How to utilize the SendGrid Block with Functions to trigger transactional email based on an event.
1 Nov 2018
I felt the need to create my own URL Shortener. I ended up with a template repository for making URL Shorteners with Jekyll and GitHub Pages. Introducing Jekyll URL Shortener - A template repository for making URL Shorteners with #Jekyll and #GitHubPageshttps://t.co/u9iutTiG2O@jekyllrb @github — Henrik Lau Eriksson (@hlaueriksson) November 1, 2018 The source code and documentation can be found here:…
Integrating Amazon Simple Email Service with Datadog to improve observability.
All November, we're posting a series of serverless challenges. Do the challenge, tweet it out, and you might get swag!
31 Oct 2018
A comparison of traditional web architectures and serverless, and the benefits of the serverless model when it comes to reliability.
A comparison of traditional web architectures and serverless, and the benefits of the serverless model when it comes to reliability.
We’ve developed Random Network Distillation (RND), a prediction-based method for encouraging reinforcement learning agents to explore their environments through curiosity, which for the first time exceeds average human performance on Montezuma’s Revenge.
30 Oct 2018
Direct Debit is a great way to take recurring payments but historically it has been seen as clunky and inflexible. So, how is Direct Debit different with GoCardless? GoCardless' Joe Robbins explains in this video quick guide.
Are you using Direct Debit as a fast, efficient, low-cost method to collect regular fees, subscriptions or one-off payments from your customers? Or considering adding Direct Debit to your payments mix?
A guide to the key payment options for Australian businesses who take recurring payments – and the pros and cons of each.
Watch this free webinar and take the worry out of increasing your fees. With expert advice from Heather Townsend, Founder, The Accountants Millionaires’ Club.
Introduction I have always been a fan of Google Products, so when they announced the Google Home Hub, I ordered one. Once I got the Hub on my network I scanned it and it returned the following: Nmap scan report for hubHost is up (0.046s latency).Not shown: 995 closed portsPORT STATE SERVICE8008/tcp open http8009/tcp open ajp138443/tcp open https-alt9000/tcp open cslistener10001/tcp…
Our project for traveling in time on a digital map - TimeMachine Atlas prototype of the city of Venice - is now live!
I recently had the opportunity to attend the Women in Technology Conference in Sydney, hosted by Maddox Events. As Thoughtworks was a sponsor of the event, it gave me an opportunity to meet technologists, marketers and even clients of Thoughtworks, all of whom were passionate about supporting women in tech. The best part of the whole event was when I…
29 Oct 2018
I like weird, yet concise language constructs and API usages Yes. I am guilty. Evil? Don’t know. But guilty. I heavily use and abuse the java.lang.Boolean type to implement three valued logic in Java: I know – a lot of enterprise developers will bikeshed and cargo cult the old saying: Code is read more often … Continue reading Imperative Loop…
The ultimate guide to getting paid on time for SMBs in Australia. We guide you through practical, low-cost, high-impact tactics that will reduce your average payment times and debtor days.
26 Oct 2018
25 Oct 2018
23 Oct 2018
PubNub, Amazon Comprehend, and Initial State, the real-time dashboard delivers up-to-millisecond analysis based on filtered keywords and topics.
PubNub, Amazon Comprehend, and Initial State, the real-time dashboard delivers up-to-millisecond analysis based on filtered keywords and topics.
Great art has the power to inspire us, to touch our souls and make us reflect on the true nature of what it is to be human. For many, such as the visually impaired, art is a closed book, inaccessible and impenetrable.
22 Oct 2018
I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here’s my 15 second answer: We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It’s called Stack
We’re proposing an AI safety technique called iterated amplification that lets us specify complicated behaviors and goals that are beyond human scale, by demonstrating how to decompose a task into simpler sub-tasks, rather than by providing labeled data or a reward function. Although this idea is in its very early stages and we have only completed experiments on simple toy…
Autistic children can experience difficulties in relating to others and understanding emotions. Now, help is at hand, thanks to a mask-wearing, kid-friendly robot. This is the work of London-based Thoughtworker, Lina Alagrami — who explored this topic at XConf EU.
21 Oct 2018
The AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam covers a wide range of AWS services. This post shares helpful notes and tips for studying key concepts like EC2, S3, VPC, DynamoDB, and more. It provides advice on the exam mindset and lists official and unofficial preparation resources. The notes summarize important details around provisioned throughput, instance types, database replication and more that…
20 Oct 2018
GoReleaser was able to build Snapcraft packages for a long time, but it wasn’t able to push them until today. Let’s see how to wrap to your TravisCI build!
I shared some of my experiences coding GoReleaser, this time, more about community and less about Go itself. Slides are more or less the same, but here they are anyway:
19 Oct 2018
The first rule of PAKE is: nobody ever wants to talk about PAKE. The second rule of PAKE is that this is a shame, because PAKE — which stands for Password Authenticated Key Exchange — is actually one of the most useful technologies that (almost) never gets used. It should be deployed everywhere, and yet it isn’t. … Continue reading…
How to create your own Magic Leap multiplayer game using Unity and PubNub.
How to create your own Magic Leap multiplayer game using Unity and PubNub.
18 Oct 2018
I came across an interesting interview question, along the lines of ”How would you make this work?” add(2, 5); // multiple arguments style > 7 add(2)(5); // currying, a chained invocation style > 7 add(1,2)(3,4) // both > 10 I thought this was a very interesting question, so took some time to implement a multi-argument / curried function. Heres what…
Thoughtworks, as an acknowledged leader of inclusion and diversity within the technology community is standing by Stonewall and their uncompromising stand for trans and non binary people in the UK’s Gender Recognition Act consultation.
17 Oct 2018
How to use gestures to control - turn on/off or change the color - of an internet-connected LED with Magic Leap and PubNub.
How to use gestures to control - turn on/off or change the color - of an internet-connected LED with Magic Leap and PubNub.
16 Oct 2018
Rails applications that use ActiveRecord objects in their cache may experience an issue where the entries cannot be invalidated if all of these conditions are true: They are using Rails 5.2+ They have configured config.active_record.cache_versioning = true They are using a cache that is not maintained by Rails, such as dalli_store (2.7.8 or prior) In […] The post Cache Invalidation…
This post highlights some git features that might be less used/known, but can end up saving you when things go south in the codebase. The post Git Catastrophes and Tips to Avoid Them appeared first on RisingStack Engineering.
For accountants, getting to grips with cash flow allows you to lead by example and become a trusted adviser to your clients. In this guide we take you through 5 steps to healthy cash flow for you and your clients.
The financial cost of abuse
15 Oct 2018
MIMIC MQTT Simulator: Programmable, dynamic platform designed to enable rapid development, testing, and deployment large-scale IoT app.
MIMIC MQTT Simulator: Programmable, dynamic platform designed to enable rapid development, testing, and deployment large-scale IoT app.
As the tech lead on non SaaS product I spend a lot of my time worrying about testing. Specifically we have tests that cover code, but what is covering the tests? Tests are important to give you certainty that what your product says on the tin is what it will do when people take it home […]
Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra quoting German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s words, "I am what I am. So take me as I am,” while pronouncing the historic verdict that leveled Section 377, is one for the ages. We, at Thoughtworks, recognize the gargantuan feat that has been accomplished and respect the blood, sweat, and tears of the thousands…
12 Oct 2018
Everyone in the US is now back in school, and we’ve been feeling the rush of excitement here at Clever over the last few weeks. On a typical day at Clever this school year, we regularly hit more than 1,000 logins per second! As we’ve chronicled over the last few months (July, May) , the […] The post Clever SSO…
A review of this year's API World, and where we think the world of APIs is headed.
A review of this year's API World, and where we think the world of APIs is headed.
11 Oct 2018
We are now accepting applications for our second cohort of OpenAI Scholars, a program where we provide 6–10 stipends and mentorship to individuals from underrepresented groups to study deep learning full-time for 3 months and open-source a project.
Learn how to harness AWS CloudTrail to enhance your serverless application security posture.
10 Oct 2018
How to use the Smartcar API and Functions to build a connected car dashboard including door control, real-time odometer tracking, and geolocation.
How to use the Smartcar API and Functions to build a connected car dashboard including door control, real-time odometer tracking, and geolocation.
I have an old Couchbase 4.5.x cluster, and I thought it would be nice to upgrade it. These are my notes and the tests I did before doing it “in production”™️.
We want to share your expertise with a global audience of serverless pioneers.
There are a number of reasons why great products fail – it happens all the time. It’s easy to think that success is linked to how much a team knows at the start of a project; however, the potential to develop new skills, learn by doing, and adapt to what is learned is equally, if not more, important. Tackling problems,…
9 Oct 2018
All SQL databases support the standard aggregate functions COUNT(), SUM(), AVG(), MIN(), MAX(). Some databases support other aggregate functions, like: EVERY() STDDEV_POP() STDDEV_SAMP() VAR_POP() VAR_SAMP() ARRAY_AGG() STRING_AGG() But what if you want to roll your own? Java 8 Stream Collector When using Java 8 streams, we can easily roll our own aggregate function (i.e. a … Continue reading Writing Custom…
This is the 1st post of the ‘Learn JavaScript for Free’ series - in these chapters you will find free materials and a roadmap for learning JS from scratch. The post Want to Learn JavaScript for Free? Start Here! appeared first on RisingStack Engineering.
We are now accepting applications for OpenAI Fellows and Interns for 2019.
8 Oct 2018
A getting started guide for building real-time, multi-user experiences for Magic Leap using Unity Game Engine and PubNub.
A getting started guide for building real-time, multi-user experiences for Magic Leap using Unity Game Engine and PubNub.
It started with a tweet: New years resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain uncertainty estimates — Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson) January 7, 2018 Why? Because I’ve been sitting in 100,000,000 meetings where people endlessly debate whether the monthly number of widgets is going up or down, or whether widget method X is more productive than widget method Y.…
How to create you own car navigation with Raspberry Pi and our open-source map project.
Many of us are all too familiar with the mantra of going digital — whatever that means — and the supposed benefits that it will bring, the power and the business benefits that will result. But too often, that mantra is trotted out without sufficient thought about the technologies and people that are critical to making it happen. That matters…
7 Oct 2018
Belmont is evaluating pedestrian and bike improvements to Ralston Avenue. These improvements build on the Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan. There is pretty good cycle access all the way from the eastern tip of Foster City to the Belmont Caltrain station. However, the cycling access from the Caltrain station to Safeway, NDNU or Carlmont Village […]
6 Oct 2018
A fascinating wide ranging interview with Dave Cutler, the creator of RSX-11M, VMS, and Windows NT. Bonus: Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft. The book on the early history of the creation of Windows NT.
5 Oct 2018
We operate in an increasingly fast, complex and interconnected world, where nimble new market entrants have been able to upend established sectors through a laser focus on unified experiences that win loyalty — and drive great businesses. Many of these barnstorming startups — Airbnb, GitHub, Buzzfeed, AVAST Software, Pinterest, Snapchat — share a common feature: they have co-founders who have…
4 Oct 2018
Yesterday we announced a major step towards making buildpacks a multi-platform, open standard by contributing to Cloud Native Buildpacks, a Sandbox Project hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Today, we are announcing that you can now easily share your buildpacks with the world, by registering them with the Heroku Buildpack Registry. As of this […] The post Heroku Buildpack…
A lot of (virtual) ink has been spilled on this blog about automated testing (no, really). This post is another in a series of dives into different automated testing tools and how you can use them to deliver a better, higher-quality web application. Here, we’re going to focus on tools and services specific to ‘visual […]
Here are some common mistakes people make when authoring Lambda functions with Node.js 8.10.
3 Oct 2018
Your Heroku application’s journey to production begins with a buildpack that detects what kind of app you have, what tools you need to run, and how to tune your app for peak performance. In this way, buildpacks reduce your operational burden and let you to spend more time creating value for your customers. That’s why […] The post Buildpacks Go…
Direct Debit payments are automated, but they're not always integrated. Here's the difference – and why it matters.
2 Oct 2018
Payment collection is a major source of admin for any SMB. Claim back the time with these business hacks.
1 Oct 2018
A quick review of my second ever GopherCon - the first one as a speaker, and my experience talking.
Small business admin is a headache for any busy entrepreneur. But there are ways to minimise the pain, speed up processes and improve business performance.
Top tips for achieving cash flow health – a guide for Australian SMBs.
This is something I keep rediscovering, because I keep forgetting it. JSON.stringify will omit all object attributes that are undefined. In most cases, it doesn't really matter, because if we parse that string back, and try to access that attribute - it will be undefined by design. Check the example below: const user = { name: 'Stanko', phone: undefined };…
30 Sept 2018
29 Sept 2018
Some nice podcasts to listen to while commuting or in general when you are away from keyboard
28 Sept 2018
An excellent talk about the importance of simplicity in the language which is anything but: NDC Techtown 2018 playlist
27 Sept 2018
Even with a brilliant idea and a strong product-market fit, the best product teams sometimes come up short. In 2011, the product failure was 48%, according to business guru R.G. Cooper, but these days figures range up to 95%, with many falling between 70-90%.
26 Sept 2018
At a customer site, I recently refactored a “slow-by-slow” PL/SQL loop and turned that into an efficient set based UPDATE statement saving many lines of code and running much faster. In this blog post, I will show how that can be done. The blog post will focus on Oracle and UPDATE, but rest assured, this … Continue reading How to…
The interaction between career development and on-call is actually really, really, bad. Bluntly, the profession takes on-call seriously, tries to be good at it, yet it is very very rare for this to be rewarded in any meaningful way. In 11 years at my previous employer, I never saw anyone get promoted for on-call performance. […]
At Jane Street, we often work with data that has a very low signal-to-noise ratio, but fortunately we also have a lot of data. Where practitioners in many fields might be accustomed to having tens or hundreds of thousands of correctly labeled examples, some of our problems are more like having a billion training examples whose labels have only a…
25 Sept 2018
5 steps to healthier cash flow for you and your clients
Is remote working making you a more effective developer? A happier developer? How can you improve?
Caltrain is spending $2 billion to electrify the entire railway from SF to Tamien, and buy new train cars. This is expensive and painful - weekend headways are 90 minutes, and the 4th and King/22nd St. stations won't get trains on Saturdays and Sundays for about six months. Why is Caltrain doing this? There are […]
All the important steps that help a new business get up to speed on GoCardless.
This is the story of Robin, a senior developer who has been at Thoughtworks for about three months. Robin was familiar with Thoughtworks because he had attended an event at one of the Thoughtworks offices and was floored by their passion for software. He immediately applied for the developer’s role. During the multiple rounds of interviews, what struck the interviewers…
24 Sept 2018
23 Sept 2018
This blog is mainly reserved for cryptography, and I try to avoid filling it with random “someone is wrong on the Internet” posts. After all, that’s what Twitter is for! But from time to time something bothers me enough that I have to make an exception. Today I wanted to write specifically about Google Chrome, … Continue reading Why I’m…
One of my favourite talks from the elusive Systems We Love conference series. Videos: https://systemswe.love/videos
21 Sept 2018
Everyone knows the SQL SUM() aggregate function (and many people also know its window function variant). When querying the Sakila database, we can get the daily revenue (using PostgreSQL syntax): The result will look something like this: date |daily_revenue |cumulative_revenue -----------|--------------|------------------- 2005-05-24 |29.92 |29.92 2005-05-25 |573.63 |603.55 2005-05-26 |754.26 |1357.81 2005-05-27 |685.33 |2043.14 2005-05-28 |804.04 … Continue reading How to…
20 Sept 2018
SQL is a verbose language, and one of the most verbose features are window functions. In a stack overflow question that I’ve encountered recently, someone asked to calculate the difference between the first and the last value in a time series for any given day: Input volume tstamp --------------------------- 29011 2012-12-28 09:00:00 28701 2012-12-28 10:00:00 … Continue reading How to…