Kallithea
Kallithea, a free software source code management system supporting two leading version control systems, Mercurial and Git.
Push the Red Button: Breaking Spotify DRM with PANDA
moyix.blogspot.com
Full Stack Python
Full Stack Python explains each layer of the web application stack, from the server up through the rendering in a user's browser.
New York's Shadow Transit
New York’s unofficial shuttles, called “dollar vans” in some neighborhoods, make up a thriving transportation system that operates where the subway and buses don’t. This interactive project, with videos, maps out that system.
Lionel Messi Is Impossible
In their Group F World Cup match late last month, Argentina and Iran were still deadlocked after 90 minutes. With the game in stoppage time and the score tied at 0-0, Lionel Messi took the ball nea...
Hasnain says:
A few choice quotes:
"By this point, it should be evident that Messi has at least a little bit of skill."
"First, to ensure that we’re celebrating the greatness of Messi and not the greatness of Barcelona, we need to make sense of Messi on Barcelona. The easiest way to do that is to evaluate Barcelona without Messi, also known as the Spanish national team."
"Coming in just behind Messi with 289 goals and assists since the 2010 World Cup is Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi’s rival from Real Madrid. When it comes to scoring, these two aren’t just on top of the pile, they’re hang-gliding somewhere way above it."
Posted on 2014-07-01T23:12:16+0000
The One-second War (What Time Will You Die?) - ACM Queue
Thanks to a secretive conspiracy working mostly below the public radar, your time of death may be a minute later than presently expected. But don't expect to live any longer, unless you happen to be responsible for time synchronization in a large network of computers, in which case this coup will lo…
Hasnain says:
This is a really really great read.
"But Linus' [Torvalds] observation that "95 percent of all programmers think they are in the top 5 percent, and the rest are certain they are above average" should not be taken lightly: very few programmers have any idea what the difference is between "wall-clock time" and "interval time," and leap seconds are way past rocket science for them. (For example, Posix defines only a pthread_cond_timedwait(), which takes wall-clock time but not an interval-time version of the call.)"
Posted on 2014-07-01T06:23:50+0000
What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse | Autopia | WIRED
The concept is called induced demand, which is economist-speak for when increasing the supply of something (like roads) makes people want that thing even more. Though some traffic engineers made note of this phenomenon at least as early as the 1960s, it is only in recent years that social scientists…
Nathan Myhrvold's Recipe for a Better Oven - IEEE Spectrum
We cook our food using technology invented to bake bricks. We can do a lot better
Hasnain says:
This is a really good article and discussion on oven technology.
Posted on 2014-06-30T20:01:03+0000
staltz/introrx.md
The introduction to Reactive Programming you've been missing - Gist is a simple way to share snippets of text and code with others.
Hasnain says:
This is a really good introduction to (Functional) Reactive Programming.
Posted on 2014-06-30T19:52:54+0000
Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater
Not long after the security firm’s top manager in Iraq told a State Department investigator “that he could kill” him, the inquiry was abandoned. Weeks later, the firm’s guards killed 17 civilians in Iraq.
Hasnain says:
"Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports."
It's sad that investigative journalism like this is getting rarer and rarer these days.
It also doesn't help that Risen, a critically lauded Pulitzer prize winning journalist, is facing jail time for not disclosing his sources for his book.
Posted on 2014-06-30T16:52:33+0000