Why I'm Not a Writer (1996)
I'm not a writer. Sometimes I write, but I don't define myself as a career writer. And that isn't because I couldn't tolerate the garret lifestyle of an obscure writer. It is because I couldn't tolerate the garret lifestyle of a successful writer. By successful I don't mean Edith Wharton. I don't think it is…
Next permutation: When C++ gets it right
An investigation into a classic algorithm for generating the distinct permutations of a sequence in lexicographical order. A Word Aligned article posted 2009-11-19, tagged Puzzles, C++, Algorithms, Python, Google.
Complexity is insecurity
Complexity can be thought of as a type of code smell : It doesn't necessarily imply that there is a problem, but the presence of complexity is very strongly correlated with the presence of security vulnerabilities. In the design and construction of secure systems, it is important to not only consider mistakes which…
Erik Naggum, 1965-2009 RIP
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NYTimes.com Announces Map/Reduce Toolkit
Recently we’ve been exploring the on-demand storage and computation tools offered by Amazon Web Services, along with an open-source toolkit called Apache Hadoop. The result is many computers working together to answer questions about our users.
Free Computer Science Courses
More great news! I started my own company: Browserling - Cross-browser testing .
How IMVU learned its way to $10M a year
“Lean startups are built from the ground up for learning about customers.” – Eric Ries I recently sat in on Eric Ries’ presentation on lean startups at Berkeley. The slides and audio ar…
Why is the DOS path character "\"?
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Django tip: Caching and two-phased template rendering
We've launched user accounts at EveryBlock , and we faced the interesting problem of needing to cache entire pages except for the "You're logged in as [username] " bit at the top of the page. For example, the Chicago homepage takes a nontrivial amount of time to generate and doesn't change often -- which means we want…
World's smallest Arc server
The frame below is being served was being served by the Arc language web server running on a SheevaPlug plug computer. (I've replaced th...
Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
Sacrifice your health for your startup
Maximizing your chance for success means sacrificing health and family. This sounds controversial, but it's not just me.
90% of China's billionaires are kids of high-ranking officials
My name is Victor Shih, currently an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University specializing in Chinese politics. This blog shares my musing and discussions on Chinese politics and political economy with interested readers. You can contact me at vshih AT northwestern.edu, and my website, where…
The odd one out - inspired by IQ tests
Mathematics, applications of mathematics to life in general, and my life as a mathematician.
Lessons I learned building an MPs' expenses crowdsourcing app for the Guardian
As you may have heard, the UK government released a fresh batch of MP expenses documents a week ago on Thursday. I spent that week working with a small team …