Tuesday, March 24, 2015

New Programming Paradigms

Functional Programming and Reactive Programming are new paradigms that are taking the software community by storm. The use of functional programming languages such as Scala have moved well beyond "research only" circles within the academic community to growing adoption for special tasks in industry.  Functional programming techniques and languages are sort of like "a new wave" following Object Oriented Programming (although the two paradigms are complementary, not competitive).

Friday, March 6, 2015

Use rsync on Linux/Mac to move data fast

Here's how to use rsync(1) on a Mac or Linux to move data fast:

rsync –achv[n] {local-dir} {remote-hostname}:{remote-dir}

This will sync the contents of {local-dir} to remote-hostname, {remote-dir}. If you supply the –n option (noted in the square brackets above), it will do a *dry-run only* showing you what will be done – but not yet doing it (very handy to confirm you will be copying the desired stuff to the desired remote location first).

Works for git clones, and any other directories, too. If you want to delete files that exist on {remote-dir} but not {local-dir}, add the delete-after parameter (with two leading dashes), like this:

rsync –achv[n] —delete-after {local-dir} {remote-hostname}:{remote-dir}

Transfers are generally done over ssh, so you’ll have to supply your password when prompted for it.

Rsync can pull as well as push, meaning you can reverse the positions of {local-dir} and {remote-hostname}:{remote-dir}, too. You can even use it to copy files to a different location on the local host if desired, too. Plus it’s very efficient at moving data quickly :-)

Sunday, December 14, 2014

BioVR

This is amazing!

"The most complex machine ever constructed by humankind"

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is gearing up for a new research phase in the new year. What secrets will be revealed about particle physics and the structure of the universe as we know it? Stay tuned, the next three years are likely to be ground-breaking!

Thursday, August 7, 2014

The Memristor - Putting Moore's law back on track

Haven't heard much at large from HP Labs until this, which I heard Meg Whitman reference several times in a recent talk she gave. Likely this puts the AI evolutionary curve back on track, perhaps making the extrapolation discussed in Louis Del Monte's book increasingly plausible :-)

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The Singularity is only 30 years away, are you ready?

Many futurists predict the singularity is only 30 years away. For sure, there will be far more change in the next 40 years than in the previous to date. I sure hope the AIs, soon to be with us, choose to prefer Asimov's three laws more than "SkyNet" or "the Matrix". As discussed in a recent article, physicist and author Louis Del Monte speculates that they will surpass, and eventually become annoyed with us (yikes!) I've picked up a copy and started reading Del Monte's book to learn more about his perspective.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Integrated or Independent QA?

A friend at work forwarded this article to me after a lunch time discussion about QA testing, and whether it should be integrated within the development team activities or operate as an independent effort.

The author's viewpoint is that there is value in a separate team and effort.

I think there’s a parallel to scientific method, too, which makes QA as a separate process valuable. Review by a different team, that corroborates readiness through their own effort, is important for overall confidence, too. Not to say that’s infallible, but it demonstrates an important watermark.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Signatures from the Big Bang

Pretty big stuff! Nine years of observations produce evidence that subliminal imprints of gravitational waves from the Big Bang are present in the free radiation of space, as Einstein predicted should be the case. Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity working at the same scale, possibly a step forward to a real Unified Theory.