Is your company scaling up its applications by breaking them up into smaller pieces, and deploying on cloud? Are you sharing and reusing services widely across the organization and outside—well beyond the development team you scrum with? If you answered "yes" to these questions, you've got microservices.
When you’re talking about sharing services, you’re talking APIs. All microservices have APIs. But companies have struggled with security, with a lack of visibility into usage and performance of the microservices APIs, and with building agile microservices for clean reuse.
Managed microservices are the solution; companies are making strategic investments in API management platforms for their microservices success.
When I tell someone Stack Overflow is based in New York City, they’re often surprised: many people assume it’s in San Francisco. (I’ve even seen job applications with “I’m in New York but willing to relocate to San Francisco” in the cover letter.) San Francisco is a safe guess of where an American tech company might be located: it’s in the heart of Silicon Valley, near the headquarters of tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Facebook. But New York has a rich startup ecosystem as well- and it’s a very different world from San Francisco, with developers who use different languages and technologies.
On the Stack Overflow data team we don’t have to hypothesize about where developers are and what they use: we can measure it! By analyzing our traffic, we have a bird’s eye view of who visits Stack Overflow, and what technologies they’re working on. As the first in a series of upcoming analyses of Stack Overflow data, here we’ll show some examples of what we can detect about software developers in each major city.
In this post we’re going to focus on the four cities that visit Stack Overflow the most: San Francisco, Bangalore, London, and New York.1
(The data used in this post is private within the company, but if you’re curious how it was generated you can find the code here).
San Francisco vs New York
First we’ll compare the two most popular American cities for software development: San Francisco and New York.
When developers are using a programming language or technology, they typically visit questions related to it. So based on how much traffic goes to questions tagged with Python, or Javascript, we can estimate what fraction of a city’s software development takes place in that language.
For example, there were 187 million question views from San Francisco in the last year, and we can see that 10.3% of these visits were to questions with the Python tag, compared to 12.8% of New York’s traffic.
Most of these common technologies look like they make up a fairly similar fraction of NY and SF traffic, but we’re interested in stark differences. What tags (among the 200 most high-traffic tags) showed the largest difference between San Francisco and New York?
One clear difference: New York has a larger share of Microsoft developers. Many tags important in the Microsoft technology stack, such as C#, .NET, SQL Server, and VB.NET, had about twice as much traffic in New York as in San Francisco. This may be because many banks and financial firms, which are much more common in NY than in SF, use these technologies.
There are also patterns in the technologies that are more common in the San Francisco area, especially languages developed by Apple (Cocoa, Objective-C, OSX) and Google (Go, Android). We can also see several influential open source projects, especially ones associated with Apache (Hive, Hadoop, Spark).
Rather than looking only at the most dramatic changes, we could visualize the SF/NY ratio compared to the total visits:
This confirms that C# (in NY) and Android (in SF) stand out as the highest traffic tags that show different behavior, with tags such as Excel, VBA, Cocoa, and Go showing more even dramatic differences. Meanwhile, the Java tag has about the same level of traffic in each city, as do several “language agnostic” tags such as “string”, “regex”, and “performance”.
New York, San Francisco, Bangalore, and London
Let’s expand the story to include Bangalore, India, and London, England. Together these four cities make up 11.1% of all Stack Overflow traffic.
Each of these cities is the “capital” of particular tags, visiting them more than the other three cities do. Which tags does each city lead in?
This fills out more of our story:
London has the highest percentage of developers using the Microsoft stack: while New York had more Microsoft-related traffic than San Francisco, here we see London with a still greater proportion. Since both London and New York are financial hubs, this suggests we were right that Microsoft technologies tend to be associated with financial professionals.
New York leads in several data analysis tools, including pandas (a Python data science library) and R. This is probably due to a combination of finance, academic research, and data science at tech companies. It’s not a huge lead, but as an R user in New York I’m still personally happy to see it!
Bangalore has the most Android development, with two to three times as much traffic to Android-related tags as the other three cities. Bangalore is sometimes called the “Silicon Valley of India” for its thriving software export industry, with Android development playing the largest role.
San Francisco leads in the same technologies as it did in the comparison with New York (except for Android). In particular (thanks to Mountain View), it’s indisputably the “Go capital of the world.” (This is true even if we look at the 50 highest-traffic cities rather than just the top 4).
This portrait of four major developer hubs is is just one of many ways Stack Overflow traffic can tell us about the global software engineering ecosystem. Whether you want to understand developers, hire them, engage them, or make your own developers more efficient, we have solutions to help you solve your problems. Check out Developer Insights to learn more.
In this analysis, we counted all traffic within 50 miles of a city: this means San Francisco includes a larger part of the “Bay Area”, such as Mountain View and Cupertino. ↩
Today, we are very pleased to announce the latest addition to the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors – Julie Hanna. Julie is the Executive Chairman for Kiva and a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship and we couldn’t be more excited to have her joining our Board.
Throughout this year, we have been focused on board development for both the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation boards of directors. We envisioned a diverse group who embodied the same values and mission that Mozilla stands for. We want each person to contribute a unique point of view. After extensive conversations, it was clear to the Mozilla Corporation leadership team that Julie brings exactly the type of perspective and approach that we seek.
Born in Egypt, Julie has lived in various countries including Jordan and Lebanon before finally immigrating to the United States. Julie graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a B.S. in Computer Science. She currently serves as Executive Chairman at Kiva, a peer-peer lending pioneer and the world’s largest crowdlending marketplace for underserved entrepreneurs. During her tenure, Kiva has scaled its reach to 190+ countries and facilitated nearly $1 billion dollars in loans to 2 million people with a 97% repayment rate. U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Julie as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship to help develop the next generation of entrepreneurs. In that capacity, her signature initiative has delivered over $100M in capital to nearly 300,000 women and young entrepreneurs across 86 countries.
Julie is known as a serial entrepreneur with a focus on open source. She was a founder or founding executive at several innovative technology companies directly relevant to Mozilla’s world in browsers and open source. These include Scalix, a pioneering open source email/collaboration platform and developer of the most advanced AJAX application of its time, the first enterprise portal provider 2Bridge Software, and Portola Systems, which was acquired by Netscape Communications and become Netscape Mail.
She has also built a wealth of experience as an active investor and advisor to high-growth technology companies, including sharing economy pioneer Lyft, Lending Club and online retail innovator Bonobos. Julie also serves as an advisor to Idealab, Bill Gross’ highly regarded incubator which has launched dozens of IPO-destined companies.
Please join me in welcoming Julie Hanna to the Mozilla Board of Directors.
Mitchell
You can read Julie’s message about why she’s joining Mozilla here.
(Take This With A Pinch of Salt: I am an adviser to Bulb, they pay me money, so I have a financial interest in you becoming their customer.)
I keep meaning to write about Bulb, I'm doing some advising for them and they're a lovely, fascinating lot. They do energy. It's 100% from renewables. And it's cheaper than most, because they're more efficient.
But, today I have a specific reason to write about them because they're doing a good thing.
If, during December, you use my referral code to switch to Bulb (or anyone's referral code, it's not just a special deal for me) they'll knock £50 off your first bill and they'll donate £50 cash to Crisis.
This is it! The start of the last month of the year, friends :-) We are kicking off the 12th month of 2016 with some news for your reading pleasure. Dig in!
If you want to add a discussion topic to the upcoming meeting agenda:
Start a thread in the Community Forums, so that everyone in the community can see what will be discussed and voice their opinion here before Wednesday (this will make it easier to have an efficient meeting).
Please do so as soon as you can before the meeting, so that people have time to read, think, and reply (and also add it to the agenda).
If you can, please attend the meeting in person (or via IRC), so we can follow up on your discussion topic during the meeting with your feedback.
Please remember that Persona has shut down as of yesterday. All affected services will offer alternative log in methods, so look for more information about that on their sites.
Reminder: Army of Awesome (as a “community trademark”) is going away. Please reach out to the Social Support team or ask in #sumo for more information.
Remember, you can contact Sierra (sreed@), Elisabeth (ehull@), or Rachel (guigs@) to get started with Social support. Help us provide friendly help through the likes of @firefox, @firefox_es, @firefox_fr and @firefoxbrasil on Twitter and beyond :-)
If you see Firefox users asking about the “zero day exploit”, please let them know that “We have been made aware of the issue and are working on a fix. We will have more to say once the fix has been shipped.” (some media context here)
A polite reminder: please do notdeleteposts without an explanation to the poster in the forums, it can be frustrating to both the author and the user in the thread – thank you!
Firefox for iOS 6.0 coming up your way before the end of this year, we hear! :-)
…and that’s it for today! So, what are you usually looking forward to about December? For me it would be the snow (not the case any more, sadly) and a few special dishes… Well, OK, also the fun party on the last night of the year in our calendar! Let us hear from you about your December picks – tell us in the forums or in the comments!
When Apple released iOS 10, the latest system software for the iPhone/iPad, it made a big deal out of the major features, like a redesigned Music app and contextual predictions in autocorrect.
But Apple’s engineer elves worked for a year to overhaul iOS 10, and they’ve planted lots of hidden gems. Today, I’m happy to present another of the best iOS 10 features that Apple forgot to mention.
For the first time, you can hide Apple’s starter apps on your Home screens (Watch, Home, Stocks, etc.), so you’re not saddled with the icons you never use. You can “delete” them just as you would any app: Hold your finger down on one until the icons start wiggling, and then tap the X button. (You’re not actually deleting them—only hiding them. They still occupy 150 megabytes.)
If you ever want one again, use the App Store to find it and “re-download” it. (You’re actually just un-hiding it.)
What a lovely book! This is the source, of course, of the superb movie that made Jennifer Lawrence a star. The book is even better; taut, lyrical, efficient. Rhee Dolly is sixteen. Her Mom is crazy, her two little brothers are too young to care for themselves, and her dad, a meth cook, has vanished after pledging their house as collateral for bail. She has a week to find him and, while nearly everyone in this forgotten corner of the Ozarks is some sort of relative, ancient family disputes mean that every hand is against her.
A fascinating and detailed look at the politics of 1606 and how they impacted Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and King Lear. In 1606, James I was trying to get Parliament to agree to uniting England and Scotland. It was a tough sell, and that echoes through all three plays. Ben Jonson did a costly, elaborate court masque to help sell it; that didn’t really work, either, but “the throne she sat on” echoes down through centuries in which masques have been forgotten. It’s fascinating how many topical references from 1606 we can trace in the plays.
Today, I’m joining Mozilla’s Board. What attracts me to Mozilla is its people, mission and values. I’ve long admired Mozilla’s noble mission to ensure the internet is free, open and accessible to all. That Mozilla has organized itself in a radically transparent, massively distributed and crucially equitable way is a living example of its values in action and a testament to the integrity with which Mozillians have pursued that mission. They walk the talk. Similarly, having had the privilege of knowing a number of the leaders at Mozilla, their sincerity, character and competence are self-evident.
Julie Hanna, new Mozilla Corporation Board member (Photo credit: Chris Michel)
(photo credit: Chris Michel)
The internet is the most powerful force for good ever invented. It is the democratic air half our planet breathes. It has put power into the hands of people that didn’t have it. Ensuring the internet continues to serve our humanity, while reaching all of humanity is vital to preserving and advancing the internet as a public good.
The combination of these things are why helping Mozilla maximize its impact is an act with profound meaning and a privilege for me.
Mozilla’s mission is bold, daring and simple, but not easy. Preserving the web as a force for good and ensuring the balance of power between all stakeholders – private, commercial, national and government interests – while preserving the rights of individuals, by its nature, is a never ending challenge. It is a deep study in choice, consequence and unintended consequences over the short, medium and long term. Understanding the complex, nuanced and dynamic forces at work so that we can skillfully and collaboratively architect a digital organism that’s in service to the greater public good is by its very nature complicated.
And then there’s the challenge all organizations face in today’s innovate or die world – how to stay agile, innovative, and relevant, while riding the waves of disruption. Not for the faint of heart, but incredibly worthwhile and consequential to securing the future of the internet.
I prescribe to the philosophy of servant leadership. When it comes to Board service, my emphasis is on the service part. First and foremost, being in service to the mission and to Mozillians, who are doing the heavy lifting on the front lines. I find that a mindset of radical empathy and humility is critical to doing this effectively. The invisible work of deep listening and effort to understand what it’s like to walk a mile in their shoes. As is creating a climate of trust and psychic safety so that tough strategic issues can be discussed with candor and efficiency. Similarly, cultivating a creative tension so diverse thoughts and ideas have the headroom to emerge in a way that’s constructive and collaborative. My continual focus is to listen, learn and be of service in the areas where my contribution can have the greatest impact.
Mozilla is among the pioneers of Open Source Software. Open Source Software is the foundation of an open internet and a pervasive building block in 95% of all applications. The net effect is a shared public good that accelerates innovation. That will continue. Open source philosophy and methodology are also moving into other realms like hardware and medicine. This will also continue. We tend to overestimate the short term impact of technology and underestimate its long term effect. I believe we’ve only begun catalyzing the potential of open source.
Harnessing the democratizing power of the internet to enable a more just, abundant and free world is the long running purpose that has driven my work. The companies I helped start and lead, the products I have helped build all sought to democratize access to information, communication, collaboration and capital on a mass scale. None of that would have been possible without the internet. This is why I passionately believe that the world needs Mozilla to succeed and thrive in fulfilling its mission.
Today, we are very pleased to announce the latest addition to the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors – Julie Hanna. Julie is the Executive Chairman for Kiva and a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship and we couldn’t be more excited to have her joining our Board.
Throughout this year, we have been focused on board development for both the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation boards of directors. We envisioned a diverse group who embodied the same values and mission that Mozilla stands for. We want each person to contribute a unique point of view. After extensive conversations, it was clear to the Mozilla Corporation leadership team that Julie brings exactly the type of perspective and approach that we seek.
Born in Egypt, Julie has lived in various countries including Jordan and Lebanon before finally immigrating to the United States. Julie graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a B.S. in Computer Science. She currently serves as Executive Chairman at Kiva, a peer-peer lending pioneer and the world’s largest crowdlending marketplace for underserved entrepreneurs. During her tenure, Kiva has scaled its reach to 190+ countries and facilitated nearly $1 billion dollars in loans to 2 million people with a 97% repayment rate. U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Julie as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship to help develop the next generation of entrepreneurs. In that capacity, her signature initiative has delivered over $100M in capital to nearly 300,000 women and young entrepreneurs across 86 countries.
Julie is known as a serial entrepreneur with a focus on open source. She was a founder or founding executive at several innovative technology companies directly relevant to Mozilla’s world in browsers and open source. These include Scalix, a pioneering open source email/collaboration platform and developer of the most advanced AJAX application of its time, the first enterprise portal provider 2Bridge Software, and Portola Systems, which was acquired by Netscape Communications and become Netscape Mail.
She has also built a wealth of experience as an active investor and advisor to high-growth technology companies, including sharing economy pioneer Lyft, Lending Club and online retail innovator Bonobos. Julie also serves as an advisor to Idealab, Bill Gross’ highly regarded incubator which has launched dozens of IPO-destined companies.
Please join me in welcoming Julie Hanna to the Mozilla Board of Directors.
I’ve spoken on dozens of panels in my 34-year career as a journalist — panels for other journalists, for PR people, for non-profit groups, for students, for housing advocates, for business groups, for resident associations, for government employees — but none has generated quite the tizzy in a teacup as the one I was on this week.
That was partly attributable to the title: Real estate and the media: crafting the narrative. The other factor was the make-up of the panel, which was me and two people who work with the development industry on communications. And the third part was who I was speaking to: the Urban Development Institute’s under-40 group.
My usual little band of hardy critics, some of them suspiciously bot-like, took this to mean that I must have sold out completely (undoubtedly because I’m being paid off by the industry).
Many thanks to my loyal colleagues who took a stand and reminded them of what kind of journalist I actually am and always have been. Less impressed by those so quick to jump to conclusions — and express them in forums where they thought I didn’t have access.
I had agreed to talk on the panel because I thought it was about media influence and coverage of the development industry, with a mix of people on it. One journalist who was invited was out of town for the date, but didn’t express any concern about the topic, I’m told; not sure about others.
It was a bit of a surprise when I saw the title and format of the panel in the publicity that came out a couple of weeks ago. But I saw this as a great opportunity to talk to people in the industry frankly about why their reputation has taken a hit in the public. That’s what I did.
For those interested in the details, I am posting a recording I made of the session. It’s not great quality. I just made it in case someone tried to misrepresent what I had said, but it seems to be audible enough on headphones.
I also transcribed the first part of it, then ran out of time to do the rest. But I’ll post my transcript fragment, as well, for those without the patience to listen to 45 minutes of bad tape.
On the topic of bad tape, some people asked questions at the end that you probably can’t hear because they were at the back of the room. One was a guy from Wesgroup, who talked about the concerns the company has about posting information on the percentage of foreign buyers.
The speaker said they decided not to put it up information about a particular project because 1. they figured no one would believe it (their data showed local buyers were greater than 95 per cent) and 2. they were worried about releasing information that would make their buyers worry their privacy was being invaded.
Another was from someone asking if it wouldn’t create a bad political situation in Burnaby if developers offered to build rental when the council has said it’s not their responsibility.
UDI SEMINAR/U40
Nov. 29, 2016
Anne McMullin, CEO of Urban Development Institute, moderator
Panelists:
Frances Bula, journalist
Bob Ransford, development consultant, former real-estate columnist Vancouver Sun
Renu Bakshi, owner of a communications business, some of whose clients are in development, former journalist
Anne McMullin: Thank everybody for coming today. So we hope to talk about today how the media works, what makes a good story, and particularly as it relates to the real-estate industry, and we can talk a little bit about the media coverage of the last six to eight months and what it might be in the future. Real estate has been the centre of attention in this market for a couple of decades, but what we’ve seen the last number of months, it’s been heightened, in both social media and mainstream media. And what we’ve really seen is it’s become more and more polarized. So I’ll start with you, Frances, and I’ll ask each of you this question and hopefully we’ll have more of a dialogue. We talk very much about the polarized debate, very polarized. Frances, could you give us your sense of the industry’s role in this debate, particularly in the last nine months.
Frances Bula: There has been change at various times. The real-estate industry hasn’t been that scrutinized. There has been a lot of scrutiny of the real-estate industry more than at other times in the past. I think you’ve all seen there’s been these periods in the past, there were big long puff pieces in the Sun or other places about various projects, not a lot of news coverage of particular challenging issues.
Obviously, people have become really concerned about the real-estate prices and and so that obviously had prompted a lot of scrutiny, and they’re concerned about the level of change that they see. And in the municipalities where there’s more change, there’s more angst. So Vancouver gets a lot because there’s a lot of building going on here, in spite of what the premier says. Actually, I think Vancouver’s at an all-time high in terms of housing starts. Burnaby, you’re obviously seeing a lot of change, and people are looking at the development industry and the real-estate industry and going, “What exactly are you guys doing?”
I realize some of the criticism that’s been levelled, a lot of it actually hasn’t involved the new-building people, it’s the re-sale people, and were they reporting accurately what the level of foreign investment was, were they obfuscating and so on. But this side of the industry has also come in for some scrutiny because of the level of donations to the B.C. Liberals, having one of the top real-estate marketers in the industry also the top fundraiser in the industry. And also, as I said, some of the changes where new construction is going in and really changing communities.
And I know from covering the industry for years, people here take pride in building communities. I’ve heard you guys say that before. “We build communities. We provide homes for people. We feel we’re real contributors.” The problem right now is the public doesn’t feel that way about you necessarily. Maybe the people who buy your new product do feel that way, but a lot of people around don’t. And they expect the development industry to be more of a partner and more of a community member these days.
And there are certain things where the industry has been silent. And I think the public has some questions about that. One of them is, for example, the pretty drastic demolition of older low-cost apartment buildings in Burnaby that are being replaced by new condos. There’s a lot of concern about that from a wide spectrum of groups that I talk to. And it’s something the industry has been silent on. In fact, when I ask people about Burnaby, they usually praise Burnaby and Derek Corrigan, which comes across – you may mean it as, ‘They’re very efficient and they process things well” – but how people are interpreting it as, you like mayors who will wholesale rezone areas and toss out low-income people and let condos be built.
That’s a place where the development industry doesn’t earn itself many credits by being silent about that.
Also, this is an industry that has a lot of information about who’s buying. I did a story recently that the pre-sale market is pretty strong, it isn’t showing the same pattern as the re-sale market, and everyone I phoned knew down to the last unit and bathroom tap how many foreign investors were buying in their buildings. You have a lot of information but you’ve been very quiet about it, you haven’t put it out.
And I know that someone told me they tried to get the real-estate board to include those stats and the board just shrugged their shoulders or I don’t know what they did. But you could have been more pro-active about who’s buying your product, whether you think that has a value. There’s a rule in journalism, if you don’t provide the information, other people will rush in to do it. When you’re not talking, other people fill the void and we’ll talk about who is filling that void later on.
One other point I was going to make. There has been this meme going around Vancouver for 20 years or 25 about empty condos. Again, you have information on that. You know who’s buying, you know for what purpose, you probably could track this better than some of the other agencies.
And the industry really just kind of stayed quiet, hoping it was all going to go away. And it did a couple of times. It sort of erupted in the ‘90s, it erupted in 2008, it did kind of go away on its own. This time it didn’t. Again, I think that by providing more information to the public, by going in showing you really are community partners, that you’re trying to help people understand the situation, you could have earned more credits for yourself.
Anyway, I’ve gone on too long here, so I’m going to stop. I hope we get to have questions from the audience, by the way
Anne McMullin: Yes, that’s great, Frances. I’m going to turn to Bob and we chatted a bit yesterday a little bit about this. In my own role, it often is a struggle to get information. We often track it as individual companies, but it’s hard to get an aggregate.
Bob Ransford: I would tend to agree with a lot of what Frances said. She mentioned that UDI is always trying to position the industry as partners with the community. And I think we haven’t been equal partners in the community’s discussion over the last couple of years that have been affecting people because they see change happening around them. And let’s take, for example, how the discussion seemed to centre around demand and price so much that really when the public discussion reached a crescendo was when prices reached a certain level and when we saw unbelievable demand in the market that we hadn’t seen before.
The industry had an opportunity to jump in at that point to jump in and talk about supply. We have the ability to talk about supply. We could talk about supply in the context of the communities that were trying to develop and the decisions that have to be made in those communities by people, the citizens who live there, the trade-offs they need to make, we haven’t been able to connect on those issues.
I think about the various components of what we call the real-estate industry that Frances talks about. There’s people who sell real estate, the realtors, there’s different kinds of real estate, there’s re-sale real estate and new development. There’s people that in the development business do their own in-house marketing, they track the relationships of all the buyers and sellers. There’s the development industry itself that strictly builds the product. There’s the construction industry. They are all separate.
The UDI is one of the few organizations that tends to bring them all together but they don’t speak with one voice. When we hear stories about real shoddy real-estate practices in the re-sale market that has nothing to do with what’s happening in the new-home market and it’s by a group of people, many of whom have entered the real-estate market as agents because of the frenzy in the market, and the ability to get into that low-barrier industry, I think the barrier to entrance is terribly low, the development industry hasn’t commented on that.
We’re the ones that take the heat on it. We have the ability to affect the professional standards that affect our business and we haven’t been in that discussion. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the demand was there. The market has been very active and when the market is active, we’re all busy in the business trying to meet the demand is there and things are viewed as positive by the people who are making money in the industry.
I can tell you if the market was the exact opposite, if we were at the lowest point in the market and there was no demand, I can tell you this industry would be reacting to that. I think we need to think about what our responsibility is to be a partner. To be a partner, you have to be engaged in the conversation. As Frances said, if we’re not engaged, then someone’s going to fill that void and they’re going to jump to conclusions, make assumptions, and develop their own messages that might be messages that are not realistic, that reflect reality in any way. So I think we need to think about how we can be there in the public discussion, not just in the market in the future.
Anne: So Frances, you touched on the difficulty, it’s really change, people feeling a lot of pressure of change. Bob, you said we really need to talk about more supply. But with that sentiment that people don’t want change, is that message of we need more supply something that can resonate. How can you be there, be part of that conversation, when what we’re offering is not what people want.
Renu Bakshi: To speak to what my colleagues have just said, if you’re not telling your story, somebody else is. This industry has always relied on UDI and other groups to be the voice of the industry and have sat back because you are selling, you are making money, your bottom line is just fine, you don’t really need to enter that fray.
But I think that it’s been a lost opportunity and I think that right now the development industry is playing catch-up in figuring out how best to tell the story so you’re telling it and not the people on Facebook, Twitter, or whomever is winning this debate. Obviously, it’s not the development industry. The public is. The opportunity to have your voice in the story, the opportunity to correct misinformation, the opportunity to at least to be able to control your message.
Once the development industry understands that, there’s more than just a sales and marketing story. Those two story streams are not at all credible. The only credibility you have is your public relations/communications story and you need to be honing on that story as part of your bigger-picture plan rather than just let’s get some sales adjectives and marketing adjectives in place and let’s buy ads and tell that story.
Frances is not telling those stories. The Vancouver Sun is not telling those stories. Only advertising tells those stories. Once you understand that, you have a lot of potential to earn credibility with the public. So when a debate like this reaches the point that it reached a few months ago, you’re not necessarily viewed as the bad guy.
You’re viewed as the people who are creating jobs, who are creating homes, the economic spin-offs, the daycare spaces, the CACs and all of that. Those stories that aren’t really being told. People don’t know who you are. They just think you’re money-makers. So if you position yourself as people contributing so much to a community, to a family that’s struggling, in terms of they have a community centre they can go to with their kids or a daycare space, you’d be viewed as way more credible when things reach a height that they have now.
Just after Fidel Castro died, The New York Times revealed that 16 different journalists had been working on his obituary . . . since 1959. (They keep these things on file, just in case a famous person dies.) It made me wonder about my own obituary and how it would have changed over the years. If … Continued
In a previous post I’ve written about pyshark and how easy it makes it to analyze network traffic in Python. As I often use a Raspberry Pi as a Wifi access point to trace live network traffic network traffic I was obviously intrigued if pyshark would also run on the Raspberry Pi. And it does, but not quite out of the box.
On Ubuntu and probably most other Linux distribution, pyshark can be installed with two commands, ‘sudo apt-get install python3-pip‘ to install pip for python3 and then ‘pip3 install pyshark‘. On the Raspberry Pi running Raspian (based on Debian Jessie), a few additional steps are necessary because tshark and two libraries are not installed by default:
sudo apt-get install tshark
# allow user pi to use tshark without sudo
# logout/in required!
sudo usermod -a -G wireshark pi
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
sudo apt-get install libxslt-dev
sudo pip3 install pyshark
Installing the two libraries took around 10-15 minutes on my Raspi 2 as some parts are compiled from source during installation. But other than a bit of patience, nothing else is required.
From a performance point of view, a Raspi 2 can keep up with around 100 packets per second. At that rate one of the CPU cores gets to its limit. Not overly impressive but it’s good enough for analyzing a bi-directional VoIP stream in which a packet in both directions is sent every 20 milliseconds.
In the WordPress world, when we look back an 2016 I think we’ll remember it as the year that we awoke to the importance of marketing. WordPress has always grown organically through word of mouth and its passionate community, but the hundreds of millions being spent advertising against WP has started to have an impact, especially for folks only lightly familiar with us.
I’ve started to hear about a number of folks across many WordPress companies and industries working on this from different angles, some approaching it from an enterprise point of view and some from a consumer point of view. There’s an opportunity for learning from each other, almost like a mastermind group. As the survey says:
Never have there been more threats to the open web and WordPress. Over three hundred million dollars has been spent in 2016 advertising proprietary systems, and even more is happening in investment. No one company in the WP world is large enough to fight this, nor should anyone need to do it on their own. We’d like to bring together organizations that would like to contribute to growing WordPress. It will be a small group, and if you or your organization are interested in being a part please fill out the survey below.
By working together we can amplify our efforts to bring open source to a wider audience, and fulfill WordPress’ mission to truly democratize publishing.
Amazon is stepping up its efforts in the coming battle of the brains.
Amazon is following its competitors by announcing a series of services based on its AI research but the performance of Echo makes me think that there is still an awful lot of work to do.
The headline of the AWS re:invent conference was the launch of three new services based on the AI work that it has done to date.
First: Amazon Recoknition.
This is a service that provides image and facial recognition as well as being able to assess the mood of the subject as well as detect glasses and so on.
Second: Amazon Polly.
This is a text to speech service that takes text input and returns an MP3 stream that sounds like a real conversation rather than a mechanical expression of just words.
Amazon Lex
This is a service that provides natural language understanding and automatic speech recognition.
It is also the system that powers the speech recognition of the Alexa digital assistant in this regard it performs reasonably well.
It is in Alexa’s ability to understand context, multi part enquiries and respond to enquiries that it falls short.
These launches have also gone hand in hand with a new initiative with Intel where Intel will launch a reference design for a home speaker that includes the Alexa digital assistant.
This is a good idea because at this early stage all the digital assistants need to collect as much data as possible in order to improve.
Hence, I expect that there will be a slew of devices that use Alexa for their brain with a range of designs, capabilities and price points.
I would not be surprised to see Google follow suit in this strategy with Google Assistant where, once again (see here), it will have the advantage.
This is because I have long believed that Google Assistant is vastly superior to anything else in terms if the user experience that it offers and the usefulness of its responses.
Consequently, if Google executes well and users like its product, it should be able to encourage manufacturers to deploy its digital assistant rather than Amazon’s.
Once again Google’s success (just like Pixel) is hinging on execution and only time will tell whether the recent re-organisation has been successful in solving Google’s historical problems in this area.
I continue to think that Alphabet is pricing in success in most of its endeavours and so prefer Microsoft, Tencent and Baidu from an investment perspective.
Way back when, companies such as Amazon and Google realised that they could leverage the large amounts of computing infrastructure developed to support their own operations by selling their spare compute and memory capacity as self-service resources.
The engineering effort used to guarantee the high service quality levels for their core businesses could be sold on to startups, and established companies alike, who did not have the engineering expertise to develop and run their own scalable, and resilient, cloud services. (You’d know if Amazon Web Services (AWS) went down completely: so would large parts of the web that are hosted there.)
In the last couple of years, the likes of Google, Amazon and IBM have moved up a level, and now offer “commodity AI” services – recognising faces and and objects in photographs, performing entity extraction on the contents of large texts, generating speech from text and text from speech, and so on. (Facebook seems to prefer to remain inward looking.)
In a spate of announcements today, Amazon joined the part with the release of their own AI services, reviewed in a post by Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels, Bringing the Magic of Amazon AI and Alexa to Apps on AWS. (I’ll post my own summary review when I’ve had a chance to play with them…)
But it seems that AWS have been shopping too. As well as providing a range of different server sizes and base operating systems, the machine instances that Amazon provides now includes FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays; which is to say, programmable chips…) and (soon) GPUs.
The FPGA machine instance, the suitably named F1 includes one to eight [Xilinx UltraScale+ VU9P?] FPGAs dedicated to the instance, isolated for use in multi-tenant environments. to support the development the machine instance also incudes
a 2.3GHz Intel Broadwell E5 2686 v4 processors, up to 976 GiB of memory and up to 4 TB of NVMe SSD storage. So that looks alright, then… Gulp. (For more, see the product announcement, Developer Preview – EC2 Instances (F1) with Programmable Hardware.)
The pre-announcement for the GPU instances (In the Works – Amazon EC2 Elastic GPUs), which have been a long time coming, look set to offer Windows support for Open GL, followed by support for other versions of OpenGL, DirectX and Vulkan. This means you’ll be able to render and stream your own 3D models, at scale. (Anyone think this may be gearing up to support AR and VR apps, as well as online streaming games? Or support for GPU crunched Deep Learning/AI models?)
As well as offering more physical machine types, Amazon have also upgraded their Aurora relational database product so that it is now compliant with PostgreSQL as well as MySQL (Amazon Aurora Update – PostgreSQL Compatibility).
But it doesn’t stop there. For the consumer, just wanting to run their oiwn web hosted instance of WordPress, Amazon virtual personal servers are now available: Amazon Lightsail – The Power of AWS, the Simplicity of a VPS (though it looks a bit pricey compared to something like Reclaim Hosting…)
Back to the big commercial users, another of the benefits of using Amazon Web Services, whose resources far exceed the capacity of all but the largest technology operating companies, is that you can avail yourself of the large amounts of computing resource that might be required to analyse and process large datasets. Very large datasets. Huge datasets, in fact. Datasets so huge that you need a freight container to ship the data to Amazon because you’re unlikely to have the bandwidth to get it there via any other means. Freight containers like AWS Snowmobile (H/T Les Carr for the pointer).
According to the FAQ, each Snowmobile is a secure data truck with up to 100PB storage capacity in a 45-foot long High Cube tamper-resistant, water-resistent, temperature controlled and GPS-tracked shipping container. On arrival at your datacentre, it needs a 350KW power supply (Amazon can supply a generator, if required). Physical access to your datacentre is achieved using the supplied removable connector rack (up to two kilometers of networking cable are provided too).
Once you have completed the data transfer using your local data connect, the Snowmobile is returned to a designated AWS region datacentre. It’s not clear how the data is then uploaded – maybe they just wheel the container into a spare bay and hook it up?
Pretty interesting observations — I agree with most of it, especially the need for Google to start catching up in terms of a decent business strategy (and structure) if they want to have any sort of significant impact.
Given that they have essentially zero footprint in Europe right now (from a field sales perspective), they better get a move on.
Not a deep article, but it will give you the basic idea of container tools such as Kubernetes from Google, Swarm from Docker, and CoreOS. Containers are a tye of virtualization, but they "don’ t need to make a virtual copy of the host server’ s hardware features, and they also don’ t need a full copy of the host operating system to be installed within the container. This enables containers to be orders of magnitude more lightweight and flexible."
Steve@Stv
Was the hectoring amateurish?
Was an amateur doing the hectoring?
Is it less shameful if the hectoring were better?… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
Soon, I'll be sharing a post detailing how I've moved from working in an agency environment to remotely working from home, and the habits I've developed to stay productive. Rather than publish a mammoth post with all the details, I'll instead break down the most beneficial habits into their own post first. Today, I'll talk about my morning routine.
This summer I was struggling with getting out of bed and being productive during the day. Earlier this year I'd started a new big feature on CodePen, I'd been working on nothing else besides this React SPA for months, and my interest had begun to wane a little. Also, I was in a bad habit of waking up and checking social media in bed. Starting my day like this was having a terrible effect on my state of mind, I didn't realise just how terrible until I stopped, and the fog cleared.
In September, I read a book by Hal Elrod called The Miracle Morning. Just like a lot of self-improvement material, there was a lot of cringey language used, but the overall concept looked very promising to me. So, with an open mind, I set my alarm for 6:00 am and attempted to do the book's suggested morning S.A.V.E.R.S. After a few mornings into this routine I was sure that this was the most positive change I could have made in my life all year. I felt amazing, productive and anxiety free.
My morning routine using the S.A.V.E.R.S
Silence - 5 minutes meditation
When my alarm goes off in the morning, I immediately roll out of bed, pull on some workout clothes, grab a glass of water, and then meditate for 5 minutes. I prefer unguided meditation (complete silence), and I use my Apple watch "breathe" app to help me do this. I've found the key here is to not check my phone at all before my routine begins. This way my thoughts can be clear rather than focused on what's on my phone. The only way I've managed to do this is by turning off all home screen notifications, because if they're sitting on there when I go to turn off my alarm I haven't got a hope of ignoring them.
Affirmations - 5 minutes
So, I was pretty sceptical about this particular step because affirmations had always made me think of this SNL sketch. But I tried to remain open-minded and wrote up four affirmations, two health and fitness related, one for gratitude for my relationship, and one related to my personal finances. I did some research on affirmations (if I'm gonna do it, I wanna do it properly!) and the key to creating a useful affirmation is to state a goal/value, the actions you commit to taking in order meet the goal/value, and the reason why you are committed. I thought I would feel silly reading these things aloud to myself each morning but I enjoy realigning on my values each day and believe they've had a positive effect on my daily outlook.
Visualization - 5 minutes
Like affirmations, I thought this one would be a little too "woo" for me, but I think it has had a major effect on my work productivity during the day, as well as my diet and exercise. The idea is that you visualise having a successful day despite the complications that will indefinitely arise. Specifically, I visualise feeling like I want to slack off during my run, and then pushing through anyway. I visualise getting distracted by Twitter and YouTube when I'm supposed to be coding, closing those tabs, and getting back to work. I visualise how I'll get that 3 pm sugar craving, and I'll choose a healthy snack over something chocolatey. Some people like to visualise longer-term achievements, but I find focusing on the short-term of that day is the most beneficial for me. It makes the decision making of my day a lot easier as I've already prepped my mind for battle.
Exercise - approximately 30 minutes
Every morning I'll either go for a run or do an online yoga class. The benefits of exercising first thing in the day have been shared before, so there's no point in me elaborating on this. I can now run for a full 30 minutes without stopping (~5km), and my strength and flexibility has improved.
Reading - approximately 10 minutes
One recurring message I've heard from self-development authors is that we should read some pages from a good (self-development) book every day. Funny that! Self-development material or not I've tried to read something positive and informative for 10 minutes each morning while I eat breakfast, to get me started on the right front (before the internet garbage intake begins!).
Scribing - approximately 5 minutes
The Miracle Morning book suggests you spend 10 minutes long-form journaling each day, but I wasn't feeling that. Instead, I use this time to fill out the daily notes in my bullet journal, usually over a coffee after I've showered.
So, that's my routine that I do each weekday morning at 6:00 am! And it is my favourite new habit! On the weekends I usually do a modified version, depending on how I feel. Since starting my miracle morning, I've lost weight, my energy is way up, and knocked off a few major personal life tasks that I had been putting off for a long time. All of these side-effects have helped me stay a happy and productive remote worker :)
If a whole morning routine sounds too much for you, I challenge you to try one thing if you don't do this already - do not check your emails or social media for a full 30 minutes after waking up and getting out of bed. Instead, do something for yourself, that puts you first and makes you happy. The internet is a shitshow of depressing news and people fighting, and making that the very first thing you start your day with could be having a dangerous effect on your mental health. It certainly was for me.
Whether you decide to check out the book or not, I hope you've found this post helpful and maybe even a small inspiration to start your own routine.
This morning we released
AWS Step Functions, a
Serverless Distributed Cloud Microservices Polyglot Workflow
Orchestration Coordinator thingie. It’s cool; you want to read about it,
visit
Jeff Barr’s joint.
Step Functions uses state machines specified in a JSON DSL called the States
language. This piece is about the two validators I wrote for States documents,
one of which is interesting.
Not that many people care about validators and parsers;
so if you think you probably won’t be interested
in the rest of this piece, you’re probably right.
The validator in the service
Like most AWS Services, Step Functions has a front-end that handles the API
calls and dispatches the work. One of the things it obviously has
to do is validate the States-language definitions you upload in the
CreateStateMachine call. It made sense for me to write the validator since
I was editing the
States language specification,
and have spent more time in the validation trenches than most.
Earlier this year I’d poked around the JSON ecosystem and ended up writing
an anguished
rant about the awfulness of all the schema alternatives, in particular
JSON Schema. But later, when I signed
up to do the service’s validator (it’s Java code) I couldn’t find a good
alternative, so I spent an unreasonably long time writing a schema, and a
validator based on it.
We’ll release that JSON Schema, or the validator source, over my dead
body. It’s not a good example of anything.
The result works, but the validator’s not as fast as I’d like and its error
messages aren’t as good as I’d like, and when I’m building a States document,
I don’t
want to have to submit it to an Amazon Web Service to find my fat-fingered
typos.
All this didn’t make me happy, so just a few weeks ago I decided we needed
more and ended up writing a hurried Ruby Gem called
statelint that you can run
from your command line; it’s acceptably fast and produces reasonably
human-readable descriptions of the problems it finds. The rest of this piece
is about Statelint’s construction.
The spec and the validator
The
States Language spec, of which
I’m an author,
should not surprise anyone; it’s written somewhat in the style of an
IETF RFC, full of MUST and MUST NOT and MAY as specified in
RFC 2119.
When I sat down to write Statelint, it occurred to me that it’d be cool to
produce error messages that lined up nicely with those MUST and MAY
clauses. So I extracted them all into a file called
StateMachine.j2119, where the
“j” in the extension is for JSON.
The rest was conceptually simple:
Load the 2119-style assertions into a data structure.
Turn the States-language JSON into a tree and check its nodes
against the constraints in that data structure.
So it turns out that Statelint is actually two Ruby gems. One is called
j2119 and does #1 and #2 from
that list above.
There are three formalisms, “roles”, “types” and “constraints”. For
example, here’s an example assertion:
A Message MUST have an object-array field named "Paragraphs"; each member is a "Paragraph".
In the above assertion, “Message” and “Paragraph” are roles and
“object-array” is a type. The constraints, which apply to any node with the
role “Message”, are: There must be a field named
“Paragraphs”, it must be an array, and the members must all be objects.
Also, when validating the object
members of the array, they are considered to have the role “Paragraph”.
The main Statelint gem bootstraps a
j2119 parser with the assertions from the States Languages spec, calls it,
then adds semantic validations that don’t fit into MUST/MAY
assertions.
What’s good
It’s fast enough. The error messages are reasonably sensible and correspond
well to the MUSTs and MAYs in the specification. Anyone can type “gem
install
statelint” and be off to the races.
What’s wrong
It doesn’t do line numbers, because the default Ruby JSON reader doesn’t. I
understand there are other readers that do, but I didn’t get around to wiring
one in. What it does is give you a path location, for example
“State Machine.States.selector.Choices[2].Variable”. Better than nothing.
The implementation is kind of gross. The .j2119 assertions are parsed with
brute-force regular expressions. Not only is this a maintainability
nightmare, it’s just stupid — it would have been
less work to use a decent parser generator. I think deploying a
natural-language parser might even be sane.
I had to do a little hand-editing on the MUST/MAY assertions from the spec
to make them regular enough. What I wanted to do, but lacked the
time and courage for, was to go and wire all those assertions back into the
spec and mark them with <div class="assertion"> or some such
so the spec could be used to drive the validator directly.
What’s next
Am I claiming I’ve invented a new JSON schema language?
Empirically maybe yes, but not really;
all I’ve established is that one hasty
implementation produced one plausible validator for one JSON
dialect.
There’s a problem in that I don’t much like schema languages; they
get used as a crutch to do avoid doing the vital work, when you’re defining a
new language, of writing clear expository human-readable prose explaining how
it works, and including lots of instructive examples. I suspect that
schema languages should be only invented by people who like them.
For now, I’ll look at bug reports and pull requests, and if someone’s fork
started getting traction, I’d shed no tears.
Maybe this will turn out to have been worthwhile research into the
JSON-validation solution space. It seems obvious that we need better tools
than we currently have.
Well, and what really matters: If State Functions attracts
AWS customers,
Statelint should make their lives a little easier.
Pebble built the first watch I wanted to wear after having a naked wrist for more than ten years. Charge it once a week, wear it carefree, get notifications from the phone. I loved the original watch. At first I could not use it since I was on Lumias, but when I went iPhone only, Pebble was my companion.
I did not like Pebble Steel in matte black with matching steel band, but eventually the stainless steel model with leather band grew on me. It was always a geek magnet, nothing for the general public.
And then Pebble lost it. First with the Time and Time Steel models. The display was too small, and the colors were so dull that it got blown away by the Apple Watch. The round watch never appealed to me. Pebble lost me.
In 2016 Pebble tried to go back to its roots by running yet another Kickstarter campaign, and essentially osborned all of their Time watches. Pebble had to lay off 25% of staff.
The company has been looking to sell itself for a while. Now it looks like Fitbit will buy them. That makes sense for Fitbit since there is hardly any overlap. And it's the only competitor they can buy. Xiaomi rules at the low end of fitness trackers, Garmin has sports watches, Apple has premium smartwatches. They are all way bigger. Acquiring a smartwatch platform and the talent behind it - for a reasonable price - is a good thing.
Everybody, from Xiaomi to Apple, is heading in the direction of health and fitness. It's a difficult market since fitness bands get quickly abandoned and end up in a drawer. It's the silicon version of the gym membership. You know you are not exercising enough, but you tried.
I expect the Pebble brand to disappear. Fitbit will rebrand the platform and make new devices, again strengthening the health & fitness theme. In a way, it is another proof point that smartwatches do not sell. Many Android Wear vendors passed in 2016, Lenovo Moto will even pass on the Android Wear 2.0 launch in 2017. Samsung has made at least ten different designs in their Gear range, now on Tizen.
There is one company that got it right. They built a smartwatch business the size of Rolex.
The year 2016 is almost at its end and 2017 will usher in a new era of possibilities.
According to Yahoo’s 2016 year in review, “Donald Trump” sites at the top of search terms, but from a tech perspective, the $1.4 billion USD deal between Wind Mobile and Shaw was one of the biggest business searches in Canada. Recently, Shaw ditched the Wind Mobile brand and announced that Freedom Mobile is the new name of the wireless carrier.
Samsung’s exploding battery issues with the Galaxy Note 7 also makes the list. Approximately 39,000 Note 7 devices were sold or distributed in Health Canada issued a mandatory recall. Samsung did make good on the error by either refunding the cost or replacing the device with a Galaxy S7. Topping the category of Top obsessions/crazes is the iPhone.
Android is the dominate platform when it comes to augmented reality smart glasses, with over 60 percent of the wearables opting to utilize Google’s operating system, according to the Definitive Guide to Augmented Reality Smart Glasses.
Other interesting stats in the study include that 60 percent of smart glasses are aimed at the enterprise market rather than average consumers. The median price for AR smart glasses sits at a relatively pricey $1,000.
Also, a surprising 50 percent of the 40 AR devices the guide looks at opt for a standard spectacles form factor, with the rest using a single lens monocular design. And finally, the average field-of-view for every device is 33 degrees, compared to the standard human range of sight at 180 degrees.
Find the full infographic focused on AR smart glasses below.
Disclosure: Super Ventures Tom Emrich produces the ‘Wearable Weekly‘ for BetaKit and MobileSyrup.
In the follow-up to its teardown of Microsoft’s Surface Studio, iFixit has taken apart the Surface Dial. The puck-like accessory was announced alongside Surface Studio during Microsoft’s Fall 2016 event.
When placed on top of Surface Studio’s screen, Dial allows users to contextually adjust app settings. In Photoshop, for instance, the Dial can be used to access the program’s colour wheel.
When not sitting on top of one of Microsoft’s Surface computers (the company plans to update the Surface Pro 3, Pro 4 and Book to make them compatible with Surface Dial), Dial can also adjust global system settings like sound volume.
Preamble aside, the Surface Dial scored lower on iFixit’s repairability scale than the computer it’s meant to accompany. While it uses standard AAA batteries for power, all of its other components are difficult to access; in fact, gaining access to some of Dial’s most vital components requires drilling a hole.
The Surface Dial, as well as the Surface Studio, are expected to come to Canada sometime next year.
Rumours and speculation about the continuation of Nokia’s mobile brand have been swirling ever since the once-great company announced in May 2016 that it would return to creating mobile devices through an exclusive ten-year licensing agreement with HMD Global.
Now the brand has offered a more specific details on its upcoming comeback, with the launch of a phones section on its official website that states the company will be back in the game with new smartphones in 2017. It also features a space where interested consumers can sign up to receive updates on the forthcoming Android-powered Nokia smartphones.
While these won’t be the first Nokia-branded devices to run Android — the 2014 Nokia X ran an Android-Windows hybrid OS and its N1 tablet also ran Android — the smartphones will likely be much closer to stock than ever before, and represent a significant step forward in the brand’s history.
Recently, specs and images of one of the company’s Android smartphones emerged, revealing a Snapdragon 430 processor, two size variants and, potentially, a meager 16GB of internal storage.
In May 2016, Microsoft sold Nokia’s feature phone division and branding assets to Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile and HMD. In the same month, HMD announced it was granted an exclusive ten-year license to produce phones under the Nokia brand.
Reports indicate that “Ok Google” commands have arrived for Android Auto.
While it’s taken almost two years for the company to integrate the feature, Android Auto users now have full control over their car’s infotainment system using only their voices.
To use the feature, users must update to the latest version of the Android Auto app and the Google app. At that point, the “While Driving” setting should work with Google Maps and Android Auto. The toggle is found under the Ok Google detection menu.
“Ok Google” is a voice detection service on your smartphone that performs several tasks, from opening up apps and setting timers to making calendar appointments and responding to emails and messages.
If your Google or Android Auto apps haven’t updated yet, you can download the software from APK through the following links:
In a statement issued to MobileSyrup, a Google spokesperson said, “The Pixel team is aware of the reports and actively working on a solution to the issue. We’ll update you as soon as we have more information.”
The issue, first reported by Pixel User Community member Mike Fox on October 27th, causes some Pixel and Pixel XL devices to malfunction when users go to take a photo. In some situations, the camera app will lock up and show purple and pink lines. While Google has yet to confirm what’s causing the bug, there seems to be some relation to poor cellular connectivity.
Since Fox first posted about the bug, the thread he started has been flooded with countless other users retelling their encounters with the same problem. A number of Pixels owners got a replacement from Google, only for their replacement phone to start locking up again.
We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops.
In the late 19th century, Southern California attracted misfits, idealists, and entrepreneurs with few ties to anyone or anything. Swamis, spiritualists, and other self-proclaimed religious authorities quickly made their way out West to forge new faiths. Independent book publishers, motivational speakers, and metaphysical-minded artists and writers then became part of the Los Angeles landscape. City of the Seekers examines how the legacy of this spiritual freedom enables artists to make creative work as part of their practices.
The internet age is a weird era for realistic portraiture. With the advent of sophisticated digital tools, and a resulting glitched-out, GIF-inspired aesthetic, traditional portrait painting feels old-fashioned. But one artist has figured out a way to revisit history's ubiquitous category of artistic composition with a cast of formidably impressive women, redefining the female archetype in the process.
For figurative realist painter Amanda Jebrón Kirkhuff, the human form is the only subject that can sustain her attention long enough to actually see a piece to completion, a process that can take several months. Her large-scale portraits depict unlikely female subjects, such as Andrea Yates, who killed her five children in a fit of postpartum psychosis, or Lorena Bobbitt, who famously sliced off her cheating husband's penis while he was sleeping. Contemporary tabloid-news narratives like these are balanced by Kirkuhuff’s innovative interpretations of figures from classical mythology, such as Cupid and Hippolyte, whose allegories are re-contextualized through the use of contemporary iconography.
Jody Lynn Bowman, 2015 (Oil on canvas, 46"x71")
Kirkhuff grinds her own paint and gesso, creating her own media from raw ingredients. But her classical technique doesn't mean she's not conceptual. "My use of traditional materials, scale, and representational technique is a critique of the historical erasure and marginalization of women and queer people in the canon of portraiture and visual art," she tells The Creators Project.
While Kirkhuff's more serious subject matter is often life-sized, she's also fond of making smaller ink drawings and zines. Because she's not confined by a conscious commitment when creating the smaller works, they have comparatively more levity and humor than her large-scale paintings.
Jody Lynn Bowman #2, 2013 (Graphite on paper, 33"x50")
Originally from Seattle, Kirkhuff earned a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and she resided in the Bay Area for ten years before relocating to LA. "There are opportunities here, and there is a culture in LA of respect for art and artists," she says. "If I am grading on an American curve, people take interest in and consume art here in a way that is actually very unique and supportive. There is also space in LA. It still feels very Western; it is a big city, but it has wide open spaces. This is valuable on a practical level, because artists can find places to work, but it's also valuable on a psychic level. I believe one’s ability to conceptualize is influenced by how much physical space they have to do it in. In LA, artists have access to more room to think and work."
Lesbian In A Gay Bar, 2016 (Oil on canvas, 57"x43")
Kirkhuff is still negotiating LA's capacity to imbue one's creative philosophy with a personal approach to spirituality. "I am in a continuous negotiation to reconcile my own nihilist tendencies with the drive to create lasting objects," she explains. "Though I appropriate spiritual imagery and some of the traditions of religious paintings in my work, I personally do not express much spirituality. The gay bar is my church. [It's] my place of worship and community congregation. Prop me up beside the jukebox when I die."
For Kirkhuff, the goal of her work is simple. "I make paintings to document women and queer people’s stories," she says. "My art-making is done in resistance to a history that has scrubbed itself clean of the record of women artists. Having a historical record, influences, and heroes that mirror yourself is a vital social resource. This is why representation is so important. If I can contribute to that through my work, then it will have a larger function. But mostly, I just keep making art to get chicks.”
Cupid, 2013 (Oil on canvas, 53"x37")
Limpwristed For Life (The Guitar Player), 2016 (Oil on canvas, 60"x45")
Andrea Yates (La Llorona), 2011 (Oil on canvas, 39"x36")
Lorena Bobbitt, 2009 (Oil on panel, 20"x24")
Hippolyte #2, 2016 (Ink wash, 23”x 31”)
Waitress, 2011 (Oil on canvas, 49"x58")
Amanda Kirkhuff: Militant Friction is on view at LAST Projects in Hollywood through December 4. Her show at MuzeuMM in Los Angeles opens December 16. Visit the artist's website here.
Is your company scaling up its applications by breaking them up into smaller pieces, and deploying on cloud? Are you sharing and reusing services widely across the organization and outside—well beyond the development team you scrum with? If you answered "yes" to these questions, you've got microservices.
Rachel Smith.
Hippolyte, 2016 (Oil on canvas, 61"x49")
Jody Lynn Bowman, 2015 (Oil on canvas, 46"x71")
Jody Lynn Bowman #2, 2013 (Graphite on paper, 33"x50")
Lesbian In A Gay Bar, 2016 (Oil on canvas, 57"x43")
Cupid, 2013 (Oil on canvas, 53"x37")
Limpwristed For Life (The Guitar Player), 2016 (Oil on canvas, 60"x45")
Andrea Yates (La Llorona), 2011 (Oil on canvas, 39"x36")
Lorena Bobbitt, 2009 (Oil on panel, 20"x24")
Hippolyte #2, 2016 (Ink wash, 23”x 31”)
Waitress, 2011 (Oil on canvas, 49"x58")