There you are... Shadow?

mackenzie: Thank you Dallas.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:05:22 -0400

Thank you Dallas.

There's a tumblr run by an astronaut living in space.

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:26:15 -0500

There's a tumblr run by an astronaut living in space.:

climateadaptation:

Colonel Chris Hadfield currently lives on the International Space Station. He posts pictures of his work and the earth and your wee brain will explode. colchrishadfield.tumblr.com

Canadian Astronaut, currently living in space aboard ISS as Flight Engineer on Expedition 34, to be Commander of Expedition 35.

Important news from space!!!

Photo

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:25:54 -0500

michael: landofivy: EVIDENCE OF HOW THE MOON FORMED HAS BEEN...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:40:42 -0500

michael:

landofivy:

EVIDENCE OF HOW THE MOON FORMED HAS BEEN FOUND

Frédéric Moynier and his team at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered evidence that the Moon was created when a planetary body the size of Mars smashed into the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago.

Moon rocks have been shown to have a tiny excess of a heavier variant of the element zinc. In the Moon’s early formation its surface was hot enough to vaporise zinc. This enrichment likely occurred as heavier zinc atoms condense out of vaporised rock faster than lighter zinc atoms . The remaining vapour escapes before it condenses. This kind of sorting by mass is known as isotopic fractionation and has been looked for in Moon rocks since the 1970’s. Moon rocks are chemically similar to Earth rocks, except for a significantly lower amount of volatiles.

you know, in case you hadn’t already heard

surrogateself: RINGZ [ by Surrogate Self ]

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:02:06 -0500

surrogateself:

RINGZ [ by Surrogate Self ]

myNoSQL: Reports Indicate That Part of Your Business Algorithm Is Executed by Humans

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:00:08 -0500

myNoSQL: Reports Indicate That Part of Your Business Algorithm Is Executed by Humans:

nosql:

Jay Kreps¹ had a very interesting follow up to the GigaOM’s article Why big data might be more about automation than insights :

That article reminded me how immature people’s thinking about the use of data is. They are still thinking about “reports”. Reports indicate that that…

Quiz: Jay-Z Lyric or Line From The Great Gatsby?

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:55:17 -0500

Quiz: Jay-Z Lyric or Line From The Great Gatsby?:

radioon:

I did not do well on this quiz.

me either…

Wow Michael I had no idea you were so multi talented…...

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:52:23 -0500

Wow Michael I had no idea you were so multi talented… Michael Schenker’s Rock Album

Thank you! Happy birthday to me!

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:32:16 -0500

Thank you! Happy birthday to me!

mattlehrer: Thanks!

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:28:51 -0500

mattlehrer:

Thanks!

Testing

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:45:55 -0500

Testing

How to build a million-qubit quantum computer

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 10:43:30 -0500

How to build a million-qubit quantum computer:

singularitarian:

A team led by Princeton‘s Associate Professor of Physics Jason Petta has developed a new method that could eventually allow engineers to build a working quantum computer consisting of millions of quantum bits (qubits).

storyboard: Art at a Snail’s Pace You’ve finally made it,...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 10:43:21 -0500

Snails atop the famed Duomo Cathedral in Milan. Photos by Paolo Demaldè.

Photo by Paolo Demaldè

Photo by Paolo Demaldè

Photo by Paolo Demaldè

Photo by Paolo Demaldè

storyboard:

Art at a Snail’s Pace

You’ve finally made it, after a breathless climb up the winding marble staircase, to the upper terrace of the Duomo di Milano — the famed Cathedral of Milan, Italy, and the fourth largest in the world. You flip through your guide book. A towering forest of ornate spires, the same ones that enchanted the literary likes of Mark Twain and Henry James? Check. The hundred gruesome gargoyles, staring down from their marble perches? Check. There is the precious white marble, quarried from Cadoglia, and a view of the Italian Swiss Alps in the distance (amid the smog). And yet, if you happened to be one of thousands of tourists who visited the Duomo two months ago, there was also something out of place — a bit of modernity sticking out among the 14th-century Gothic masterpiece.

There, slinking across the cathedral’s steps and roof, were dozens of bright blue plastic snails.

Read More

joshua: Birthday cornbread for intern Casey (he’s from Iowa,...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 23:33:46 -0500

joshua:

Birthday cornbread for intern Casey (he’s from Iowa, don’t judge)

Awesome print ftw!

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:48:27 -0500

Awesome print ftw!

nevver: Tardis fridge

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:23:10 -0500

nevver:

Tardis fridge

adamlaiacano: The Bad Data Handbook is finally out! It’s the...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:22:16 -0500

adamlaiacano:

The Bad Data Handbook is finally out! It’s the first time I’ve contributed to a publication and I’m incredibly excited about it.

The top required skills of a data scientist are generally considered to be: mathematical know-how, programming capabilities, and some sort of domain knowledge enabling them to ask (and then answer) relevant questions.

This book is about all of the other garbage that you have to put up with along the way. Each chapter is written by someone who has spent more time than they probably would have liked dealing with a specific issue, and they provide some tips and pitfalls. I haven’t read the other chapters yet, but some of the included topics are:

Test drive your data to see if it’s ready for analysis

Work spreadsheet data into a usable form

Handle encoding problems that lurk in text data

Develop a successful web-scraping effort (that’s me)

Use NLP tools to reveal the real sentiment of online reviews

Address cloud computing issues that can impact your analysis effort

Avoid policies that create data analysis roadblocks

Take a systematic approach to data quality analysis

I hope at least a few of you buy it and enjoy it.

jacob: I’ve worked at Tumblr for four years.

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 02:15:46 -0500

jacob:

I’ve worked at Tumblr for four years.

automotivated: eyes (by Max.photographies)

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:33:25 -0500

automotivated:

eyes (by Max.photographies)

"The second is that measuring individual performance among software engineers is very hard. I would..."

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:31:08 -0500

“The second is that measuring individual performance among software engineers is very hard. I would say that it’s almost impossible and in practical terms, economically infeasible. Why do I call infeasible rather than merely difficult? That’s because the only people who can reliably measure individual performance in software are so good that it’s almost never worth their time to have them doing that kind of work.”

- What Programmers Want | Michael O.Church

Or, as former Facebook Director of Engineering Yishan Wong puts it: “[Non-technical] leaders are unable to tell when the technical staff is not performing up to snuff, because they cannot reliably differentiate between excuses for poor technical performance and true obstacles that arise when contending with difficult technical challenges. Performance management then becomes impossible, leading to mediocre work and eventually, outright and repeated project failures.”

(via buzz)

This may come as a shock to developers, but there actually several ways to tell. They’re a bit tricky to learn, but ridiculously simple once you pick up a few tricks.

(via rickwebb)

This article seems to operate on the premise that NO management is best, which obscures the organizational, structural and speed benefits to a relatively hands-off and laid back management structure. Augmenting technical teams with non-technical skill sets, in the right place, can put everyone on the same track to accomplish more for the team and company as a whole.

And by the way, not every “non-technical” member of a team has zero interest in being so in the future.
(via reneeejp)