hi all. heres my annual collection of coding/ cs-related links for 2017, tracking some trends. my leading item is the Damore controversy at google as capturing a lot of the zeitgeist.[a] it was just announced that hes suing.[a27]
godwins law is that most onlinne discussions eventually deteriorate/ degrade into an argument about Nazis. a similar observation may be made that a lot of controversies tend to end in lawsuits. ahmed the infamous clockbuilder comes to mind also.[k3]
the google Damore story captures the confluence of the diversity[e] vs “identity politics” being tracked here over the last few years. for me this story also captures how little freedom of speech or real intellectual freedom so-called “knowledge workers” have at corporations, no matter how supposedly openminded or “non evil” the corporations portray themselves to be.
yet do think Damore is on a quixotic quest. a smart guy but maybe not so emotionally intelligent. going off on a tangent. he seemed to get a bit distracted/ fixated on meta issues around his job. noticing that Google was not the corporate paradise that the propaganda pictured. so James, do you think you can have it better anywhere else? maybe you should ask (cohorts somewhat similar in ways) Snowden or Assange about that kind of idealism and where you will end up with it….
some libertarians espouse/ elevate/ glorify the decentralizing, individual-empowering aspects of technology, but as we look around the world, its hard to miss the opposite signs in widespread action around us. whitfield diffie inventor of asymmetric cryptography once excoriated “corporate imperalism” at a CFP (conference for freedom and privacy) around the turn of the century. it may have sounded radical at the time, but a decade and ½ later, it doesnt sound so extreme or unlikely any more. we live in an age that lacks simplistic compartmentalization.
so some years after andreeson announced “software is eating the world”, some of the breathless sheen/ hype/ buzz has now worn off the coding industry last year and some of its “dark side” became more apparent.[d] a few yrs after the facebook IPO, people are asking very tough questions about journalistic responsibility and integrity, and Zuckerberg announced a new years resolution to deal with fake news on his site. good luck with that! its something that the media has been attempting to solve for centuries, arguably since the invention of the printing press.
a new well written/ researched book on Shannon came out and its great to see some more appreciation/ awareness for his work for this sometimes hidden/ unheralded figure who ushered in the Information Age.[b2]
this new administration is a near 180 difference in geek mentality compared to the last one but [c7] was one highlight, where ivanka made some gesture toward coding for girls/ her own 6yr old daughter Arabella. there is very widespread resources now for youngsters to figure out coding such as inexpensive yet sophisticated toys, kits, and classes.[c] saw nearly a whole wall at toys-r-us with the latest.
overall a big trend is much of the prior attn/ near hype around algorithms and coding probably shifting into a machine learning/ AI context.
there is still a lot of innovation going on in new languages[j] but am also wondering if maybe this is finally starting to level/ plateau after moores law finally starting to level off also. it was a wild ride, and there are still more surprises in store.
- a. google2
- b. leaders/ famous/ history
- b2. shannon
- c. edu
- d. down/dark side
- e. diversity
- f. news/ commentary
- g. advance
- h. jobs
- i. prizes
- j. languages
- k. ahmed
- l. humor
- 1. Google CEO cancels ‘town hall’ on gender dispute
- 2. Google Abruptly Cancels Town Hall About Jame’s Damore’s Memo | WIRED
- 3. James Damore, Fired for Writing the ‘Google Memo,’ Just Might Sue | WIRED
- 4. Fired Engineer James Damore: I Feel Google Betrayed Me – Bloomberg
- 5. Why I Was Fired by Google – WSJ
- 6. I’m a woman in computer science. Let me ladysplain the Google memo to you. – Vox
- 7. What the Google gender ‘manifesto’ really says about Silicon Valley
- 8. Fired Google engineer pens WSJ op-ed on his ‘sexist’ memo | Daily Mail Online
- 9. The Ideological Echo Chamber of the Beach | An Ergodic Walk
- 10. What the Google Gender ‘Manifesto’ Really Says about Silicon Valley | Alternet
- 11. The perfect culture war: how conservative pundits reacted to Google’s fired engineer | US news | The Guardian
- 12. James Damore’s Google Memo Gets Science All Wrong | WIRED
- 13. How The Pro-Trump Media Turned The Google Memo Into A National Story
- 14. Protests at Google offices over worker’s firing canceled | Daily Mail Online
- 15. Computational Complexity: The World is Not for Me
- 16. Fired Google Engineer Blames Diversity Zealots For His Dismissal | HuffPost
- 17. Men in Computer Science | Windows On Theory
- 18. The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore
- 19. James Damore Case Could Spawn More Legal Headaches for Google | WIRED
- 20. Why Men Don’t Believe the Data on Gender Bias in Science | WIRED
- 21. Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo on Gender Differences – Bloomberg
- 22. What James Damore Got Wrong About Gender Bias in Computer Science | WIRED
- 23. Three women sue Google ‘for treating men better’ | Daily Mail Online
- 24. Ex-Google Employees Sue Tech Giant For Systemic Gender Pay Discrimination | HuffPost
- 25. Google ‘segregates’ women into lower-paying jobs, stifling careers, lawsuit says | Technology | The Guardian
- 26. Inside the new battle against Google
- 27. James Damore sues Google for allegedly discriminating against conservative white men | The Verge
- 1. ‘Twilight’ Star Kristen Stewart Co-Authors Artificial-Intelligence Paper
- 2. Kristen Stewart co-wrote a paper about AI in filmmaking | Daily Mail Online
- 3. Turing, Father of the Modern Computer
- 4. David Johnson: 1945-2016 | Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP
- 5. Computational Complexity: David Johnson (1945-2016)
- 6. Google coding champion whose Cameroon hometown is cut off from the internet – BBC News
- 7. John Maeda: If You Want to Survive in Design, You Better Learn to Code | WIRED
- 8. Famous Computer Scientists | List of the Top Well-Known Computer Scientists
- 9. An Aerospace Coder Drags a Stodgy Industry Toward Open Source | WIRED
- 10. Harry Huskey, Pioneering Computer Scientist, Is Dead at 101 – The New York Times
- 11. Maryland’s Would-be Governor Alec Ross Plans to Resist Trump by Teaching Kids | WIRED
- 12. Lost Turing letters give unique insight into his academic life prior to death
- 13. Collection of letters by codebreaker Alan Turing found in filing cabinet | Science | The Guardian
- 14. Meet the High Schooler Shaking Up Artificial Intelligence | WIRED
- 15. The Inside Story of ‘Pong’ and Nolan Bushnell’s Early Days at Atari | WIRED
- 16. The Female Supercomputer Designer Who Inspired Steve Jobs
- 17. How nuclear fears helped inspire creation of the internet | Aeon Essays
- 18. Elon Musk Beats Out Mark Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs as The Most Admired Tech Leader | Gospelherald.com
- 19. ATM at 50: An oddity, but it changed consumer behavior | Daily Mail Online
- 20. The Radical Message of ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ | WIRED
- 21. Fireside Chat with Simons Institute Director Dick Karp | Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
- 22. MacArthur Foundation/ Regina Barzilay Computer Scientist | Class of 2017
- 23. People of Programming Languages
- 24. ITCS 2016 graduating bits
- 25. Can Rap Genius Annotate the World? — NYMag
- 26. Codebreaker (TV Movie 2011) – IMDb
- 1. Meet the Authors of a Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age – IEEE Spectrum
- 2. A Man in a Hurry: Claude Shannon’s New York Years – IEEE Spectrum
- 3. How a polymath transformed our understanding of information | Aeon Essays
- 4. Claude Shannon: The Juggling Poet Who Gave Us the Information Age
- 5. 10,000 Hours With Claude Shannon: How A Genius Thinks, Works, and Lives
- 6. No, Nazis, Cyber Genius Claude Shannon Can’t Be Your Hero
- 7. How Claude Shannon Rebooted Information
- 1. Making automation and globalization work for more people starts in elementary school | Commentary | Dallas News
- 2. Get Your Kids Coding With Sony’s Clever Building Blocks | WIRED
- 3. Cozmo, the World’s Cutest Robot, Now Teaches You to Code | WIRED
- 4. Why You—Yes, You—Need to Learn to Code
- 5. Robotics program teaches students to code, build robots
- 6. It’s Time to Make Code More Tinker-Friendly | WIRED
- 7. Under fire Ivanka Trump promotes bid to get girls coding | Daily Mail Online
- 8. CodesDope : Learn C C++ Java Ruby Python and Perl in simplest way and discuss your doubts
- 9. Why every school should have a robotics curriculum | CoderZ Blog
- 10. Burundi Teenagers Participating In International Robotics Competition Go Missing | HuffPost
- 11. Piper Raspberry Pi Computer Kit
- 12. Spectrum for the new generation, Part 2: Kano Pixel Kit
- 13. We don’t need to teach our kids to code, we need to teach them how to dream – Startup Grind – Medium
- 14. San Quentin’s Web Development Shop Gives Inmates a Future-Ready Fresh Start | WIRED
- 15. Hasbro’s $120 robo-dog teaches kids to code | Daily Mail Online
- 16. Computer Kit 2017 | Raspberry Pi Computer & Coding Kit | Kano | Kano.me
- 17. Pixel Kit | Build Your Own Lightboard & Learn To Code | Kano | Kano.me
- 18. Public Review Period for K-12 CS Standards Now Open! – CSTA
- 19. How complexity classes can help you avoid a bar fight!
- 1. Does Engineering Education Breed Terrorists? – The Chronicle of Higher Education
- 2. 2016: The Year Silicon Valley’s Hype Machine Sputtered | WIRED
- 3. Trump’s Empty Crackdown on Overseas Coders Doesn’t Fix H-1Bs | WIRED
- 4. Why I’m Not Looking to Hire Computer-Science Majors – WSJ
- 5. British Airways Union Blames Massive IT Failure On Outsourcing IT Jobs To India
- 6. As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating – The New York Times
- 7. A Murder in Kansas Shatters the Dreams of Immigrant Tech Workers | WIRED
- 8. How Do We Stop the Internet from Lying to Us? | Alternet
- 9. The Coming Software Apocalypse – The Atlantic
- 10. Open and Closed – The New York Times
- 11. How Big Tech Became a Bipartisan Whipping Boy | WIRED
- 12. 2017 Was The Year We Fell Out of Love with Algorithms | WIRED
- 13. Indian IT layoffs in 2017 top 56,000, led by TCS, Infosys, Cognizant — Quartz
- 14. Not Everything Can Be Fixed With Software – Sunil Rajaraman – Medium
- 1. Why Do Robots Always Turn Out Sexist? People Make Them. – The Daily Beast
- 2. Most computer science majors in the U.S. are men. Not so at Harvey Mudd – LA Times
- 3. The tech nerds attracting the world’s most desirable women | Daily Mail Online
- 4. Bunk beds, roaches and nerdy geniuses: my year in a Silicon Valley hacker house | US news | The Guardian
- 5. A team of women is unearthing the forgotten legacy of Harvard’s women ‘computers’ | Public Radio International
- 6. Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment – The New York Times
- 7. Kids on winning robotics team told, ‘Go back to Mexico’
- 8. Can Robots Help Get More Girls Into Science and Tech? | WIRED
- 9. Rediscovering History’s Lost First Female Video Game De | Co.Design
- 10. Are you a geek or a nerd? Scientist creates graph that explains the difference – and tells you where YOU are on the scale | Mail Online
- 11. The place where women lust after spotty nerds | Daily Mail Online
- 1. Experts on the Pros and Cons of Algorithms | Pew Research Center
- 2. A software engineer was detained by U.S. Customs — and given a test to prove he’s an engineer – Recode
- 3. Immigrant Says Customs Quizzed Him to Prove He Can Code | WIRED
- 4. An Extremely Rare Apple-1 is Going to Auction
- 5. Google Accused of Trying to Patent Public Domain Technology
- 6. The Silicon Valley Engineers Driving the Anti-Trump Train | WIRED
- 7. Apple, Facebook & Twitter argue against Trump travel ban | Daily Mail Online
- 8. Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex | Aeon Ideas
- 9. Hey, Computer Scientists! Stop Hating on the Humanities | WIRED
- 1. Diehard Coders Just Rescued NASA’s Earth Science Data | WIRED
- 2. Algorithms: the managers of our digital lives
- 3. The Raspberry Pi Zero W Is Your Key to the Hackable Future | WIRED
- 4. How to build software for a computer 50 times faster than anything in the world — ScienceDaily
- 5. This Unreal Engine Generated Face Almost Escapes The Uncanny Valley And It’s Freaking Us Out – Digg
- 6. One-Way Salesman Finds Fast Path Home | Quanta Magazine
- 7. The mathematicians who want to save democracy : Nature News & Comment
- 1. The Next Big Blue-Collar Job Is Coding | WIRED
- 2. NEW YORK COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS DAY NYCE 2017
- 3. Where the STEM Jobs Are (and Where They Aren’t) – The New York Times
- 4. united states – Are there more open jobs than available developers? – Skeptics Stack Exchange
- 5. Want to Make It as a Biologist? Better Learn to Code | WIRED
- 1. NASA is offering a $15,000 prize if you can speed up its simulation code – The Verge
- 2. Why the world’s toughest maths problems are much harder than a chess puzzle, and well worth US$1m
- 3. Michael and Sheila Held Prize
- 4. 2016 Hackaday Prize
- 1. Kotlin: the Upstart Coding Language Conquering Silicon Valley | WIRED
- 2. The 2017 Top Programming Languages – IEEE Spectrum
- 3. Why is Python Growing So Quickly? – Stack Overflow Blog
- 4. How HBO’s Silicon Valley built “Not Hotdog” with mobile TensorFlow, Keras & React Native
- 1. Ahmed Got His Clock Back!
- 2. Ahmed Mohamed demands $15m compensation and written apology for homemade clock arrest | People | News | The Independent
- 3. Family of Muslim teen Ahmed Mohamed seeks $15M in clock incident | Daily Mail Online
- 4. Richard Dawkins Compares Ahmed Mohamed To ISIS Child Soldier
