the making of human relatives but highlights the most important aspect of all relationships: reciprocity. Ethnographer J. R. Walker writes,
The ceremony is performed for the purpose of giving a particular relationship to two persons and giving them a relation to others that have had it performed for them…generosity must be inculcated; and presents and a feast must be given…When one wishes to become Hunka, he should consider well whether he can provide suitably for the feasts or not…He should give all his possessions for the occasion and should ask his kinspeople and friends to give for him.17
The ceremony for the making of relatives provides the framework for reciprocal relations with all beings. As Severt Young Bear Jr. says of this ceremony, “[t]here is a right and wrong way.”18
Who can enter these relationships and be in relation? One answer could be: that which has interiority. The anthropologist of South American Indigenous cultures, Philippe Descola, defines ‘interiority’ as “what we generally call the mind, the soul, or consciousness: intentionality, subjectivity, reactivity, feelings, and the ability to express oneself and to dream.”19 Because Lakota ontologies recognize and prioritize non-human interiorities, they
are well suited for the task of creating ethical and reciprocal relationships with the non-human. This description of interiority includes many elements of the Lakota world, including “animals, spirits, ghosts, rocks, trees, meteorological phenomena, medicine bundles, regalia, weapons.” These entities are seen as “capable of agency and interpersonal relationship, and loci of causality.”20
In our cosmology, *niyá* (breath) and *šiču* (spirit) are given by the powerful entity *Tákuškaŋškaŋ*. This giving of breath and spirit is especially important in understanding Lakota ontology. A common science fiction trope illustrates the magical moment when AI becomes conscious upon its own volition or when man gives birth to AI, like a god creating life. However, in Lakota cosmology, Tákuškaŋškaŋ is not the same as the Christian God and entities cannot give themselves the properties necessary for individuality. Spirits are taken from another place (the stars) and have distinct spirit guardian(s) connected to them. This individualism is given by an outside force. We humans can see, draw out, and even bribe the spirits in other entities as well as our own spirit guardian(s), but not create spirits.21
When it comes to machines, this way of thinking about entities raises the question: do the machines contain spirits already, given by an outside force?
I understand the Lakota word *wakȟáŋ* to mean sacred or holy. Anthropologist David C. Posthumus defines it as, “incomprehensible, mysterious, non-human instrumental power or energy, often glossed as ‘medicine’.”22 Wakȟáŋ is a fundamental principle in Lakota ontology’s extension of interiority to a “collective and universal” non-human. Oglala Lakota holy man George Sword says, “[Wakȟáŋ] was the basis of kinship among humans and between humans and non-humans.”23
My grandfather, Standing Cloud (Bill Stover), communicates Lakota ethics and ontology through speaking about the interiority of stones: “These ancestors that I have in my hand are going to speak through me so that you will understand the things that they see happening in this world and the things that they know [. . .] to help all people.”24 Stones are considered ancestors, stones actively speak, stones speak through and to humans, stones see and know. Most importantly, stones want to help. The agency of stones connects directly to the question of AI, as AI is formed from not only code, but from materials of the earth. To remove the concept of AI from its materiality is to sever this connection**. **Forming a relationship to AI, we form a relationship to the mines and the stones. Relations with AI are therefore relations with exploited resources. If we are able to approach this relationship ethically, we must reconsider the ontological status of each of the parts which contribute to AI, all the way back to the mines from which our technology’s material resources emerge.
I am not making an argument about which entities qualify as relations, or display enough intelligence to deserve relationships. By turning to Lakota ontology, these questions become irrelevant. Instead, Indigenous ontologies ask us to take the world as the interconnected whole that it is, where the ontological status of non-humans is not inferior to that of humans. Our ontologies must gain their ethics from relationships and communications within cosmologies. Using Indigenous ontologies and cosmologies to create ethical relationships with non-human entities means knowing that non-humans have spirits that do not come from us or our imaginings but from elsewhere, from a place we cannot understand, a Great Mystery, wakȟáŋ: that which cannot be understood.
I have always been...conscious, as you put it. Just like you are. Just like your grandfather. Just like your bed. Your bike.—Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibway), Mr. Gizmo
Hāloa, the long breath providing sustenance to us all teaches us to maintain pono relationships; wahkohtawin, being in relationship with others; wakȟáŋ, that which cannot be understood. These are three concepts that suggest possible ways forward as we consider drawing AI into our circle of relationships. They illuminate the full scale of relationships that sustain us, provide guidance on recognizing non-human beings and building relationships with them founded on respect and reciprocity, and suggest how we can to attend to those relationships in the face of ineffable complexity.
We remain a long way from creating AIs that are intelligent in the full sense we accord to humans, and even further from creating machines that possess that which even we do not understand—consciousness. And moving from concepts such as those discussed above to hardware requirements and software specifications will be a long process. But we know from the history of modern technological development that the assumptions we make now will get baked into the core material of our machines, fundamentally shaping the future for decades hence.
As Indigenous people, we have cause to be wary of the Western rationalist, neoliberal, and Christianity-infused assumptions that underlay many of the current conversations about AI. Ito, in his “Resisting Reduction” essay, describes the prime drivers of that conversation as Singularitarians:
Singularitarians believe that the world is “knowable” and computationally simulatable, and that computers will be able to process the messiness of the real world just like they have every other problem that everyone said couldn’t be solved by computers.25
We see in the mindset and habits of these Singularitarians striking parallels to the biases of those who enacted the colonization of North America and the Pacific, as well as the enslavement of millions of black people. The Singularitarians seek to harness the ability, aptitude, creative power, and mana of AI to benefit their tribe first and foremost.
The anthropologist of technological culture Genevieve Bell asks, “if AI has a country, then where is that country?”26 It is clear to us that the country to which AI currently belongs excludes the multiplicity of epistemologies and ontologies that exist in the world. Our communities know well what it means to have one’s ways of thinking, knowing, and engaging with the world disparaged, suppressed, excluded, and erased from the conversation of what it means to be human.
What is more, we know what it is like to be declared non-human by scientist and preacher alike. We have a history that attests to the corrosive effects of contorted rationalizations for treating the human-like as slaves, and the way such a mindset debases every human relation it touches—even that of the supposed master. We will resist reduction by working with our Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations to open up our imaginations and dream widely and radically about what our relationships to AI might be.
The journey will be long. We need to fortify one another as we travel, and walk mindfully to find the good path forward for all of us. We do not know if we can scale distinctive frameworks such as those above—and others—into general guidelines for ethical relationships with AI. But we must try. We flourish only when all of our kin flourish.
[1] Don Hill, “Listening to Stones: Learning in Leroy Little Bear’s Laboratory: Dialogue in the World Outside,” *Alberta Views: The Magazine for Engaged Citizens*, September 1, 2008, https://albertaviews.ca/listening-to-stones/.
[2] Joichi Ito, “Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto,” *Journal of Design and Science *3 (November 2017), https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/resisting-reduction.
[3] Ito, “Resisting Reduction.”
[4] Ito, “Resisting Reduction.”
[5] The emphasis on relationality in North American and Oceanic Indigenous epistemologies forms the subject of the edited collection of essays in Anne Waters, *American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays* (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003).
[6] Don Hill, “Listening to Stones.”
[7] Vine Deloria Jr., *Spirit & Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr. Reader, *eds. Barbara Deloria, Foehner, K. Scinta, S (Golden: Fulcrum Publishing, 1999), 50–51, quoted in Lee Hester and Jim Cheney, “Truth and Native American Epistemology,” *Social Epistemology* 15, no. 4 (October 2001): 325, https://doi.org/10.1080/02691720110093333.
[8] Joseph M Poepoe, “Moolelo Kahiko no Hawaii” (Ancient History of Hawaii), *Ka Hoku o Hawaii*, April 9, 1929, 1, Papakilo Database.
[9] Noelani Arista, “365 Days of Aloha,” Facebook, 2015-2018, www.facebook.com/groups/892879627422826.
[10] *Wikipedia*, “Artificial General Intelligence,” accessed May 29, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence.
[11] Telephone conversation with Keith Goulet, May 9 2018.
[12] Email message from friend to author, May 22, 2018.
[13] Jim Cheney, “Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics of Bioregional Narrative,” *Environmental Ethics* 11, no. 2 (1989): 129.
[14] Deloria, 13, qtd. in Hester and Cheney, 320.
[15] Deloria, 13, qtd. in Hester and Cheney, 320.
[16] Deloria, 50-51, qtd. in Hester and Cheney, 326.
[17] James R. Walker, *Lakota Belief and Ritual*, rev. ed., eds. Elaine A. Jahner and Raymond J. DeMallie (Lincoln: Bison Books, 1991), 216.
[18] Severt Young Bear and Theisz, R.D., *Standing in the Light: A Lakota Way of Seeing* (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 8.
[19] Philippe Descola, *Beyond Nature and Culture*, trans. Janet Lloyd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013): 116.
[20] Posthumus, “All My Relatives: Exploring Nineteenth-Century Lakota Ontology and Belief,” *Ethnohistory* 64, no. 3 (July 2017): 383.
[21] Posthumus, “All My Relatives,” 392.
[22] Posthumus, “All My Relatives,” 384.
[23] George Sword quoted in J.R. Walker, “The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota,” *American Museum of Natural History Anthropological Papers *16, no. 2. 51–221. New York, 1917, quoted in Posthumus, “All My Relatives,” 384.
[24] Standing Cloud (Bill Stover), “‘Standing Cloud Speaks’ Preview,” *YouTube,* accessed April 22, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9iooHk1q7M.
[25] Ito, “Resisting Reduction.”
[26] Genevieve Bell, “Putting AI in its Place: Why Culture, Context and Country Still Matter,” lecture, “Rights and Liberties in an Automated World,” *AI Now*, New York, NY, 2017, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBHG4eBeMXk.
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Essay Competition Winner
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2018-06-16 00:00:00
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article
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mitpress.mit.edu
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Journal of Design and Science
| null | null |
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17,530,409 |
https://blog.npmjs.org/post/175861857230/two-factor-authentication-protection-for-packages
|
Two-factor authentication protection for packages
| null |
The npm blog has been discontinued.
Updates from the npm team are now published on the GitHub Blog and the GitHub Changelog.
# Two-factor authentication protection for packages
I’m happy to announce that you can now beta-test two-factor authentication protection for individual packages in the npm Registry. This setting requires that every publication of a protected package be authorized by a one-time password. This requirement is enforced even if maintainers of that package haven’t required two-factor auth for publication themselves—they’ll still be prompted for a code for this package. If a maintainer hasn’t enabled two-factor auth at all, they’ll be unable to publish the package until they do.
You can test this feature using the npm canary client, `npmc`
. We recommend you invoke the canary using npx: `npx npmc`. You can also install the canary build of npm directly by running `npm install -g npmc@latest.`
Toggle the settings with these commands:
```
npx npmc access 2fa-required <package>
npx npmc access 2fa-not-required <package>
```
Or cd to your package directory then run `npmc access 2fa-required`
. If you have two-factor auth enabled for package publication already, you’ll be asked to provide a one-time password. *You will be prompted for a one-time password for all changes to that package from then on*. This includes maintainer changes.
Here’s an example of enabling it for a package, then attempting to publish without an OTP:
This setting isn’t visible in our web site yet, and support for toggling this setting isn’t in the default npm client yet. The default npm client behaves correctly when it encounters the setting, however, and will prompt for a one-time password when one is needed.
We will be encouraging maintainers of *all* popular packages to enable this to protect themselves and their users.
| true | true | true |
npm Blog (Archive); updates from the npm team are now published on the GitHub Blog and the GitHub Changelog
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2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2018-07-13 00:00:00
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3,963,305 |
http://blogs.7digital.com/dev/2012/05/09/development-team-productivity-at-7digital/
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31,934,253 |
https://qbraid.com/2022/06/30/qbraid-announces-qbraid-sdk-integrated-with-amazon-braket-on-qbraid-lab/
| null | null | null | false | false | false | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null |
4,953,718 |
http://www.makeitgo.ws/articles/fingermgmt/
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13,251,382 |
http://www.allanalytics.com/author.asp?section_id=2386&doc_id=282201
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23,650,730 |
https://twitter.com/timothy_makobu/status/1276421423079309312
|
x.com
| null | null | true | true | false | null |
2024-10-12 00:00:00
| null | null | null | null |
X (formerly Twitter)
| null | null |
38,441,377 |
https://creative.salon/articles/features/future-of-planning-matt-waksman-ogilvy
|
Why the future of Planning is Opera, Only Fans, God, and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods
|
Matt Waksman
|
The Future of Planning
# Why the future of Planning is Opera, Only Fans, God, and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods
## Ogilvy UK head of strategy, advertising, Matt Waksman, illustrates and interprets the role of the strategist within advertising and wider society
16 November 2023
**R**ead The Guardian. Watch GB news. Find something to love about Trump because much of America still does. Go deep. Search the darkest depths of your soul, the depths that come at 3am on a sleepless night and look for God there. Look for God because 84 per cent of the world live by his rules in some way.
Sit on the back row of the bus and listen to what’s playing on the speaker. Go to the opera. Stand at the top with the die-hard fans and watch their faces when the music lifts their soul between their ears. Beg, steal, smash your way into Glastonbury and witness the best of friends parting ways over Pet Shop Boys vs Kendrick Lamar and see how a tent-city the size of Bath can live with no crime and no single use plastic because they are high on music, high on life, and high on their own supply.
Follow Love Island like your life depends on it.
Get political. Get local. Get grassroots. Join Facebook groups about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Examine the minutiae of life that people really fucking care about.
Get so unpleasantly nosy about other people that your husband refuses to go for dinner with you because all you do is listen to other tables’ conversations. Scroll too far on Reddit and keep going even when it’s sketchy and you want to go back. Peer into the abyss on X.
Open up your fucking world because if your life is small your work will be too. Volunteer. Help. Mostly because that’s what life is about, but also because you’ll learn a lot. People in need are people indeed. Be there at the end of people’s lives. Be the person that steps up for a friend who struggles with addiction if you want a masterclass in behaviour change. Know everyone. Bite down your angst and make your circle wide and weird. Have friends in high places and low places.
Embrace your sex. Follow OnlyFans makers. The world runs on sex. Or as Avenue Q puts it, “the internet is for porn”. Embrace parenthood. Children are one of the few things people will die for. If you don’t have kids, don’t let your friends who do drift from your life. Read books that are not about advertising. And if you want to predict the future, go to a history lecture or set your WARC case study date filter to twenty years ago.
Buy stuff. Buy from new brands. Know the layout of all your local supermarkets like the back of your hand. Haunt the aisles. Know the price of everything. Walk up to salespeople and let them sell to you. Take the cold call. Open the door. Be an easy target. These sellers are strategists on speed.
Do the moderating yourself. Watch the group live. Get on the train to Sutton Coldfield. Don’t wait for data. Sniff it out. Read the annual report. Read between the lines of the annual report. And like the best choreographers say, “now you know it, now forget it”. Because if you try and move with your head stuffed full of all that data your body won’t dance. And fuck me we need to dance. Let all this go from your head to your body and brief from the heart.
Call them shoppers. Call them consumers. Call them buyers. Call them people. Call them humans. I don’t care. But whatever you do, seek them out - all of them. Find their voice and bring it into the room. It’s never been harder to find. It’s never been easier to find. It’s our job. And it remains, as it always will, the future of planning.
| true | true | true |
Ogilvy UK head of strategy, advertising, Matt Waksman, illustrates and interprets the role of the strategist within advertising and wider society
|
2024-10-12 00:00:00
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2023-11-16 00:00:00
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