stevenhelferich.com

Summer’s almost over and I’ll be spending the long weekend in Boston visiting family. Not much else to say this week. The links are little more tech-focused this week, but if you’re not interested in that, the article on gerrymandering is very timely.

Anyway, here are the links:

• India and Pakistan are hit by malware potentially supported by a state actor.
• Programmer, developer, engineer; what’s your preferred title?
• Google takes out a swath of Japanese internet access with a simple configuration error.
• How DeepMind created its game-playing AI.
• Storing secrets in AWS using Parameter Store.
• The topic of gerrymandering is addressed…again.

Not much to say. Spending some time in Sacramento this weekend and then Boston later next week. I found some interesting links this week, so if you usually only read one or two, I suggest at least checking out all of them this weekend. Personally, I’m enjoying these new graphic-driven articles by the New York Times; you’ll find that style in the first link this week!

Anyway, here are the links:

• Alaska’s permafrost is thawing; the NYTimes reports on how the landscape will change.
• How to enable 3-finger drag for windows in OS X.
• China’s “Great Cannon”, inserting malware to create DDOS attacks.
• “Superdosing” with B12 and broader B-vitamins linked with increasing cancer risks.
• Conviction of Samsung’s heir leads to a power vacuum at the top.
• Greater accessibility through “dark themes” on websites and applications.

Another dramatic week in global affairs. The US Navy 7th fleet suffered another accidental collision, which prompted questions of protocol and potential cyber sabotage of the vessels. Domestically, the US is recovering from a fatal clash of protestors in Virginia and bracing itself for more far-right demonstrations around the country. Locally, Sydney and I went out to see Allie X in concert. It was a small venue, but she gave a good performance and basically played all her best songs.

Anyway, here are the links:

• Understanding asymmetrical numeral systems in light of Google’s attempt to patent.
• A post on interviews containing links to helpful interview prep sites.
• Can North Korea hit the United States with a nuclear ICBM?
• Part 1 of 2 of the fall of Yugoslavia on YouTube.
• The US withholds aid money from Egypt in response to perceived human rights violations on the part of the Egyptian government.
• The US Navy relieves the commander of the US 7th fleet, based out of Yokosuka, after multiple collisions involving 7th fleet vessels.

I read most of these earlier in the week, but thought I should still post this one. Didn’t make any plans for the eclipse in Oregon this week, but still had a fun weekend around SF. Sydney and I took Saturday to pick up the car from the shop, but before that we hit up SF MOMA and managed to take same pictures. Today we remembered that Civic Center has a farmers week on the weekends, so we went over and bought our groceries for the week. Shocking that the farmers market has green onions and Safeway doesn’t (my expose on Safeway’s awful business is forthcoming).

Anyway, here are the links:

• More Confederate monuments are coming down around the country.
• Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s controversial advisor, leaves the White House.
• SF elections in District 6 could indicate the direction the city will take towards homelessness and affordable housing.
• New Slack-bot, Pr Police, keeps track of pull requests awaiting review in GitHub.
• The Economist sums up the latest vehicular terror attack in Europe.
• The NY Fed branch raises it’s prospects for US 3rd quarter GDP.

I’ve finally picked up some steam getting things done at home. I’ve been giving Github’s project management product a try for my current side project and it’s useful enough so far. What I really want is the ability to render project details (for instance, the kanban board) on my repository’s homepage for quick reference.

So far, using Github for managing this project has worked out well. My attention is constantly split across so many topics, I find it helpful to write things down into discrete issues and milestones that help remind me of the project status. I know a lot of people just prefer to wing it or keep things loosely organized, but if the progress keeps up on this project, I might have a good blog post on self-motivation and organization.

Anyway, here are the links:

• More Southern politicians begin the process of removing Confederate statues.
• A potential solution of the P versus NP problem.
• Designing microservices with failure in mind.
• Interactive review of species threatened offshore energy exploration.
• Is America headed for a Civil War? From the New Yorker.
• After a number of CEOs resign, Trump disbands his CEO advisory board.

I started this post series with ten links per post. As time has gone by, I’ve started thinking ten links every few days might be too much for a reader to digest on top of their own reading burden. Naturally, I’m letting the number decline over time until I find a level I like the best. Right now that level is six per post, so let’s see how that feels.

In other news, I’ve been putting some work into a Discord bot to push traffic from content creators into Discord server channels. It’s a fun project with a simple initial scope, but tons of room to grow over time. The news in the US and around the world is so bleak that I’d rather not directly discuss it here.

Anyway, here are the links:

• A 50-minute presentation of Spotify’s approach to microservices.
• “What I haven’t Fixed Your Issue Yet”, an open letter from an OSS developer.
• Algorithms and data structures implemented in popular languages on Github.
• Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio forward competing plans to fund the public transit crisis in NYC.
• China commits to refusing key North Korean exports as part of the UN plan to curb the North’s missile program.
• After good news in Q2, Chinese data indicates a mixed picture with credit, industrial, and export growth all taking hits.

It’s been so long since I’ve put one of these together. I’ve since been to Hawaii for two weeks and finished my first year at Workday! Maybe a retrospective article is called for? Honestly, there’s so much going on right now that even getting the Hawaii pictures posted is going to take me another week probably. But the short of it is that I’m back and ready to start making these posts again!

Anyway, here are the links:

• US-North Korea tensions are straining the isolated state’s relationship with its sponsor, China.
• West Virginia turns its focus to vocational programs to retrain its workforce.
• DeepMind and Blizzard announce collaboration to develop advanced AI for Blizzard’s Starcraft game series.
• A farewell letter to the Go programming language.
• New research hints that common ownership and index funds could be raising prices and hurting competition.
• Another call to avoid the People Like Us interview paradigm, ending in an endorsement for the audition interview system.

It’s hard to believe, but the final items of furniture have been purchased. We’ve worked our way down the list of necessities and ended up on end-tables and a bench by the front door. I can tell you this much, it feels great not to have to sit on the floor to put on my shoes anymore. Some other organization details: I’m moving some of my technical books into the office once my new Portal bookends arrive so that should hopefully clean out some more space at home.

I owe this blog a ton of content and I promise I’m getting around to it, but there’s a lot going right now that requires balancing so things will come off the backlog whenever they do. Anyway, here are the links:

• A great breakdown of the mechanics of supply-side reforms by Michael Pettis.
• A new wave of cyberattacks hits Russia and Ukraine and spreads to the rest of Europe.
• A skeptic’s view on the sudden popularity of blockchain.
• Snapchat’s new Snap “Map” feature has the potential to change the game for the embattled Social Media upstart.
• NYC’s subway delay problems go deeper than technology; there are simply too many people riding too few trains.
• Automating indoor gardening with Raspberry Pi and killing some green beans along the way.
• China launches a next-generation guided-missile navy destroyer in a bid to modernize its armed forces.

This weekend was Pride around the country, so Sydney and I thought it’d be a perfect chance to take the camera out and try and film a vlog. I got probably about an hour of good footage of the parade and interesting pedestrians before the battery died (I forgot to bring a spare). I’ll be sure to put a video up on Facebook or YouTube this week of the experience. Besides that, I’ve gotten back to reading daily and waking up before 9 on the weekends.

In other news, seems like Trump has been doing something people don’t like, the Safeway near me still doesn’t carry cream, and the second season of Kimmy Schmidt seems like it decided it just didn’t want to make sense anymore. Anyway here are the links:

• An animated graph showing how many 95+ degree days different regions can expect in the coming years.
• Foxconn plans a $10bn investment in a display-making factory somewhere in the United States, playing into Trump’s plan to increase investment in the US.
• The Gulf states give Qatar an ultimatum to close Al-Jazeera, end its funding of terrorism, and pull away from Iran.
• The NSA opens a Github account, open-sourcing a number of its projects.
• Mozilla and the National Science Foundation are offering $2m for a plan to effectively decentralize the Internet while increasing performance and robustness.
• The USS Fitzgerald apparently ignored warnings by the container ship Crystal that the two were on a collision course, adding to the confusion around the incident.
• Despite stabilizing CO2 emissions from human sources, overall CO2 in the atmosphere grew at a record pace in 2015 and 2016.
• An author reminisces about the simpler days of Gchat in light of its recent demise.