27 Feb 2019, 8:01 a.m.

GSoC/Outreachy Mentoring Orgs: Consider Giving Applicants English Tutoring

Google Summer of Code just announced the 207 mentoring organizations (open source projects seeking participants) for this year's round, and Outreachy's 9 mentoring orgs also announced open internship projects. This blog post is directed at …

Read More
25 Feb 2019, 16:52 p.m.

API Copyrightability Law Brings (Many of) Us Together

So you know that moment partway through a movie where heroes team up and stride toward the camera in slow motion while epic music plays? The Python Software Foundation's counsel, Van Lindberg, writes: @ThePSF and …

Read More
24 Feb 2019, 11:10 a.m.

Interesting University Press Ebooks via NYPL

Hey New York Public Library patrons! Today I looked at NYPL's "E-Book Central" and discovered University Press Scholarship Online. Click "Connect to database" and enter your NYPL barcode number and PIN, and you can read …

Read More
22 Feb 2019, 16:50 p.m.

Tropes, and Missing Stories, in Art about Programming

"The Art of Python", the one-night arts festival about your experience of programming, is still open for proposals, till February 28th. What experiences do we want to explore? We want variety -- because there are …

Read More
22 Feb 2019, 8:33 a.m.

The Fascinating Life of Dalip Singh Saund

My latest MetaFilter blog post is "At the beginning I never thought of becoming a candidate myself." Immigrant, math Ph.D., farmer, and judge Dalip Singh Saund wasn't just the first Asian American elected to the …

Read More
19 Feb 2019, 6:36 a.m.

As The Saying Goes, I'm Part Of The Precipitate

Tonight, I'm gonna attend my local Community Board meeting, which will include an MTA presentation on the Astoria Boulevard ADA & Station Renewal project. (I hope that, after the meeting, I can hang out with …

Read More
17 Feb 2019, 10:53 a.m.

My Open Data Quest, Part ... 11?

On Tuesday night, I attended a committee meeting of the NYC council's Committee on Technology at City Hall (another view) and gave a bit of public comment (video -- my testimony is 02:05:03 till 2:09:11, …

Read More
14 Feb 2019, 7:58 a.m.

Puns About Domain Names Are Kinda Par For The Course Around Here

I blearily woke this morning - Leonard was already up. I wished him a happy Valentine's Day. "I think we really match. And in some sense, because we met online,* we met in e-harmony. And …

Read More
11 Feb 2019, 14:04 p.m.

Some Movies Are For Not-Me

I haven't really been keeping up with reviewing movies here. Some recent joys: I loved Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which was astounding in its artistry and the marriage of story and virtuosic presentation. The Muppet …

Read More
07 Feb 2019, 8:17 a.m.

Socratic Questioning, Devil's Advocacy, and Conversational Power Tools

"Devil's advocate" was a job. In order for someone to perform the role of Devil's advocate, someone else had to appoint them to that position. And the Devil's advocate performed a bounded task within an …

Read More