ProLinks #23

Why programmers never agree, why audience matters and about learning. More inside.

IT

Stolen Bitcoin Tracing - Computerphile - When bitcoin is spent, remainders are re-encoded & combined - how do you separate out any ill-gotten gains from the legitimate hard-earned lucre?

Why Do Some Programmers Never Agree? - Why does it seem like no matter how strong your argument, some programmers never agree with you?

Your audience matters the most - Don’t fish out for email addresses, we’re humans you know.

Why German companies fail at digital innovation - (No) thanks to hierarchical managers, obsolete tools and daft politics, Germany risks being left in the digital dark age.

World Models - Can agents learn inside of their own dreams?

Science

All Models Are Wrong - Every scientific model or representation of something in nature is simplified, reduced, in order to make them useful.

Miscellaneous

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Comments

ProLinks #57 - Truth, Wayland and Sex Tapes

Tech Let's talk about Wayland ... This is the fundamental principle of every single product (including security products). If you cannot use a thing, because its "safety" or "security" mechanisms prevents the core functionality from being utilized in the intended fashion, the product is useless. For example, a Web browser without an Internet connection is possibly very secure from Internet exploits - but it also doesn't do its main function - let people browse the Internet Speed is the killer feature When you touched a Razr or a Palm phone, there was a delay. It felt sluggish and slow. Apple removed the delay between your finger tapping the screen and something happening. Your finger could finally manipulate the UI in realtime, just like in the real world. It felt magical. If there was even a slight delay, the whole experience fell apart. Everything is broken, and it’s okay Every car you’ve ever ridden in, every elevator you’ve ever taken, every s

ProLinks #65 - North Korea, Cryptocurrencies, Propaganda and more

Tech The Incredible Rise of North Korea’s Hacking Army He was right. As the newspapers soon reported, more than sixteen million dollars was withdrawn from roughly seventeen hundred 7-Eleven A.T.M.s across Japan that morning, using data stolen from South Africa’s Standard Bank. The newspapers surmised that 7-Elevens had been targeted because they were the only convenience stores in Japan whose cash terminals all accepted foreign cards. Soon after the raids, the withdrawal limit for many A.T.M.s in the country was reduced to fifty thousand yen Why Cryptocurrency Is A Giant Fraud ❧ Current Affairs Schweikert is partly right: “selling it as a revolution” is a hugely important part of why cryptocurrency is succeeding. But as is generally the case when someone is trying to sell you something, the whole thing should seem extremely fishy. In fact, much of the cryptocurrency pitch is worse than fishy. It’s downright fraudulent, promising people benefits that they will not get and trying

ProLinks #64 - Cookies, How to Survive Apocalypse, Fall of Rome and more

Tech Ubuntu 21.04 is here Ubuntu machines can join an Active Directory (AD) domain at installation for central configuration. AD administrators can now manage Ubuntu workstations, which simplifies compliance with company policies. Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy The Arkansas firm claims to have data on 2.5 billion people around the world. And in the US, if someone’s interested in that information, there are virtually no restrictions on their ability to buy and then use it. How to fight back against Google FLoC Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposes a new way for businesses to reach people with relevant content and ads by clustering large groups of people with similar interests. This approach effectively hides individuals “in the crowd” and uses on-device processing to keep a person’s web history private on the browser. How Live TV Works Do Neural Networks Think Like Our Brain? OpenAI Answers! 🧠 koush Difficult to quantify what an ecological disaster Bitcoin

ProLinks #58 - Evangelicals, Screen time and BASE Jumping

Tech The technical interview practice gap, and how it keeps underrepresented groups out of software engineering MIT gave me was a big stamp on my forehead that, to this day, makes strangers think I’m smart. But there was another, more relevant gift that gave me a serious advantage over students who did not attend an elite computer science institution: boundless access to technical interview practice. Not only was there a multi-week course during the month-long break between Fall and Spring semesters that was dedicated exclusively to passing technical interviews, but all of my peers were going through exactly the same thing at the same time Clone Wars - Open source clones of popular sites 70+ open-source clones of popular sites like Airbnb, Amazon, Instagram, Netflix, Tiktok, Spotify, Trello, Whatsapp, Youtube, etc. List contains source code, demo links, tech stack, and, GitHub stars count. Great for learning purpose! “Well, it seems great to me” But if your music, your graphic

ProLinks #59 - Terrible men, Facebook and SOCOM

Tech You’re Doing It Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype What is less obvious is why Shoshana Zuboff, an emerita professor of Harvard Business School, so uncritically repeats the digital industry’s marketing materials, nor why she never points to or assesses evidence that goes against her argument. Yet her writings are full of hyperbole that sounds like she took press releases from Facebook’s and Google’s PR departments and rewrote them to be alarming, How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation Zuckerberg’s obsession with getting the whole world to use Facebook had found a powerful new weapon. Teams had previously used design tactics, like experimenting with the content and frequency of notifications, to try to hook users more effectively. Their goal, among other things, was to increase a metric called L6/7, the fraction of people who logged in to Facebook six of the previous seven days. L6/7 is just one of myriad ways in which Facebook has measured “e

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