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diff --git a/reviews/technical/linux.conf.au-2017.md b/reviews/technical/linux.conf.au-2017.md deleted file mode 100644 index 9eb8da7..0000000 --- a/reviews/technical/linux.conf.au-2017.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,330 +0,0 @@ -# linux.conf.au 2017 - -## General comments - -Re-stating the audience's questions before replying is helpful. - -## Choose Your Own Adventure, Please! - -Keynote by Pia Waugh. - -Warns against short-sighted itch-scratching; wants to encourage more -long-lasting systemic change. To contrast with Maciej Cegłowski, who -warns against [ivory-tower wank] in Sillicon Valley, where no-one -seems interested in working on the severe poverty problems nearby. - -(To be fair, Pia does say we need both "symptomatic relief" and -systemic change.) - -41:30 - -> My favourite story from my studies with martial arts was actually -> about two monks walking around. They're walking along, elder one, -> younger one, and when they get to the river, a person comes and says -> "I'm being chased by robbers, can you help me across the river -> please?". The older monk says "Yep, not a problem", picks them up -> and carries them across (because they're hurt). The person gets -> away. And they're walking along, still in silence, and the younger -> monk says: "… You know, back at the river back there"; the older -> monk says "Yeah?"; the younger monk says "I thought we had taken a -> vow of silence". The other goes, "Yeah?". "… Should you have -> spoken to that person?", and the older monk says: "I put that person -> down back at the river. Why haven't you?" - -That story appeals to me: it's got some sort of -Jesus-ish-unconditional-forgiveness-Zen vibe that feels reassuring, -"it's OK to make mistakes, as long as you aimed for the Greater Good, -focus on the Spirit of the Law instead of upholding the Letter". But -slippery slope turns that into "move fast and break things", -consequences and accountability be damned. - -You can even link that to ["fussy" compilers] and false alarms: why -should Buddhist GCC warn on Vow-of-Silence violation if it's not -actually a problem? The warning should be refined, the diagnosis -should be smarter, the standard amended, otherwise how do you -distinguish between the shades of red? - -["fussy" compilers]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-04/msg00190.html -[ivory-tower wank]: http://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm - -## Stephen King's practical advice for tech writers - -By Rikki Endsley. - -Lots of pointers, e.g. [The Care and Feeding of the -Press](http://netpress.org/care-feeding-press/). - -Suggested outline: - -- intro (invite the reader in) -- state the problem (background) -- solution -- (for tech article, tutorial, whitepaper: technical stuff (howto, FAQ)) -- conclude (important dates, action items) - -Parasite words: "very", "some". Be mindful of slang. - -## Sharing the love: making games with PICO-8 - -By John Dalton. - -> Sad old people, longing for the glory days - -PICO-8 restores the "Democracy of Creating". - -Kids get the point of sharing without having to be "encouraged" by -licences. - -## Writing less, saying more: UX lessons from the small screen - -By Claire Mahoney. - -- "mobile" is not necessarily "on the move" -- a "mobile" app does not have to be a "diet" version of the original - -Users do not expect the functionality to be diminished. - -> Context can be better than words - -(I feel like there is a connection to be made here with namespaces in -programming languages.) - -Patterns are good, repetition is not. - -Defining purpose with "when X, I want Y so I can Z" helps "keeping it -real" and reminding you of the user out there. - -## Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Rock Star Developers - -By Rikki Endsley. - -When writing job descriptions, stop asking for rock stars. Focus on: - -- job requirements -- job environment - -Makes it easier for people to figure whether they will fit in. - -Look for developers interested in making *others* succeed, learning -*new* skills; make sure they are accessible, they use the best tool -for the job, and they are able to innovate, lead, and collaborate with -a diverse mix of people. - -If you have a rockstar on your hands, make sure the janitors still get -some credits. - -## Why haven't you licensed your project? - -By Richard Fontana. - -"Post open-source" has actually been a thing for a while: the term -describes the widespread trend of not attributing a license to one's -project. - -Berne convention says that copyright is automatic, so this POSS -software might be implicitly "proprietary". Why worry? There is a -lot of proprietary software already. - -Not putting on a license constitutes a statement for some developers. - -Some attempts at public-domain dedication: - -- [WTFPL](http://www.wtfpl.net/) -- [Unlicense](http://unlicense.org/) -- [0-clause BSD](http://landley.net/toybox/license.html) -- [BOLA](https://blitiri.com.ar/p/bola/) -- [CC0](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/) - -## Handle Conflict, Like a Boss! - -By Deb Nicholson. - -Conflict mostly comes from missing information, mismatched goals. - -Avoidance, accomodation and assertion each have their own issues as -conflict-handling strategies. - -Using historical motivations can help give credit to new ideas. - -Hypotheticals such as "What's the worst that could happen?" help -identify the root issues people will not directly talk about. - -No ad hominem. No name-calling. Period. Beware of [Contempt Culture]. - -Setting expectations can help enforce a civil tone and constructive -criticism. - -[Contempt Culture]: (https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture). - -## The journey of a word: how text ends up on a page - -By Simon Cozens. - -Very interesting explanations on the lengths Unicode must go to in -order to turn humanity's sprawling mess of written communication -methods into rigorous rules that a computer can understand. - -Some diacritics can be encoded either with a single code point or a -vowel plus a combining code point; this is because Unicode intends to -have one code point for *every character that other encodings have -ever contained*. - -Cozens is publishing a free online book on the subject: [Fonts and -Layout for Global Scripts]. - -[Fonts and Layout for Global Scripts]: https://simoncozens.github.io/fonts-and-layout/ - -## Surviving the Next 30 Years of Free Software - -By Karen Sandler. - -Is copyright assignment to big organizations (Canonical, FSF?) the -solution to problems we cannot anticipate? - -Wills are tricky: recipients might be taxed on the "monetary value" of -the "legacy". - -Using a trust as a "legal hack": would build a "registry" of free -software; the trust can map handles to contact information to preserve -anonymity. - -The idea is vaporware for now, since this trust cannot be built -without debating a lot of finer points. - -> The best gift you can give to the people you love is to make sure -> they're prepared for when you're gone. - -## The relationship between openness and democracy - -By Pia Waugh. - -Openness creates a natural incentive for "doing the right thing". - -Some people think shady deals which allow politicians to make huge -amounts of money from the industry are fair game, since they have to -get the investments they made during their campaign back. - -On "policy-based evidence" as an alternative to evidence-based policy: - -> That's rather funny'n'clever'n'witty… Oh shit, you're serious. - -How representative and legitimate are elected individuals? Never mind -the participation rate, most people vote for (or against) one or two -things, not the whole program. - -> (13:00) Everyone loves to kick public servants; **everyone**. - -> (14:30) I was gonna start a cartoon. And the first thing was gonna -> be someone saying "I'm surprised that you're working in government, -> I would've thought you'd disagree with X, Y, Z." OK. -> -> The second panel somone saying to me "I just can't believe you're -> working in government! I thought you had *integrity*! I thought -> you would disagree with all of these things!" … *OK*. -> -> The third person says "YOU MOTHER-"… Anyway, goes on a complete -> tirade, I'll probably get hit on the head. -> -> The fourth panel is me running off in the distance. Into the -> sunset. And the three people saying to each other "Why are there no -> good people in government?" - -"Consulting the public" used to be a point on a checklist, not -intended to yield useful outputs. - -## JavaScript is Awe-ful - -By Katie McLaughlin. - -In JavaScript, functions have to add `var` explicitly to their local -variable declarations, otherwise they will assign to global variables. - -``` javascript -> [] + [] -"" -> [] + {} -[object Object] -> {} + [] -0 -> {} + {} -NaN -``` - -JavaScript is a registered trademark; ECMAScript is the actual, -*standardised*, **versioned** language. - -Some examples of things which can be accomplished without JavaScript: -<http://youmightnotneedjs.com/>. - -Cross-compilers alleviate some of the pain; one has to be careful with -their prefered language's warts though. - -In Ruby, `&&` and `and` do not have the same precedence with respect -to `not`. - -## Data Structures and Algorithms in the 21st Century - -By Jacinta Catherine Richardson. - -Voronoi diagrams have a lot of applications: - -- modeling the capacity of wireless networks -- robot navigation -- mouse hoverstate - -Fourier transforms help with data compression. Naively: O(n²); from -the sixties onward: O(n log(n)). Nearly Optimal Sparse Fourier -Transform (2012): O(k log(n)), helps on-the-fly data compression. - -Singular Value Decomposition helps with pattern recognition/comparison -by allowing to express e.g. rotations. - -> New stuff! - -Evolutionary algorithms (a form of AI/machine learning) to find -optima: - -- a function to tell "is this good enough?" - -Genetic algorithms (a form of evolutionary): - -- fitness criteria -- swap information ("breed") -- random-ish variations - -> Setting up the fitness criteria and the initial conditions for -> genetic algorithms […] is as much art as it is science. - -Artificial Immune Systems (90s) is used in computer security. - -Swarm algorithms: agents share the value of their findings and -converge. Used e.g. to locate cancer; considered for e.g. traveling -sales person problem, unmanned cars. - -Bacterial Foraging Optimization; Shuffled Frog Leaping; -Teaching-Learning-Based Optimisations. - -[Foldit](http://fold.it) is an experiment consisting in making humans -solve hard problems (e.g. protein folding) through competitive gaming. - -Graph isomorphism is *hard*. Easy to verify, hard to solve. Until a -week ago: we can now solve them in quasi-polynomial time. - -## My personal fight against the modern laptop - -By Hamish Coleman. - -Ports, durability, keys are getting worse. - -Plugging an older keyboard on newer Thinkpads presents issues: - -- the motherboard sends in high-voltage current to enable backlight -- some keys don't work; the firmware must be changed (and then - re-encrypted) - -Sharing firmware patches is challenging; most end-users have no idea -what these even are; some of them run Windows and cannot easily use -the patching tools. - -Newer firmwares seem to be signed; this will probably make them harder -to tweak. |