Data: How Google's Self-Driving Cars Work

The Trick That Makes Google's Self-Driving Cars Work - The Atlantic
"Google has created a virtual track out of Mountain View. 

The key to Google's success has been that these cars aren't forced to process an entire scene from scratch. Instead, their teams travel and map each road that the car will travel...

They're probably best thought of as ultra-precise digitizations of the physical world, all the way down to tiny details like the position and height of every single curb. A normal digital map would show a road intersection; these maps would have a precision measured in inches...

Google has mapped 2,000 miles of road. The US road network has 4 million miles of road. "It is work," Urmson added, shrugging, "but it is not intimidating work." 

www.datascienceassn.org/sites/default/files/Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data.pdf @ IEEE
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data
Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig, and Fernando Pereira, Google

• For many tasks, words and word combinations provide all the representational machinery we need to learn from text.
• Because of a huge shared cognitive and cultural context, linguistic expression can be highly ambiguous and still often be understood correctly.
• The same meaning can be expressed in many different ways, and the same expression can express many different meanings. 
• Choose a representation that can use unsupervised learning on unlabeled data, which is so much more plentiful than labeled data.

IoT: Google Project Brillo, Weave protocol (!)

Project Brillo   |   Google Developers
"Brillo extends the Android platform to all your connected devices, so they are easy to set up and work seamlessly with each other and your smartphone."

"Weave, the IoT protocol for everything

Phone to device to cloud

Weave provides seamless and secure communication between devices both locally and through the cloud. It’s integrated into the Google mobile platform, so support is built-in to Android and easily available for iOS.

Interoperate across manufacturers

The Weave program will drive interoperability and quality through a certification program that device makers must adhere to. As part of this program, Weave provides a core set of schemas that will enable apps and devices to seamlessly interact with each other.

Compatible with Nest

Nest and Nest ecosystem devices will also use Weave, so they can easily and securely interoperate with devices from other manufacturers."

VR: Google Jump (!)

Jump – Google

Google's big jump into virtual reality | Sundar’s Google: an exclusive look at the future of Google’s most important products

Hands-On With Google Jump: A Virtual Reality Rig - Bloomberg Business

Get Cardboard – Google

The First Self-Driving Semi-Truck

The World's First Self-Driving Semi-Truck Hits the Road | WIRED



"The truck in question is the Freightliner Inspiration, a teched-up version of the Daimler 18-wheeler sold around the world. And according to Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, it will make long-haul road transportation safer, cheaper, and better for the planet.

...

The Freightliner Inspiration offers a rather limited version of autonomy: It will take control only on the highway, maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles and staying in its lane. It won’t pass slower vehicles on its own.
...
In 2012 in the US, 330,000 large trucks were involved in crashes that killed nearly 4,000 people, most of them in passenger cars. About 90 percent of those were caused by driver error."

podcast: Geek Out Recap @ .NET Rocks!

"Red Balloon Security", HP Printers firmware update insecurity

Red Balloon Security

AESOP @ Red Balloon Security

aesop.redballoonsecurity.com/RedBalloonSecurity_AESOP.pdf

Exclusive: Millions of printers open to devastating hack attack, researchers say - Red Tape  @NBCNews

"This time-lapsed image of a screen on an HP LaserJet shows the impact of a rogue print job used to reprogram the device.

Could a hacker from half-way around the planet control your printer and give it instructions so frantic that it could eventually catch fire? Or use a hijacked printer as a copy machine for criminals, making it easy to commit identity theft or even take control of entire networks that would otherwise be secure?"

"(Columbia University’s researchers)... say they've reverse engineered software that controls common Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers. Those printers allow firmware upgrades through a process called "Remote Firmware Update." Every time the printer accepts a job, it checks to see if a software update is included in that job. But they say printers they examined don't discriminate the source of the update software – a typical digital signature is not used to verify the upgrade software’s authenticity – so anyone can instruct the printer to erase its operating software and install a booby-trapped version."

Popular office phones vulnerable to eavesdropping hack, researchers say - Red Tape

@NBCNews

Hack Simplifies Attacks On Cisco Routers

podcast that mentioned this: Practical IoT with Josh Holmes @ .NET Rocks!

Azure WebJobs

Run Background tasks with WebJobs
"You can run programs or scripts in WebJobs in your App Service web app in three ways: on demand, continuously, or on a How to use AzCopy with Microsoft Azure Storageschedule. There is no additional cost to use WebJobs.

This article shows how to deploy WebJobs by using the Azure Portal. For information about how to deploy by using Visual Studio or a continuous delivery process, see How to Deploy Azure WebJobs to Web Apps.

The Azure WebJobs SDK simplifies many WebJobs programming tasks. For more information, see What is the WebJobs SDK."

Automating Backups with Azure WebJobs & AzCopy | Mark J Brown's Blog

How to use AzCopy with Microsoft Azure Storage

IoT, cars, app: "Automatic" (!)

Automatic: Connect Your Car to Your Digital Life

1. "CAR ADAPTER ($100)
   The Automatic adapter plugs into the standard diagnostics port hidden under the dash in most cars since 1996.
2. FREE MOBILE APP
   The Automatic app pairs with the adapter and displays useful information about your car and driving habits.
3. CONNECTED CAR
   Now your car’s data can power apps from the Automatic App Gallery and connect your car to the rest of your life."

Amazon.com: Automatic Car Adapter & Car Apps (2nd Generation): Automotive

Google I/O 2015 (!)

Google I/O 2015


The 12 most important announcements from Google I/O 2015 | The Verge

• Android M
• Android everywhere
• Virtual reality
• ...

Everything Google Announced at Google I/O 2015 @ thenextweb

Microsoft "Flow for Outlook" App

Microsoft is developing a new Outlook companion app called 'Flow' for the iPhone | Windows Central
"Microsoft appears to be developing a new and lightweight email client that can be used in tandem with its Outlook app. The app, called Flow, is apparently in internal testing among Microsoft employees for the iPhone."

"Use Flow with anyone, it's email: Reach anyone with an email address and all conversations for you and others are also in Outlook. Together, you can use Flow and Outlook interchangeably to participate in the same conversations.

"Fast, fluid, natural conversations: No subject lines, salutations, or signatures. Flow is designed for fast, light-weight conversations in real time.

"Focus on what's important: Only conversations started in Flow and their replies show up in Flow, not your whole inbox. Focus on your most important person-to-person conversations without the noise."

China =$250B=> South America

Chinese Rail In South America | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

China wants to build a railroad across Latin America - Business Insider
"China and Peru have agreed to study the feasibility of a controversial 3,300 miles (5,300 km) transcontinental railroad that will connect Peru's Pacific coast with Brazil's Atlantic coast

...

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $250 billion in investment in Latin America over the next 10 years as part of a drive to boost resource-hungry China's influence in a region long dominated by the United States."

Planes, Trains & Copper: China’s Premier Goes to Latin America - Bloomberg Business

Nicaragua Canal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SQL Server += JSON

SQL Server to add JSON Support

"SQL Server 2016 is expected to offer native support for working with JSON. The first iteration of this support will be released as part of SQL Server 2016’s CTP 2.
...
The main CTP 2 feature is the ability to “format and export” JSON. This is done by appending a FOR JSON clause to the end of a SELECT statement. It is based on the FOR XML clause and, like it, allows for both automatic and semi-manual formatting of the resulting JSON string.

...

JSON data is stored as an nVarChar variable. This is also the case when storing JSON data inside table columns
...
To directly query JSON for scalar values, you can use the JSON_VALUE function. This function uses a JavaScript like notation to locate values within the JSON object. It uses the $ symbol as the object root, dot-notation for properties, and brackets for array indexes."

JSON Support in SQL Server 2016 - jocapc - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

app: Waze (GPS navigation, social) (!)

Waze: Free Community-based Mapping, Traffic & Navigation App

Waze - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Waze Social GPS Maps & Traffic - Android Apps on Google Play


What Waze Adds To Google: A View From Waze's CEO


Waze co-founder's tips for growing a $1bn startup that Google might buy | Media Network | The Guardian

• "Who are your users and what is their problem?
• Make your mistakes fast
• The DNA and the mission defines the journey
• Fall in love with the problem you’re solving, not the solution
• Focus is not what we’re doing. It’s what we’re not doing
• The definition of a good product is good retention"

free ebook: Building Microservices

How to Adopt Microservices - Oreilly ebook | NGINX
by Sam Newman, a technologist at ThoughtWorks

ideas: "Intelligent Reaction"; Adam Bosworth, SalesForce (!)

A brilliant presentation by Adam Bosworth, delivered on SalesForce's DreamForce 2005 event in San Francisco.

"Intelligent Reaction"
Old model: 5 year "plans", state socialism; blank slate and API first ("Intelligent Design")
New model: Try, watch, learn; Real Apps first, APIs follow ("Intelligent Reaction)
Solutions need marketplaces; communities, market dynamic

SalesForce "invented" cloud-based software, before it was called "cloud."
Cleverly, they called web based application "no software",
to contrast with complex and expensive on-premise enterprise CRM systems.
With a little help from ActiveX objects, web browsers ware able to handled basic CRM tasks.
Adam was a lead of IE4 in Microsoft at that time...

Adam Bosworth | LinkedIn

Adam has a long and very influential history in area of software development and XML, from Borland Quattro, then leading development of Access and Internet Explorer at Microsoft, creating new a platform acquired by BEA (leading Java platform at the time), then as Vice President at Google, creating a healthcare startup Keas, and now apparently EVP at SalesForce.

Adam Bosworth's Weblog | Thoughts on health, technology, and sometimes politics

Adam Bosworth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adam Bosworth at TEDxSF (7 Billion Well) - YouTube

Distinguished Innovator - Adam Bosworth, Founder & CEO, Keas - YouTube
"Looking for simple solutions for hard problems"

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration - meaning and origin.

Parker Harris Salesforce cofounder profile - Business Insider
“Do it fast, simple, and right the first time"
Salesforce Office Buildings Tour - Business Insider

---

My preference would be to use word "response" instead of "reaction",
to indicate resposible (response-able) approach, not just instant reaction.
In any case, feedback-driven development is clearly a better way.

data: GraphQL (React.js, Relay, Facebook), JsonQL

GraphQL Introduction | React
A GraphQL query is a string interpreted by a server that returns data in a specified format. Here is an example query:

{
  user(id: 3500401) {
    id,
    name,
    isViewerFriend,
    profilePicture(size: 50)  {
      uri,
      width,
      height
    }
  }
}

(Note: this syntax is slightly different from previous GraphQL examples. We've recently been making improvements to the language.)

And here is the response to that query.

{
  "user" : {
    "id": 3500401,
    "name": "Jing Chen",
    "isViewerFriend": true,
    "profilePicture": {
      "uri": "http://someurl.cdn/pic.jpg",
      "width": 50,
      "height": 50
    }
  }
}

Introducing Relay and GraphQL | React
"GraphQL is a data querying language designed to describe the complex, nested data dependencies of modern applications. It's been in production use in Facebook's native apps for several years.

On the server, we configure the GraphQL system to map queries to underlying data-fetching code. This configuration layer allows GraphQL to work with arbitrary underlying storage mechanisms. Relay uses GraphQL as its query language, but it is not tied to a specific implementation of GraphQL."

JSON_QL could be an appropriate name... and as expected it already exists!

(written in Go Lang)

hayeah/jsonql · GitHub

jsonQL

Inspired by GraphQL, build JSON documents from a declarative JSON-based spec.

// select * from users where 1 < id and id < 4 and id != 3
{from: "users", where: "1 < id and id < 4 and id != 3"}

Now, this syntax is more descriptive than template based as in GraphQL...

Go lang productivity, benchmarks

Go Is Unapologetically Flawed, Here’s Why We Use It | Brave New Geek
As Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of C++) so eloquently put it, “There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.”

Go vs Java | Computer Language Benchmarks Game

Go vs C# Mono | Computer Language Benchmarks Game

Go vs C++ g++ | Computer Language Benchmarks Game

Go vs C gcc | Computer Language Benchmarks Game

Go by Example: Hello World

"Go is an open source programming language designed for building simple, fast, and reliable software. Go by Example is a hands-on introduction to Go using annotated example programs. Check out the first example"

free e-book: Azure for Developers

free e-book: Azure for Developers
What Programmers Need to Know about Microsoft's Cloud Platform
By John Adams
Publisher: O'Reilly
Released: May 2015

Tesla Motors self-driving cars liability solution

Who’s Responsible when a Driverless Car Crashes? Tesla’s Got an Idea - WSJ
"The Palo Alto, Calif., electric-car maker soon will begin activating semiautonomous features, including the capability to pass other cars without driver intervention, in its Model S sedans. A driver can trigger the passing function by hitting the turn signal...That action not only tells the car it can pass, but also means the driver has given thought to whether the maneuver is safe."

Tesla resolves driverless car liability argument with one tweak | ZDNet

Tesla Motors Inc Finds Potential Solution For Liability Issues Over Driverless Car Technology

Containers are the future of computing

Google systems guru explains why containers are the future of computing — > S C A L E — Medium
"As a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Eric Brewer devised the CAP theorem — a governing concept in the design of distributed systems — and co-founded web-search pioneer Inktomi. In this interview, Brewer, now vice president of infrastructure at Google, explains why the work he’s doing on application containers could be at least as big as cloud computing and how the CAP theorem is holding up nearly two decades after its inception.

Google is currently driving an open source project called Kubernetes that simplifies the process of building applications atop clusters of containers, including those using the popular Docker format."

Eric Brewer (scientist) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meet the Man Who's Rewiring Google From the Inside Out | WIRED

Android Wear vs. Apple Watch

LukeW | On the Wrist: Android Wear vs. Apple Watch

detailed comparison of interactions and experiences

IoT: node.js with Microsoft JavaScript engine

Microsoft Forks Node.js to Support ARM  @ InfoQ
"Microsoft has created its own version of version of Node.js which is designed to run on Windows 10 and support the ARM architecture. To do this, Microsoft has changed the default Node.js configuration from using the V8 JavaScript engine to allow the use of the Chakra JavaScript engine found on Windows 10.

...

According to Microsoft’s Arunesh Chandra and Gaurav Seth, the goal of supporting Windows on ARM is to further the company’s vision of powering the Internet of Things with Windows 10 IoT Core. Seth notes that while the project’s focus is on IoT Core, their modified version of Node.js should run on any version of Windows 10."

Chakra (JScript engine) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting thing is that Microsoft's JavaScript engine is currently not open source...

With exhange-able JavaScript engines on browsers and servers, 

JavaScript has become a real universal platform ("assembly language of the web")

JavaScript is Web Assembly Language and that's OK. - Scott Hanselman

Open Source: WCF

WCF is Open Source @ InfoQ

"The .NET Foundation has just announced the release of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) as open source. WCF, originally offered in .NET 3.0, offers a high-level abstraction over cross-application communication. It supports one-way and two-way messages over HTTP, TCP, named pipes, and, with third-party extensions, any other message based wire format.

...supports the ability to use WCF in both Universal Windows and ASP.NET 5 applications.

...Everything you need for basic one-way communication over HTTP or TCP is in place. Two-way communication, web sockets, and various security features such as SSL are still a work in progress."

clouds: Microsoft +? SalesForce

Microsoft tried to buy Salesforce for $55B, report says - CNET
(and SalesForce was asking for $70B)

"...Salesforce currently has a market valuation of more than $49 billion. Microsoft, which is the world's largest software maker, has more than $95 billion in cash and cash-equivalents

..SalesForce reported $1.51 billion in revenue for its fiscal first quarter, and forecast sales for the full year could be as high as $6.55 billion."

Forecast: "cloudy" :)

Cloudy king? AWS said to be bigger than Google, Microsoft, IBM AND Salesforce combined | SiliconANGLE

“Across the full and varied spectrum of cloud activities there are now six companies that can lay a valid claim to having annual cloud revenue run rates in excess of $5 billion – AWS, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco and Salesforce"

Microsoft Research "Hyperlapse"

First-person Hyperlapse Videos
"...a method for converting first-person videos, for example, captured with a helmet camera during activities such as rock climbing or bicycling, into hyper-lapse videos, i.e., time-lapse videos with a smoothly moving camera. 

At high speed-up rates, simple frame sub-sampling coupled with existing video stabilization methods does not work, because the erratic camera shake present in first-person videos is amplified by the speed-up."

Meet Microsoft Hyperlapse

Asus Zenfone 2 with Intel Atom CPU

Asus Zenfone 2 Review: Very Fast, Very Affordable
"world's-first 4GB of RAM and U.S.-first Intel Atom 64-bit CPU, the Asus Zenfone 2 goes toe to toe with other flagship phones for less than half the price ($199 : $299) (2+16GB : 4+64GB)

"Zenfone 2 boasts a 13-megapixel rear camera with some clever shooting modes, a 5.5-inch full-HD screen, and a removable back with support for two SIM cards and expandable microSD storage"

ideas: good character, good bottom line

Ethical CEOs Finish First - HBR
Fred Kiel, author of Return on Character, explains his research on why being good benefits the bottom line.CEOs Finish First - HBR

"...strong character leaders contributed an amazing:

• almost five times bottom line profitability as do the weak character leaders. And 
• they enjoy a much higher level of workforce engagement, about 26% higher. And 
• they also have a significant impact on reducing corporate risk to the company.

So those are the three big headlines of the objective data.

...it turns out that there is a set of moral principles that are universal among all cultures around the globe: integrity and responsibility (head) forgiveness and compassion (heart)

...innovation will only thrive in a forgiving culture. If people are afraid that if they try out a risky idea or promote some new innovative idea that might turn out to be a bad idea and not be successful, they’re not going to do that if they think they’re putting their career on the line and taking that kind of risk..."
Return on Character - KRW International, Inc.

character reputation predictor instrument

Go vs. C#

Comparing Go and .NET // Justin Beckwith


Go by Example: Hello World

A Tour of Go

Google: "Guide to Technical Development"

a collection of useful links to CS learning resources

Students - Guide to Technical Development - Google Careers
"Having a solid foundation in Computer Science is important to become a successful Software Engineer. This guide is a suggested path for university students to develop their technical skills academically and non-academically through self paced hands-on learning. You may use this guide to determine courses to take, but please make sure you are taking courses required for your major in order to graduate. The online resources provided in this guide are not meant to replace courses available at your university."

Tesla PowerPack, saving money, Making Wine

Tesla batteries pair well with wine-making - MarketWatch
"Jackson Family Wines now has 21 of Tesla’s batteries in six of its wineries in northern and central California. Together, the batteries provide 4.2 megawatts of storage capacity, and the winery uses the batteries mostly in two ways: to shift loads, or switching to the batteries when using power during the most expensive part of the day, and to smooth out its demand peaks... The winery estimates its portion of the savings will be about $200,000 a year."
"Elon Musk called demand for the batteries “crazy off the hook” and said they are essentially sold out through mid-2016."

ideas: "The Best Place to Work"

Your Brain’s Ideal Schedule - HBR 
interview with Ron Friedman, Ph.D., author of The Best Place to Work,
on how to structure your day to get the most done.

Proactive vs Reactive (Postpone emails)

"... start out day by checking our email, or listening to our voice mail... being responsive first thing in the morning is really cognitively expensive. And for one thing, it’s because it prevents us from leveraging our best hours.

Typically, we have a window of about three hours where we’re really, really focused. We’re able to have some strong contributions in terms of planning, in terms of thinking, in terms of speaking well. And if we end up squandering those first three hours reacting to other people’s priorities for us, which is ultimately what voice mail, or email is, is a list of other people’s requests for our time, that ends up using up our best hours and we’re not quite as effective as we could be.
The other a major reason being response first thing is not a good idea is because it puts you in a reactive mindset. So you’re looking outward for direction, rather than looking inward. And switching from a proactive to a reactive mindset is easy, but doing the reverse is much, much harder."

Play vs Work

"...play is anything that’s something you do for fun, but without necessarily having a goal, or a purpose behind it

... making time for play can make you more successful at work. Particularly if you’re work involves creative thinking.

...when we’re engaged in play, we’re rewarded for taking risk. Like in a video game, or playing sports, that puts you in a risk taking mindset, which could be beneficial

... in video games, you get... immediate feedback... recognition when we succeed... progressive difficulty.

Meaning vs Happiness 

"...emotions really serve as guideposts in terms of whether or not we’re doing the right things both for our physical and mental health. And so when you’re experiencing negative emotions, there’s a temptation to want to sweep those negative emotions under the rug and kind of power through.

...by acknowledging negative emotions, we can actually make improvements in our lives that ultimately lead us to be happier."

Ed Deci, the founder of self determination theory, which is the basis of Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: 

...happiness is a bunch of crap... if you’re ignoring your negative emotions, then you can’t live a full life.
... if you’re working to create something of value, not every day is going to be a picnic.
... it’s better to acknowledge and respond to your negative emotions than again, to just to simply sweep them underneath the rug in an effort to feel happy..."

"In The Best Place to Work, award-winning psychologist Ron Friedman, Ph.D. uses the latest research from the fields of motivation, creativity, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and management to reveal what really makes us successful at work."

Theory - selfdeterminationtheory.org
"...People are centrally concerned with motivation — how to move themselves or others to act
...Conditions supporting the individual’s experience of autonomy, competence,and relatedness are argued to foster the most volitional and high quality forms of motivation and engagement..."

Drive – Daniel H. Pink
"...examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action."

100 Best Companies to Work For - Fortune

100 Best Companies to Work For List

Best Places to Work | Glassdoor

HTTP/2

a detailed overview of the protocol that will soon become a "new normal" on the web

Architecting Websites For The HTTP/2 Era


http2/http2-spec · GitHub

How we got to the HTTP/2 and HPACK RFCs - O'Reilly Radar

Text-to-Speech: ReadSpeaker

Text-to-Speech Solutions | ReadSpeaker
"Use the power of ReadSpeaker text to speech to give a voice to your
websites, mobile apps, digital books, elearning materials, documents, and more!"
example: Deploy Continuous Improvement - O'Reilly Radar

Kata: Deploy Continuous Improvement (HP futuresmart firmware)

A story about how HP improved firmware development efficiency 10 times, while fixing security issues.
Deploy Continuous Improvement - O'Reilly Radar
"Balancing the work it takes to improve capability against delivery work that provides value to customers. ...The researchers concluded that to achieve high performance, companies that rely on software should focus first and foremost on their ability to execute, build reliable systems,and work to continually reduce complexity. Only then will pursuing alignment with business priorities pay off..."

"How the HP LaserJet Team Implemented the  Improvement Kata

The direction set by the HP LaserJet leadership was to improve developer productivity by a factor of 10, so as to get firmware off the critical path for product development and reduce costs.
They had three high-level goals:

• Create a single platform to support all devices
• Increase quality and reduce the amount of stabilization required prior to release
• Reduce the amount of time spent on planning"

THE IMPROVEMENT KATA HANDBOOK
 Practicing foundational skills for scientific thinking


A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware (Agile Software Development Series): Gary Gruver, Mike Young, Pat 
Fulghum: 9780321821720: Amazon.com: Books

Microsoft Ignite 2015

Microsoft Ignite Keynote | Microsoft Ignite 2015 | Channel 9

Satya Nadella: Ignite 2015 | News Center

1. "The first, it is about the era of more personal computing. 
2. Second is it’s about reinventing the very nature of work
   with productivity and business process coming together. 
3. And lastly, it is about building the intelligent cloud back-end
   for the world’s applications."

"Windows 10 for me is not just another release of Windows,
it is a new generation of Windows, and it’s about Windows delivered as a service.

...

Everything that we are building is going to be built for this mobile world where the mobility of the experience across devices matters, where social collaboration and co-creation is core to what we do.

All of the experiences will have intelligence built into it."

Ignite On Demand

MS Ignite 2015 – Key TakeAways and Highlights « MSExchangeGuru.com

• Office 2016
• SharePoint 2016
• Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016
• SQL Server 2016
• Exchange Server 2016
• Skype for Business Broadcasting
• Analytics in Office Delve
• Intelligent Cloud
• Hybrid Cloud for the Next Generation
• Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA)
• Office 365 control enhancements and transparency
• Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS)

business book: Chess Not Checkers

Chess Not Checkers | By Mark Miller | Home

Great Leaders Serve | By Mark Miller | Chess Not Checkers

Chess Not Checkers: O'Reilly - Safari Books Online
"The early days of an organization are like checkers: a quick game with mostly interchangeable pieces. Everybody does a little bit of everything, the leader included, and things are so frantic you just have to react as fast as you can. But as the organization expands, you can't just keep jumping from activity to activity. You have to think strategically, look ahead, leverage every employee's specific talents. That's chess. And this approach creates unprecedented levels of performance."

"(Mobile) Software Is Eating The World" @ a16z

Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating the World - WSJ
(co-founder of Netscape, now a very successful venture investor in Silicon Valley)

"...Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this phenomenon of software eating a traditional business is the suicide of Borders and corresponding rise of Amazon. In 2001, Borders agreed to hand over its online business to Amazon under the theory that online book sales were non-strategic and unimportant. Oops...
Today, the world's largest bookseller, Amazon, is a software company..."

Why Software Is Eating The World

The Man Who Makes the Future: Wired Icon Marc Andreessen | WIRED

Marc Andreessen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Presentation: mobile is eating the world. — Benedict Evans

Mobile Is Eating the World from a16z

architecture: Google’s New Campus

Google’s New Campus: Architects Ingels, Heatherwick’s Moon Shot - Bloomberg Business







Google's plans for a massive, futuristic new headquarters get derailed by LinkedIn | The Verge

AP.NET 5 @ Build 2015

BUILD 2015 ASP.NET 5 Training Videos - Introduction and Deep Dive - Scott Hanselman

Introducing ASP.NET 5 | Build 2015 | Channel 9


Deep Dive into ASP.NET 5 | Build 2015 | Channel 9


Azure App Service Architecture | Build 2015 | Channel 9

New ASP.NET Features and Fixes in Visual Studio 2015 RC - .NET Web Development and Tools Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

The Big Rename

• k and klr are now DNX. DNX stands for .NET Execution Environment.
• kvm is now dnvm or the .NET Version Manager
• kpm is migrating some functionality of its functionality to dnu, the .NET Development Utility and some functionality will migrate to be core NuGet functionality
• The Aspnet50 and aspnetcore50 framework monikers in project.json files are being replaced with dnx451 and dnxcore50.

Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate now available in the Virtual Machine Azure Gallery - Microsoft Application Lifecycle Management - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Azure "Desired State Configuration"

Chatting with Snover | Build 2015 | Channel 9

The Next Generation of Azure Compute Platform with Mark Russinovich | Build 2015 | Channel 9

Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration Overview
"DSC is a new management platform in Windows PowerShell that enables deploying and managing configuration data for software services and managing the environment in which these services run.
DSC provides a set of Windows PowerShell language extensions, new Windows PowerShell cmdlets, and resources that you can use to declaratively specify how you want your software environment to be configured. It also provides a means to maintain and manage existing configurations."

Introducing the Azure PowerShell DSC (Desired State Configuration) extension - Windows PowerShell Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Windows PowerShell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Desired State Configuration[56][57][58]: Declarative language extensions and tools that enable the deployment and management of configuration data for systems using the DMTF management standards and WS-Management Protocol.

education: courses, classes or lessons?

meaning - What is the difference between taking courses, classes or lessons? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

• Course is the broadest term for the study of a subject. It could be used to refer to an entire degree program, but it is most appropriately applied to a specific subject such as First Year English Literature.
  
• Class is more specific and is most properly applied to a section of a course taught by one instructor to one group of students at a certain scheduled time.
  
• Lesson is the most specific and implies a particular unit of instruction, such as would be delivered by a particular instructor to a particular class on a given day.

Azure "Data Lake"

data lake - Wiktionary
"If you think of a datamart as a store of bottled water – cleansed and packaged and structured for easy consumption – the data lake is a large body of water in a more natural state. The contents of the data lake stream in from a source to fill the lake, and various users of the lake can come to examine, dive in, or take samples."

Data lake @ Microsoft Azure
"A hyper scale repository for big data analytic workloads

• A Hadoop Distributed File System for the Cloud
• No fixed limits on file size
• No fixed limits on account size
• Unstructured and structured data in their native format
• Massive throughput to increase analytic performance
• High durability, availability and reliability
• Azure Active Directory access control
• Intuitive management console"

Microsoft Build 2015: Data Lake - YouTube

Introducing Azure Data Lake | Microsoft Azure Blog

Microsoft announces Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure Data Lake in preview | VentureBeat | Cloud | by Jordan Novet

Gartner Says Beware of the Data Lake Fallacy

Gartner gets the 'data lake' concept all wrong | InfoWorld

"The data lake strategy is part of a greater movement toward data liberalization. It started with the printing press and moving the books out of the monastery. Sure, there was confusion and a schism, but did we really want to wait for the monks to decide who gets the handwritten books?"

It continues with the Internet...
Now Gartner has aligned itself with the data monks who sit over the data and horde it in usually expensive, proprietary technologies..."

A/B testing

online free course (or class?):

A/B Testing - Udacity (+Google)

A/B testing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"In marketing and business intelligence, A/B testing is jargon for a randomized experiment with two variants, A and B, which are the control and treatment in thecontrolled experiment .[1] It is a form of statistical hypothesis testing with two variants leading to the technical term, Two-sample hypothesis testing, used in the field of statistics

...

As the name implies, two versions (A and B) are compared, which are identical except for one variation that might affect a user's behavior. Version A might be the currently used version (control), while Version B is modified in some respect (treatment)."

Talks @ Coursera - A/B Testing @ Internet Scale - Coursera Technology

Designing, Running, and Analyzing Experiments - University of California, San Diego | Coursera

IoT: $9 computer "CHIP" (!)

The World's First $9 Computer: Meet Chip by Next Thing Co.
"...Oakland, CA is Next Thing Co. a team of nine artists and engineers who are pursuing the dream of a lower cost single board computer. Today they’ve unveiled their progress on Kickstarter, offering a $9 development board called Chip.

The board is Open Hardware, runs a flavor of Debian Linux, and boasts a 1Ghz R8 ARM processor, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of eMMC storage. It is more powerful than a Raspberry Pi B+ and equal to the BeagleBone Black in clock speed, RAM, and storage. Differentiating Chip from Beagle is its built-in WiFi, Bluetooth, and the ease in which it can be made portable, thanks to circuitry that handles battery operation."

"spend an additional $10 (VGA) or $15 (HDMI) if you want high-resolution video, but as-is, it's an amazing price for a complete system capable of running Linux out of the box."

Next Thing Co. Releases "World's First" $9 Computer - YouTube

Allwinner Technology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ideas: Psychology of Pricing

from: Four Short Links analysis and commentary: O'Reilly Radar
Four short links: 7 May 2015 - O'Reilly Radar

Psychology of Pricing: A Gigantic List of Strategies
"...a massive list of psychological pricing strategies
Whether you’re launching a new product, selling items on eBay, or negotiating a deal on your house, you’ll learn how to choose a price that will maximize your profit."

web evolution: Fluent 2015

many interesting stories / videos from Fluent 2015 conference:

Finding new in the Web - O'Reilly Radar
by Simon St. Laurent

"Fluent 2015... brought together a variety of stories about front-end engineering – some technical, some social, some more intricately intertwined.

From the very first day, it was clear that React was the big technical story of the conference, taking the place that Angular (which is still clearly important!) had had the previous year.

...JavaScript, often specifically ECMAScript 6 (ES6), the latest release. Brendan Eich talked about a world in which compiling to JavaScript has become normal, and how that frees much of the future development of JavaScript and the Web..."

Silicon Valley: Past & Future

Why Silicon Valley Will Continue to Rule — Backchannel — Medium
by Leslie Berlin, Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University, and author of The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley.


Before, the region was called the “Valley of the Hearts Delight,” renowned for its apricot, plum, cherry and almond orchards.

China += robots, Segway

Chinese shopping for global robotics ventures | Robohub

• "Beijing-based Ninebot, a Segway competitor, acquired Segway;
• Chinese venture fund Cybernaut plans to invest $200 million into Russia’s Skolkovo Center to incubate Russian inventions manufactured and marketed in China;
• China South Rail paid $190 million to acquire SMD, a UK deep-sea robot manufacturer;
• and Chinese drone maker DJI is forecasting global 2015 sales of $1 billion and a market value of $10 billion as it seeks funds to scale up it’s operations."

"Ninebot, a Beijing-based 2012 startup, markets their device as a personal transportation robot. Segway has sued and accused Ninebot of patent infringement but all that is now water under the bridge because Ninebot acquired (for an undisclosed amount) all the intellectual property as well as the company and facilities of Segway."

Andrew Ng: Why 'Deep Learning' Is a Mandate for Humans, Not Just Machines | WIRED

"Andrew Ng, chief scientist at China’s search giant Baidu. Ng has taught AI at Stanford, led the Google Brain project, founded online education pioneer Coursera, and just last year took his post at “China’s Google” in hopes of figuring out how to teach computers to see and hear"

Azure Resource Manager, Service Fabric

Mark runs on double speed without speeding up :)

The Next Generation of Azure Compute Platform with Mark Russinovich | Build 2015 | Channel 9
...ways to integrate with Azure Resource Manager (ARM) to enable role-based access control (RBAC), tagging, and template-based deployments, and how Windows containers with Docker compatibility make your code deploy instantly and work consistently in any environment. Also learn how Service Fabric, Microsoft’s hyper-scale micro-service PaaS that powers everything from Azure DB to Cortana, brings applications state-of-the art high-density, high availability and stateful computing capabilities."

Azure Resource Manager Templates | Microsoft Ignite 2015 | Channel 9

All Things Azure | Build 2015 | Channel 9

Microsoft Azure Technology Introspective | Microsoft Ignite 2015 | Channel 9

Mark Russinovich talks with Rick Claus.

HTTP/2 in Windows 10

A nice technical overview of functionality of HTTP/2

HTTP/2 in Windows 10: Browser, Apps and Web Server | Build 2015 | Channel 9
"HTTP/2 is the next generation transport for all web content. It will bring greater efficiency, faster performance and enable universal secure deployment of services. Windows 10 will come with built in support for HTTP/2 enabling automatic deployment in Servers, apps, and the browser."

HTTP/2 @ GitHub

"This is the home page for HTTP/2, a major revision of the Web's protocol. It is maintained by the IETF HTTP Working Group."

HTTP/2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows 10 comes with HTTP/2, and there is also a server verdion. 

Windows Server Technical Preview | TechNet Evaluation Center

data: Google Cloud Bigtable, with HBase API

Google Offers Bigtable in the Cloud
Google is making available to customers Cloud Bigtable, their own database used for more than a decade for services such as Search, GMail, Maps or YouTube. While they are not open sourcing Bigtable as they did with other products, the new cloud service is accessible through an open source interface, the Apache HBase 1.0.1 API.

Google Cloud Bigtable pricing 

Google Brings Bigtable NoSQL To The Masses