~/devreads

30 Apr 2019

29 Apr 2019

Casey 5 min read

If you’re like me, or like many other Python developers, you’ve probably lived (and maybe migrated) through a few version releases. Python 3.7(.3), one of the latest releases, includes some impressive new language features that help to keep Python one of the easiest, and most powerful languages out there. If you’re already using a Python […] The post Getting to…

engineeringdeveloper toolspython

ericlippert 6 min read

We’ve been mostly looking at small, discrete distributions in this series, but we started this series by looking at continuous distributions. Now that we have some understanding of how to solve probability problems on simple discrete distributions and Markov processes, … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

Brijendra Nag 4 min read

Are you looking to develop your own application on top of the Bazaarvoice Response API? Well, we got something for you. The Response API Demo App is a simple Node-React application which demonstrates how to use Response API in conjunction with our 3-legged OAuth2 API. It is recommended to go through the Developer Portal and […]

uncategorizeddeveloper portalresponse apitutorial

26 Apr 2019

ericlippert 7 min read

Last time on FAIC we implemented the Markov process distribution, which is a distribution over state sequences, where the initial state and each subsequent state is random. There are lots of applications of Markov processes; a silly one that I’ve … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

25 Apr 2019

1 min read

We’ve created MuseNet, a deep neural network that can generate 4-minute musical compositions with 10 different instruments, and can combine styles from country to Mozart to the Beatles. MuseNet was not explicitly programmed with our understanding of music, but instead discovered patterns of harmony, rhythm, and style by learning to predict the next token in hundreds of thousands of MIDI…

research

24 Apr 2019

lukaseder 1 min read

I found a very interesting SQL question on Twitter recently: Hi @sfonplsql we have some scenario, Let us 01Jan Mkt Value 100, 02Jan 120, next entry available 25th Jan 125, from 3rd Jan 24 Jan, our value should be 120. How to arrive ? Thanks @oraclebase — Vikki (@vikkiarul) April 23, 2019 Rephrasing the question: … Continue reading Using IGNORE…

sqlignore nullslast valueoraclesql standard

Nick Gottlieb 1 min read

The SCV team at AO.com started with one serverless service. They were so impressed with the turnaround time and low maintenance overhead that the entire team went Serverless First.

customers

Nikki Jones 1 min read

I’m responsible for bringing graduates into Thoughtworks in the UK. I get to work on a number of exciting initiatives, and the one I’m working on right now is a scholarship in partnership with Northcoders, designed to bring more underrepresented minorities into tech. Northcoders is an organisation in Manchester that runs technology boot camps. We chose to work with them…

Mike Mason 1 min read

Whenever we publish a Technology Radar, I take a look at broader trends within the technology industry that don’t necessarily make it onto the radar as blips or themes. Creating the Radar is an excellent chance to dissect what’s going on in the software world, here’s the latest: Buy now, pay later

Rebecca Parsons 1 min read

For the naysayers, there’s little value to be found in exploring new programming languages. After all, most languages today are Turing complete — they can implement everything that is implementable — so what’s the point of learning something new? For self-confessed language geeks like myself — I’d learned five of them before leaving university — that line of argument misses…

23 Apr 2019

ericlippert 6 min read

[Code for this episode is here.] So far in this series we’ve very briefly looked at continuous distributions on doubles, and spent a lot of time looking at discrete distributions with small supports. Let’s take a look at a completely … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

1 min read

We’ve developed the Sparse Transformer, a deep neural network which sets new records at predicting what comes next in a sequence—whether text, images, or sound. It uses an algorithmic improvement of the attention mechanism to extract patterns from sequences 30x longer than possible previously.

research

Gareth Morgan 1 min read

In early March, hundreds of technologists gathered in Shenzhen, China, to join the Technology Radar Summit — an event hosted by Thoughtworks which explored a wide range of subjects, such as microservices, continuous intelligence, and IoT.

22 Apr 2019

Sally Vedros 4 min read

Earth Day inspires millions of people around the world to take action on behalf of our beautiful planet. For some, this means getting out and volunteering for a day with an environmental group. For others, it’s about changing our daily habits to be more mindful about things like recycling, driving, or water usage. But a […] The post Finding Inspiration…

lifecustomerseducationplatform updates

jgamblin 4 min read

I had the chance to attend LoCoMoCoSec this year and had a fantastic time. It was a well-run conference that was extremely focused on being friendly for families and being inclusive of the diverse group of people who make up our community. It also doesn’t hurt that it was in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.…

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Meenakshi Dhanani 1 min read

In June 2016, while sitting across my family at dinner, I announced my application for a one-in-a-million chance at a Google Anita Borg Scholarship. source: http://ignite.globalfundforwomen.org

20 Apr 2019

1 min read

Our hero, a mathematician, is writing notes in LaTeX and needs to convert it to a format that her blog platform accepts. She’s used to using dollar sign delimiters for math mode, but her blog requires \( \) and \[ \]. Find-and-replace fails because it doesn’t know about which dollar sign is the start and which is the end. She…

19 Apr 2019

Chandler Mayo 1 min read

Chirp provides yet another way to bring users together on a real-time chat application - using simple audio chirps to instantly connect chatters.

Chandler Mayo 1 min read

Chirp provides yet another way to bring users together on a real-time chat application - using simple audio chirps to instantly connect chatters.

Chandler Mayo 1 min read

Chirp is like an audio QR code. It can be used to easily connect users to a chatroom or any other real-time experience. This tutorial shows how.

Chandler Mayo 1 min read

Chirp is like an audio QR code. It can be used to easily connect users to a chatroom or any other real-time experience. This tutorial shows how.

18 Apr 2019

Ben Francis 4 min read

Project Things is graduating from its early experimental phase and from now on will be known as Mozilla WebThings. This platform for monitoring and controlling devices over the web consists of the WebThings Gateway, a software distribution for smart home gateways focused on privacy, security and interoperability, and the WebThings Framework, a collection of reusable software components that help developers…

featured articlemozilla webthingswebthings

2 min read

We’re excited to announce the launch of our public bug bounty program with Bugcrowd — the #1 crowdsourced security platform. This public program is open to Bugcrowd’s full crowd of top, trusted whitehat hackers, and we will award up to $1,500 per vulnerability identified on our website, API, and mobile apps.

Anthony O'Connell 1 min read

Risk management. There's a tool for that. In fact, there are many tools you can use to document and visually represent information. It really doesn't matter which one you use, what matters is the quality of information captured, the nature and structure of thinking used to analyse the risks, and the decisions the thinking facilitates.

17 Apr 2019

ericlippert 7 min read

So… I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is: I’ve described an interface for discrete probability distributions and implemented several distributions. I’ve shown how projecting a distribution is logically equivalent to the LINQ Select operator. I’ve shown … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

Staś Małolepszy 8 min read

Fluent is a family of localization specifications, implementations and good practices developed by Mozilla. With Fluent, translators can create expressive translations that sound great in their language. Today we’re announcing version 1.0 of the Fluent file format specification. We’re inviting translation tool authors to try it out and provide feedback. The post Fluent 1.0: a localization system for natural-sounding translations…

featured articlefirefoxlocalizationmozillaasymmetric localization

1 min read

If you haven’t heard of it, Depth First Learning is a wonderful resource for learning about machine learning.

16 Apr 2019

Michael Droettboom 14 min read

Pyodide is an experimental project from Mozilla to create a full Python data science stack that runs entirely in the browser. We think it’s worthwhile to work on moving the JavaScript data science ecosystem forward, and that's why we built and released Iodide earlier this year. In the meantime, we’re meeting data scientists where they are by bringing the popular…

featured articlejavascriptdata scienceiodidepyodide

0xADADA 3 min read

Gibsons “San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide” is worth reading, his take is that San Francisco has become too successful… inevitable to decline into some expensive backwater due to “the rent is too damn high”. He paints a compelling vision of the ills of appalling levels of income inequality, the monoculture of white-male-American tech-workers, and the metastasis of the city into the…

essayseconomics

15 Apr 2019

Jonan Scheffler 10 min read

Setting up a database is a relatively straightforward process (Heroku has an add-on for that), but getting it to run well in production is sometimes another matter. As your application grows and your data grows along with it, you will likely find a number of performance bottlenecks specifically related to your database, and this post […] The post Optimizing Database…

engineeringdatabasedeveloper toolsperformance optimizationpostgres

ericlippert 8 min read

[Code for this episode is here.] Last time in this series I left you with several challenges for improving our DSL for imperative probabilistic workflows. But first, a puzzle: Question One: You are walking down the street when you see … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

1 min read

OpenAI Five is the first AI to beat the world champions in an esports game, having won two back-to-back games versus the world champion Dota 2 team, OG, at Finals this weekend. Both OpenAI Five and DeepMind’s AlphaStar had previously beaten good pros privately but lost their live pro matches, making this also the first time an AI has beaten…

research

7 min read

Anyone who built software for a while knows that estimating how long something is going to take is hard. It’s hard to come up with an unbiased estimate of how long something will take, when fundamentally the work in itself is about solving something. One pet theory I’ve had for a really long time, is that some of this is…

Kalaiarasi Srinivasaramanan 1 min read

The agile framework is a brilliant way to build and deliver scalable software solutions irrespective of size or complexity. The foundational principle of agile teams is continuous collaboration and conversation, which helps discover and maintain a consistently holistic and interdependent business view. This approach also keeps the team and client engaged ensuring resounding success until the end of the project,…

13 Apr 2019

Michael Carroll 1 min read

How to build an app that analyzes and gauges customer feedback in real time using IBM Watson Natural Language Classifier and PubNub.

Michael Carroll 1 min read

How to build an app that analyzes and gauges customer feedback in real time using IBM Watson Natural Language Classifier and PubNub.

12 Apr 2019

ericlippert 2 min read

I’m continuing my efforts to port over and update my old blog content. The previous episode is here. We’re still in the first few weeks of me blogging; I was pumping out articles at a rate I now consider to … Continue reading →

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11 Apr 2019

ericlippert 10 min read

Last time in this series I proposed a stripped-down DSL for probabilistic workflows. Today, let’s see how we could “lower” it to ordinary C# 7 code. I’ll assume of course that we have all of the types and extension methods that … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

Sandra Persing 2 min read

Mozilla Developer Roadshow is a meetup-style, Mozilla-focused event series for people who build the web. In 2017, the Roadshow reached more than 50 cities around the world sharing highlights of Mozilla and Firefox technologies. Now, we’re back! To open our 2019 series, Mozilla presents two events with VR visionary Nonny de la Peña and the Emblematic Group in Los Angeles…

conferenceseventfeatured articleweb developersemblematic

10 Apr 2019

1 min read

A design principle from Extreme Programming (XP) that states that a programmer shouldn't add any functionality until it's actually necessary…

9 Apr 2019

ericlippert 4 min read

Thanks again to the good people at Microsoft who have kept my old blog alive for now; my plan is to port the articles from the old site over, and then they will redirect from the old URLs to the … Continue reading →

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Marco Castelluccio 3 min read

To help get bugs in front of the right Firefox engineers quickly, we developed BugBug, a machine learning tool that automatically assigns a product and component for each new untriaged bug. By presenting new bugs to triage owners faster, we hope to decrease the turnaround time to fix new issues. Check out BugBug for your own issue-tracking triage. The post…

artificial intelligencefeatured articlefirefoxfirefox development highlightsqa

lukaseder 1 min read

A question that is frequently occurring among my SQL training‘s participants is: What’s the difference between putting a predicate in the JOIN .. ON clause and the WHERE clause? I can definitely see how that’s confusing some people, as there seems to be no difference at first sight, when running queries like these, e.g. in … Continue reading The Difference…

sqljoinjoin .. ononpredicate

Schakko 2 min read

We are currently in the process of migrating our alerting infrastructure from OMD to Atlassian’s OpsGenie. Most of the features (SMS, phone call etc.) worked out of the box but we struggled with pushing alerts back into our on-premises Jira instance. Enable logging of POST requests OpsGenie does not provide […] The post Using Atlassian OpsGenie with a localized on-premises…

devops

4 min read

Here's a really silly example. If you don't like it, well- damn. If you do, tell me about it. Pokemon Example w/ TypeScript Let's say you…

5 min read

Wikipedia says an Anemic Domain Model "is the use of a software domain model where the domain objects contain little or no business logic…

1 min read

By data integrity, we mean "what shape is this data allowed to take?”, “what methods can be called and at which point?", “what are the…

1 min read

Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the Apollo program (and early space program more generally), and been reading my way through a growing number of books and documentaries written about it. At a party this weekend I got asked for my list of Apollo book…

8 Apr 2019

ericlippert 6 min read

Without further ado, here’s my proposed stripped-down C# that could be a DSL for probabilistic workflows; as we’ll see, it is quite similar to both enumerator blocks from C# 2 and async/await from C# 5. (Code for this episode can … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

Dan Brown 1 min read

Earlier this year, we partnered with Glitch.com on a starter kit that teaches the fundamentals of WebVR using A-Frame. Today, we introduce a week of WebVR experiments that build on the basics. Designed by Glitch creator Andrés Cuervo, each experiment is unique and is meant to teach and inspire as you craft your own WebVR experiences. The post Sharpen your…

featured articleaframeandrs cuervoglitch

Kevin Telford 1 min read

In my previous post, I looked at how banks should take advantage of the open banking revolution as an opportunity to revolutionise their business. In this post, I want to talk about the changes needed to your business strategy, technology and more in order to start that journey - for all types of organisation. 1. Acquisition is not always the…

7 Apr 2019

6 Apr 2019

5 Apr 2019

4 Apr 2019

ericlippert 6 min read

I’ve got no code for you this time; instead here are some musings about language design informed by our discussion so far. One of the most important questions to ask when designing a language feature is: what should the balance … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random

MapTiler (Martin Mikita) 1 min read

We prepared an automated update system that brings you regular weekly updates of maps from the OpenStreetMap vector tiles.

3 Apr 2019

Henrik Warne 2 min read

I like good programming quotes. Here are some new ones I have found since my last posts. Complexity “Why do people find DNS so difficult? It’s just cache invalidation and naming things.” – @jdub “Your code doesn’t work!” “It works … Continue reading →

programmingquotes

Terence Lee 7 min read

When we open-sourced buildpacks nearly seven years ago, we knew they would simplify the application deployment process. After a developer runs git push heroku master, a buildpack ensures the application’s dependencies and compilation steps are taken care of as part of the deploy. As previously announced, we’ve taken the same philosophies that made buildpacks so […] The post Turn Your…

engineeringbuildpackscloud infrastructuredockerlanguages

Dave Cheney 1 min read

A short talk about unit testing that I gave at the Go London User Group last month. Links: Slides Playlist of videos from the March meetup

go

5 min read

Once every two weeks, we prepare new versions of our mobile apps to be published to the app stores. Being confident about releasing software at that scale — with as many features and code contributions as we have and while targeting a wide range of devices like we do at SoundCloud — is no easy task. So, over the last…

Kevin Telford 1 min read

In my previous post, I looked at why a ‘trust mantra” is not enough to stop customers from leaving if they feel their trust has been abused. To succeed, integrity needs to be an intrinsic part of your business; this means laying the foundations, serving customers the way they want, building confidence through useful services, and being proactive on their…

2 Apr 2019

ericlippert 3 min read

Before that silly diversion I mentioned that we will be needing the empty distribution; today, we’ll implement it. It’s quite straightforward, as you’d expect. [Code for this episode is here.] public sealed class Empty<T> : IDiscreteDistribution<T> { public static readonly Empty<T> Distribution = new Empty<T>(); private Empty() { } public T Sample() => throw new Exception(“Cannot sample from empty distribution”);…

uncategorizedfixing random

1 Apr 2019

ericlippert 4 min read

I just thought of a really cute application of the stochastic workflow technology we’ve been working on; most of the series has already been written but it fits in here, so I’m going to insert this extra bonus episode. We’ll … Continue reading →

uncategorizedfixing random