"parallel" entries

Four short links: 24 October 2014

Four short links: 24 October 2014

Parallel Algorithm, Open Source Bio, 3D Printed Peptides, and Open London Data

  1. PaGMOParallel Global Multiobjective Optimizer […] a generalization of the island model paradigm working for global and local optimization algorithms. Its main parallelization approach makes use of multiple threads, but MPI is also implemented and can be mixed in with multithreading. PaGMO can be used to solve in a parallel fashion, global optimization tasks.
  2. Avoiding the Tragedy of the Anticommons — Many people talk about “open source biology.” Mike Loukides pulls apart open source and biology to see what the relationship might be. I’m still chewing on what devops for bio would be. Modern software systems throw off gigabytes of data, and we have built tools to monitor those systems, archive their data, and automate much of the analysis. There are free and commercial packages for logging and monitoring, and it continues to be a very active area of software development, as anyone who’s attended O’Reilly’s Velocity conference knows.
  3. peppytides (Makezine) — 3d-printed super accurate, scaled 3D-model of a polypeptide chain that can be folded into all the basic protein structures, like α-helices, β-sheets, and β-turns. (via Lenore Edman)
  4. London Data Store — dashboard and open data catalogue for City of London’s data release efforts.
Four short links: 8 August 2014

Four short links: 8 August 2014

Synchronization, Security Pi, YouTube Stardom, and Javascript Logging

  1. Everything You Wanted to Know About Synchronization But Were Too Afraid to Ask (PDF) — This paper presents the most exhaustive study of synchronization to date. We span multiple layers, from hardware cache-coherence protocols up to high-level concurrent software. We do so on different types of architectures, from single-socket — uniform and non- uniform — to multi-socket — directory and broadcast-based many-cores. We draw a set of observations that, roughly speaking, imply that scalability of synchronization is mainly a property of the hardware.
  2. Raspberry Pi as Low-Cost Security Camera (Instructables) — $120 HD motion-sensing web-viewable security camera.
  3. Inside YouTube’s Fame Factory (FastCompany) — great article about the tipping point where peer-to-peer fame becomes stage-managed corporate fame, as Vidcon grows. See also Variety: If YouTube stars are swallowed by Hollywood, they are in danger of becoming less authentic versions of themselves, and teenagers will be able to pick up on that,” Sehdev says. “That could take away the one thing that makes YouTube stars so appealing.”
  4. Sherlog.js (Github) — Javascript error and event tracker application. Honestly, I have no idea if this is any good but the name is golden. I’m such a sucker.
Four short links: 13 March 2014

Four short links: 13 March 2014

Parallel Programming, Malignant Computation, Politicised GDS, and Data Stream Toolkit

  1. Is Parallel Programming Hard? And, If So, What Can You Do About It? — book by Paul E. McKenney, on single-machine multi-CPU parallel programming.
  2. Malignant ComputationThe bitcoin mining network would work just as well if it had far less computation devoted to it. Bitcoins would be mined at exactly the same rate if 1/2 or 1/4 of the computational resources were devoted. This means that bitcoin has incentivized a tremendous amount of computational busy work.
  3. GDS Becomes Political (Computer Weekly) — She [Opposition MP] said that digital should not be about imposing a way of working on the public sector – Labour is not fond of the “digital by default” mantra – but about supporting public service delivery. […] “When this government decided upon the digitalisation of this [online job search] service they apparently did not take into account those with poor literacy skills, mental health issues or learning difficulties – who, as most people would have predicted, make up a higher-than-average proportion of the unemployed.”
  4. streamtools (Github) — a graphical toolkit for dealing with streams of data. Streamtools makes it easy to explore, analyse, modify and learn from streams of data. (via OpenNews)
Four short links: 10 December 2013

Four short links: 10 December 2013

Flexible Data, Google's Bottery, GPU Assist Deep Learning, and Open Sourcing

  1. ArangoDBopen-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values. Build high performance applications using a convenient sql-like query language or JavaScript extensions.
  2. Google’s Seven Robotics Companies (IEEE) — The seven companies are capable of creating technologies needed to build a mobile, dexterous robot. Mr. Rubin said he was pursuing additional acquisitions. Rundown of those seven companies.
  3. Hebel (Github) — GPU-Accelerated Deep Learning Library in Python.
  4. What We Learned Open Sourcing — my eye was caught by the way they offered APIs to closed source code, found and solved performance problems, then open sourced the fixed code.
Four short links: 30 August 2013

Four short links: 30 August 2013

Flexible Layouts, Web Components, Distributed SQL Database, and Reverse-Engineering Dropbox Client

  1. intention.jsmanipulates the DOM via HTML attributes. The methods for manipulation are placed with the elements themselves, so flexible layouts don’t seem so abstract and messy.
  2. Introducing Brick: Minimal-markup Web Components for Faster App Development (Mozilla) — a cross-browser library that provides new custom HTML tags to abstract away common user interface patterns into easy-to-use, flexible, and semantic Web Components. Built on Mozilla’s x-tags library, Brick allows you to plug simple HTML tags into your markup to implement widgets like sliders or datepickers, speeding up development by saving you from having to initially think about the under-the-hood HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
  3. F1: A Distributed SQL Database That Scalesa distributed relational database system built at Google to support the AdWords business. F1 is a hybrid database that combines high availability, the scalability of NoSQL systems like Bigtable, and the consistency and usability of traditional SQL databases. F1 is built on Spanner, which provides synchronous cross-datacenter replication and strong consistency. Synchronous replication implies higher commit latency, but we mitigate that latency by using a hierarchical schema model with structured data types and through smart application design. F1 also includes a fully functional distributed SQL query engine and automatic change tracking and publishing.
  4. Looking Inside The (Drop)Box (PDF) — This paper presents new and generic techniques, to reverse engineer frozen Python applications, which are not limited to just the Dropbox world. We describe a method to bypass Dropbox’s two factor authentication and hijack Dropbox accounts. Additionally, generic techniques to intercept SSL data using code injection techniques and monkey patching are presented. (via Tech Republic)
Four short links: 2 July 2013

Four short links: 2 July 2013

Microvideos for MIcrohelp, Organic Search, Probabilistic Programming, and Cluster Management

  1. How to Make Help Microvideos For Your Site (Alex Holovaty) — Instead of one monolithic video, we decided to make dozens of tiny, five-second videos separately demonstrating features.
  2. How Google is Killing Organic Search — 13% of the real estate is organic results in a search for “auto mechanic”, 7% for “italian restaurant”, 0% if searching on an iPhone where organic results are four page scrolls away. SEO Book did an extensive analysis of just how important the top left of the page, previously occupied by organic results actually is to visitors. That portion of the page is now all Google. (via Alex Dong)
  3. Church — probabilistic programming language from MIT, with tutorials. (via Edd Dumbill)
  4. mesosa cluster manager that provides efficient resource isolation and sharing across distributed applications, or frameworks. It can run Hadoop, MPI, Hypertable, Spark (a new framework for low-latency interactive and iterative jobs), and other applications. Mesos is open source in the Apache Incubator. (via Ben Lorica)
Four short links: 1 July 2013

Four short links: 1 July 2013

Web Traffic Visualisation, TV Interviews, GPU Programming, and Programmatic Pants Design

  1. Web Traffic VisualizationDots enter when transactions start and exit when completed. Their speed is proportional to client’s response time while their size reflects the server’s contribution to total time. Color comes from the specific request. (via Nelson Minar)
  2. Complete Guide to Being Interviewed on TV (Quartz) — good preparation for everyone who runs the risk of being quoted for 15 seconds.
  3. Harlan (GitHub) — new language for GPU programming. Simple examples in the announcement. (via Michael Bernstein)
  4. Open Fitopen source software that investigates several approaches to generating custom tailored pants patterns. Open Fit Lab is an attempt to use this software for on-the-spot generation and creation of custom clothes. (via Kaitlin Thaney)
Four short links: 5 June 2013

Four short links: 5 June 2013

Interesting Themes, Distributed Systems Failure Modes, Gesture Sensing Through Wifi, and Bad Taste Agile

  1. OATV Fund III Pitch Deck (Slideshare) — contains a list of what they were investing in, and what they want to invest in with the new round. Then: Quantified self; Internet subsystems; Smart networks of things; Manipulation and visualization of big data; sustainability; Maker movement. Now: Quantified Self Pro; Maker Pro; Hacking Education; Hidden Economies; Operations as Competitive Advantage; A Router in Every Pocket; The Internet Operating System. The move to “Pro” interests me, too. (via Bryce Roberts)
  2. The Network is ReliableMany applications silently degrade when the network fails, and resulting problems may not be understood for some time—if they are understood at all. […] much of what we know about the failure modes of real-world distributed systems is founded on guesswork and rumor. […] In this post, we’d like to bring a few of these stories together. We believe this is a first step towards a more open and honest discussion of real-world partition behavior, and, ultimately, more robust distributed systems design.
  3. Wisee (PDF) — recognising gestures using disturbances in the (wifi) force. Our results show that WiSee can identify and classify a set of nine gestures with an average accuracy of 94%. (via BoingBoing)
  4. Why Your Users Hate Agile Development (IT World) — What developers see as iterative and flexible, users see as disorganized and never-ending. Here’s how some experienced developers have changed that perception. (via Slashdot)
Four short links: 4 June 2013

Four short links: 4 June 2013

Distributed Browser-Based Computation, Streaming Regex, Preventing SQL Injections, and SVM for Faster Deep Learning

  1. WeevilScout — browser app that turns your browser into a worker for distributed computation tasks. See the poster (PDF). (via Ben Lorica)
  2. sregex (Github) — A non-backtracking regex engine library for large data streams. See also slide notes from a YAPC::NA talk. (via Ivan Ristic)
  3. Bobby Tables — a guide to preventing SQL injections. (via Andy Lester)
  4. Deep Learning Using Support Vector Machines (Arxiv) — we are proposing to train all layers of the deep networks by backpropagating gradients through the top level SVM, learning features of all layers. Our experiments show that simply replacing softmax with linear SVMs gives significant gains on datasets MNIST, CIFAR-10, and the ICML 2013 Representation Learning Workshop’s face expression recognition challenge. (via Oliver Grisel)
Four short links: 9 April 2013

Four short links: 9 April 2013

Electric Monks, Moore's Law's Death Spiral, Trafficking Technology, and Product Management

  1. Automated Essay Grading To Come to EdX (NY Times) — shortly after we get software that writes stories for us, we get software to read them for us.
  2. AMD Calls End of Moore’s Law in Ten Years (ComputerWorld) — story based on this video, where Michio Kaku lays out the timeline for Moore’s Law’s wind-down and the spin-up of new technology.
  3. Addressing Human Trafficking Through Technology (danah boyd) — technologists love to make tech and then assert it’ll help people. Danah’s work on teens and now trafficking steers us to do what works, rather than what is showy or easiest.
  4. Product Management (Rowan Simpson) — hand this to anyone who asks what product management actually is. Excellent explanation.