Entries tagged “open source”

Four short links: 22 May 2012

Four short links: 22 May 2012

Budget App, Health Insurance Data, Perl Release, and HTML5 WYSIWYG Editor

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 22 May 2012

  1. New Zealand Government Budget App -- when the NZ budget is announced, it'll go live on iOS and Android apps. Tablet users get details, mobile users get talking points and speeches. Half-political, but an interesting approach to reaching out to voters with political actions.
  2. Health Care Data Dump (Washington Post) -- 5B health insurance claims (attempted anonymized) to be released. Researchers will be able to access that data, largely using it to probe a critical question: What makes health care so expensive?
  3. Perl 5.16.0 Out -- two epic things here: 590k lines of changes, and announcement quote from Auden. Auden is my favourite poet, Perl my favourite programming language.
  4. WYSIHTML5 (GitHub) -- wysihtml5 is an open source rich text editor based on HTML5 technology and the progressive-enhancement approach. It uses a sophisticated security concept and aims to generate fully valid HTML5 markup by preventing unmaintainable tag soups and inline styles.

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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

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 17 May 2012

  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.

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Four short links: 15 May 2012

Four short links: 15 May 2012

Mobile Money, Actors in java, Actors in python, and a Decision-Making Tool

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 15 May 2012

  1. Mobile Money (The Economist) -- Many people know that "mobile money"—financial transactions on mobile phones—has taken off in Africa. How far it has gone, though, still comes as a bit of a shock. Three-quarters of the countries that use mobile money most frequently are in Africa, and mobile banking in some of them has reached extraordinary levels.
  2. Akka -- Apache-licensed Java high-performance concurrency library built around the concept of "actors". (via Hacker News)
  3. Pykka -- actors in Python. (via Hacker News)
  4. Loom.io Project -- help crowdfund a collaborative decision-making tool. They're using it as they build the tool, and it's the implementation of a process they use in real life. I know many organisations who need a free open-source web application that helps groups make better decisions together. You should probably read more about the interesting company Enspiral which is behind loom.io.

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Lucene conference touches many areas of growth in search

by  | @praxagora  | +Andy Oram | 11 May 2012

With a modern search engine and smart planning, web sites can provide visitors with a better search experience than Google. Why turn-out for the new "big data" track was lower than I expected, and other news from this week's conference about using Lucene big and small.

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Four short links: 4 May 2012

Four short links: 4 May 2012

Statistical Fallacies, Sensors via Microphone, Peak Plastic, and Go Web Framework

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington |  4 May 2012

  1. Common Statistical Fallacies (Flowing Data) -- once you know to look for them, you see them everywhere. Or is that confirmation bias?
  2. Project Hijack -- Hijacking power and bandwidth from the mobile phone's audio interface. Creating a cubic-inch peripheral sensor ecosystem for the mobile phone.
  3. Peak Plastic -- Deb Chachra points out that if we’re running out of oil, that also means that we’re running out of plastic. Compared to fuel and agriculture, plastic is small potatoes. Even though plastics are made on a massive industrial scale, they still account for less than 10% of the world’s oil consumption. So recycling plastic saves plastic and reduces its impact on the environment, but it certainly isn’t going to save us from the end of oil. Peak oil means peak plastic. And that means that much of the physical world around us will have to change. I hadn't pondered plastics in medicine before. (via BoingBoing)
  4. web.go (GitHub) -- web framework for the Go programming language.

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Recombinant Research: Breaking open rewards and incentives

Can open data dominate biological science as open source has in software?

by  | @praxagora  | +Andy Oram |  2 May 2012

To move from a hothouse environment of experimentation to the mainstream of one of the world's most lucrative and tradition-bound industries, Sage Bionetworks must aim for its nucleus: rewards and incentives. Comparisons to open source software and a summary of tasks for Sage Congress.

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The UK's battle for open standards

The UK government is fighting for open standards, but it needs help.

by  | @swardley  | +Simon Wardley |  2 May 2012

Influence, money, a bit of drama — not things you typically associate with open standards, yet that's what the U.K. government is facing as it evaluates open options.

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Four short links: 2 May 2012

Four short links: 2 May 2012

Elective Dickery, Probabilistic Data Analysis, Data Cleaning, and SSL Security

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington |  2 May 2012

  1. 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.
  2. Probabilistic Structures for Data Mining -- readable introduction to useful algorithms and datastructures showing their performance, reliability, and resources trade-off. (via Hacker News)
  3. Dataset -- a Javascript library for transforming, querying, manipulating data from different sources.
  4. Many HTTPS Servers are Insecure -- 75% still vulnerable to the BEAST attack.

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Recombinant Research: Sage Congress plans for patient engagement

by  | @praxagora  | +Andy Oram |  1 May 2012

The Vioxx problem is just one instance of the wider malaise afflicting the drug industry. Managers from major pharma companies expressed confidence that they could expand public or "pre-competitive" research in the direction Sage Congress proposed. The sector left to engage is the one that's central to all this work--the public.

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Four short links: 1 May 2012

Four short links: 1 May 2012

Self-directed Education, Bunnie Huang, ssh in the Browser, and Screen Size

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington |  1 May 2012

  1. Sugata Mitra: Beyond The Hole in the Wall (YouTube) -- great talk by the education researcher Sugata Mitra whose big kick is self-directed learning. Great stories about the deployments and effects he's had with technology and supervision rather than teaching, but the end is a real kicker: the core skills we have are literacy, search, and belief. Of the three, the most problematic is belief: when and how do/should we turn something we've read into something ingrained, accepted, and built-upon? (via Tara Taylor-Jorgenson)
  2. Interview with Bunnie Huang (Makezine) -- fascinating interview with the hardware guy behind the Chumby. It's all gold, from rapid iteration at early stages of hardware through to the need to simplify. I think one of the most gut-wrenching realizations that small companies have to make is that they aren’t Apple. Apple spends over a billion dollars a year on tooling. An injection molding tool may cost around $40k and 2-3 months to make; Apple is known to build five or six simultaneously and then scrap all but one so they can evaluate multiple design approaches. But for them, tossing $200k in tooling to save 2 months time to market is peanuts. But for a startup that raised a million bucks, it’s unthinkable. Apple also has hundreds of staff; a startup has just a few members to do everything. The precision and refinement of Apple’s products come at an enormous cost that is just out of the reach of startups.
  3. ssh as Chrome Extension -- can't help but feel that building a secure login system on top of web browsers on top of operating systems isn't going to be more secure than building a secure login system on top of the operating system.
  4. (Tablet) Size Matters (Luke Wroblewski) -- as the screen gets bigger, we use the Web more.

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Recombinant Research: Sage Congress promotes data sharing in genetics

Report from a movement that believes in open source and open data in science

by  | @praxagora  | +Andy Oram | 30 April 2012

Through two days of demos, keynotes, panels, and breakout sessions, Sage Congress brought its vision to a high-level cohort of 230 attendees from universities, pharmaceutical companies, government health agencies, and others who can make change in the field.

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Four short links: 30 April 2012

Four short links: 30 April 2012

A/B Testing in Rails, Open Source Groupware, Is the Internet Innovative, and Patent Art

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 30 April 2012

  1. Chanko (Github) -- trivial A/B testing from within Rails.
  2. OpenMeetings -- Apache project for audio/video conferencing, screen sharing, whiteboard, calendar, and other groupware features.
  3. Low Innovation Internet (Wired) -- I disagree, I think this is a Louis CK Nobody's Happy moment. We renormalize after change and become blind to the amazing things we're surrounded by. Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people work from home, collaborate to develop software that has saved the world billions of dollars in licensing fees, provide services, write and share books, make voice and video calls, create movies, fund creative projects, buy and sell used goods, and you're unhappy because there aren't "huge changes"? Have you spoken to someone in the publishing, music, TV, film, newspaper, retail, telephone, or indeed any industry that exists outside your cave, you obtuse contrarian pillock? There's no room on my Internet for weenie whiners.
  4. Context-Free Patent Art -- endlessly amusing. (via David Kaneda)

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Four short links: 26 April 2012

Four short links: 26 April 2012

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

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 26 April 2012

  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)

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Four short links: 25 April 2012

Four short links: 25 April 2012

Online Courses, mod_spdy, Dying Industries, and Javascript Conference Report

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 25 April 2012

  1. World History Since 1300 (Coursera) -- Coursera expands offerings to include humanities. This content is in books and already in online lectures in many formats. What do you get from these? Online quizzes and the online forum with similar people considering similar things. So it's a book club for a university course?
  2. mod_spdy -- Apache module for the SPDY protocol, Google's "faster than HTTP" HTTP.
  3. The Top 10 Dying Industries in the United States (Washington Post) -- between the Internet and China, yesterday's cash cows are today's casseroles.
  4. Notes from JSConf2012 -- excellent conference report: covers what happens, why it was interesting or not, and even summarizes relevant and interesting hallway conversations. AA++ would attend by proxy again. (via an old Javascript Weekly)

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Four short links: 23 April 2012

Four short links: 23 April 2012

Three Strikes, Cloud Sovereignty, Flipped Classroom, and Open Tactical Playbook

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 23 April 2012

  1. How's That Three Strikes Thing Working Out? (Paul Brislen) -- The rights holders in New Zealand put together an ad campaign based on the destruction of value of New Zealand content, yet it hasn’t defended a single New Zealand artist.
  2. USTR Telling You Where To Stick Your Data -- A number of US companies had expressed concerns that various departments in the Australian Government, namely, the Department of Defence, The National Archives of Australia, the Department of Finance and Deregulation, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) and the State of Victoria’s Privacy Commissioner had been sending negative messages about cloud providers based outside the country, implying that “hosting data overseas, including in the United States, by definition entails greater risk and unduly exposes consumers to their data being scrutinised by foreign governments”. Negative message, but a true one. (via Slashdot)
  3. On Flipping the Classroom (Wired) -- Moving a lecture online changes where that information is consumed, not necessarily the degree of student engagement or its effectiveness. Curricula provider Mathalicious critiqued Khan Academy as “one of the most dangerous phenomena in education today.” Hear, hear. Praise Khan for the feedback it provides teachers on where their kids are at, but even in Stanford's trials in schools they find kids use the videos as absolute last resort for learning something.
  4. What Simon Wardley Is Up To (Google Plus) -- I'm researching and writing a tactical playbook for competition in an open world based upon concepts of evolution, value chain and ecosystems using techniques such as choke points, barriers, tower and moat, ILC, inertia, economic phases (build, peace, war), new organisational methods etc etc. WANT. (Apologies, don't know if O'Reilly is publishing this or not--I'm arm's length from the publishing side of things)

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Four short links: 20 April 2012

Four short links: 20 April 2012

Hologram Headliners, Javascript Stack, HTML to PDF, and Software Defined Networking

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 20 April 2012

  1. Tupac Coachella Behind the Technology (CBS) -- interesting to me is Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg were considering taking Shakur with them on tour. Just as Hobbit, Tintin, etc. are CG-ing characters to look normal, is the future of "live" spectacle to be this kind of CG show? Will new acts be competing against the Rolling Stones forever?
  2. Javascript All The Way Down (Alex Russell) -- points out that we're fixing so much like compatibility, performance, accessibility, all this stuff with Javascript. We're moving further and further from declarative programming and more and more back to the days of writing heaps of Xlib or Motif toolkit code to implement our UIs and apps.
  3. wkhtmltopdf (Google Code) -- Simple shell utility to convert html to pdf using the webkit rendering engine, and qt. My first piece of "I wrote this, now you can use it too" open source was an HTML to PS converter (this was 1994 or so) via LaTeX. It's a useful thing, no really.
  4. Nicira (Wired) -- moving network management into software so the network hardware is as dumb as possible. Interesting continuation of the End-to-End principle, whereby smarts live at the edges of the network and the conduits are dumb.

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Sage Congress: The synthesis of open source with genetics

Sage Congress: The synthesis of open source with genetics

Complex health problems are too big for a single team.

by  | @praxagora  | +Andy Oram | 19 April 2012

A conversation with Sage Bionetworks founder Stephen Friend about how open source can support a business model in drug development, the progress of current data sharing projects, and more.

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Four short links: 19 April 2012

Four short links: 19 April 2012

Text Similarity, Designing Engagement, Clustering Stories, and Prince of Persia

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 19 April 2012

  1. Superfastmatch -- open source text comparison tool, used to locate plagiarism/churnalism in online news sites. You can pull out the text engine and use it for your own "find where this text is used elsewhere" applications (e.g., what's being forwarded out in email, how much of this RFP is copy and paste, what's NOT boilerplate in this contract, etc.). (via Pete Warden)
  2. Ten Design Principles for Engaging Math Tasks (Dan Meyer) -- education gold, engagement gold, and some serious ideas you can use in your own apps.
  3. Clustering Related Stories (Jenny Finkel) -- description of how to cluster related stories, talks about some of the tricks. Interesting without being too scary.
  4. Prince of Persia (GitHub) -- I have waited to see if the novelty wore off, but I still find this cool: 1980s source code on GitHub.

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Four short links: 18 April 2012

Four short links: 18 April 2012

Cartographic Data Tool, Astronomical Volumes of Astronomical Data, Faster Touch, and Why MS Open Source?

by  | @gnat  | +Nat Torkington | 18 April 2012

  1. CartoDB (GitHub) -- open source geospatial database, API, map tiler, and UI. For feature comparison, see Comparing Open Source CartoDB to Fusion Tables (via Nelson Minar).
  2. Future Telescope Array Drives Exabyte Processing (Ars Technica) -- Astronomical data is massive, and requires intense computation to analyze. If it works as planned, Square Kilometer Array will produce over one exabyte (260 bytes, or approximately 1 billion gigabytes) every day. This is roughly twice the global daily traffic of the entire Internet, and will require storage capacity at least 10 times that needed for the Large Hadron Collider. (via Greg Linden)
  3. Faster Touch Screens More Usable (Toms Hardware) -- check out that video! (via Greg Linden)
  4. Why Microsoft's New Open Source Division (Simon Phipps) -- The new "Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc." provides an ideal firewall to protect Microsoft from the risks it has been alleging exist in open source and open standards. As such, it will make it "easier and faster" for them to respond to the inevitability of open source in their market without constant push-back from cautious and reactionary corporate process.

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Microsoft opens up

Microsoft opens up

How Microsoft is contributing to and benefitting from open source.

by  | @rroumeliotis  | +Rachel Roumeliotis | 17 April 2012

Microsoft seems to be embracing open source more and more. What does this tell us about the company's near-term future?

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