🎧 This Week in Google 439 Stick It in Your Underwear | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google 439 Stick It in Your Underwear by Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham, Mathew Ingram from TWiT.tv
Google's 1st CES: Assistant is everywhere, but so is rain. People keep stealing Google bikes. AT&T pulls out of a Huawei deal - Huawei CEO is not pleased. Mark Zuckerberg's ""personal challenge"" for 2018 is to do his job. Facebook kills M. Meltdown mitigation hurts. Record number of US border gadget searches. Senate will vote to fix Net Neutrality. IoT at CES. Jeff's Pick: my_aussie_gal on Instagram Mathew's Pick: Sarah Silverman and the Twitter Troll

https://youtu.be/i1otqlx95mU

👓 Investor Bill Miller commits $75 million to Johns Hopkins Philosophy Department | JHU Hub

Read Investor Bill Miller commits $75 million to Johns Hopkins Philosophy Department by Dennis O'Shea (The Hub (Johns Hopkins))
Legendary investor William H. "Bill" Miller III has committed a record $75 million to the Johns Hopkins University Department of Philosophy to broaden and intensify faculty research, graduate student support, and undergraduate study of philosophical thought.
Support for the humanities like this is definitely a worthy cause!

🔖 Pods Framework

Bookmarked Pods Framework (Pods Framework)
The Pods Framework is an open-source, GPLv2+ licensed PHP project released on October 8th, 2008. The goal was to create an interface and PHP codebase to easily create, extend, and manage content types within WordPress. While the normal WordPress content architecture is limited to the built-in tables, a primary feature of Pods allows you to base content types off of their own custom tables designed around each content types’ needs. The Pods Framework allows an ordinary user or developer to easily create and extend custom post types, content types, taxonomies, users, media, or comments — helping you keep your content organized and speed up the development of your project. Pods starts as a blank slate, as most frameworks do. The control is put into the hands of the developer to mould it into what is needed, without the fluff. Much of Pods’ functionality is coupled with a UI for easy administration, however, there are large portions of the codebase that can be optionally used for advanced implementations or specific project needs. You control everything while Pods Framework does the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting.

👓 Introduce a new way to retain knowledge from Kindle books | Diigo

Read Introduce a new way to retain knowledge from Kindle books by Joel Liu (Diigo)
Diigo provides a 2 step method to help you make the best use of your kindle highlights. Step 1: Import your kindle highlights to your Diigo library. Step 2: Organize highlights from a book in your own knowledge structure.
Another interesting way to potentially cut out data from Amazon Kindle e-books in terms of annotations, marginalia, and notes.

📺 Introduction to Category Theory 1 by Steven Roman | YouTube

Watched Introduction to Category Theory 1 by Steven Roman from YouTube
Lecture one of six in an introductory set of lectures on category theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If6VUXZIB-4&list=PLiyVurqwtq0Y40IZhB6T1wM2fMduEVe56&index=1

Take Away from the lecture: Morphisms are just as important as the objects that they morph. Many different types of mathematical constructions are best described using morphisms instead of elements. (This isn’t how things are typically taught however.)

Would have been nice to have some more discussion of the required background for those new to the broader concept. There were a tremendous number of examples from many areas of higher math that many viewers wouldn’t have previously had. I think it’s important for them to know that if they don’t understand a particular example, they can move on without much loss as long as they can attempt to apply the ideas to an area of math they are familiar with. Having at least a background in linear algebra and/or group theory are a reasonable start here.

In some of the intro examples it would have been nice to have seen at least one more fully fleshed out to better demonstrate the point before heading on to the multiple others which encourage the viewer to prove some of the others on their own.

Thanks for these Steven, I hope you keep making more! There’s such a dearth of good advanced math lectures on the web, I hope these encourage others to make some of their own as well.

👓 Here’s to What’s Next | Jonathan LaCour

Read Here's to what's next by Jonathan LaCour (cleverdevil)
Last week, I shared that I have decided to move on from DreamHost, and its been a crazy week tying up loose ends, meeting with colleagues to remember our time together, and reflecting on the past. Now, its time to focus on what's next. On January 16th, I start as Chief Technology Officer at Reliam, a managed cloud service provider based out of Los Angeles, CA. Reliam has just secured up to $75 Million of investment from Great Hill Partners to drive growth. Simon Anderson, former CEO of DreamHost, and my ex-boss, has joined Reliam as CEO. I am thrilled by the possibilities that are ahead of us!
 

👓 After review, closure of Johns Hopkins Humanities Center ‘will not be considered’ | Hub

Read After review, closure of Johns Hopkins Humanities Center 'will not be considered' (The Hub)
Committee recommends three possible paths forward for 50-year-old academic center
Glad to hear this may have a happier ending that I had suspected. I remember a conversation several years ago in which Dick Macksey was reticent to retire because it might have adverse effects on the department. I hope to see his legacy and that of the humanities at Hopkins continue unabated.

🔖 [1801.06022] Reconstruction Codes for DNA Sequences with Uniform Tandem-Duplication Errors | arXiv

Bookmarked Reconstruction Codes for DNA Sequences with Uniform Tandem-Duplication Errors by Yonatan Yehezkeally and Moshe Schwartz (arxiv.org)
DNA as a data storage medium has several advantages, including far greater data density compared to electronic media. We propose that schemes for data storage in the DNA of living organisms may benefit from studying the reconstruction problem, which is applicable whenever multiple reads of noisy data are available. This strategy is uniquely suited to the medium, which inherently replicates stored data in multiple distinct ways, caused by mutations. We consider noise introduced solely by uniform tandem-duplication, and utilize the relation to constant-weight integer codes in the Manhattan metric. By bounding the intersection of the cross-polytope with hyperplanes, we prove the existence of reconstruction codes with greater capacity than known error-correcting codes, which we can determine analytically for any set of parameters.

👓 Learn Archives – Pods Framework | Pods.io

Read Learn Archives - Pods Framework (pods.io)
WordPress Content Types and Fields WordPress is all about creating content. It comes bundled with Posts and Pages, which you can organise using the Categories and Tags taxonomies. It’s also got post meta fields which you can use to append data to your content – author, date, and custom fields, for example.

👓 PBS Chief Talks Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, #MeToo | Variety

Read PBS Chief Talks Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, #MeToo by Daniel Holloway (Variety)
PBS in recent months parted ways with two of its highest-profile on-air personalities, Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley, amid sexual-misconduct allegations. Speaking Tuesday at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour, PBS chief executive Paula Kerger addressed both departures as well as the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault. “When we are aware of issues, we’ll move quickly, as we did with Charlie Rose, as we did [with] Tavis Smiley,” Kerger said.
Oddly, I hadn’t heard much about the Tavis Smiley allegations. Most of the news was just that he was out, but without any direct story. Perhaps I missed it during the holidays??

👓 Tavis Smiley Announces Multiple Deals on Multiple Platforms Including New Online/TV Series

Read Tavis Smiley Announces Multiple Deals on Multiple Platforms Including New Online/TV Series by Tavis Smiley (Facebook)
The Smiley Group, Inc., holding company for award-winning talk show host Tavis Smiley, has announced multiple new deals across an assortment of platforms aimed at reaching a broader, younger and more international audience. “Every crisis presents us an opportunity,” explained Smiley. “I look forward to speaking with a louder, clearer voice to even more people. There is just too much going on that demands our immediate attention.” Following a decision by PBS to end distribution of his long-running nightly talk show, Tavis Smiley, the broadcaster has signed on to host a new online series called “The Upside with Tavis Smiley.” The weekly interview series to commence second quarter 2018, will celebrate the spirit of resilience, the power to overcome that resides in each of us.