How We Know Us
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How do you measure an elephant?
A couple of years ago, Massimo Ferrari and I created the most extensive and thorough financial evaluation of OpenStack, which we called Elephant in the Room. We talked about it a lot, met a lot of customers doing amazing things, and received a lot of nice press coverage. Pulling together this type of research is…
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Divided Brain, Map & Terrain – Sounds Like ML to Me
Despite the guest, Dr. Iain McGilchrist, explicitly rejecting the metaphor that the brain is like a computer, I can’t help but think about the process of building and incorporating machine learning models. Psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist talks about his book, The Master and His Emissary, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. McGilchrist argues we have…
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When Luck Is Your Strategy
M.R.D. Foot tells a story of an underground agent forced to transport a B-2 wireless set (radio) through a railway station in which German forces were conducting random checks of luggage and personnel. The radio which the agent was carrying was a distinct size and shape and thus easily recognizable to alert police forces. The…
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MP3 and Entropy
If you’re like me, with a wife nursing in the other room and an infant distracted by any noise or movement, then your mind naturally drifts to the topic of entropy[1]. I saw something on “TV”[2] about music, and began wondering about whether different musical styles had different entropy. Slashing around with a little Perl…
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Red Hat is the Best IT Software Company!?
Friday night, Red Hat was honored as the “Best IT Software Company” along with luminaries from other industries including Elon Musk, LeVar Burton, and Jane Goodall by the World Technology Network. Rodney Brooks, co-founder of iRobot and winner of the individual award for IT Hardware, made the joke that it was nice to have a hardware…
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The Baby Measureur
R Code for Our Kid Not to long ago, a tiny, screaming, pooping, extraordinarily amazing data manufacturing machine came into my life. Long accustom to taking subtle cues from my wife, his arrival was not a surprise; so I had plenty of time to prepare my optimal workflow for consuming baby data. Basically, I just…
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India’s Parliament is hiring men with a gift for mimicry to scare away monkeys
More here: http://qz.com/242905/indian-parliament-to-hire-men-to-dress-up-as-langurs-to-scare-away-monkeys/
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Camera Obscura
A slipping cap on our ceiling created a camera obscura with our television.
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Calling Data Anonymization Experts
With the ever increasing amount of open data, I’m having a surprising difficulty in tracking down best practices for anonymizing data. I’ve started collecting some, and I’m sure there are lot of people out there with brilliant expertise to share. Content after the break, or drop some knowledge here.
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NYC Taxi GPS
Chris Whong got a hold of a lot of GPS data for NYC taxis, using the cleverest hack of all: He asked nicely. Not sure what I want to do with this yet, but spend an evening putting the basics together, and drew this from a small subset of the taxi dropoff locations. I love…
Got any book recommendations?