Friday, June 30, 2017

A Beginner's Guide To Ethereum, The Next Bitcoin

http://digg.com/2017/what-is-ethereum
Introduction to Ethereum, and why it's more than a BitCoin clone. 

Kinetica raises $50 million to provide GPU-powered data insights

https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/29/kinetica-raises-50-million-to-provide-gpu-powered-data-insights/
Machine learning and GPU startup raises $50M

Fighting for jobs in America’s former ‘Sock Capital of the World’

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fighting-jobs-americas-former-sock-capital-world-heesun-wee
Having grown up in "the clothing center of the South", this article hits close to home. 

Linus Torvalds Explains How Linux Still Surprises and Motivates Him

https://www.linux.com/blog/event/lc3-china/20176/6/linus-torvalds-explains-how-linux-still-surprises-and-motivates-him
General interview with Linus about Linux, community and the surprising popularity of git. 

‘I’m a Bitcoin Millionaire’

https://melmagazine.com/im-a-bitcoin-millionaire-2672ca1d1ab7
Interview with a self-proclaimed bitcon millionaire. About what you'd expect: bought early and mined. 

Friday, June 23, 2017

What Would Happen If You Never Used An Alarm Clock?

http://digg.com/2017/never-use-alarm-clock
I don't generally use an alarm clock. Good to hear I'm doing the right thing. 

What Is Snapshot Testing, and Is It Viable in PHP?

https://www.sitepoint.com/snapshot-testing-viable-php/
Interesting take on testing: Snapshot testing, borrowed from the React world. 

Chiropractors are bullshit

https://theoutline.com/post/1617/chiropractors-are-bullshit
Apparently, I'm not the only one with a dim view of Chiropractors.

Laravel Bootstrap Components

https://medium.com/appstract/laravel-bootstrap-components-9b6e9a259a9e
Library to make it easy to use Bootstrap components with Laravel. 

PHP 5.6 Vs PHP 7 – Performance Benchmarks With Laravel 5

https://www.cloudways.com/blog/laravel-5-benchmarks-php-5-6-and-7/
As if enough benchmarks between PHP 5 and PHP 7 haven't been run, another with Laravel. 

Deploying your PHP / apache webapp in under a minute with Hasura

https://blog.hasura.io/deploying-your-php-apache-webapp-in-under-a-minute-with-hasura-16b8d5212117
Sorta like Heroku, we'll see how it runs. 

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Plugable Digital USB Microscope with Observation Stand

http://plugable.com/products/usb2-micro-250x/#drivers
home page for the plugable digital microscope

The NSA has open-sourced dozens of security tools

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-nsa-has-open-sourced-dozens-of-security-tools-7af99cfe422
OpenSource NSA security tools. I like the Raspberry PI VPN. 

Drop jQuery From Your Bootstrap Project (and Replace it With Vue.js!)

https://dzone.com/articles/drop-jquery-from-your-bootstrap-project-and-replac
Nice intro to replacing JQuery with Vue.js Bootstrap. 

A tiny requestAnimationFrame powered 60+fps lightweight parallax hover tilt effect for jQuery.

http://gijsroge.github.io/tilt.js/
Nice tilt package for JQuery. I may use this in my next class.

How do you draw a circle? We analyzed 100,000 drawings to show how culture shapes our instincts

https://qz.com/994486/the-way-you-draw-circles-says-a-lot-about-you/
Drawing basic shapes and how culture relates, though it may be more about written language. 

The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math'

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/
Basic competency in math is more about work than natural ability. Surprise!


Thursday, June 15, 2017

First-of-its-kind trial goes plaintiff's way; Winn-Dixie ordered to update website for the blind

http://legalnewsline.com/stories/511127037-first-of-its-kind-trial-goes-plaintiff-s-way-winn-dixie-ordered-to-update-website-for-the-blind
How far does the Americans with Disabilities Act go? Ecommerce sites? Ask Winn-Dixie? 

Podcast Statistics 2017: Will Android Continue To Gain Market Share While Apple Slips?

https://powerpresspodcast.com/2017/06/14/podcast-statistics-ns-2017/
What type of devices do people listen to podcasts on? Some historical perspective.

Who is the Warren Buffett of the Meme Economy?

https://priceonomics.com/who-is-the-warren-buffett-of-the-meme-economy/
Interesting market simulation using memes. 

10 Best PHP URL Shortener Scripts

https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-best-php-url-shortener-scripts--cms-28675
Collection of good URL shortners written in PHP. Most I've never heard of. 

Family CRMs, Guzzle Wrappers and PHP Machine Learning? Sourcehunt!

https://www.sitepoint.com/family-crms-guzzle-wrappers-php-machine-learning/
Mixed-bag of PHP open source tools: machine learning, guzzle wrapper, CRM, etc.

Five Tips to Improve Your Unit Testing

https://qafoo.com/blog/105_five_tips_improve_unit_testing.html
Tips to improve unit testing.  Language-agnostic read.

Developing a CI Process for Laravel with Codeship and Forge

https://laravel-news.com/ci-process-codeship-forge
How to set up a CI process for laravel with Codeship and laravel forge. 

Read and write Google Sheets from PHP

http://www.phillipshipley.com/2017/05/read-and-write-google-sheets-from-php/
Read and write Google Sheets via PHP

Here's How Much Businesses Pay To Get On Those Big Blue Exit Signs

http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-much-businesses-pay-to-get-on-those-big-blue-1795338950
How much does it cost businesses to be on the blue exit signs? About $1k per year? 

Up and running exakat in 15 mins

https://www.exakat.io/up-and-running-with-exakat/
Static PHP code analysis via Exakat. Shame that it uses Java, though. 

JSON feed: fail

http://cweiske.de/tagebuch/jsonfeed.htm
The technical failings of the new JSON feed proposal.

The Laravel platform CMS

https://pyrocms.com/
CMS built on top of Laravel. 

Sunday, June 11, 2017

How Dropbox, Airbnb, Groupon And Others Acquired Their First Users.

https://medium.com/@SoldOutSupplier/how-dropbox-airbnb-groupon-and-others-acquired-their-first-users-ae9fd6372e0d
How dropbox, quora, reddit, groupon, etc got their first customers. 

Your Ultimate Guide for Learning Any Skill Faster and Better

https://themission.co/your-ultimate-guide-for-learning-anything-faster-and-better-abceb81327b8
Hints on learning anything better: Focus and take notes? 

104 Facts You Don’t Know About Mobile Marketing

https://websitebuilder.org/resources/104-facts-you-dont-know-about-mobile-marketing/
Not sure about the count, but an infographic about mobile marketing. Hint: tough to convert. 

Mezzanine is a powerful, consistent, and flexible content management platform.

http://mezzanine.jupo.org/
Open Source CMS built in Python Django. Like the MIT license.

The Best Website Builders in the Market 2017

https://websitebuilder.org/
Review site for the point-and-click website builders out there. 

How to scrape websites with Python and BeautifulSoup

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-scrape-websites-with-python-and-beautifulsoup-5946935d93fe
Cool Python library to scrape websites. 

Friday, June 9, 2017

Malware Uses Obscure Intel CPU Feature to Steal Data and Avoid Firewalls

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/malware-uses-obscure-intel-cpu-feature-to-steal-data-and-avoid-firewalls/
Really sophisticated attack on Intel chipsets: Serial over Lan?!?

Websites built by freelance developers are plagued with security failures

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2017/06/08/website-security/
From the no-surprise-here department: hiring a cut-rate web developer yields apps with major security issues. 

The Impossible Mathematics of the Real World

http://nautil.us/issue/49/the-absurd/the-impossible-mathematics-of-the-real-world
Interesting take on the so-close-but-not-quite problems in math. 

Marketing Made Simple Maximizing open rates automatically with Artificial Intelligence, Hyper-personalization, Predictive analysis for email, SMS, Web Push, SMTP

https://sendpulse.com/
Representative of what I'll call "3rd generation" bulk email providers: SMS, email, push, etc. 

What is the best bulk email sender for mass emails?

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-bulk-email-sender-for-mass-emails
Quora discussion of best mass email providers. A couple being mentioned do indeed look like 3rd gen providers.