McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 30th 2017

• MAKING. A lovely essay about making, from maker-extraordinaire Tim Hunkin
• Why is anyone listening to Tim O’Reilly?

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 23rd 2017

• I haven't experienced imposter syndrome, and maybe you haven't either. 'Do these people doubt themselves? have moments questioning whether they deserve to be where they are? Of course they do! It is a key part to being a humble, likable, open-minded developer. They aren’t “suffering” from a “syndrome”.' Perpetual confidence is a bug, not a feature.
• The Boring Designer. Good advice, not just for designers.
• The Ethical Minefields of Technology. "Instead of looking at technologies programmed to enable human beings to better navigate the world I see technologies optimized to help corporations better navigate and manipulate human behaviour.”
• DING: A magazine about the internet and things. #1 AUTUMN 2017. Interesting reading. A little strange for such a Web/Internet-centric organisation to be publishing things as a PDF, but still...
• Showing the Algorithms Behind New York City Services. An interesting proposal in New York to make its algorithms more visible.
• 13 things I learned from six years at the Guardian. Lots of good insight on what's important for organisations in the modern world, including this gem: "people who do the flashy things are plentiful, and people willing and able to graft on the stuff that just incrementally makes things better are in sadly short supply."

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 2nd 2017

• The Coming Software Apocalypse. Interesting appeal for more formal verification in software. We do need to get better at building software, although I think formal verification should be matched with more design or systems thinking education/recognition too. Having had to write a bunch of Z (a formal specification language) during my Computer Science degree, I wonder if TLA+ is actually usable. Z was painful to use, and I had first-year degree maths too, so it's not that I'm completely inept at maths.
• Unpublishable: Censored Emails From Noam Chomsky. Redaction as art. Lovely.
• Smell of data. Beautiful metaphor and well-chosen alert mechanism for data leaks.
• Autopsy of a slow train wreck. Building a business is hard, exhibit A.
• Things learned while running your own self-funded startup. Building a business is hard, exhibit B.
• Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee. Sage career advice for anyone wanting to work in the tech/startup world.
• The 21st floor. Harrowing stories of the families who lived (and survived and died) on just one of the floors of Grenfell Tower. It continues to be a disgraceful affair, and Chelsea council and the Government aren't showing any signs of improving.
• Introducing The National Algorithm. Excellent look at the development of modern army uniforms, and how to create a true Dutch camouflage.
• The inside story of what it took to keep a Texas grocery chain running in the chaos of Hurricane Harvey. Excellent report on how one supermarket chain dealt with hurricane Harvey. What sort of decisions they needed to make, how they adapted their supply chain, and so on. The ability to do this sort of exception handling is so often lost as systems are computerised for "better efficiency".

Cennydd Bowles: Ethics in the AI Age from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.