"psych" entries

Four short links: 22 May 2015

Four short links: 22 May 2015

Automobile Ownership, Architectural Robots, UX Psychology, Go Packages

  1. GM: That Car You Bought, We’re Really the Ones Who Own ItGM’s claim is all about copyright and software code, and it’s the same claim John Deere is making about their tractors. The TL;DR version of the argument goes something like this: cars work because software tells all the parts how to operate; the software that tells all the parts to operate is customized code; that code is subject to copyright; GM owns the copyright on that code and that software; a modern car cannot run without that software; it is integral to all systems; therefore, the purchase or use of that car is a licensing agreement; and since it is subject to a licensing agreement, GM is the owner and can allow/disallow certain uses or access. In the future, manufacturers own the secondary market.
  2. Architectural Robots (Robohub) — The concept is named ‘Minibuilders.’ This is a group of robots each performing a specific task. The first robot layers a 15 cm (6 in) footprint or foundation, while a second and a third robot print the rest of the building by climbing over the structures they already printed and laying more material over them. This design is only possible at construction scale where printed layers are solid enough to support a robotic print head.
  3. The Psychology of UX — digging into 10 things about human psychology that should inform UX.
  4. gigoFetching packages in golang can be difficult, especially when juggling multiple packages and private repositories. GIGO (Gigo Installer for Go) tries to solve that problem, effectively being the golang equivalent of Python’s pip.
Four short links: 31 March 2015

Four short links: 31 March 2015

Boring Technology, Psychology Memes, Engineering Ladder, and Flatpack Refugee Shelters

  1. Choose Boring Technology (Dan McKinley) — Adding technology to your company comes with a cost. As an abstract statement this is obvious: if we’re already using Ruby, adding Python to the mix doesn’t feel sensible because the resulting complexity would outweigh Python’s marginal utility. But somehow when we’re talking about Python and Scala or MySQL and Redis, people lose their minds, discard all constraints, and start raving about using the best tool for the job.
  2. Dunning-Kruger and Other Memes — a reality check on the popsci conception of some psych research.
  3. Sharing our Engineering LadderIn addition to the ladder causing problems inside of my team, we were having a hard time evaluating candidates during interviews and determining what level to hire them into. Particularly at the more senior levels, it wasn’t clear what the criteria for success really looked like. So, together with my tech leads and engineering managers, we rewrote the ladder to be more specific. It has been very helpful both for the process of reviews and promotion committees as well as for the process of hiring.
  4. Ikea’s flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production (The Verge) — The UNHCR has agreed to buy 10,000 of the shelters, and will begin providing them to refugee families this summer. […] Measuring about 188 square feet, each shelter accommodates five people and includes a rooftop solar panel that powers a built-in lamp and USB outlet. The structure ships just like any other piece of Ikea furniture, with insulated, lightweight polymer panels, pipes, and wires packed into a cardboard box. According to Ikea, it only takes about four hours to assemble.
Four short links: 4 February, 2015

Four short links: 4 February, 2015

CLR Open Source, Cluster Management, Workplace Bias, and So Much Chrome

  1. CoreCLR Open Sourced (MSDN) — garbage collection, compilation to machine code, and other bits of the CLR.
  2. Kafka Manager — Yahoo open sources a cluster management tool.
  3. Unconscious Bias at Work — useful talk on workplace biases.
  4. All the Chrome (Quirksmode) — Google Chrome is not the default browser on Android 4.3+. There are now at least eight Chromium-based Android default browsers, and they are all subtly, though not wildly, different. The number of Chromium family members has recently risen from nine to eleven with the addition of HTC and LG Chromium, default browsers for modern HTC and LG high-end devices.
Four short links: 14 July 2014

Four short links: 14 July 2014

Scanner Malware, Cognitive Biases, Deep Learning, and Community Metrics

  1. Handheld Scanners Attack — shipping and logistics operations compromised by handheld scanners running malware-infested Windows XP.
  2. Adventures in Cognitive Biases (MIT) — web adventure to build your cognitive defences against biases.
  3. Quoc Le’s Lectures on Deep Learning — Machine Learning Summer School videos (4k!) of the deep learning lectures by Google Brain team member Quoc Le.
  4. FLOSS Community Metrics Talks — upcoming event at Puppet Labs in Portland. I hope they publish slides and video!
Four short links: 20 June 2014

Four short links: 20 June 2014

Available Data, Goal Setting, Real Tech, and Gamification Numbers

  1. Dynamo and BigTable — good preso overview of two approaches to solving availability and consistency in the event of server failure or network partition.
  2. Goals Gone Wild (PDF) — In this article, we argue that the beneficial effects of goal setting have been overstated and that systematic harm caused by goal setting has been largely ignored. We identify specific side effects associated with goal setting, including a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a rise in unethical behavior, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation.
  3. Tech Isn’t All Brogrammers (Alexis Madrigal) — a reminder that there are real scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley working on problems considerably harder than selling ads and delivering pet food to one another. (via Brian Behlendorf)
  4. Numbers from 90+ Gamification Case Studies — cherry-picked anecdata for your business cases.
Four short links: 6 September 2012

Four short links: 6 September 2012

Human Genome Doxed, Programmed by Movies, CritterDrones, and Responsive Websites

  1. ENCODE Project — International project (headed by Ewan Birney of BioPerl fame) doxes the human genome, bigtime. See the Nature piece, and Ed Yong’s explanation of the awesome for more. Not only did they release the data, but also the software, including a custom VM.
  2. 5 Ways You Don’t Realize Movies Are Controlling Your Brain — this! is! awesome!
  3. RC Grasshoppers — not a band name, an Israeli research project funded by the US Army, to remotely-control insects in flight. Instead of building a tiny plane whose dimensions would be measured in centimeters, the researchers are taking advantage of 300 million years of evolution.
  4. enquire.js — small Javascript library for building responsive websites. (via Darren Wood)
Four short links: 18 June 2012

Four short links: 18 June 2012

Facebook Sociology, Microbiome Mapping, Attention Surplus Disorder, and Makematics

  1. What Facebook Knows (MIT Tech Review) — Analyzing the 69 billion friend connections among those 721 million people showed that the world is smaller than we thought: four intermediary friends are usually enough to introduce anyone to a random stranger. and our close friends strongly sway which information we share, but overall their impact is dwarfed by the collective influence of numerous more distant contacts—what sociologists call “weak ties.” It is our diverse collection of weak ties that most powerfully determines what information we’re exposed to.
  2. Human Microbiome Mapped (The Scientist) — the Human Microbiome Project sequenced DNA of bacterial samples collected from 242 healthy volunteers. 3.5 terabytes of data, all accessible through public databases. One fascinating finding: Although each body part is characterised by some signature microbial groups, no species was universally present across every volunteer. “One of the HMP’s original mandates was to define the core microbiome, or the bugs that everyone shares,” said Huttenhower. “It looks like there really aren’t any.”
  3. Kids Today Not Inattentive (Neuroskeptic) — There’s no evidence that children today are less attentive or more distractible than kids in the past, according to research just published by a team of Pennsylvania psychologists. (via Ed Yong)
  4. Teaching Makematics at ITP (Greg Borenstein) — Computer vision algorithms, machine learning techniques, and 3D topology are becoming vital prerequisites to doing daily work in creative fields from interactive art to generative graphics, data visualization, and digital fabrication. If they don’t grapple with these subjects themselves, artists are forced to wait for others to digest this new knowledge before they can work with it.
Four short links: 1 June 2012

Four short links: 1 June 2012

Health App, The Met 3D Scanning, Skinnerian Apps, and Visual Programming

  1. BeWell App (Google Play) — continuously tracks user behaviors along three key health dimensions without requiring any user input — the user simply downloads the app and uses the phone as usual. Finally, someone tracking my behaviour for my own good.
  2. Met 3D — the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts its first 3d printing and scanning hackathon. [O]n June 1 and 2, approximately twenty-five digital artists and programmers will gather at the Met to experiment with the latest 3-D scanning and replicating technologies. Their aim will be to use the Museum’s vast encyclopedic collections as a departure point for the creation of new work. THIS. IS. AWESOME. (via Alison Marigold)
  3. The Perfected Self (The Atlantic) — everything you knew about B. F. Skinner was wrong, and you should know about him because you’re using his techniques to lose weight, stop smoking, and do your homework. (via Erica Lloyd)
  4. Google Blockly — (Google Code) A web-based, graphical programming language. Users can drag blocks together to build an application. No typing required. Open sourced.
Four short links: 17 May 2012

Four short links: 17 May 2012

Demythologizing Big Data, Online Scams, A Useful Computer Vision Library, and Opening Politics

  1. The Mythology of Big Data (PDF) — slides from a Strata keynote by Mark R. Madsen. A lovely explanation of the social impediments to the rational use of data. (via Hamish MacEwan)
  2. Scamworld — amazing deconstruction of the online “get rich quick” scam business. (via Andy Baio)
  3. Ceres: Solving Complex Problems with Computing Muscle — Johnny Lee Chung explains the (computer vision) uses of the open source Ceres Non-Linear Least Squares Solver library from Google.
  4. How to Start a Think Tank (Guardian) — The answer to the looming crisis of legitimacy we’re facing is greater openness – not just regarding who met who at what Christmas party, but on the substance of policy. The best way to re-engage people in politics is to change how politics works – in the case of our project, to develop a more direct way for the people who use and provide public and voluntary services to create better social policy. Hear, hear. People seize on the little stuff because you haven’t given them a way to focus something big with you.
Four short links: 26 April 2012

Four short links: 26 April 2012

Historic Software, Flickr Javascript, Twitter Commandline, and Math Mental Habits

  1. Apollo Software — amazing collection of source code to the software behind the Apollo mission. And memos, and quick references, and operations plans, and …. Just another reminder that the software itself is generally dwarfed by its operation.
  2. flickrapi.js (Github) — Aaron Straup Cope’s Javascript library for Flickr.
  3. t (Github) — command-line power-tool for Twitter.
  4. Habits of Mind (PDF) — Much more important than specific mathematical results are the habits
    of mind used by the people who create those results,and we envision a curriculum
    that elevates the methods by which mathematics is created,the techniques used
    by researchers,to a status equal to that enjoyed by the results of that research.
    Loved it: talks about the habits and mindsets of mathematicians, rather than the set of algorithms and postulates students must be able to recall. (via Dan Meyer)