I think that's the right attitude to take. Getting intimate with a project enough to build it from scratch demonstrates a great deal of commitment.
Working with a Linux distribution probably eases the burden, but even with all the dev tools and build requirements at the ready a clean build might not arise until the environment is a perfect replica. These are things that regular contributors probably take for granted, they've set this all up previously and the order of magnitude is greatly reduced.
I've always enjoyed the challenge and healthy debate around open source tools, it's been an important part of my life in computing, and ethics are at the heart of it. I also like the restrictions that the tools impose, it's a constraint on creativity, but learning to be intuitive with constrains is also a creative outcome. In turn I've always tried to commit quality bug reports, and patches where I feel I understand the environment enough to fix my own problem. The time that goes into these things is prohibitive and takes a level of patience and good will that most people simply wouldn't bother with.
A projects culture really matters, and I think that open-source projects often are tainted by vicious personalities. But it's far more difficult to hire and fire in this world, a dominant contributor is still important even when their personality sucks, and the amount of work hours devoted to removing them by a community is often not worth the effort of just accepting an ego and warning contributors of the problem. This just continues to poison the pot. It only gets worse when the contributor becomes a lead.
There are projects that you might personally find valuable and that's a good reason to get involved, but everyone has a life outside of open-source. If you're lucky the project is what makes you money and it's in your best interest to quit complaining and do something. If you're contributing in your free time then your relationship will probably be fleeting at best. It's hard not to have a life.
I'd love to work in a culture of expected mutual respect, but it's not a perfect world.. In the meantime let's support peoples initiative for what it's actually worth, be positive and hopefully grow community by encouraging more people to get that little bit more involved. They've probably already taken extraordinary steps in that direction.
Anyone want to hazard a guess at the technology they plan to implement to get this started?
Surely this is not designed to be written from scratch, so..
- Are they using known lexical & semantic scanners?
- Is it focused on English language first?
- What crawlers will scan content?
- I'll assume it's an open platform, but license for contributors?
- What database architecture will hold the graph?
- How does it know the mark of authority, and is this primarily based on human input learning or machine learning?
I'm sure $2.5M wont touch the sides, but maybe if it's a well directed project, with healthy user contribution, based on interesting technologies they might develop a good backbone architecture. Ambitious for sure.
I'm a bit shocked that Conde Nast never bothered to work out a digital advertising strategy that worked. In the magazine business they can sell off their pages easily because they are essentially part of the content and their content is influential. They control the client pool and match advertisers with the brand of content, a reader of Vogue would spend as much time studying the content of some advertisers because it covered their interests in an interesting way.
A good friend is a fashion designer and she collects oodles of high end magazines, they have a heavy cover price and advertising makes up a large proportion of the pages, but it doesn't matter because the content and advertising coalesce. The advertising editor is still an important part of the business and they make certain that their work both reinforces the business and doesn't tarnish the content. It's a slick alignment.
Something became unstuck with publishing on the web very early, and for whatever the reason, magazines and periodicals typically gave up exclusively collating and editing their own advertising material. An industry of third party providers took that job, providing the initial promise of instant revenue and later the promise that adverts could be tailored to the eyeballs of the viewer. But the third parties never came up with a way to nicely separate their ads from the content that people were attracted to, to give it the necessary space that makes reading a magazine somehow less bombarding. They adopted the messy format of banners and placement ads, which wasn't far away from the newspaper grid. But newspapers were always a different beast with less refinement, the daily coverage was enough of a compulsion to readers that it covered the incongruous layout (and the trend for a very long time was not to pollute the front page with advertising as this would cheapen the status of important stories and editorials - this came much later). Every ad technology that they have come up with only aides in their own destruction - popups, overlays, flash and animated gifs only serve in distracting the audience enough to irritate.
It's probably too late to reform the industry to make advertising consistent, relevant and non distracting. The content has already suffered, reputations are diminished and reputable journalists are becoming far more autonomous in their output. There was a renewed interest in digital magazine publishing when the ipad came out, it allowed for more traditional interaction, layout and perusal, but releasing an app based publication is more involved than publishing to the web once and there's more mind share in the latter.
It's going to be interesting to watch how the web trends for commercial media. But at the same time I doubt my fashion friend is about to stop buying magazines and judging by the content they are becoming more beautiful and textural with every new publication. Still a viable niche alternative to screen burn, the adverts look fantastic, and there's zero chance of accidental malware. No salvation for a suffering industry, but they've been embedded in the web a very long time and failed pretty badly.
I don't quite understand why people want to dismiss examples of machine learning as valid techniques for understanding the human environment.. It's not as if the human brain was built and guided from nothing, many of the same adaptive principles are as present in our minds as they are in other mammals and equally so from where all the branches divide. Even tiny organisms. And we seems to center the brain at the core of humans intelligence, when there's a range of chemical and metabolic coordination going that might bypass the brain entirely.
It's efficient, failure resistant models that matter. We're talking about accelerated learning, finding the models that work out of all those many iterations that fail. You can model it, decompile the results and try to understand and emulate what makes things seem real, but we don't even need to analyze it, because case by case it changes and it's circumstance makes things very different. 'Many ways to skin a cat'.
I think the challenge of the future is finding the general API that can negotiate all the things and make all the parts communicate, the kernel if you want. We can determine optimum speech algorithms, babel communication, create seeing eyes that recognize objects, optimize forms that can negotiate physical terrain, work out what is meant in human expression, but it's not until all these units work together that the 'AI' will seem seamless in human terms.
All of those parts have discreet forms, they generate a lineage of algorithms from iterations based on code, languages often derived from need. A Lisp might be the best way of interpreting language, a Haskell might be work best for defining strict biomechanics and area physics. Different abstractions are better for the results they are designed to intuit. But when we are to create the ultimate neural net, the composite of all these machine languages that are constantly required to optimize beyond human intelligible understanding, what will be using? What structure will state 'this works good enough' to not bother with the computation any more - in the familiar context of why don't our eyes have faster frame rate, need better detail, or need us to see into UV. What regulates such a machine, and how does a machine understand failure without guidance?
I like to think of these questions when I see rough examples posited around potentials in machine learning. Getting one human system sorted is one thing, communicating the results to other sub-systems an optimize concurrent results is another. The data model is too huge to even comprehend!
I'm just excited that these things exist, that there are individuals, research groups and companies looking at the what makes us 'us'. It might help us unlock the features of the brain and evolution.. Used for commercial gain - who cares, just a small cog, with revenue to continue development.
GitHub got off the ground on-selling an emerging open-source product as a service with some innovations around data visualizations / analytics and community structure, customized for the web. Their growth really comes down to the right set of features at the right time, a low friction setup, good price point and good flow of communication with their user base.
The perceived stagnation is likely a side-effect of scaling the operation to fit with increased demand and the growth and expectations of their private & enterprise (paying) customers, who have become notably more high profile as the years roll on. With it comes the difficulty and expense of providing a dependent, secure infrastructure and a more refined and audited code base to fit the needs.
It's a diverse community here and while some groups consistently demand feature freeze (hating on 'bloat', 'features coming from marketing', focus on 'core product'), others are only convinced that a products relevancy is based only on cutting edge features ('we need feature a, because b', 'product c is irrelevant because product d offers a'). To offer refinement that appeals to both camps is a delicate tightrope.
Meanwhile you have market speculation that would use in part a forum like this as a sounding board for some kind of consumer sentiment index.
The complaints with GitHub seem fairly incidental, people airing their grievances on the incumbent because the cost of moving is considered either a hassle or a big-deal. But moving is an option, and the perceived stagnation is building a better competition (that they fulfill the promise without other expenses is always the gamble). GitHub isn't without problems, and it does seem like some obvious community complaints that have stagnated, but once released it'll probably just be a case of 'finally, thanks, no love lost'.
In the end, Git by nature is decentralized, easily self hosted, and both GitLab and Phabricator provide interesting open-source environments. It's not exactly a one way street.
But maybe it was always going to be a tough market to corner? My prediction.. more posts on HN describing migration to a different system and how it solved everything.. and then the followup 12-24 months later. Oh well.
Homelessness shelters will generally be up against some pretty tight constraints. Their service is non-profit, their staffing is either voluntary or tight and their organization structure will be pushed by fluctuating demand.
The constraints on a company participating in a program are quite disproportionate, they're looking to fill a seasonal gap and while looking towards a social problem to fill this gap is honourable (and mutually beneficial), they also need to be aware of the duress that mutually beneficial labour can create.
This article only attempts to highlight the constraints. Amazon should have better social policy to be deal with the vulnerabilities of the assets they hire in this situation. I'm sure it's a learning experience for the YWCA, but the onus is still on Amazon to be able to better negotiate stable living conditions for the people it employed through such a program. These are people who have the potential to get out of bad situation but are still vulnerable (financially / socially / mentally), and this vulnerability should be realistically accounted for as the real liability that it is to the company employing.
No company needs to embark on such a program, they could fill labour shortages through traditional means, but when they do, it should be with some mutual agreement to work with the organisation and employees to ensure a quality outcome. Anything less is socially negligent.
It's heartening that Amazon wanted to participate, but I hope they can take on the criticism and help build a better program.
This is the creative economy in a nutshell, it's just not highly lucrative except for a small number of edge cases, for the rest it's peanuts.
The danger embedded in this exception is that it's the generally mediated norm for the creative 'genius', the artist living the high life receiving reward for their exceptional talent. Skill + followers = reward. People in the top spots have earned their place.
Anyone who has participated in a creative profession long enough will have seen many brilliantly talented people fail, and critiques will follow as to why they missed out (obsessive personality, no marketability, poor communication, not in touch with reality, poor career trajectory, no exposure, etc). Creative people are pinned against each other, so these critiques flow from fellow producers too, and sadly when one person calls it a day, others will see opportunity left in their wake and attempt to fill the gap only to deal with similar patterns. Mostly failure is just part of the biz and no real indicator of talent.
Many will reach for the 'lottery' metaphor to justify creative economy, which I think at it's heart is true. Creative capital is amassed by a tiny minority in a global pool, and the 'pop' market intends to keep it this way - it's much easier to manage and account for a tiny list of select 'important' people, rally behind them and create an economy that benefits all parties (distributors and artists) than to embrace the entirety of creative output.
But again there are exceptions. And these are the ones maintaining 'creative integrity', who then become every other artists benchmark for succeeding against the odds. They help fertilize the pool, keep enthusiasm up and make people have faith that good work can succeed. Again another lottery, and these rare successes often become heavily fortified by the same industry, itself championing the outsider and benefiting from the perceived 'integrity'.
However, when you decide to give up on the supply chain completely and present yourself to an audience honestly things can actually come good. There are audiences that have given up on the supply chain too, and are sympathetic to artists presenting themselves with all their frailties. Once a connection is made, these people become real subscribers and will pay to keep this connection flowing and will even help advertise the artists they love (think t-shirts). There are many great examples of artists who have decided to control their supply chain, get intimate with an audience, and nurture the connection as directly as possible. They still work with mass culture but only as an interface to build audience.
How hard is it for these Vloggers to do the same, kick the supply-chain (freeloading hits) and direct their core audience to their own supply. Surely it's as simple as adding to their 'please like / subscribe to our channel' spiel with a 'and to see our other content visit our website direct'.
Maybe something will disrupt the 'pop' industry and create equity, but when mass piracy doesn't change much and pay services still only give majority revenue to top billers, it seems that 'pop' is more agile than most give lip service to.
I think think this article and the discussion demonstrates more about cognitive bias than anything else. The assumption that an individual is purchasing 20 pieces is probably a leap in the wrong direction. I would assume that McDonalds are direct marketing this price point to families, who they know are buying a range of other items on top of a shared serving of chicken. It's like a cheeky wink to them that they get a bonus for the bulk custom, that they know no individual could eat, just like a fish and chip shop will throw in more calamari than ordered for a large order. The reward probably doesn't cost them much but it keeps these group orders coming back.
Thanks. This form of internet journalism really irritates me, trying desperately to create a compelling narrative out of fairly dry technical parts, only to end abruptly to some upbeat testimonial - it reads more like a poorly written press release.
Give each section some space.. as with code, indentation will make your content more readable.
Reduce the unnecessary typography.. the titles, body text and code blocks all compete and are inconsistent. There are some great mono-spaced fonts that are part of wider family of type, pick a good font-family and stick to it.
The contrast between the dark-themed code blocks and the body text is just too jarring, you might want to try using a lighter code block or experiment with a darker themed body. A well designed color-scheme like solarized can handle the change of contrast while maintaining harmony. Have a good look at a range of color-schemes and see how you might be able to use one of those colors consitently throughout the site.
Where's the index? I might want to jump to a certain section, or just see what's below without having to skim the whole page.. it's a basic usability feature, but pretty important.
Working with a Linux distribution probably eases the burden, but even with all the dev tools and build requirements at the ready a clean build might not arise until the environment is a perfect replica. These are things that regular contributors probably take for granted, they've set this all up previously and the order of magnitude is greatly reduced.
I've always enjoyed the challenge and healthy debate around open source tools, it's been an important part of my life in computing, and ethics are at the heart of it. I also like the restrictions that the tools impose, it's a constraint on creativity, but learning to be intuitive with constrains is also a creative outcome. In turn I've always tried to commit quality bug reports, and patches where I feel I understand the environment enough to fix my own problem. The time that goes into these things is prohibitive and takes a level of patience and good will that most people simply wouldn't bother with.
A projects culture really matters, and I think that open-source projects often are tainted by vicious personalities. But it's far more difficult to hire and fire in this world, a dominant contributor is still important even when their personality sucks, and the amount of work hours devoted to removing them by a community is often not worth the effort of just accepting an ego and warning contributors of the problem. This just continues to poison the pot. It only gets worse when the contributor becomes a lead.
There are projects that you might personally find valuable and that's a good reason to get involved, but everyone has a life outside of open-source. If you're lucky the project is what makes you money and it's in your best interest to quit complaining and do something. If you're contributing in your free time then your relationship will probably be fleeting at best. It's hard not to have a life.
I'd love to work in a culture of expected mutual respect, but it's not a perfect world.. In the meantime let's support peoples initiative for what it's actually worth, be positive and hopefully grow community by encouraging more people to get that little bit more involved. They've probably already taken extraordinary steps in that direction.