DPL Reading List – September 25, 2015
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
A Group Of Wireless Execs Aim To Build A Nationwide Network For The Internet Of Things (Thanks to Chris Apple for recommending this article) – “The idea behind what Ingenu calls The Machine Network is that companies can use the network to transmit very small amounts of data over fairly long distances at a low cost and be assured that they will arrive.”
How = What + Why (Or, Where to Start Improving Your User Experience) (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “It’s really dangerous to use a single data source to make decisions about user experience improvements. With qualitative methods (like usability testing) alone you might spend a lot of time solving a problem that a negligible number of users have issues with. With quantitative methods (like web analytics) alone you might “solve” a problem that isn’t even a problem at all.”
How The NFL—Not The NSA—Is Impacting Data Gathering Well Beyond The Gridiron – “Stelfox showed Ars some of the real-time data generated during last year’s Super Bowl on condition that it not be published. Looking through information collected, you could easily determine that when a certain player lined up in a certain spot, he was almost guaranteed to get the ball. So while top-level game film and old-school coaching could catch that, so does the Zebra technology—and it does so instantly.”
Americans Agree Computer Science Is Important—But Only One-Quarter Of US Schools Teach It – “We can make big strides in addressing these issues if: a) Industry, the nonprofit sector and governments at all levels help provide resources for training teachers and/or offering direct training to students, and b) We all exercise our opinions more often on what we do want to be taught or offered in school and then ensure that our testing and accountability standards aren’t a barrier to those objectives. It’s clear that we have a huge disconnect right now between what we see as a priority for our kids’ future and what is currently being taught. It’s time to crack the code on coding in schools.”
Debunking The “Steve Jobs Ignored Customers” Myth (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “Identify all the compromises faced by the customer. Heck, test your hypotheses with your target market (rich lawyers with lots of disposable income for phones) before you build anything. But don’t pretend that this was just willed out of thin air.”
Near-Perfect Computer Security May Be Surprisingly Close – “Indistinguishability obfuscation begins by positing two programs that compute the exact same outputs by different methods — for example, the equivalent functions f(x) = x(a + b) and f(x) = ax + bx. For any set of three inputs—a, b and x—each program produces the same result as the other, but arrives at that result by a different path. IO says that given two equivalent programs, it should be possible to encrypt them so that users cannot tell which version they have, no matter how much they poke around.”
Go Midwest, Young Techie: Silicon Valley Too Pricey For Startups – “While San Francisco and Seattle still rule the industry — and remain totally cool places to live and work — companies are increasingly moving operations where talent is cheaper and easier to retain. The fastest-growing states for technology jobs in the first half of the year were Minnesota, Utah, Nebraska and Michigan, according to a Dice.com analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. New York was seventh and California ranked 10th.”
