Links - August 18, 2016
Hello there old friends. It has been forever since my last post, and I apologize for that. Here is a mixed bag of technology, management, and politics pieces. My interests haven’t changed, hopefully yours haven’t either.
Expect more frequent updates coming back soon.
- Serverless Architectures Mike Roberts
“Serverless” is the Next Big Thing. Serve static stuff on S3, make everything stateless, and plug a bunch of functions in Lambda. AWS once again changing the paradigm.
- The hedgehog and the fox Benedict Evans
I like to think of myself as a much more fox-ey than hedgehog-ey person, and I think success comes from getting a fox to surround themselves with hedgehogs. This is true in the AI context, as well as many others. “To think about tech now is to think about many things.”
- Stalking your Facebook friends on Tinder Alex Hogue - Literally Words
The internet: where nothing is really private.
- What Did You Do? What Will I Have Done? Albert Wenger - Continuations
While the comparisons with WWII are extreme, this is one of those “better safe than sorry” situations. Go vote, I can’t.
- Watch this very chill video of virtual soft-bodied creatures swimming underwater James Vincent - The Verge
Some really cool research by Francesco Corucci et al.
- The Uber Engineering Tech Stack, Part I: The Foundation Lucie Lozinski - Uber Engineering Blog
It is always interesting to see how others do things. Especially interesting is the migration from python/node to Java/Go, and the heavy usage of OSS projects. I agree that having less languages is good, however, this might be a bit quixotic.
- Central bank digital currency: the end of monetary policy as we know it? Marilyne Tolle - Bank Underground
One of the most intriguing aspects of bitcoin is what kind of effects a constant, predictable, and stable money supply would cause in our financial systems. Coming from the Bank of England, this post holds more water than the usual cryptocurrency wonk posts.
- Delusions of Chaos Paul Krugman - The New York Times
The world is a mess, its just less messy than it used to be.
- The Unbundled City Paul Krugman - The New York Times
Not the usual Krugman. A really interesting take on how the Internet has changed cities. While he thinks of “back office operations,” I think of AWS and outsourced manufacturing.
- The Dreaded Weekly Status Email Christina R. Wodtke - Elegant Hack
In the modern office, email defines workflows. Communicating over email is hard. Do it right.
- Apple and the gun emoji Jeremy Burge - Emojipedia
Related, and somewhat more in depth, is the a16z podcast on emoji. Why do these icons carry so much weight?
- Judaism is not a major player in the history of humankind Yuval Harari - Haaretz (Paywall)
Exceptionalism is not just an American problem.
The only way I was able to get around the paywall was to click on the link from Facebook Messenger, which adds a referrer to the HTTP request. Let me know if you find another workaround. - What Marissa Mayer Brought to Yahoo That Can’t Be Bought or Sold Jelena Woehr - Medium
Leadership is hard, and requires personal sacrifice. People appreciate that, and can tell when a person in power doesn’t put in the required effort. According to Woehr, Marissa did.
- Rectangular countries David Barry
Useless but fun geospatial data analysis, because why not?