- Objectivist C — very clever. In Objectivist-C, each program is free to acquire as many resources as it can, without interference from the operating system. (via Tim O’Reilly)
- Zynga and Facebook Stock Oddities (The Atlantic) — signs of robotrading, a reminder that we’re surrounded by algorithms and only notice them when they go awry.
- The Final ROFLcon and Mobile’s Impact on Internet Culture (Andy Baio) — These days, memes spread faster and wider than ever, with social networks acting as the fuel for mass distribution. But it’s possible we may see less mutation and remixing in the near future. As Internet usage shifts from desktops and laptops to mobile devices and tablets, the ability to mutate memes in a meaningful way becomes harder.
- Oh Mi Bod — I was impressed to learn that one can buy vibrators that can be controlled from an iPhone. Insert iBone joke here. (via Cary Gibson)
"algorithms" entries
Can Future Advisor be the self-driving car for financial advice?
A startup mashes personal and government data with algorithms to provide automated advice.
Given the turmoil in financial markets and uncertainty abroad, good financial advice has never been more valuable. Startup Future Advisor looks to democratize personalized financial advice using the Internet, data and algorithms.
Four short links: 21 May 2012
Objectivist C, Robotrading, Meme Culture, and Mobile-controlled Peripherals
Four short links: 2 May 2012
Elective Dickery, Probabilistic Data Analysis, Data Cleaning, and SSL Security
- Punting on SxSW (Brad Feld) — I came across this old post and thought: if you can make money by being a dick, or make money by being a caring family person, why would you choose to be a dick? As far as I can tell, being a dick is optional. Brogrammers, take note. Be more like Brad Feld, who prioritises his family and acts accordingly.
- Probabilistic Structures for Data Mining — readable introduction to useful algorithms and datastructures showing their performance, reliability, and resources trade-off. (via Hacker News)
- Dataset — a Javascript library for transforming, querying, manipulating data from different sources.
- Many HTTPS Servers are Insecure — 75% still vulnerable to the BEAST attack.
Unstructured data is worth the effort when you've got the right tools
Alyona Medelyan and Anna Divoli on the opportunities in chaotic data.
Alyona Medelyan and Anna Divoli are inventing tools to help companies contend with vast quantities of fuzzy data. They discuss their work and what lies ahead for big data in this interview.
Unstructured data is worth the effort when you’ve got the right tools
Alyona Medelyan and Anna Divoli on the opportunities in chaotic data.
Alyona Medelyan and Anna Divoli are inventing tools to help companies contend with vast quantities of fuzzy data. They discuss their work and what lies ahead for big data in this interview.
Four short links: 20 December 2011
Maximum MySQL, Digital News, Unbiased Mining, and Congressional Clue
- How Twitter Stores 250M Tweets a Day Using MySQL (High Scalability) — notes from a talk at the MySQL conference on how Twitter built a high-volume MySQL store.
- How The Atlantic Got Profitable With Digital First (Mashable) — Lauf says his team has focused on putting together premium advertising experiences that span print, digital, events and (increasingly) mobile.
- Data Mining Without Prejudice — an attempt to measure fit without pre-favouring one type of curve over another.
- It Is No Longer OK Not To Know How Congress Works (Clay Johnson) — looking for a specific innovation to try and change the way Washington works by the time Congress votes on SOPA is about as foolish as Steve Jobs trying to diet his way out of having pancreatic cancer.
Four short links: 5 September 2011
Bitcoin Banks, Journo Ethics, Android and iOS, and Clever Algorithms
- Dan Kaminsky on Bitcoin (Slideshare) — short version: banks are an emergent property as it scales.
- Unethical Ventures (All Things D) — astonishing slam on the new venture fund that Michael Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) will be running while still writing for TechCrunch. This could have been a lot cleaner, of course, by Arrington simply resigning from TechCrunch, becoming a VC and perhaps starting a new blog where his agenda is much clearer, from which he could huff and puff away as he does with much entertaining gusto at real and (mostly) imagined slights. There is certainly precedent for VCs blogging, including Fred Wilson, Brad Feld and Ben Horowitz. And, despite my criticisms about ethics, it is clear that Arrington is a talented writer whose unique voice would be even stronger if it was truly seen as separate from what has become a news organization. But because of his obvious need to be the center of attention — requiring the ermine kingmaker mantle and foisting his patented I’m-here-to-tell-it-like-it-is attitude on us all — that appears to be impossible.
- An iOS Developer Takes on Android — a very easy to follow comparison of the two platforms from a developer who worked on both and who is carefully not partisan. I hadn’t realized before what an advantage OpenGL confers to the iOS devices. It’s not just for 3D games any more (he says, catching up with 2008).
- Clever Algorithms — book of 45 nature-inspired algorithms, code in Ruby.
Four short links: 25 July 2011
Minecraft Emergent Behaviour, Algorithmic 3D Printing, Automated MapReduce Optimization, and Multi-Device Preview
- Anonymity in Bitcoin — TL;DR: Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous. It may be possible to conduct transactions is such a way so as to obscure your identity, but, in many cases, users and their transactions can be identified. We have performed an analysis of anonymity in the Bitcoin system and published our results in a preprint on arXiv. (via Hacker News)
- 3D Printing + Algorithmic Generation — clever designers use algorithms based on leaf vein generation to create patterns for lamps, which are then 3d-printed. (via Imran Ali)
- Manimal: Relational Optimization for Data-Intensive Programs (PDF) — static code analysis to detect MapReduce program semantics and thereby enable wholly-automatic optimization of MapReduce programs. (via BigData)
- Screenfly — preview your site in different devices’ screen sizes and resolutions. (via Smashing Magazine)
Four short links: 13 July 2011
Freebase in Node, Form Styling, Implicit Friendships, and Dyslexic Font
- Freebase in Node.js (github) — handy library for interacting with Freebase from node code. (via Rob McKinnon)
- Formalize — CSS library to provide a standard style for form elements. (via Emma Jane Hogbin)
- Suggesting More Friends Using the Implicit Social Graph (PDF) — Google paper on the algorithm behind Friend Suggest. Related: Katango. (via Big Data)
- Dyslexia — a typeface for dyslexics. (via Richard Soderberg)
Four short links: 13 May 2011
Bogus Analysis x 2, API Classifications, and Expansive Text
- Mathematical Intimidation: Driven by the Data (PDF) — excellent article from Notices of the American Mathematical Society about the flaws in “value-added modelling”, the latest fad whereby data about students’ results in different classes are analysed to identify the effect of each teacher. People recognize that tests are an imperfect measure of educational success, but when sophisticated mathematics is applied, they believe the imperfections go away by some mathematical magic. But this is not magic. What really happens is that the mathematics is used to disguise the problems and intimidate people into ignoring them—a modern, mathematical version of the Emperor’s New Clothes. A critical instance of Hilary Mason’s Clean data > More Data > Fancy Math. (via Audrey Watters)
- Classification of HTTP-based APIs — The classification achieves an explicit differentiation between the various kinds of uses of HTTP and provides a foundation to analyse and describe the system properties induced. (via Brian Mulloy)
- Cancer Clusters (BBC) — straightforward demonstration of how naive analysis of random numbers can yield “patterns”.
- FitText.js — a jQuery plugin for inflating type.