Category Archives: Computers

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Managed services killed DevOps | TechCrunch

Today, developers are increasingly turning to managed services for toolsets and infrastructure requirements — tasks traditionally managed by DevOps teams. Amazon Web Services and other managed service providers have allowed for a dramatically simplified way of working, reducing complexity on the developer end and, thus, allowing them to focus on software development instead of installing databases and ensuring processes like backup, redundancy and uptime. In other words, managed services removed a lot of headaches with which DevOps teams were forced to deal.

While it might be hard for some people to accept, the only conclusion can be that DevOps teams are creating the same problem they were initially built to solve. DevOps was established to speed things up, but because of the nature of managed services today, you no longer need a whole team to facilitate them — why not simply teach all developers how to utilize the infrastructure tools in the cloud? The truth is, like QA before it, DevOps has itself become an unnecessary step in the continuous deployment process. As such, it is obsolete.

Source: Managed services killed DevOps | TechCrunch

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The funny things happening on the way to singularity | TechCrunch

It seems more obvious every day that man and machine are quickly assimilating. The transparency that’s inherent in technology will eventually destroy privacy. Automation will eventually eliminate the need for human labor. There’s a short window of time between then and now. We need a master plan for how we’ll manage the disruption that goes along with it.

Source: The funny things happening on the way to singularity | TechCrunch

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Alexa, Cortana, and Siri aren’t novelties anymore. They’re our terrifyingly convenient future.

“Alexa—and Siri and Cortana and all of the other virtual assistants that now populate our computers, phones, and living rooms—are just beginning to insinuate themselves, sometimes stealthily, sometimes overtly, and sometimes a tad creepily, into the rhythms of our daily lives. As they grow smarter and more capable, they will routinely surprise us by making our lives easier, and we’ll steadily become more reliant on them.”

Source: Alexa, Cortana, and Siri aren’t novelties anymore. They’re our terrifyingly convenient future.

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Mapping the Brain to Build Better Machines | Quanta Magazine

An ambitious new program, funded by the federal government’s intelligence arm, aims to bring artificial intelligence more in line with our own mental powers. Three teams composed of neuroscientists and computer scientists will attempt to figure out how the brain performs these feats of visual identification, then make machines that do the same. “Today’s machine learning fails where humans excel,” said Jacob Vogelstein, who heads the program at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). “W

Source: Mapping the Brain to Build Better Machines | Quanta Magazine

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Why Learning To Code Won’t Save Your Job | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

Although I certainly believe that any member of our highly digital society should be familiar with how these platforms work, universal code literacy won’t solve our employment crisis any more than the universal ability to read and write would result in a full-employment economy of book publishing.

It’s actually worse. A single computer program written by perhaps a dozen developers can wipe out hundreds of jobs. As the author and entrepreneur Andrew Keen has pointed out, digital companies employ 10 times fe

Source: Why Learning To Code Won’t Save Your Job | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

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Your Data Footprint Is Affecting Your Life In Ways You Can’t Even Imagine

Predictions about you (and millions of other strangers) are starting to deeply shape your life. Your career, your love life, major decisions about your health and well-being, and even if you end up in jail, are now being governed in no small part by the digital bread crumbs you’ve left behind—many of which you don’t even know you’ve dropped in the first place.

Source: Your Data Footprint Is Affecting Your Life In Ways You Can’t Even Imagine

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AlphaGo’s victory means the world is about to change

“AI methods are progressing much faster than expected, (which) makes the question of the long-term outcome more urgent,” said AI expert Stuart Russell of the University of California’s Berkeley Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences department.

“In order to ensure that increasingly powerful AI systems remain completely under human control… there is a lot of work to do,” he continued.That means that the long held fantasy of a true form of general artificial intelligence is going to be upon humanity sooner than we thought.

Source: AlphaGo’s victory means the world is about to change

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Rats vs. computers vs. rat cyborgs in maze navigation | KurzweilAI

What would happen if we combined synthetic and biological systems, creating an intelligent cyborg rat? How would it perform?

Researchers in China decided to find out by comparing the problem-solving abilities of rats, computers, and rat-computer “cyborgs,” as they reported in an open-access PLOS ONE paper.

Source: Rats vs. computers vs. rat cyborgs in maze navigation | KurzweilAI

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Computer science is the key to America’s skills crisis | TechCrunch

We must recognize that computer science is fundamental. Every student in the United States should learn about algorithms, how the Internet works or how to make an app. But more important, computer science teaches kids to be problem solvers and innovators. Helping students develop these skills will benefit them in every subject, in the classroom and beyond.

Source: Computer science is the key to America’s skills crisis | TechCrunch

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Functional Programming Is Not Popular Because It Is Weird | Probably Dance

Imperative languages have this huge benefit of having implicit state. Both humans and machines are really good at implicit state attached to time. When reading the cake recipe, you know that after finishing the first instruction the oven is preheated, the pans are greased and we have mixed a batter. This doesn’t have to be explicitly stated. We have the instructions and we know what the resulting state would be of performing the instructions. Nobody is confused by the imperative recipe. If I was able to actually finish writing the functional recipe and if I showed it to my mom, she would be very confused by it. (at least the version that doesn’t use monads would be very confusing. Maybe a version using monads wouldn’t be as confusing)

Source: Functional Programming Is Not Popular Because It Is Weird | Probably Dance