Changelog Master Feed

We partnered with Red Hat to promote Season 4 of Command Line Heroes — a podcast about the people who transform technology from the command line up. Season 4 is all about hardware that changed the game. We’re featuring episode 1 from season 4 — called “Minicomputers: The soul of an old machine.” This is the story of Minicomputers and how they paved the way for the personal computers that could fit in a bag and, eventually, the phones in our pockets. Learn more and subscribe at redhat.com/commandlineheroes. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Command Line Heroes – A podcast from Red Hat about the people who transform technology from the command line up. Head to redhat.com/commandlineheroes to learn more and subscribe. Featuring:Saron Yitbarek – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:They don’t fit in your pocket. But in their day, minicomputers were an order of magnitude smaller than the room-sized mainframes that preceded them. And they paved the way for the personal computers that could fit in a bag and, eventually, the phones in your pocket. 16-bit minicomputers changed the world of IT in the 1970s. They gave companies the opportunity for each engineer to have their own machines. But it wasn’t quite enough, not until the arrival of 32-bit versions. Carl Alsing and Jim Guyer recount their work at Data General to create a revolutionary new 32-bit machine. But their now legendary work was done in secret. Codenamed “Eagle,” their machine was designed to compete with one being built by another team in their own company. These engineers recall the corporate politics and intrigue required to keep the project going—and how they turned restrictions into advantages. Neal Firth discusses life on an exciting-but-demanding project. One where the heroes worked together because they wanted to, without expectations of awards or fame. And all three discuss how this story was immortalized in the non-fiction engineering classic, The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder The New Golden Age of Building with Soul by Jessie Frazelle The Minicomputers of the 70s by Georg Wittenburg Rise and Fall of Minicomputers by Gordon Bell Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Daniel and Chris do a deep dive into The AI Index 2019 Annual Report, which provides unbiased rigorously-vetted data that one can use “to develop intuitions about the complex field of AI”. Analyzing everything from R&D and technical advancements to education, the economy, and societal considerations, Chris and Daniel lay out this comprehensive report’s key insights about artificial intelligence. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog. The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. Featuring:Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: The AI Index 2019 Annual Report Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Anders Damsgaard is a climate science researcher working on cryosphere processes at the Department of Geophysics at Stanford University. He joined the show to talk with us about the intersection of open source and climate science. Specifically, we discuss a set of shell tools he created called The Scholarref Tools which allow you to perform most of the tasks required to gather the references needed during the writing phase of an academic paper. We also discuss climate science, physics, self hosting Git, and why Anders isn’t present on any “social” networks. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019 OR changelog2020. To learn more and get started head to linode.com/changelog. Retool – Retool makes it super simple to build back-office apps in hours, not days. The tool is is built by engineers, explicitly for engineers. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. Featuring:Anders Damsgaard – WebsiteAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: adamsgaard.dk The Scholarref Tools Why I deleted my GitHub account Anders Damsgaard’s photography stagit - Static git web viewer Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

It’s a new year which means companies are hiring and developers are interviewing. So we thought it would be fun to host a fun game of technical Jeopardy. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog. Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog. The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. Featuring:Jake Dohm – GitHub, XEmma Bostian – GitHub, LinkedIn, XChristopher Hiller – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, XKevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes:Here are some of the topics we covered which might be useful to know in a technical interview! You should never have to define any of these things but knowing their concepts and how they work will help you land a job! CSS Flexbox Froggy Flexbox Defense Polypane App Media queries Keyframes Specificity Selectors Pseudo classes / elements Pre-processors Combinators HTML Aside DOCTYPE Meta tag iFrame Canvas The Web HTTPS Cache Cookies TCP/IP JavaScript Const, let, var Scope / hoisting Undefined, null Protoypes / the prototype chain Promises Higher-order functions Callback functions Closures Map Set Event bubbling / delegation Functional programming Strict mode Prevent default Type of / instance of Miscellaneous Stack overflow WAI-ARIA & accessibility XSS attacks / security breaches SEO Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Carmen, Mat, and Jon are joined by Steve Francia and Julie Qiu to discuss the new Go.dev website. What was the motivation behind it? What technology was used to build it? How are they working to make package discovery better? And what resources are there to help you convince your manager to use Go on that upcoming project? Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog. Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. Algorithms with Go – A free Go course where panelist Jon Calhoun teaches you how algorithms and data structures work, how to implement them in Go code, and where to practice at. Great for learning Go, learning about algorithms for the first time, or refreshing your algorithmic knowledge. Featuring:Julie Qiu – GitHub, XSteve Francia – GitHub, XCarmen Andoh – GitHub, XMat Ryer – GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, XJon Calhoun – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: go.dev - A new hub for Go devs created by the Go team pkg.go.dev - The package discovery portion of Go.dev “Imported By” example - An example of a package and its imports on Go.dev go-discovery-feedback@google.com - Feedback email address go-licenses - A tool to check go package licenses Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Production ML systems include more than just the model. In these complicated systems, how do you ensure quality over time, especially when you are constantly updating your infrastructure, data and models? Tania Allard joins us to discuss the ins and outs of testing ML systems. Among other things, she presents a simple formula that helps you score your progress towards a robust system and identify problem areas. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Tania Allard – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: “What’s your ML score” talk “Jupyter Notebooks: Friends or Foes?” talk Joel Grus’s episode: “AI code that facilitates good science” Papermill nbdev nbval Books “DevOps For Dummies” by Emily Freeman Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mike McDerment is the founder and CEO of FreshBooks. Believe it or not, Mike became a founder by accident. Like many of us, Mike had an itch that he just had to scratch. One thing led to another and soon enough FreshBooks became a key tool in the belt of many freelancers and agencies looking for an easy way to send invoices and get paid quickly online. We talk through the early days of FreshBooks and how things came to be, why they created a secret competitor to iterate on a bold idea for the future of FreshBooks, and we also cover what keeps Mike excited. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog. Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. Featuring:Mike McDerment – Website, LinkedIn, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: We use FreshBooks The Web 2.0 Show #66 - Freshbooks / Mike McDerment Why You Should Become Your Own Competitor Starting Over: How FreshBooks Reinvented Its Online Accounting Service On The Fly 7 Ways I’ve Almost Killed FreshBooks Listen to Brain Science #9: One small act of kindness Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

We teamed up with some friends of ours at Heroku to promote the Code-ish podcast so we’re sharing a full-length episode right here in The Changelog’s feed. This episode features Chris Castle with special guests Carol Nichols and Jake Goulding talking about the strengths of the Rust programming language. Learn more and subscribe at heroku.com/podcasts/codeish. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Code-ish by Heroku – A podcast from the team at Heroku, exploring code, technology, tools, tips, and the life of the developer. Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Featuring:Carol Nichols – Website, GitHub, XJake Goulding – Website, GitHub, XChris Castle – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes:Rust is a type-safe, concurrent, and memory efficient language from Mozilla. Developers from various backgrounds are turning towards it more as a means of quickly writing performant and functional code for browsers, cryptocurrencies, operating systems, CLIs, and–oh yeah, embedded devices. Carol Nichols and Jake Goulding are Rust instructors and enthusiasts, and they join Chris Castle to talk about Rust’s underlying strengths as an ideal blend of simpler languages, like Ruby, with more memory conscious ones, like C. Check the show notes and transcript for more details. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Did you know you can make a device vibrate via a webpage? Neither did we until we popped open Luigi De Rosa’s super cool repo that collects many of the lesser known things browsers can do in 2020. On this episode we hang out on his list and discuss which APIs were surprises to us, which we think are the most useful, which we wish would die in a fire (sorta), and what you might get if you mash up a few of these APIs. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog. Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog. Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. Featuring:Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XDivya – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XKevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes: Tweet at @luruke and thank him for this repo This is the repo, btw Nick Nisi wants you to try the Web Coffee API We all think the Web Share API is neat Read about the SMS Receiver API More on the Web Payments API Should we do an episode on A-Frame? Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mireille and Adam dig deeper into empathy as a construct. What key brain structures are involved? How can we better understand empathy to be able to better navigate ourselves and our relationships with others both at home and in the workplace? Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedInAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:Daniel Siegel, MD, in his book Aware notes 5 Aspects of Empathy: Emotional Resonance: Feeling another person’s feelings. Perspective Taking: Seeing through the eyes of another. Cognitive Understanding: Imagining the mental experiences of another and their meaning. Empathic Concern: Caring about the well-being of another. *This is the gateway for compassion. Empathic Joy: Feeling happy about another’s happiness or success. ​​Empathy: In face-to-face interactions, communication has a multi-modal nature involving the processing of visual facial cues (such as the speaker’s facial expression), the tone of the voice (i.e., affective prosody) and the choice of words (i.e., semantics). **Empathy involves a working model of another person in the mind’s eye. Brain structures involved: Pre-frontal cortex: Involved in perspective taking. Executive function. Anterior Cingulate Cortex: The anterior cingulate cortex is sometimes divided into four regions, each of which seem to underpin a separate function (see Bush, Luu, & Posner, 2000). Mirror neurons: a brain cell that reacts both when a particular action is performed and when it is only observed. These are activated in the process of empathy. In particular, the Anterior Cingulate Cortex includes: The anterior region, which is involved in executive function The dorsal region, which is involved in cognitive processes The ventral region, which is involved in emotional regulation The posterior region, which is involved in evaluative processes (e.g., Bush, Vogt, Holmes, Dale, Greve, Jenike et al., 2002) ​​Claus Lamm, PhD, University of Vienna, investigates the processes that regulate firsthand pain and those that cause empathy for pain through numerous studies on the influence of painkillers. ​​According to Lamm, research “suggests that empathy for pain is grounded in representing others’ pain within one’s own pain systems.” The Role of Facial Expression in Empathy: The value of “looking at” the face of another to provide another data point to understand where they are emotionally. How might you build your empathy skills? Consider EMPATHY as an acronym: (adapted from Harvard psychiatrist, Helen Riess, MD) E: Eye contact M: Muscles of facial expression P: Posture. What is the person’s body language? A: Affect/Emotion. T: Tone of voice. Affective prosody. H: Hearing the whole person. Y: Your response. Emotions are contagious. Getting practical - What can I do differently in order to cultivate empathy? Mindfulness as training for increased compassion and empathy. Practice responding with empathy outside of the live event: after an actual incident, reflect on what or how you could’ve responded differently that would’ve helped you “see” the other person more effectively or changed the interaction between you? Build your internal file of empathy from a conceptual level so that you have a bigger, broader frame of reference for others. Give back. Volunteering as practicing loving-kindness; giving to others’ without expectation of return. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!