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  Difference Engine: Luddite legacy

AN APOCRYPHAL tale is told about Henry Ford II showing Walter Reuther, the veteran leader of the United Automobile Workers, around a newly automated car plant. “Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues,” gibed the boss of Ford Motor Company. Without skipping a beat, Reuther replied, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?”Whether the exchange was true or not is irrelevant. The point was that any increase in productivity required...

   Artificial intelligence,Engine,Difference,Human,Computer     2011-11-07 08:33:16

  A plugin to update last_error in Delayed Job

delayed_job is a process based asynchronous task processing gem which can be ran at background. It will fork the specified number of processes to execute the tasks asynchronously. The task status is usually stored in the database so that it can be easily integrated into a Rails application where asynchronous job execution is desired. Normally when a job fails to execute or error occurs, it would save the error into the database with the column last_error. Ideally all these will be handled b...

   RUBY,RUBY ON RAILS,DELAYED JOB,LAST_ERROR     2017-11-18 13:05:49

  Obviously Correct

What do automatic memory management, static types and purity have in common? They are methods which take advantage of the fact that we can make programs obviously correct (for some partial definition of correctness) upon visual inspection. Code using automatic memory management is obviously correct for a class of memory bugs. Code using static types is obviously correct for a class of type bugs. Code using purity (no mutable references or side effects) isobviously c...

   Memory management,Code,Static,Purity     2011-11-07 08:13:05

  Discovery kills distribution: why the web needs a new leader

[Apple and Google have locked application discovery and distribution within their app stores. VisionMobile's Andreas Constantinou explains how Facebook is using the web to disintermediate Apple/Google and why the web needs a new leader].The platform duopoly.In just the space of 3 years, the mobile platforms landscape has changed from an election race to an oligarchy. The network effects at the heart of the Apple and Google business models have created formidable barriers to entry. The growth in ...

   Web,Leader,New era,Google,Apple,Mobile     2011-10-18 02:53:29

  Introducing JavaScript native file management

TL;DR The Mozilla Platform keeps improving: JavaScript native file management is an undergoing work to provide a high-performance JavaScript-friendly API to manipulate the file system. The Mozilla Platform, JavaScript and Files The Mozilla Platform is the application development framework behind Firefox, Thunderbird, Instantbird, Camino, Songbird and a number of other applications. While the performance-critical components of the Mozilla Platform are developed in C/C++, an increasing number o...

   JavaScript,File,Local file,Firfox,Mozilla     2011-12-06 09:05:48

  Python threads: communication and stopping

A very common doubt developers new to Python have is how to use its threads correctly. Specifically, a large amount of questions on StackOverflow show that people struggle most with two aspects: How to stop / kill a threadHow to safely pass data to a thread and back I already have a blog post touching on these issues right here, but I feel it’s too task-specific for sockets, and a more basic and general post would be appropriate. I assume the reader has a basic familiarity with Pytho...

   Python,Multithreading,Communication,Synchronize     2011-12-28 07:38:32

  HTML above flash (transparency + z-index)

We have faced this problem many of the times. When we want to display some message on top of all layers on a page or use some feature like jQuery light boxes. Normally the flash file continues to shine through the page. No matter what you do with layering the dom elements using z-index.See the layering flash content problem definition here.Before this, people used to dodge this issue with some fixes like hiding the flash area completely and then showing a static image of...

   HTML,Flash,Above,z-index,wmode,transpare     2011-05-01 15:46:34

  How I Learned to Program Computers

I’ve been asked this question a lot lately, especially after I built YouTube Instant. So, here’s the answer, once and for all, for those who are interested.In short:I learned how to program by building lots of websites.The full story:I learned how to program by working on lots of different website projects starting from a pretty young age. What follows is a full account of all the major websites I’ve built, back to the very first site I made when I was 11 years old. Wha...

   Programming,Computer,Tips,Feross Aboukhadijeh     2011-10-17 10:25:32

  Why Software Is Eating The World

This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I've observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the...

   software,quota,internet world,eat up     2011-08-22 12:06:40

  Inside Google's recruiting machine

FORTUNE -- In the hot war for talent being fought in Silicon Valley, no company has an arsenal quite like Google's. Named Fortune's Best Company to Work For in 2012, the search giant made a record 8,067 hires last year -- boosting total headcount by a third. The thirteen-year-old firm's recruiting has an almost mythical quality about it, particularly for the two million candidates applying to work there each year. In terms of elite American institutions, getting a job at Google ranks with b...

   Google,Recruiter,Contract,Recruit machine     2012-02-25 04:50:01