- Last 7 days
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Their success from a technical aspect was based in part on separating the camera from the sound recording device (David used a Nagra) by accurately controlling the speed of the camera and the tape recorder, allowing the two devices to be moved independently with respect to each other, an impossibility in commercially available equipment at the time. Long takes with ordinary equipment of the era would invariably lose synchronization.
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- Aug 2024
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Monopoly is not played on a cartesian plane. It's played on a directed circular graph. Therefore, it is inappropriate to use the Euclidean distance metric to compare the distances between places on the board. We must instead use minimum path lengths. Example: If we used Euclidean distance, then you would have to agree that the distance between, say, Go and Jail is equal to the distance between the Short Line and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Clearly, this is not the intention. In your example, the "nearest railroad" would be the railroad square having the shortest path from wherever you stand. With the game board representing a directed graph, there are no "backwards" paths. Thus, the distance from the pink Chance square to the Reading railroad is not 2. It's 38.
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www.w3.org www.w3.org
- Jun 2024
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www.belfercenter.org www.belfercenter.org
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TensionThe ability to see like a data structure afforded us the technology we have today. But it was built for and within a set of societal systems—and stories—that can’t cope with nebulosity. Worse still is the transitional era we’ve entered, in which overwhelming complexity leads more and more people to believe in nothing. That way lies madness. Seeing is a choice, and we need to reclaim that choice. However, we need to see things and do things differently, and build sociotechnical systems that embody this difference.This is best seen through a small example. In our jobs, many of us deal with interpersonal dynamics that sometimes overwhelm the rules. The rules are still there—those that the company operates by and laws that it follows—meaning there are limits to how those interpersonal dynamics can play out. But those rules are rigid and bureaucratic, and most of the time they are irrelevant to what you’re dealing with. People learn to work with and around the rules rather than follow them to the letter. Some of these might be deliberate hacks, ones that are known, and passed down, by an organization’s workers. A work-to-rule strike, or quiet quitting for that matter, is effective at slowing a company to a halt because work is never as routine as schedules, processes, leadership principles, or any other codified rules might allow management to believe.The tension we face is that on an everyday basis, we want things to be simple and certain. But that means ignoring the messiness of reality. And when we delegate that simplicity and certainty to systems—either to institutions or increasingly to software—they feel impersonal and oppressive. People used to say that they felt like large institutions were treating them like a number. For decades, we have literally been numbers in government and corporate data structures. BreakdownAs historian Jill Lepore wrote, we used to be in a world of mystery. Then we began to understand those mysteries and use science to turn them into facts. And then we quantified and operationalized those facts through numbers. We’re currently in a world of data—overwhelming, human-incomprehensible amounts of data—that we use to make predictions even though that data isn’t enough to fully grapple with the complexity of reality.How do we move past this era of breakdown? It’s not by eschewing technology. We need our complex socio-technical systems. We need mental models to make sense of the complexities of our world. But we also need to understand and accept their inherent imperfections. We need to make sure we’re avoiding static and biased patterns—of the sort that a state functionary or a rigid algorithm might produce—while leaving room for the messiness inherent in human interactions. Chapman calls this balance “fluidity,” where society (and really, the tech we use every day) gives us the disparate things we need to be happy while also enabling the complex global society we have today.
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- May 2024
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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usage (n)USE (v)
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www.technologyreview.com www.technologyreview.com
- Apr 2024
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Iroful Fountain Pen Friendly Paper Review - Better Than Cosmo Air Light? by [[Blake's Broadcast]]
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- Mar 2024
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We can't use algorithms to filter for quality because they're not designed to. They're designed to steer you towards whatever's most profitable for their creators.That puts the onus on us, as users, to filter out the noise and that is increasingly difficult.
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- Feb 2024
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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Die Selbstverpflichtungen der Regierungen zur Dekarbonisierung reichen bei weitem nicht aus. Ein Bericht, der von den Vereinten Nationen als Grundlage für die kommende COP28 publiziert wurde, ergibt, dass 2030 etwa 20 bis 23 Gigatonnen mehr CO<sub>2</sub> emittiert werden sollen, als mit dem 1,5 °-Ziel verträglich wäre. Zum ersten Mal wird in einem offiziellen UN-Dokument das Ende der Nutzung fossiler Brennstoffe gefordert. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/un-report-calls-for-phasing-out-of-fossil-fuels-as-paris-climate-goals-being-missed
Bericht: https://unfccc.int/documents/631600
Tags
- actor: UN
- 1,5°
- process: increasing emissions
- institution: Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit
- Technical dialogue of the first global stocktake. Synthesis report by the co-facilitators on the technical dialogue
- driver: ghg emissions
- 2023-09-08
- expert: Ani Dasgupta
- expert: Gareth Redmond-King
- institution: World Resources Institute
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www.liberation.fr www.liberation.fr
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Der CO<sub>2</sub>-Gehalt der Atmosphäre wird 2024 weiter steigen, so dass die vom IPCC erarbeiteten Pfade, um das 1,5°-Ziel einzuhalten, nicht mehr eingehalten werden können. Das ergibt sich aus einer Studie des britischen Met Office, die sich auf die Daten des Mauna Loa-Observatoriums in Hawai stützt. (Die obere Grenze der Unsicherheitsbereiche dieser Pfade ist erreicht, selbst wenn der El-Niño-Einfluss abgezogen wird. Ein Einhalten der Pfade würde ein sofortiges Absinken des CO<sub>2</sub>-Gehalts erfordern.) https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/climat-les-concentrations-de-co2-cette-annee-menacent-la-limite-de-15c-daugmentation-globale-des-temperatures-20240119_6JIALPQDBNADFGNHS4MVDXR5QA/?redirected=1
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- Jan 2024
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news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
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Wirth himself realized the problems of Pascal and his later languages are basically improved versions of Pascal -- Modula, Modula-2, and Oberon. But these languages didn't even really displace Pascal itself let alone C -- but maybe if he had named them in a way that made it clear to outsiders that these were Pascal improvements they would have had more uptake.
Modula and Oberon should have been codenames rather than independent projects.
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www.liberation.fr www.liberation.fr
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zh.wikipedia.org zh.wikipedia.org
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每個語言都有自己的一組音位,這也就是這個語言的語音系統[4],音位可用來研究某個特定語言中如何將音組合成詞。音位有時被譯為「音素」[5],然而音素一詞在中文裡的用法較為混亂,不一定都是指音位。
很高興看到台、中、港兩國三地的維基百科,不約而同把phoneme正名為「音位」而非「音素」。另外,星馬澳也如此。唯一「不合群」的漢字用法是日語,稱之為「音素」,這對台灣的譯名影響不小。
建議從今起,大家努力建立共識,一概把phoneme稱作「音位」、把phonemics稱作「音位學」,一勞永逸,與有歧義的詞「音素」區分開來。
很不幸,在台灣、正體中文的文獻中,「音素」一詞既可能指phone,也可能指phoneme,而區分兩者的能力又是語音學(phonetics)、音位學(phonemics)的重頭戲!因爲術語詞彙的翻譯不統一而造成學習和理解的混亂,得不償失。
很支持臺灣雙語無法黨提倡PA(phonemic awareness音位意識)的宗旨,但黨主席蕭博士對外一貫把PA中的phoneme稱作「音素」,就容易和phone(亦可稱「音素」)混淆。建議一起努力大聲說出「音位」。
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- Dec 2023
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diataxis.fr diataxis.fr
- Oct 2023
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matklad.github.io matklad.github.io
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Messages are delineated by newlines. This means, in particular, that the JSON encoding process must not introduce newlines within a message. Note however that newlines are used in this document for readability.
Better still: separate messages by double linefeed (i.e., a blank line in between each one). It only costs one byte and it means that human-readable JSON is also valid in all readers—not just ones that have been bodged to allow non-conformant payloads under special circumstances (debugging).
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- Sep 2023
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mywiki.wooledge.org mywiki.wooledge.org
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If IFS is unset, or its value is exactly <space><tab><newline>, the default, then any sequence of IFS characters serves to delimit words. If IFS has a value other than the default, then sequences of the whitespace characters space and tab are ignored at the beginning and end of the word, as long as the whitespace character is in the value of IFS (an IFS whitespace character). Any character in IFS that is not IFS whitespace, along with any adjacent IFS whitespace characters, delimits a field. A sequence of IFS whitespace characters is also treated as a delimiter. If the value of IFS is null, no word splitting occurs.
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rubyreferences.github.io rubyreferences.github.io
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It seems that the method is a direct equivalent of a.fdiv(b).ceil, and as such, annoyingly unnecessary, but fdiv, due to floating point imprecision, might produce surprising results in edge cases
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bugs.ruby-lang.org bugs.ruby-lang.org
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As "module" is more generic concept than "class", the name misleadingly implies that either this method doesn't returns refined modules, or modules can't be refined. This is obviously not true and trivially disproved: module Refs refine Enumerable do def foo = puts 'foo' end end Refs.refinements[0].refined_class #=> Enumerable. Which is, well, not a class. # The refinement is usable, so it is not a mute concept: using Refs [1, 2, 3].foo # prints "foo" successfully I believe we refer to "modules" when some feature applies to modules and classes. Unless there is some deeper consideration for the current naming (I don't see justification in #12737, but I might miss something), the method should be renamed or aliased.
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- Aug 2023
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abstract.ece.cmu.edu abstract.ece.cmu.edu
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Another way I get inspiration for research ideas is learning about people's pain points during software development Whenever I hear or read about difficulties and pitfalls people encounter while I programming, I ask myself "What can I do as a programming language researcher to address this?" In my experience, this has also been a good way to find new research problems to work on.
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evilmartians.com evilmartians.com
- Jul 2023
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blog.ploeh.dk blog.ploeh.dk
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"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
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dascript.org dascript.org
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Also, for those who for some reason prefer curly brackets over Python-style indenting, it is also possible to write:
Good and sensible.
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- May 2023
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datascience.codata.org datascience.codata.org
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articulates requirements for readability sating that identifiers must be: Any printable characters from the Universal Character Set of ISO/IEC 10646 (ISO 2012):UTF-8 encoding is required; Case insensitive:Only ASCII case folding is allowed.
{UTF-8} {ASCII Case Folding}
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infomesh.net infomesh.net
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almost all beginners to RDF go through a sort of "identity crisis" phase, where they confuse people with their names, and documents with their titles. For example, it is common to see statements such as:- <http://example.org/> dc:creator "Bob" . However, Bob is just a literal string, so how can a literal string write a document?
This could be trivially solved by extending the syntax to include some notation that has the semantics of a well-defined reference but the ergonomics of a quoted string. So if the notation used the sigil
~
(for example), then~"Bob"
could denote an implicitly defined entity that is, through some type-/class-specific mechanism associated with the string "Bob".
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- Jan 2023
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datascienceparichay.com datascienceparichay.com
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Now, if you try to parse a date (using the pandas.to_datetime() function) that lies outside this range, we get the above ParseError.
The datetime type in pandas can only take values inside a given range, for example, dates less than 1677-09-21 and greater than 2262-04-11 cannot be used in Pandas. Is this due to the bit size the datetime[ns] type uses in Pandas?
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www.mediawiki.org www.mediawiki.org
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The popular recommendation is that there should be between 40 and 75 characters per line. The findings of multiple studies conclude that "short line lengths are easier to read". Regarding learning and information retention: "Subjects reading the narrow paragraphs had better retention than those reading the wide paragraphs"
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cdn.tc-library.org cdn.tc-library.org
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news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
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Patch based systems are idiotic, that's RCS, that is decades old technology that we know sucks (I've had a cocktail, it's 5pm, so salt away).Do you understand the difference between pass by reference and pass by value?
Larry makes a similar analogy (pass by value vs pass by reference) to my argument about why patches are actually better at the collaboration phase—pull requests are fragile links. Transmission of patch contents is robust; they're not references to external systems—a soft promise that you will service a request for the content when it comes. A patch is just the proposed change itself.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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how important is the concrete syntax of their language in contrast to
how important is the concrete syntax of their language in contrast to the abstract concepts behind them what I mean they say can someone somewhat awkward concrete syntax be an obstacle when it comes to the acceptance
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- Nov 2022
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michaelnotebook.com michaelnotebook.com
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The creators of Scrivener have taken a process that formerly had to be done manually by writers, and built a system of cues that make it easy and natural.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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The paradox of information systems[edit] Drummond suggests in her paper in 2008 that computer-based information systems can undermine or even destroy the organisation that they were meant to support, and it is precisely what makes them useful that makes them destructive – a phenomenon encapsulated by the Icarus Paradox.[9] For examples, a defence communication system is designed to improve efficiency by eliminating the need for meetings between military commanders who can now simply use the system to brief one another or answer to a higher authority. However, this new system becomes destructive precisely because the commanders no longer need to meet face-to-face, which consequently weakened mutual trust, thus undermining the organisation.[10] Ultimately, computer-based systems are reliable and efficient only to a point. For more complex tasks, it is recommended for organisations to focus on developing their workforce. A reason for the paradox is that rationality assumes that more is better, but intensification may be counter-productive.[11]
From Wikipedia page on Icarus Paradox. Example of architectural design/technical debt leading to an "interest rate" that eventually collapsed the organization. How can one "pay down the principle" and not just the "compound interest"? What does that look like for this scenario? More invest in workforce retraining?
Humans are complex, adaptive systems. Machines have a long history of being complicated, efficient (but not robust) systems. Is there a way to bridge this gap? What does an antifragile system of machines look like? Supervised learning? How do we ensure we don't fall prey to the oracle problem?
Baskerville, R.L.; Land, F. (2004). "Socially Self-destructing Systems". The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology: Innovation, actors, contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 263–285
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ar.al ar.al
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@stephen@social.stephenfry.com
This is where it starts getting ridiculous.
First, rather than social.stephenfry.com, stephenfry.com should be sufficient. Look at email. I can set my MX records to point wherever I want. I don't actually have to have a server with A records to field the email traffic.
Secondly, the @stephen part is superfluous, too! This is something where Mastodon et al had years (decades!) of hindsight to take care of this, and they still messed it up.
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- Oct 2022
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www.sumologic.com www.sumologic.com
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will improve collaboration
The article contains no proof of this statement.
If someone knows of research that proves this, please let me know.
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- Sep 2022
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github.com github.com
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Such schemas cannot easily be refactored without removing the benefits of sharing. Refactoring would require forking a local copy, which for schemas intended to be treated as an opaque validation interface with internal details that may change, eliminates the benefit of referencing a separately maintained schema in the first place.
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news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
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The LISP part, though, is not going well. Porting clever 1970s Stanford AI Lab macros written on the original SAIL machine to modern Common LISP is hard. Anybody with a knowledge of MACLISP want to help?
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- Aug 2022
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2012. Microsoft Writing Style Guide. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/welcome/.
Other recommendable technical–writing style guides:
- Google developer documentation style guide
- Apple Style Guide
- Write the Docs, Accessibility guidelines
- Write the Docs, Reducing bias in your writing
- IBM developerWorks Editorial style guide
- Red Hat Technical Writing Style Guide
- Splunk Style Guide
- DigitalOcean Documentation Style Guide
- Salesforce Style Guide for Documentation and User Interface Text
- Rackspace Writing guidelines
- OpenStack Writing style
- MongoDB Documentation Style Guide
- Conscious Style Guide
- 18F Content Guide
- A11Y Style Guide
- Mailchimp Content Style Guide
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Oracle risks can be divided intotechnical and social problems
technical and social problems
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- Jun 2022
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nolanlawson.com nolanlawson.com
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Want to animate navigations between pages? You can’t (yet). Want to avoid the flash of white? You can’t, until Chrome fixes it (and it’s not perfect yet). Want to avoid re-rendering the whole page, when there’s only a small subset that actually needs to change? You can’t; it’s a “full page refresh.”
an impedance mismatch, between what the Web is (infrastructure for building information services that follow the reference desk model—request a document, and the librarian will come back with it) versus what many Web developers want to be (traditional app developers—specifically, self-styled product designers with near 100% autonomy and creative control over the "experience")—and therefore what they want the Web browser to be (the vehicle that makes that possible, with as little effort as possible on the end of the designer–developer)
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stackoverflow.blog stackoverflow.blog
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Technical specs have immense benefits to everyone involved in a project: the engineers who write them, the teams that use them, even the projects that are designed off of them
Benefits: 1. as developer, easy to solve problem 2. as team, easy to do team work 3. as Project manager, easy postmortems
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- May 2022
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geraldmweinberg.com geraldmweinberg.com
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Because we didn’t have real marketing people, we updated the product to became more and more interesting to us, the developers, and less interesting to potential buyers.
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news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
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an acknowledgement of network effects: LP is unlikely to ever catch on enough to be the majority, so there needs to be a way for a random programmer using their preferred IDE/editor to edit a "literate" program
This is part of the reason why I advocate for language skins for comparatively esoteric languages like Ada.
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- Apr 2022
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twitter.com twitter.com
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ReconfigBehSci [@SciBeh]. (2022, January 14). RT @kallmemeg: NEW: @UKHSA Variant Technical Briefing Technical Briefing 34 https://gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-sars-cov-2-variants-technical-briefings Updated Omicron Risk Assessment https… [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1482057283957891075
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twitter.com twitter.com
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ReconfigBehSci. (2021, May 7). RT @kallmemeg: The @PHE_uk Variant Technical Briefing 10 now published Confirms B.1.617.2 upgraded to a VOC due to transmissibility conce… [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1391209724285050883
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www.imaginarycloud.com www.imaginarycloud.com
- Mar 2022
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idratherbewriting.com idratherbewriting.com
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You should link abundantly to other content. Wikipedia articles provide some of the best examples of “every page is page one” style.
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www.news18.com www.news18.com
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Corbevax: All About India’s First Protein Sub-Unit Covid Vaccine to be Given to 12-14 Age Group From Today. (2022, March 16). News18. https://www.news18.com/news/india/corbevax-all-about-indias-first-protein-sub-unit-covid-vaccine-to-be-given-to-12-14-age-group-from-today-4874345.html
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- Jan 2022
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hypothes.is hypothes.is
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The nature of technical writing is explained in "The nature of technical writing". Technical communication is something we do every day without even noticing. Having strong communication skills is beneficial in all areas of one's life, from personal to professional. From a business standpoint, communication is key to every transaction. Communicating effectively allows others and yourself to understand information at a faster and more accurate rate. A lack of communication skills leads to frequent misunderstandings and frustration.
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Technical communication/writing is something that has been around for a very long time. The earliest examples belong to Aristotle and his dictionary of "philosophical terms" and his summary of the "Doctrines of Pythagoras". World War I is considered the "Golden Age" of technical writing due to advances in medicine and aerospace.
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technicalwriterhq.com technicalwriterhq.com
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technical writer interview
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What does a Functional Design have to offer? https://en.itpedia.nl/2019/01/16/wat-heeft-een-functioneel-ontwerp-te-bieden/ A functional design is a specification of the functions of the software that the end_users have agreed to. Many companies have a software_developer handbook that describes what topics a functional design should cover. This article looks at the steps of functional design in the context of software development.
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- Nov 2021
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dictionary.cambridge.org dictionary.cambridge.orgdemo1
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an example of a product, especially a computer program or piece of recorded music, given or shown to someone to try to make them buy or support it: a software demo
I prefer this to the Merriam-Webster definition.
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www.merriam-webster.com www.merriam-webster.com
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an example of a product that is not yet ready to be sold a demo version of the software
I prefer the Cambridge Dictionary definition.
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- Oct 2021
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stylepedia.net stylepedia.net
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user n. When referring to the reader, use "you" instead of "user." For example, "The user must..." is incorrect. Use "You must..." instead. If referring to more than one user, calling the collection "users" is acceptable, such as "Other users may want to access your database."
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- Sep 2021
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developer.salesforce.com developer.salesforce.com
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stylepedia.net stylepedia.net
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Do not use articles in front of product names. For example, do not write "the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was..."
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www.mdpi.com www.mdpi.com
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Vice versa, many researchers and practitioners who are mainly interested in human-centered social constructs choose to ignore the to them often alienating world of technical systems design.
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human-centered aspects that predominate in community informatics, like ethics, legitimacy, empowerment, and socio-technical design
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socio-technical
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- Aug 2021
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cacm.acm.org cacm.acm.org
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"Whether those slashes were forward slashes or back slashes didn't affect how the Web worked," he says, "but it does affect how other developers react to it
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- Jun 2021
- May 2021
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interpersonal.stackexchange.com interpersonal.stackexchange.com
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Hey, I'm a PhD in [field] and do [whatever] professionally. Before calling you, I've narrowed down the problem to [something on their end], so that's what needs to be addressed. If I could speak to an engineer about [specific problem], that'd be great; but if we've gotta walk through the script, let's just knock it out quickly. If they end up requiring the script, then the best way to use your expertise is to run through it quickly. Keep the chit-chat to a minimum and just do the stuff efficiently. If they start describing how to perform some step, you might interrupt them with, "Got it, just a sec.", then let them know once you're ready for the next step.
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So what can you do to demonstrate your technical knowledge? Well, you are doing the right thing by using the correct technical terms. That will give an indication to the person handling the ticket. Explicitly explaining your role as the administrator or developer should also help.
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From experience I can say that professionals will be more forgiving if you go through things at a basic level than amateurs who have no idea what you're talking about, so people will probably err on the side of caution and not assume the customer has a high level of expertise.
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www.impressivewebs.com www.impressivewebs.com
- Apr 2021
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stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com
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(Yes, I realize from a technical, end-user perspective this really doesn't matter.)
The word "technical" in this sentence doesn't seem to belong or to clarify anything. I think it would be clearer without it.
But I think I understand what he's saying, which is that technical details don't matter to the end user. They only know/see/care if it works or not.
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linusakesson.net linusakesson.net
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If you want to run a full fletched linux OS on the ipad an option is to jailbreak the ipad and try to install linux. This is hard because Apple does not want you to and a failed installation might render the ipad useless. Also you will not be able to run any iOS apps anymore obviously.
new tag?: jailbreaking a device
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css-tricks.com css-tricks.com
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www.redblobgames.com www.redblobgames.com
- Mar 2021
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trailblazer.to trailblazer.to
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Optimization in this case is nothing crazy, just something I neglected while designing the framework.
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github.com github.comjceb/dex1
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I consider systemd/user as a good alternative for dex's autostart functionality and switched to it recently. In particular, systemd solves the issue of dex losing control over the started processes which causes processes to live longer than the X session which could cause additional annoyances like reboots taking a lot of time because the system is waiting for the processes to terminate.
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psyarxiv.com psyarxiv.com
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Silas, J., Jones, A., Weiss-Cohen, L., & Ayton, P. (2021, March 9). The seductive allure of technical language and the effect on covid-19 vaccine intentions. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/4kb6v
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Refactoring is a means of addressing the problem of software rot. It is described as the process of rewriting existing code to improve its structure without affecting its external behaviour.
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www.sitepoint.com www.sitepoint.com
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As to opinions about the shortcomings of the language itself, or the standard run-times, it’s important to realize that every developer has a different background, different experience, different needs, temperament, values, and a slew of other cultural motivations and concerns — individual opinions will always be largely personal and, to some degree, non-technical in nature.
Tags
- reaction / reacting to
- good point
- what is important/necessary for one person may not be for another
- everyone has different preferences
- non-technical reasons
- +0.9
- software project created to address shortcomings in another project
- runtime environment
- annotation meta: may need new tag
- everyone has different background/culture/experience
- JavaScript
- software preferences are personal
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URL
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- Feb 2021
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trailblazer.to trailblazer.to
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The Subprocess macro will go through all outputs of the nested activity, query their semantics and search for tracks with the same semantic.
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jrsinclair.com jrsinclair.com
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assets.publishing.service.gov.uk assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
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GOV.UK. „Investigation of Novel SARS-CoV-2 Variant: Variant of Concern 202012/01“. Zugegriffen 22. Februar 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201.
Tags
- data
- COVID-19
- investigation
- tracking
- UK
- surveillance
- transmission
- technical
- briefing
- public health
- mutation
- virus
- healtcare
Annotators
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openrevolution.net openrevolution.net
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would would
double would
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hilton.org.uk hilton.org.uk
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violates our expectation that hard things should be technical
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This is funny because it’s unexpected. Cache invalidation sounds like a hard thing, while naming sounds more straightforward. The joke works because it violates our expectation that hard things should be technical. It’s also funny because it’s true.
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us6.campaign-archive.com us6.campaign-archive.com
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Fewer screenshots means less maintenance work. If the product changes, the screenshots must change too, to remain helpful and prevent confusion. Lots of screenshots plus frequent product changes can cost a lot of time: keeping the docs in sync with the product can become unmanageable. A middle-ground approach is using text descriptions of UI elements, like “Click the START button”, as it’s easier to keep text descriptions matching the UI. And well-designed user interfaces and UI microcopy often mean that users don’t need screenshots to find their way through the product.
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opensource.stackexchange.com opensource.stackexchange.com
- Jan 2021
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www.zdnet.com www.zdnet.com
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I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues.
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blog.logrocket.com blog.logrocket.com
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JSONP is a relic of the past and shouldn’t be used due to numerous limitations (e.g., being able to send GET requests only) and many security concerns (e.g., the server can respond with whatever JavaScript code it wants — not necessarily the one we expect — which then has access to everything in the context of the window, including localStorage and cookies).
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discourse.ubuntu.com discourse.ubuntu.com
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Most users frankly don’t care how software is packaged. They don’t understand the difference between deb / rpm / flatpak / snap. They just want a button that installs Spotify so they can listen to their music.
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css-tricks.com css-tricks.com
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The debate about whether a button or link should be used to download a file is a bit silly, as the whole purpose of a link has always been to download content. HTML is a file, and like all other files, it needs to be retrieved from a server and downloaded before it can be presented to a user. The difference between a Photoshop file, HTML, and other understood media files, is that a browser automatically displays the latter two. If one were to link to a Photoshop .psd file, the browser would initiate a document change to render the file, likely be all like, “lol wut?” and then just initiate the OS download prompt. The confusion seems to come from developers getting super literal with the “links go places, buttons perform actions.” Yes, that is true, but links don’t actually go anywhere. They retrieve information and download it. Buttons perform actions, but they don’t inherently “get” documents. While they can be used to get data, it’s often to change state of a current document, not to retrieve and render a new one. They can get data, in regards to the functionality of forms, but it continues to be within the context of updating a web document, not downloading an individual file. Long story short, the download attribute is unique to anchor links for a reason. download augments the inherent functionality of the link retrieving data. It side steps the attempt to render the file in the browser and instead says, “You know what? I’m just going to save this for later…”
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- Dec 2020
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github.com github.com
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I don't think this is what really matters at the end, since whatever is the implementation the goal should be to provide a library that people actually like to use.
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- Nov 2020
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github.com github.com
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You can either use require to bypass typescript special import.
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github.com github.com
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this is treated as debt work for of us and that's usually tackled during the first week in the milestone (roughly the first week in the month)
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Annotators
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- Oct 2020
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codesandbox.io codesandbox.io
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Look at their Readme:
Well we have had a great time adding field validations, but there are validations that are tied up to the whole record we are editing than to a given field, for instance let's face this scenario: - You are not allowed to transfer more than 1000 € to Switzerland using this form (for instance: you have to go through another form where some additional documentation is required). - The best place to fire this validation is at record level. - Record validation functions accept as input parameter that whole form record info, and return the result of the validation (it accepts both flavours sync and promise based), let's check the code for this validator: ...
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danielmiessler.com danielmiessler.com
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andrewdeandrade commented on Jul 30, 2015
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andrewdeandrade commented on Jul 31, 2015
locked issues that I would comment on if I could: Can't react to comment because locked. Want to thumb up.
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softwareengineering.stackexchange.com softwareengineering.stackexchange.com
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And if they are a technical debt - how do measure up how much you can borrow so you can afford the repayments?
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debt ... which is not a straight bad thing but something that could provide some "short term financing" get us to survive the project (how many of us could afford to buy a house without taking out the mortgage?).
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But recently I started to think about default values as some sort of a technical debt ... which is not a straight bad thing but something that could provide some "short term financing" get us to survive the project
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dylanvann.com dylanvann.com
- Sep 2020
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medium.com medium.com
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Customers care more about the value our application adds to their lives than the programming language or framework the application is built with. Visible Technical Debt such as bugs and missing features and poor performance takes precedence over Hidden Technical Debt such as poor test code coverage, modularity or removing dead code
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In the real world — the time to pay off technical debt is scarce — in most of the time fueled by the fear of the unknown. The management loves to milk the cow but not to change the litter. The developers on another hand avoid modernizing legacy code — to avoid trouble in case anything breaks.
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You are in crossroad to make a big decision: keep increasing the tech debt or start the migration before it is too late.
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- Aug 2020
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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jamanetwork.com jamanetwork.com
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Mishra, V., & Dexter, J. P. (2020). Comparison of Readability of Official Public Health Information About COVID-19 on Websites of International Agencies and the Governments of 15 Countries. JAMA Network Open, 3(8), e2018033–e2018033. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.18033
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- Jun 2020
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blogs.bmj.com blogs.bmj.com
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Test and trace: It didn’t have to be this way. (2020, June 19). The BMJ. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/06/19/test-and-trace-it-didnt-have-to-be-this-way/
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- May 2020
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www.digital-democracy.org www.digital-democracy.org
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Remember that tech decisions are political decisions
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docs.gitlab.com docs.gitlab.com
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This task disables two-factor authentication (2FA) for all users that have it enabled. This can be useful if GitLab’s config/secrets.yml file has been lost and users are unable to log in, for example.
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www.chromestatus.com www.chromestatus.com
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AppCache was standardized in the Offline Web applications section of the HTML specification. The standard is formally referred to as application caches. New Web applications should be built around Service Workers. Existing applications that use AppCache should migrate to Service Workers. AppCache access was removed from insecure origins in M70. This intent addresses AppCache usage in secure origins.
First and foremost, AppCache is a deprecated standard with serious architectural concerns. Second, Chrome's AppCache implementation is a security and stability liability. AppCache is documented as deprecated and under removal in MDN and in the WHATWG standard, and marked as obsolete in W3C’s HTML 5.1. It is incompatible with CORS, making it unfriendly for usage with CDNs. Overall, AppCache was changed in over 400 Chromium CLs in 2018-2019. It has imposed a tax on all of Chrome’s significant architectural efforts: Mojofication, Onion Souping, and the Network Service. The security benefits of the removal are covered under Security Risks.
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webapps.stackexchange.com webapps.stackexchange.com
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I am looking for indirect access via some sort of settings or confirmation, or proof that it is impossible.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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However, since problems are only addressed when they arise, maintenance is reactive rather than proactive. Small problems left unaddressed can balloon into major failures due to focus on cost.
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www.iubenda.com www.iubenda.com
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Though GDPR is primarily a legal challenge, a technological response was also necessary to meet the transparency and control requirements that arise as a result of GDPR implementation.
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www.civicuk.com www.civicuk.com
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after nearly 10 years of continuous improvement
Not necessarily a good or favorable thing. It might actually be preferable to pick a younger software product that doesn't have the baggage of previous architectural decisions to slow them down. Newer projects can benefit from both (1) the mistakes of previously-originated projects and (2) the knowledge of what technologies/paradigms are popular today; they may therefore be more agile and better able to create something that fits with the current state of the art, as opposite to the state of the art from 10 years ago (which, as we all know, was much different: before the popularity of GraphQL, React, headless CMS, for example).
Older projects may have more technical debt and have more legacy technologies/paradigms/integrations/decisions that they now have the burden of supporting.
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It would be best to offer an official way to allow installing local, unsigned extensions, and make the option configurable only by root, while also showing appropiate warnings about the potential risks of installing unsigned extensions.
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I know, you don't trust Mozilla but do you also not trust the developer? I absolutely do! That is the whole point of this discussion. Mozilla doesn't trust S3.Translator or jeremiahlee but I do. They blocked page-translator for pedantic reasons. Which is why I want the option to override their decision to specifically install few extensions that I'm okay with.
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As I see it, we've got 3 solutions in front of us currently to have in-line translation:
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I appreciate the vigilance, but it would be even better to actually publish a technical reasoning for why do you folks believe Firefox is above the device owner, and the root user, and why there should be no possibility through any means and configuration protections to enable users to run their own code in the release version of Firefox.
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It should be possible to implement the functionality of page-translator via a more popular extension that is designed to inject arbitrary data into websites, including remote code, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/ .
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I appreciate the vigilance, but it would be even better to actually publish a technical reasoning for why do you folks believe Firefox is above the device owner, and the root user, and why there should be no possibility through any means and configuration protections to enable users to run their own code in the release version of Firefox.
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We must consider introducing sensible default options in Firefox, while also educating users and allowing them to override certain features, instead of placing marginal security benefits above user liberties and free choice.
Tags
- the owner of a device/computer should have freedom to use it however they wish
- compromise
- good point
- marginal benefits
- balance of power
- trust
- balance
- good idea
- trade-offs
- security
- freedom
- key point
- freedom of user to override specific decision of an authority/vendor (software)
- empowering people
- code injection
- allowing security constraints to be bypassed by users
- bypassing technical constraints
- answer the "why?"
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To load one temporarily go to about:debugging, "This Firefox" and click "Load temporary add-on from file". More permanently: many (most?) Linux distributions allow unsigned extensions to be placed in /usr/lib/firefox/browser/extensions/ and they will automatically be loaded, provided they have valid names (e.g. dodgy@unsignedextension.com.xpi).
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- Apr 2020
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Potential for political focus on building new features over technical improvements (such as refactoring)
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medium.com medium.com
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Running the same code in the browser and on the server in order to avoid code duplication is a very different problem. It is simply a matter of good development practices to avoid code duplication. This however is not limited to isomorphic applications. A utility library such as Lodash is “universal”, but has nothing to do with isomorphism. Sharing code between environments does not give you an isomorphic application. What we’re referring to with Universal JavaScript is simply the fact that it is JavaScript code which is environment agnostic. It can run anywhere. In fact most JavaScript code will run fine on any JavaScript platform.
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Having the server render the HTML on first page load is the functional part, the thing that provides for a better user experience. The technical part is where we use the same code in both environments, which no user ever asked for, but makes a developer’s life easier (at least in theory).
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www.techrepublic.com www.techrepublic.com
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there's no reasonable way to communicate effectively with the less technically minded without acquiescing to the nontechnical misuse of the term "hacker"
Tags
- "hacker" vs. "cracker"
- popular misconceptions
- communicating with less technical people
- alternative to mainstream way
- hoping/trying to convince others that your view/opinion/way is right by consistently sticking to it despite many being ignorant/mistaken/unaware/holding different opinion
- language: misuse of word
- acquiescing/giving in
Annotators
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github.com github.com
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The result, all too often, is that we decide (often unconsciously) that the sweeping change just isn't worth it, and leave the undesirable pattern untouched for future versions of ourselves and others to grumble about, while the pattern grows more and more endemic to the code base.
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- Mar 2020
- Feb 2020
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about.gitlab.com about.gitlab.com
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development is hard because you have to preserve the ability to quickly improve the product in the future
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- Jan 2020
- Dec 2019
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runyourown.social runyourown.social
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Do the technical administrators have to be the same people doing the social organizing? I think the answer as of June 2019 is, sadly, yes. If you have 2 people with root access to the server and 2 people managing the community aspects, you'll end up with imbalances in that group of 4. You will end up with technical administrators who feel like code monkeys who never get the gratitude that the community organizers get, or you'll end up with community organizers who feel like glorified babysitters while the techies have all the real power. You might even end up with a situation where both are true. I think that if you're dedicated to this sort of project though, you could start with something like that 2 and 2, and then the techies could teach the organizers the technical skills, and the organizers could teach the techies the organizing skills.
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- Sep 2019
- Aug 2019
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teamtreehouse.com teamtreehouse.com
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www.robinwieruch.de www.robinwieruch.de
- Feb 2019
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static1.squarespace.com static1.squarespace.com
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Gay
Gay valued what is being referred to as "technical assurance," meaning that all uncertainty and self-doubt in performance was removed through this carefully thought out plan of delivery. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Gay-British-author
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- Jan 2019
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www.at-the-intersection.com www.at-the-intersection.com
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Kind of the technical philosophy is everything that happens in the market is captured in the data and so any headline moves will be captured pretty much instantaneously or in a few minutes in the charts.
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Yeah, uh, I would say for reallocating, I'm, yeah. So I would say on Gemini I do Bitcoin, ethereum, and that's kind of like the longer term things.
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Uh, I definitely have some other, you know, mostly it's mostly I use ta very, very ta heavy. Um, I will, but I'll always keep the fundamentals in mind, especially for the medium to long term.
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I really try to focus on technicals cause I mean, yeah, the technicals is, is supposed to be representative, at least from an historical standpoint of the sentiment, right? Like if it's, if it's losing, if people are losing faith in it, then you'll probably see where did it go down? You'll see the price get affected by it. Um, and I tried to just trade on that. I try to minimize my sources all over the place.
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So depending on where you're trading, you could put more emphasis on where the other, when when you're doing fundamental analysis on a stock, there's a lot more information going into that, you know, potential company valuation. Um, whereas I would argue most cryptocurrencies heavily lack fundamentals at all.
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I personally try to trade based on technicals only. I'll read stuff for more general and for information. Um, but I guess the way I look at is like technical is this more short term? And fundamentals is more longterm.
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Uh, yeah, I'm in a few groups. There's a couple of the crypto focused, uh, the also have been just, I wouldn't say [inaudible], but have put more emphasis on, you know, since we're technical traders, there's a reason not to take advantage of, uh, the market opportunities and traditional as they pop up. So we've been focused mainly on just very few inverse etfs to short the s&p to short some major Chinese stocks, um, doing some stuff with, uh, oil, gas. And then there's some groups that I'm in that are specifically focused on just traditional, uh, that are broken up or categorized by what they're trading.
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I respect the idealism of blockchain developers who, I believe, are sincere in their faith that they are building a better world. But I am confounded by their inability to see that they are falling victim to exactly the same fallacies their hacker forebears embraced: this notion that we can code ourselves out of the deep holes we’ve dug; that we are building utopias in our virtualities that will finesse away the imperfections of human character.
<big>评:</big><br/><br/>将区块链与互联网发展史作同类比较,的确能发现相似的轨迹,但也难逃倚老卖老的嫌疑。从何时起,我们给自己立下了「后来者无论成功与失败,始终跑在前人滑破的气流里」这一金科玉律?值得一提的是,见证时代前沿发展的进步主义者,在世界观上大多并不前沿,甚至很前现代。<br/><br/>试问:你渴望完美无缺的人设吗?若是,那你又可否期待「能加速该进程」的技术横空出世?自渡与普渡,向来是技术社群必须直面的哲学迷思。
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www.maritime-executive.com www.maritime-executive.com
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Contrary to mainstream thinking that this new technology is unregulated, it’s really quite the opposite. These systems apply the strictest of rules under highly deterministic and predictable models that are regulated through mathematics. In the future, industry will be regulated not just by institutions and committees but by algorithms and mathematics. The new technology will gradually out-regulate the regulators and, in many cases, make them obsolete because the new system offers more certainty. Antonopoulos explains that “the opposite of authoritarianism is not chaos, but autonomy.”
<big>评:</big><br/><br/>1933 年德国包豪斯设计学院被纳粹关闭,大部分师生移民到美国,他们同时也把自己的建筑风格带到了美利坚。尽管人们在严格的几何造型上感受到了冷漠感,但是包豪斯主义致力于美术和工业化社会之间的调和,力图探索艺术与技术的新统一,促使公众思考——「如何成为更完备的人」?而这一点间接影响到了我们现在所熟知的美国式人格。<br/><br/>区块链最终会超越「人治」、达到「算法自治」的状态吗?类似的讨论声在人工智能领域同样不绝于耳。「绝对理性」站到了完备人格的对立面,这种冰冷的特质标志着人类与机器交手后的败退。过去有怀疑论者担心,算法的背后实际上由人操控,但随着「由算法生成」的算法,甚至「爷孙代自承袭」算法的出现,这样的担忧逐渐变得苍白无力——我们有了更大的焦虑:是否会出现 “blockchain-based authoritarianism”?
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CTP is a key method for reflective design, since it offers strategies to bring unconscious values to the fore by creating technical alternatives. In our work, we extend CTP in several ways that make it particularly appropriate for HCI and critical computing.
Ways in which Senger, et al., describe how to extend CTP for HCI needs:
• incorporate both designer/user reflection on technology use and its design
• integrate reflection into design even when there is no specific "technical impasse" or metaphor breakdown
• driven by critical concerns, not simply technical problems
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CTP synthesizes critical reflection with technology production as a way of highlighting and altering unconsciously-held assumptions that are hindering progress in a technical field.
Definition of critical technical practice.
This approach is grounded in AI rather than HCI
(verbatim from the paper) "CTP consists of the following moves:
• identifying the core metaphors of the field
• noticing what, when working with those metaphors, remains marginalized
• inverting the dominant metaphors to bring that margin to the center
• embodying the alternative as a new technology
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- Dec 2018
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wendynorris.com wendynorris.comhci1523.vp35
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Our under-standing of the gap is driven by technological exploration through artifact cre-ation and deployment, but HCI and CSCW systems need to have at their corea fundamental understanding of how people really work and live in groups, or-ganizations, communities, and other forms of collective life. Otherwise, wewill produce unusable systems, badly mechanizing and distorting collabora-tion and other social activity.
The risk of CSCW not driving toward a more scientific pursuit of social theory, understanding, and ethnomethodology and instead simply building "cool toys"
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The gap is also CSCW’s unique contribution. CSCW exists intellectually atthe boundary and interaction of technology and social settings. Its unique intel-lectual importance is at the confluence of technology and the social, and its
CSCW's potential to become a science of the artificial resides in the study of interactions between society and technology
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Nonetheless, it has been argued here that theunique problem of CSCW is the social–technical gap. There is a fundamentalmismatch between what is required socially and what we can do technically.Human activity is highly nuanced and contextualized. However, we lack thetechnical mechanisms to fully support the social world uncovered by the socialfindings of CSCW. This social–technical gap is unlikely to go away, although itcertainly can be better understood and perhaps approached.
Factors involved in the socio-technical gap:
Social needs vs technical capacity
Human activity
Technical mechanisms continue to lag social insights
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Nonetheless, several guiding questions are required based on thesocial–technical gap and its role in any CSCW science of the artificial:• When can a computational system successfully ignore the need fornuance and context?• When can a computational system augment human activity withcomputer technologies suitably to make up for the loss in nuance andcontext, as argued in the approximation section earlier?• Can these benefits be systematized so that we know when we are add-ing benefit rather than creating loss?• What types of future research will solve some of the gaps betweentechnical capabilities and what people expect in their full range of so-cial and collaborative activities?
Questions to consider in moving CSCW toward a science of the artificial
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The final first-order approximation is the creation of technical architecturesthat do not invoke the social–technical gap; these architectures neither requireaction nor delegate it. Instead, these architectures provide supportive oraugmentative facilities, such as advice, to users.
Support infrastructures provide a different type of approximation to augment the user experience.
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Another approximation incorporates new computational mechanisms tosubstitute adequately for social mechanisms or to provide for new social issues(Hollan & Stornetta, 1992).
Approximate a social need with a technical cue. Example in Google Docs of anonymous user icons on page indicates presence but not identity.
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First-order approximations, to adopt a metaphor from fluid dynamics, aretractable solutions that partially solve specific problems with knowntrade-offs.
Definition of first-order approximations.
Ackerman argues that CSCW needs a set of approximations that drive the development of initial work-arounds for the socio-technical gaps.
Essentially, how to satisfy some social requirements and then approximate the trade-offs. Doesn't consider the product a solution in full but something to iterate and improve
This may have been new/radical thinking 20 years ago but seems to have been largely adopted by the CSCW community
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Similarly, an educational perspective would argue that programmers andusers should understand the fundamental nature of the social requirements.
Ackerman argues that CS education should include understanding how to design/build for social needs but also to appreciate the social impacts of technology.
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CSCW’s science, however, must centralize the necessary gap between whatwe would prefer to construct and what we can construct. To do this as a practi-cal program of action requires several steps—palliatives to ameliorate the cur-rent social conditions, first-order approximations to explore the design space,and fundamental lines of inquiry to create the science. These steps should de-velop into a new science of the artificial. In any case, the steps are necessary tomove forward intellectually within CSCW, given the nature of the social–tech-nical gap.
Ackerman sets up the steps necessary for CSCW to become a science of the artificial and to try to resolve the socio-technical gap:
Palliatives to ameliorate social conditions
Approximations to explore the design space
Lines of scientific inquiry
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Ideological initiatives include those that prioritize the needs of the peopleusing the systems.
Approaches to address social conditions and "block troublesome impacts":
Stakeholder analysis
Participatory design
Scandinavian approach to info system design requires trade union involvement
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Simon’s (1969/1981) book does not address the inevitable gaps betweenthe desired outcome and the means of producing that outcome for anylarge-scale design process, but CSCW researchers see these gaps as unavoid-able. The social–technical gap should not have been ignored by Simon.Yet, CSCW is exactly the type of science Simon envisioned, and CSCW couldserve as a reconstruction and renewal of Simon’s viewpoint, suitably revised. Asmuch as was AI, CSCW is inherently a science of the artificial,
How Ackerman sees CSCW as a science of the artificial:
"CSCW is at once an engineering discipline attempting to construct suitable systems for groups, organizations, and other collectivities, and at the same time, CSCW is a social science attempting to understand the basis for that construction in the social world (or everyday experience)."
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At a simple level,CSCW’s intellectual context is framed by social constructionism andethnomethodology (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Garfinkel, 1967), systemstheories (e.g., Hutchins, 1995a), and many large-scale system experiences (e.g.,American urban renewal, nuclear power, and Vietnam). All of these pointed tothe complexities underlying any social activity, even those felt to be straightfor-ward.
Succinct description of CSCW as social constructionism, ethnomethodlogy, system theory and large-scale system implementation.
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Yet,The Sciences of the Artificialbecame an an-them call for artificial intelligence and computer science. In the book he ar-gued for a path between the idea for a new science (such as economics orartificial intelligence) and the construction of that new science (perhaps withsome backtracking in the creation process). This argument was both charac-teristically logical and psychologically appealing for the time.
Simon defines "Sciences of the Artificial" as new sciences/disciplines that synthesize knowledge that is technically or socially constructed or "created and maintained through human design and agency" as opposed to the natural sciences
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The HCI and CSCW research communitiesneed to ask what one might do to ameliorate the effects of the gap and to fur-ther understand the gap. I believe an answer—and a future HCI challenge—is toreconceptualize CSCW as a science of the artificial. This echoes Simon (1981)but properly updates his work for CSCW’s time and intellectual task.2
Ackerman describes "CSCW as a science of the artificial" as a potential approach to reduce the socio-technical gap
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As Heilbroner (1994) and other researchers have argued, technological tra-jectories are responsive to social direction. I make the case that they may alsobe responsive to intellectual direction.1Indeed, a central premise of HCI isthat we should not force users to adapt.
Ackerman concludes the discussion about socio-technical gaps that people should not be forced to adapt to technology.
Technology can and should respond to social and intellectual direction.
Cites Heilbroner (1994) who writes about technological determinism that I should take a look at
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The coevolutionary form of this argument is that we adapt resources in theenvironment to our needs. If the resources are capable of only partial satisfac-tion, then we slowly create new technical resources to better fit the need.
Another argument that social practices should adapt and evolve alongside technology. Ackerman raises concerns about this viewpoint becoming "invisible" and simply accepted or assumed as a norm without question.
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A second argument against the significance of the gap is historically based.There are several variants: that we should adapt ourselves to the technology orthat we will coevolve with the technology.
Alternatively, humans should adapt or coevolve with intractable technologies. Ackerman cites neo-Taylorism (an economic model that describes work produced by redundant processes and splintered socio-technical activities)
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A logically similar argument is that the problem is with the entire vonNeumann machine as classically developed, and new architectures will ame-liorate the gap. As Hutchins (1995a) and others (Clark, 1997) noted, the stan-dard model of the computer over the last 30 years was disembodied, separatedfrom the physical world by ill-defined (if defined) input and output devices.
This related argument that neural network designed systems will overcome the socio-technical gap created by highly architected computer systems that are explicit and inflexible. Ackerman argues here, too, that the advances have not yet arrived and the gap has endured.
Quick summary of von Neumann architecture
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First, it could be that CSCW researchers merely have not found the properkey to solve this social–technical gap, and that such a solution, using existingtechnologies, will shortly exist.
One argument against the socio-technical gap is that future advances in technology will solve the problem. Ackerman argues this is unlikely since the gap has existed for more than 20 years despite attempts to bridge the gap.
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Theproblem, then, was centered by social scientists in the process of design. Cer-tainly, many studies in CSCW, HCI, information technology, and informa-tion science at least indirectly have emphasized a dichotomy betweendesigners, programmers, and implementers on one hand and the social ana-lyst on the other.
Two different camps on how to resolve this problem:
1) Change more flexible social activity/protocols to better align with technical limitations 2) Make systems more adaptable to ambiguity
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In particular, concurrency control problems arise when the software, data,and interface are distributed over several computers. Time delays when ex-changing potentially conflicting actions are especially worrisome. ... Ifconcurrency control is not established, people may invoke conflicting ac-tions. As a result, the group may become confused because displays are incon-sistent, and the groupware document corrupted due to events being handledout of order. (p. 207)
This passage helps to explain the emphasis in CSCW papers on time/duration as a system design concern for workflow coordination (milliseconds between MTurk hits) versus time/representation considerations for system design
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Moreover,one of the CSCW findings was that such categorization (and especially howcategories are collapsed into meta-categories) is inherently political. The pre-ferred categories and categorization will differ from individual to individual.
Categories have politics.
See: Suchman's 1993 paper
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/764c/999488d4ea4f898b5ac5a4d7cc6953658db9.pdf
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Because some of the idealization must be ignored to pro-vide a working solution, this trade-off provides much of the tension in anygiven implementation between “technically working” and “organizationallyworkable” systems. CSCW as a field is notable for its attention and concern tomanaging this tension.
Nice summation of the human and technical tensions in CSCW
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Incentives are critical.
Costs, motives, and incentives drive collaboration. Again, refer to peer production literature here from Benkler and Mako, and Kittur, Kraut, et al
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People not only adapt to their systems, they adapt their systems to theirneeds
Another reference to matching technology to design heuristics -- user control and system/real world needs.
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There appears to be a critical mass problem for CSCW systems
Perpetual problem but is critical mass more of market issue (large vs niche need and who will pay for it) or a technical issue (meets need vs low adoption due to being ahead of its time)?
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The norms for using a CSCW system are often actively negotiatedamong users.
Community norms are well-discussed in the crowdsourcing and peer production literature.
See: Benkler, Mako and Kittur, Kraut, et al
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Visibility of communication exchanges and of information enableslearning and greater efficiencies
Evokes the distributed cognition literature as well peer production, crowdsourcing, and collective intelligence practices.
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eople prefer to know who else is present in a shared space, and they usethis awareness to guide their work
Awareness, disclosure, and privacy concerns are key cognitive/perception needs to integrate into technologies. Social media and CMCs struggle with this knife edge a lot.
It's also seems to be a big factor in SBTF social coordination that leads to over-compensating and pluritemporal loading of interactions between volunteers.
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Exceptions are normal in work processes.
More specific reference to workflow as a prime CSCW concern. Exceptions, edge cases, and fluid roles need to be accommodated by technology.
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Members of organizations sometimes have differing (and multiple)goals, and conflict may be as important as cooperation in obtaining is-sue resolutions (Kling, 1991). Groups and organizations may not haveshared goals, knowledge, meanings, and histories (Heath & Luff,1996; Star & Ruhleder, 1994).
A lot to unpack here as this bullet gets at the fundamental need for boundary objects (Star's work) to traverse sense-making, meanings, motives, and goals within artifacts.
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One finding of CSCW is that it is sometimes easier and better toaugment technical mechanisms with social mechanisms to control,regulate, or encourage behavior (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991)
HCI / interface design heuristics re: user controls, etc.
See: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
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because people of-ten lack shared histories and meanings (especially when they are indiffering groups or organizations), information must berecontextualized to reuse experience or knowledge. Systems often as-sume a shared understanding of information.
References Goffman's work on identity and representation.
Touches again on Suchman's work on context in situations.
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Yet, systems often have considerable difficulty han-dling this detail and flexibility.
This remains a problem in HCI/CSCW nearly two decades after this paper was published.
Why?
Do the theories and models (symbolic vs non-symbolic) not adequately describe the human-side of the technical interaction? Or the technical-side of the human behavior/motive/need?
Is the gap less nuance in (detail about) behavior and more a function of humans are fickle, contradictory, and illogical.
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Social activity is fluid and nuanced, and this makes systems techni-cally difficult to construct properly and often awkward to use.
CSCW assumption.
See also: Suchman's 1987 situated action book and contests in Vera and Simon's 1993 paper
Gist of SA is that HCI (and its breakdowns) must be studied in real-life situations, knowing is inseparable from doing, and cognition can't be separated from context.
Good summary here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_cognition
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0364021305800084
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1207/s15516709cog1701_5
Tags
- heuristics
- boundary objects
- situated action
- socio-technical gap
- approximations
- distributed cognition
- categories
- peer production
- presence
- pluritemporal
- cscw
- system design
- workflow
- presentation of self
- hci
- spatial time
- classification
- science of the artificial
- motives
- palliatives
- temporal structures
- incentives
- technological determinism
Annotators
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