Category: Read

👓 Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js | Facebook

Read Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js by Adam Wolff (Facebook)
Next week, we are going to relicense our open source projects React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js under the MIT license. We're relicensing these projects because React is the foundation of a broad ecosystem of open source software for the web, and we don't want to hold back forward progress for nontechnical reasons. This decision comes after several weeks of disappointment and uncertainty for our community. Although we still believe our BSD + Patents license provides some benefits to users of our projects, we acknowledge that we failed to decisively convince this community.
This won’t bode well for large portions of the web…

👓 Decentralized Web Pt 3: Join the IndieWeb | Michael McCallister: Notes from the Metaverse

Read Decentralized Web Pt 3: Join the IndieWeb by Michael McCallister (Notes from the Metaverse)
In recent months, I’ve been learning a lot about the “IndieWeb,” an idea spread by folks who understand that the Web offers a unique platform where ordinary people without the financial clout of the 20th century publishing industry could still potentially reach millions with their ideas.

But to be honest, I’m not sure I can tell you why — and how — to join up any better than Chris Aldrich did in this piece on AltPlatform. So just go over there now.

I know Michael has been working at the IndieWeb bit for a while, so this is some nice praise.

👓 Here’s Why Steve Bannon Wears So Many Shirts | The Cut

Read Here’s Why Steve Bannon Wears So Many Shirts (The Cut)
His spokesperson and other highly knowledgeable play sources attempt to explain the former presidential counselor’s questionable fashion choice.

👓 Why I’m leaving a Research I University for a Liberal Arts College | AMS Blogs

Read Why I’m leaving a Research I University for a Liberal Arts College (inclusion/exclusion)
I knew at a pretty early stage in my life — my freshman year of college, to be exact — that I wanted to become a research mathematician.  I have degrees from fancy research universities…

👓 The History of the Future of Learning Objects and Intelligent Machines | Audrey Watters

Read The History of the Future of Learning Objects and Intelligent Machines by Audrey WattersAudrey Watters (Hack Education)
This talk was delivered at MIT for Justin Reich’s Comparative Media Studies class “Learning, Media, and Technology.” The full slide deck is available here.

👓 Ex-C.I.A. Official Resigns After Harvard Courts Chelsea Manning | New York Times

Read Harvard Disinvites Chelsea Manning, and the Feeling Is Mutual by (New York Times)
The dean of the Kennedy School said the selection of Ms. Manning for a fellowship had been a mistake, after protests from current and former C.I.A. officials.

👓 Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction? | Nautilus

Read Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction? by Simon DeDeo (Nautilus)
What computers teach us about getting along. From an office at Carnegie Mellon, my colleague John Miller and I had evolved a computer program with a taste for genocide.
Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction?

This article reminds me that I need to go back to reading Fukuyama’s two volume series (Origins of Political Order) and apply more math to it as a model. I can see some interesting evolution of political structures spread throughout the modern world and still want a more concrete answer for the jumps between them. I suspect that some of our world problems are between more advanced political economies and less advanced (more tribalistic ones — read Middle Eastern as well as some third world nations) which are working on different life-ways. Are there punctuated equilibrium between the political structures of economies like the graph in this paper? What becomes the tipping point that pushes one from one region to the next?

I also feel a bit like our current political climate has changed so significantly in the past 20 years that it’s possible we (America) may be regressing.

Check out this referenced paper:
🔖 Barasz, M., et al. Robust cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Program equilibrium via provability logic. arXiv 1401.5577 (2014).

👓 The First Species to Have Every Individual’s Genome Sequenced | The Atlantic

Read The First Species to Have Every Individual’s Genome Sequenced by Ed Yong (The Atlantic)
It’s an endearing, giant, flightless, New Zealand parrot, and it’s a poster child for the quantified-self movement.
Kakapo

👓 Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript? | Medium

Read Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript? by Mandy Michael (Medium)
I recently had the opportunity to speak at Web Directions Code 2017 over in Melbourne. While there, I was part of a panel with Mark Dalgleish and Glen Maddern (who gave spectacular talks I might add). We’d just finished a set of talks about CSS, and during the panel we got a question along the lines of (paraphrasing): “Is there a place in the industry for people who just write css and html” To me, this could easily be interpreted as, “Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript?”, based on some comments from the audience after, this seemed to be how many understood question. So, we asked the audience if they hire people who just write CSS and HTML. No-one put their hand up. And I, for one, was disappointed.

👓 Wyck Godfrey Is Named Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group President | Deadline Hollywood

Read Wyck Godfrey Named Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group President (Deadline Hollywood)
BREAKING 10:49 AM with updated details, noon: After working in the business for 20 years both as a producer and creative executive, Wyck Godfrey has been tapped to replace Marc Evans as Motion Picture Group President at Paramount Pictures. He will begin his job in January. Evans, as Deadline reported last night, is seguing into a producing deal. Godfrey comes to the job after a prolific run as producer and partner with Marty Bowen in Temple Hill. His producing credits include The Maze Runner and Twilight Saga franchises, the latter of which was dropped by Paramount. The move comes only six months after Jim Gianopulos stepped in as Chairman/CEO of Paramount Pictures. Godfrey will report to him and oversee creative/development, casting, phsyical production, post production and music, according to the studio.

👓 A Simple Design Flaw Makes It Astoundingly Easy To Hack Siri And Alexa | FastCo Design

Read A Simple Design Flaw Makes It Astoundingly Easy To Hack Siri And Alexa (Fast Company)
Hackers can take control of the world’s most popular voice assistants by whispering to them in frequencies humans can’t hear.
 

 

👓 One of the world’s most influential math texts is getting a beautiful, minimalist edition | The Verge

Read One of the world’s most influential math texts is getting a beautiful, minimalist edition by Andrew Liptak (The Verge)

A couple of years ago, a small publisher called Kroncker Wallis issued a handsome, minimalist take on Isaac Newton’s Principia. Now, the publisher is embarking on its next project: Euclid's Elements.

The publisher is using Kickstarter to fund this new edition. Euclid’s Elements is a mathematical text written by Greek mathematician Euclid around 300 BCE and has been called one of the most influential textbooks ever produced. The treatise contains 13 separate books, covering everything from plane geometry, the Pythagorean theorem, golden ratio, prime numbers, and quite a bit more. The books helped to influence scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Sir Isaac Newton. In 1847, an English mathematician named Oliver Byrne re-wrote the first six books of Euclid's Elements, taking its concepts and illustrating them.

 

 

👓 Don’t Sell Your Soul or Students to an Edtech Brand | Rafranz Davis | Medium

Read Don’t Sell Your Soul or Students to an Edtech Brand by Rafranz Davis (Medium)
There are plenty of reasons why teachers join ambassador programs. For some, this is how they gain access to potentially great tools that…