tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62784522691039645232024-03-14T04:34:09.919-04:00IEFBR14Software development, then and now.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.comBlogger420125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-58886767572193194552023-11-13T11:06:00.000-05:002023-11-13T11:06:04.478-05:00Union strongCongratulations to Digital Media United, part of <a href="https://nabet31.org/">NABET-CWA Local 31</a> and representing tech workers at <a href="https://www.npr.org/">NPR</a>, on the ratification of its first contract! David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-41773434342504689812023-08-30T13:48:00.003-04:002023-08-30T13:51:02.010-04:00Still holding some secretsThe <a href="https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230723.html">Antikythera Mechanism</a> visits the Astronomy Picture of the Day once again.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-36618358047152990852023-03-15T15:21:00.000-04:002023-03-15T15:21:01.528-04:00Undergrads<p>An excellent documentary on the genesis of BASIC (with just a touch of chest-thumping on the part of Dartmouth College).
</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WYPNjSoDrqw" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-70613715802380694732023-02-20T17:24:00.000-05:002023-02-20T17:24:41.440-05:00Is anyone reading the literature?Joseph Weizenbaum didn't expect his secretary to take <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA">ELIZA</a> so seriously, either. Sheesh. <a href="https://blogs.bing.com/search/february-2023/The-new-Bing-Edge-%E2%80%93-Learning-from-our-first-week/">"The new Bing & Edge – Learning from our first week."</a>
<blockquote>One area where we are learning a new use-case for chat is how people are using it as a tool for more general discovery of the world, and for social entertainment. This is a great example of where new technology is finding product-market-fit for something we didn’t fully envision.</blockquote>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-50896642008879198832023-01-29T16:11:00.001-05:002023-01-29T16:11:32.073-05:00Arena.jsOh, dear sweet Fox, yes (see JavaScript file browser, below).
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/code_lifespan.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="377" src="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/code_lifespan.png"/></a></div>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-3053833338734324382023-01-22T11:33:00.001-05:002023-02-20T17:25:33.098-05:00End of the sprintFriday I retired, after eight great years at NPR. <a href="https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/1/267976-the-end-of-programming/fulltext">According to Matt Welsh</a>, not a moment too soon. I hope I haven't left any <a href="https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-email-process">howlers like this one</a> behind, although the clunky JavaScript-only file browser that I built as my first project for NPR has resisted refactoring for 14 years.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-33734413314965528832022-12-16T14:08:00.001-05:002022-12-16T14:08:32.641-05:00Mini-rantLooking forward to the day when I no longer hear, without definition, the phrase "on prem." Ugly, jargony, and unecessarily obscure.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-34218060139641109762022-12-11T17:32:00.003-05:002023-01-29T16:14:26.996-05:00ExtensionsAs of 04:05 this morning, the PHP refactoring and language level upgrade that I started working on in July, is finally released.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-57254117656644310312022-12-06T20:47:00.001-05:002022-12-06T20:47:12.423-05:00PlinkFlashbacks of the year that I spent as a consultant with a cadre of operations researchers.
<p>
<blockquote>...well over <a href="https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-parameters">a hundred parameters</a> for one function call, with a mix of literal values and pointers being passed in.</blockquote>
<p>
Some of the parameter and type names are particularly frightening. <code>a1alleles</code> is not a name you want to read in Arial. And what of <code>Oblig_missing_info* om_ip</code>?David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-49216992178600017472022-10-22T22:54:00.001-04:002022-10-22T22:54:25.084-04:00CHUNKMatt Parker breaks down his supporters' efforts to optimize the Jotto Problem. Rust and Julia are two of the languages used, but C++ was a favorite of the record holders.
<p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c33AZBnRHks" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-39786466550580176532022-10-09T17:14:00.001-04:002022-10-09T17:14:16.429-04:00BWKBrian Kernighan, who put the K in awk, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/unix-legend-who-owes-us-nothing-keeps-fixing-foundational-awk-code/">is still patching it</a>, in this case to provide Unicode and CSV support.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-74709623917527816562022-10-09T17:07:00.001-04:002022-10-09T17:07:25.387-04:00RecyclingNot obsolete quite yet: there is still a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124441151/some-industries-still-use-floppy-disks-this-is-one-of-the-only-places-to-buy-the">market for floppy disks,</a> including <a href="https://www.floppydisk.com/5point25">5.25- and 8-inch disks</a>, which really were floppy. Well, flexible.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-4830156333140438682022-09-12T21:08:00.004-04:002022-09-12T21:08:47.598-04:00Results-oriented<a href="https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1569390035685736449">A cartoon from Amy Hwang.</a>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-33735234855792031792022-06-20T10:43:00.003-04:002022-06-20T10:43:55.381-04:00ArchivesThe Association for Computing Machinery is rolling out <a href="https://associationsnow.com/2022/05/the-way-things-were-why-open-access-to-the-acm-digital-library-matters/">open access</a> to its <a href="https://dl.acm.org/">back catalog</a>, as Ernie Smith reports.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-31330012449385994132022-04-16T16:31:00.001-04:002022-04-16T16:31:31.646-04:00Ring of fire eclipseStill more reveals for the Antikythera Mechanism. A preprint suggests a zero point for the gizmo of <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/researchers-home-in-on-possible-day-zero-for-antikythera-mechanism/">22 December 178 BCE</a>.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-81626858078653525942022-03-12T16:57:00.001-05:002022-03-12T16:57:39.854-05:00Care for a game?Betsy Golden Kellem reminds us that Elektro wasn't the only box of electronics and blinking lights on display at the 1939 New York World's Fair. There was also <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-nimatron/">The Nimatron</a>.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-23816492691826930702022-03-12T16:52:00.000-05:002022-03-12T16:52:26.427-05:00Slugs......are one of the terms that have acquired multiple meanings in my shop. Beyond the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/11/24/whats-in-a-slug/">traditional journalism meaning</a>—a short, reusable, almost arbitrary, traditionally ALL CAPS handle for a story making its way through the editing process—we've also used "slug" to refer to the friendly label above the headline that sets some context for the reader. In <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085474195/what-to-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-weekend-bts-umma">What's making us happy</a>, it's the "SPECIAL SERIES" tag. The main topic of the story is often used as the slug, unless we're on the landing page for that topic... and that's a long story. To avoid confusion, we're introducing the jaunty term "eyebrow" as a replacement. The new CMS that we're on the long road to adoption uses "slug" for the semi-legible part of a semantic URL, the "whats-in-a-slug" bit in the case of the Times article linked above. "Permalink text" is the suggested replacement, but I think we'll still have to slug it out.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-13640410932441622992022-02-26T10:54:00.002-05:002022-02-26T10:57:03.465-05:00191I had <a href="https://iefbr14.blogspot.com/2020/08/9-and-counting.html">a small hand, back in 2020</a>, in this phase of bringing NPR and its <a href="https://twitter.com/NPRTechTeam/status/1497289581355487234">member stations to its new CMS, Grove</a>. It's nice to have a project phase come to completion. The last station site to come aboard was <a href="https://www.kdll.org/">KDLL</a> in the the Kenai peninsula of Alaska. More work to come!David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-29407775436225184762021-11-28T18:03:00.001-05:002021-11-28T18:03:08.366-05:00Glide path<p>Certainly the next stage in my professional development: recently, doing some hard drive housekeeping, I moved my professional résumé into an /Archives folder. Not gonna need it anymore.
<p>And, thank Fox, I haven't had a bid résumé for consulting work in seven years. Bid résumés sit somewhere on the lies-damn lies-statistics continuum.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-28969661119752429062021-11-06T16:52:00.002-04:002021-11-06T16:52:45.975-04:00Maybe I remember that<a href="https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2021/10/23/nota-bene/">John D. Cook figures out that the APL comment symbol ⍝ is pronounced "lamp,"</a>
<blockquote>giving light to the poor soul mentally parsing code.</blockquote>
<a href="https://xpqz.github.io/learnapl/intro.html#our-first-tentative-steps">It does sorta look like a lamp.</a>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-51139178050338543292021-10-08T19:10:00.000-04:002021-10-08T19:10:44.543-04:00Fail fast, because you willA perspective on this week's Facebook outage from Remy Porter. <a href="https://thedailywtf.com/articles/eff-up-like-it-s-your-job">It's your job to eff up.</a> Are you rolling out new technology and techniques? Ask
<blockquote><ul><li>How does it tell me when I've effed up?</li>
<li>When I inevitably eff up, how hard is it to fix it?</li>
<li>How does it minimize the consequences of my eff up?</li></blockquote>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-92008485886292065292021-06-13T14:36:00.001-04:002021-06-13T14:36:18.646-04:00Win XP still tickingScientific researchers have many reasons for <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01431-y">keeping aged computing hardware alive</a>, as Anna Nowogrodzki reports: lack of funds to upgrade, stability and durability, and even—sometimes—performance.
<blockquote>For [neuroscientist Bjoern] Brembs, older PCs offer another crucial feature that was lost when Microsoft replaced its text-based operating system, MS-DOS, with Windows. MS-DOS “handles data as they come in with no buffering delays”, says Brembs, who exploits this feature for his fruit-fly flight simulator. “In Windows, so many things are constantly happening in the background,” Brembs says. You might want to take measurements at intervals of precisely 50 milliseconds, but the operating system might be able to manage only an average of 50 ms, with intervals ranging from 20 to 80 ms, depending on what else it has to do. “For flies,” says Brembs, “such massive delays are perceivable.”</blockquote>David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-6661000903552519032021-04-06T19:52:00.001-04:002021-04-06T19:52:11.259-04:00Orrery<a href="https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210321.html">The Antikythera Mechanism</a> was recently featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-64408889005505371302021-03-17T16:12:00.000-04:002021-03-17T16:12:20.532-04:00Green and blackRich Maddison of the RAF <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55808632">keeps his flight log on a Psion 5</a> -- and other vintage technologists, as reported by Michael Dempsey.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6278452269103964523.post-20817744922191871752021-03-16T11:01:00.002-04:002021-03-16T11:01:33.164-04:00Dragon HandFor the longreads shelf: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-whttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-whttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w">Freeth et al., "A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism."</a> As summarized by <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/scientists-solve-another-piece-of-the-puzzling-antikythera-mechanism/">Jennifer Ouellett</a>e and a report from <a href="https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-experts-recreate-mechanical-cosmos-world.html">University College London</a>, researchers have figured out how the gearing on the face of the clockwork cosmos worked.David Gorslinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284540044933588641noreply@blogger.com0