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Showing posts from August, 2018

Facebook Sorry for Deleting Holocaust Education Post Over Photo of Nude, Starving Jewish Children

The image has now been restored, with reassurance from Facebook that its new moderation system will be more thorough in its selection of images it deems as inappropriate in future. from gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/facebook-sorry-for-deleting-holocaust-education-post-over-photo-of-nude-starving-jewish-children/

Five steps to delivering DevOps at scale

So, you’re thinking of taking DevOps out of the relatively safe, yet challenging environment of the controlled initiative, and into the far less safe, and even more challenging environment of the broader enterprise? While, “if you want get there, don’t start from here,” may be a familiar adage, most organisations have little choice but to take what they have (in terms of strategy and organisation, people and tools) as a foundation for DevOps nirvana. Given this, complex, crumbling reality upon which you already stand, how can you start thinking about broader deployment of DevOps? In a recent webinar with myself and Nigel Kersten at Puppet, our discussions and Nigel’s hands-on insights unearthed a set of steps which I thought I would paraphrase and share. These aren’t so much a methodology as “what seems to have worked for a number of organisations” — feedback welcome, as always! 1. Start by mapping the value stream Having said these steps don’t constitute a methodology, they st

AI for Humanity, Not Corporations

The majority of AI and machine learning is built to bolster the revenue streams of corporations rather than for the interest of human welfare. That scares me. The source of this fear comes from three compounding causes: Lack of effective government investment in AI Venture backed investors favoring business to business (B2B) startups over business to consumer (B2C) Corporations primarily driven by profit, not social utility. Our society lacks a singular force with deep pockets that consistently values social good over revenue. The closest should be government, but it’s sluggish at best and apathetic at worst when it comes to  technology adoption that benefits society. Furthermore, the United States government is primarily fueled by the pockets of lobbyists who represent the interest of corporations rather than citizens. Occasionally there’s a bipartisan initiative to utilize technology to empower citizens but even then the implementation of such initiatives waxes and wanes depen

Cool, Looks Like Facebook Has a James Damore Now

Last year, a Google engineer named James Damore triggered an entirely unnecessary and ultimately unproductive controversy after his internally published 10-page memo decrying “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” became a matter of public record from gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/cool-looks-like-facebook-has-a-james-damore-now/

President Trump Accuses Google of Rigging Search Results Against Him, Calls It 'Very Dangerous'

President Trump’s first tweet of the day accused Google of "controlling what we can & cannot see." after claiming that the results shown in its search engine are "rigged" to favour Left-Wing media. from gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/president-trump-accuses-google-of-rigging-search-results-against-him-calls-it-very-dangerous/

Homeless Man Says He's Still Waiting for £155,000 Raised on GoFundMe After Viral Act of Charity

Johnny Bobbitt is reportedly homeless and asking for money on the streets less than a year after he selflessly helped a stranded person, earning him viral attention and hundreds of thousands in crowdfunded donations. from gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/womans-gofundme-for-homeless-veteran-raises-311000-but-she-refuses-to-give-it-to-him/

Marvel's Making One of Its Most Racially-Problematic Characters Even More Complicated

The difficult thing about old characters is that there's no simple way to "undo" the things about them that read as offensive by today's standards — Psylocke suffers from this more than most. from gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/marvels-making-one-of-its-most-racially-problematic-characters-even-more-complicated/

DJI's Mavic 2 Series Comes With a More Powerful Camera and So Many Sensors

DJI's two new drones feature some seriously impressive kit, with 31 minutes of flight time, optical zoom and a myriad of other smart features, these machines are some of the most impressive consumer drone offerings we've tried. from gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/djis-mavic-2-series-comes-with-a-more-powerful-camera-and-so-many-sensors/

Good Afternoon, Here's Footage of a Shark Fighting A T-Rex From the Final Sharknado Film

This trailer for The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time features, among other things: dragon sharks, a shark fighting a T-Rex, and Neil deGrasse Tyson saying the word “sharknado”. from gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/good-afternoon-heres-footage-of-a-shark-fighting-a-t-rex-from-the-final-sharknado-film/

UK tax authorities Make Tax Digital, whether businesses want it or not

In a changing world, it is good to know that some certainties remain, such as when companies log their affairs and give up to Caesar what is due to Caesar, that is, pay their tax. In the UK at least, even this constant is under fire. I’m speaking tongue in cheek of course, but the government’s Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative is proving troubling to more than a few businesses. On the upside, tax accounting software vendors seem very well furnished with information. There’s a quick start  guide which shows JSON and XML formats for information exchange, RESTful API calls and so on. There’s also a developer  hub  to test remote access to  APIs . Less available is information to businesses and accountants, who are largely in the dark beyond a central assumption that everyone is using vendor packages now, aren’t they? Simply put, if you’re already using a package such as QuickBooks or Xero, you should be OK (according to the list of those whose software will enable auto-uploading to