The man who went looking for freedom
Fighting the system used to be dangerous anywhere in Eastern Europe. For one protester from a small Romanian village it was disastrous - and for his family.
Hasnain says:
"When he left home, the car stuffed with placards and leaflets, my father knew what he was returning to. Yet he had no choice. For him the family was his country and the country was his family. If he did not fight for everyone else, he could not have hoped to put food on our own table. Or a shred of dignity in our lives. He left us out of desperation and moral conviction."
Posted on 2014-04-02T16:50:05+0000
Amazon Fire TV
Amazon Fire TV is a tiny box that connects your HDTV to a world of online entertainment. With a huge selection of TV episodes and movies, voice search that really works, plus exclusive features like Amazon FreeTime, it’s the easiest way to enjoy Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, low...
Redis new data structure: the HyperLogLog - Antirez weblog
antirez 3 minutes ago. Generally speaking, I love randomized algorithms, but there is one I love particularly since even after you understand how it works, it still remains magical from a programmer point of view. It accomplishes something that is almost illogical given how little it asks for in ter...
Hasnain says:
This is a really interesting writeup on a cool data structure.
Posted on 2014-04-01T16:37:31+0000
Big data: are we making a big mistake? - FT.com
Five years ago, a team of researchers from Google announced a remarkable achievement in one of the world’s top scientific journals, Nature. Without needing the results of a single medical check-up, they were nevertheless able to track the spread of
Hasnain says:
“Big data” has arrived, but big insights have not. The challenge now is to solve new problems and gain new answers – without making the same old statistical mistakes on a grander scale than ever."
Microsoft Azure – Innovation, Quality and Price - Windows Azure - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
This week Microsoft has the pleasure of hosting thousands of developers from all over the world at our Build conference in San Francisco. They don’t travel because they like airline food. They travel because they recognize we’re in the early stages of a platform shift and want to influence the next…
Hasnain says:
I think it's cool that Amazon, google, and Microsoft have all decided to reduce the prices of their cloud offerings.
Posted on 2014-03-31T22:02:56+0000
How One Man Ruined The Most Expensive Game Jam In History
...game jam in the history of the video game industry, and how it was dismantled by a single man. Let’s get started. GAME_JAM didn’t start out as a...
http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~rompf/pldi2014.pdf
lampwww.epfl.ch
Hasnain says:
"In this paper, we propose to turn JIT compilation into a precision tool by adding two essential and generic metaprogramming facilities: First, allow programs to invoke JIT compilation explicitly. This enables controlled specialization of arbitrary code at run- time, in the style of partial evaluation. It also enables the JIT compiler to report warnings and errors to the program when it is un- able to compile a code path in the demanded way. Second, allow the JIT compiler to call back into the program to perform compile- time computation. This lets the program itself define the translation strategy for certain constructs on the fly and gives rise to a powerful JIT macro facility that enables “smart” libraries to supply domain- specific compiler optimizations or safety checks."
Posted on 2014-03-31T18:38:28+0000
The Town That Turned Poverty Into a Prison Sentence
Most states shut down their debtors’ prisons more than 100 years ago; in 2005, Harpersville, Alabama, opened one back up.
Hasnain says:
"It was a system of extraction and coercion so flagrant that Alabama Circuit Court Judge Hub Harrington likened it to a modern-day “debtors’ prison.” In a July 2012 ruling in a civil action brought on behalf of Debra Ford and three others, Harrington wrote: “The court notes that [debtors’ prisons] generally fell into disfavor by the early 1800s, though the practice appears to have remained commonplace in Harpersville. From a fair reading of the defendants’ testimony one might ascertain that a more apt description of the Harpersville Municipal Court practices is that of a judicially sanctioned extortion racket…. Disgraceful.”
Then he seized control of the Harpersville Municipal Court."
Posted on 2014-03-31T17:57:02+0000
Ill-Considered Choices: Coffee and its Effects on Feature Creep
It's only feature creep if there isn't the time to implement (and doesn't mess with a clean interface). Otherwise, it's innovation of neat things (provided there is a customer request). :)
Hasnain says:
"And that's how I set out to simplify ordering Starbucks and created an internal banking system. "
Posted on 2014-03-31T17:51:01+0000
xg - skin
alteredqualia.com