07 Aug 2010
Market Data Firm Spots the Tracks of Bizarre Robot Traders

Fascinating stuff - be sure to read the comments, they're almost better than the article itself. I'm pretty convinced that all high frequency trading is a scam, but I can't puzzle out what these bots are up to...

Mysterious and possibly nefarious trading algorithms are operating every minute of every day in the nation's stock exchanges.

(link) [The Atlantic]

22:38 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

04 Aug 2010
Amazon e-book tipping point

The digital dark age comes one step closer.

On the strength of the popular Kindle, Amazon says it now sells more e-books than hardcovers. What's being lost is the messy tactile narrative of how books are made manifest and cling to our lives, as "The Hobbit" did to mine.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor]

19:41 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

30 Jul 2010
How grep got it's name

I didn't know that!

It all starts back with 'ed', the original unix editor. ed was a command-line editor that worked identically to the colon-commands in vi and vim - in fact, you can press Q to get into ed mode (then type vi to get back into vim).

(link) [Giant Robots]

17:22 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

14 Jul 2010
How Microbes Defend and Define Us

What a concept! Working with Nature instead of against her...

Scientists are regularly blown away by the complexity, power, and sheer number of microbes that live in our bodies. “We have over 10 times more microbes than human cells in our bodies,” said George Weinstock of Washington University in St. Louis. But the microbiome, as it’s known, remains mostly a mystery. “It’s as if we have these other organs, and yet these are parts of our bodies we know nothing about.”

(link) [New York Times]

via Letter from Hardscrabble Creek

06:41 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

06 Jul 2010
The Data Singularity is Here

Despite the emphasis on massive data storage, I notice that most of the phenomena revolves around the velocity and endpoints of data, rather than it's mere quantity. To turn a phrase, it's not a database nation, it's a data stream nation, and that stream is moving at light speed. No human required.

In a nutshell, the Data Singularity is this: humans are being spliced out of the data-driven processes around us, and frequently we aren’t even at the terminal node of action. International cargo shipments, high-frequency stock trades, and genetic diagnoses are all made without us.

(link) [Dataspora Blog]

22:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

10 Jun 2010
Do the feds have a case against Apple?

WTF? Who does Apple think it is? Microsoft? Has Steve Jobs started channeling his inner Bill Gates?

News analysis Apple's tweaking of the rules for which kind of ad networks can operate on its iPhone has prompted scrutiny from antitrust authorities, according to reports.

(link) [CNET News]

21:09 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

09 Jun 2010
Closing the Digital Frontier

Sad, and altogether too true. Let's hope this is a temporary trend. AOL tried this "walled garden" approach in the mid to late 90's, and we know how that turned out. We'll see.

The era of the Web browser’s dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet’s founding ideology—that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral— suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media—and of the Web itself?

(link) [The Atlantic]

07:05 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

08 Jun 2010
Apple developers, you're living on the edge

I would rephrase this to say "Apple Mobile Developers", but other than that it's pretty accurate. I never dreamed when I very publicly endorsed Apple as "for developers" in 2002 that things would go this route. I'm not ready to pull that endorsement - yet. Mac developers (such as me) can still use our choice of tools, and don't have to sign any obnoxious developer agreements if we don't want to. If Apple tries that with the Mac line, well, I'd be gone in a Flash. Pun intended.

Jobs' message to developers this week might have sounded simple on stage: three easy rules to follow, 95 percent approval rate, and cash money just rolling into your pockets. Frankly, I can't believe any developer still believes any of those lines, and after the events of this week, everyone ought to be reading between them. You may think the App Store is a gold mine, but it sounds like one hell of a dangerous mine.

(link) [CNET]

22:41 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

03 Jun 2010
Peak Wood

Philosophy meets technology - how far will pure hubris carry us?

The idea of no limits to resources like wood and oil derived from technological advances such as metallurgy, domestication of animals, the wheel and sails for ships. Thanks to such technological advances, humanity began to believe it had moved beyond nature.

(link) [Miller-McCune]

07:12 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

27 May 2010
Mathematical Logic Finds Unexpected Application on Wall Street

This kind of math is way out of my league, but I have noticed a decided uptick in job postings for very high level math programmers in a Unix environment, all based in Manhattan for "major Wall Street firms". Perhaps they're looking for an implementation team for this insanity - who knows?

The one thing this proves beyond a doubt is that stock exchanges have moved out of their traditional role as markets for companies to raise capital and morphed into casinos for very sophisticated high rollers, most of whom have armies of math and computer scientists to back their bets.

Is it any wonder the economy is slowly tanking?

In an unexpected development for the depressed market for mathematical logicians, Wall Street has begun quietly and aggressively recruiting proof theorists and recursion theorists for their expertise in applying ordinal notations and ordinal collapsing functions to high-frequency algorithmic trading. An ordinal notation system is used to name each ordinal in a certain initial subsequence of the countable ordinals; such systems have recently been applied by elite trading operations to the parameterization of families of trading strategies of breathtaking sophistication. Ordinal notation high-frequency trading algorithms, also called ordinal arbitrage systems, pit their strategies against similar algorithmic opponents on electronic exchanges for a few fleeting seconds, during which thousands of trades are executed, including exploratory trades that test the strategies of opposing human and machine traders.

(link) [Christian Marks]

17:06 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

24 May 2010
A Celebration of Duct Tape

Nothing wrong with duct tape - most useful stuff on the planet. Even when it comes to analogies: I've been known to wear the moniker of duct tape programmer with a measure of pride.

If the DIY community had a universal symbol, it most certainly would be a roll of duct tape. Inexpensive, abundant, strong, and ready to stick to nearly anything, this versatile DIY companion is a must in your DIY toolkit.

(link) [LifeHacker]

21:08 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

02 Apr 2010
Dr. Henry Edward Roberts, RIP

A loss indeed, but nice to see Gates and Allen apparently always acknowledged the connection. By way of reerence, it was the high cost of Dr. Roberts machine that prompted my own early experiments in computing.

Dr. Henry Edward Roberts, a developer of an early personal computer that inspired Bill Gates to found Microsoft, died Thursday in Georgia. He was 68.

(link) [Los Angles Times]

10:01 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

21 Mar 2010
Algebra in Wonderland

Why math geeks love Lewis Carroll...

Dodgson most likely had real models for the strange happenings in Wonderland, too. He was a tutor in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and Alice’s search for a beautiful garden can be neatly interpreted as a mishmash of satire directed at the advances taking place in Dodgson’s field.

(link) [New York Times]

08:12 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

02 Mar 2010
The Internet? Bah!

A lot has changed in 15 years, eh?

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

(link) [Newsweek]

07:51 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

28 Feb 2010
The Future of Money

I have a bit of experience in this arena, and I can tell you right now, these folks only have half the equation. Take a look at the conversion chart with it's multiplicity of online "currencies" and ask yourself how conversions between them, much less handling processing of payments, can ever possibly be free...

The short answer is they can't. The real answer is another question: free to whom?

A generation ago, when people made the choice to switch to plastic, credit cards did not just replicate cash; they fundamentally changed how we used money. The ease with which people could make purchases encouraged them to buy much more than they had in the past. Entrepreneurs suddenly had access to easy — though high-interest — loans, providing a spark to the economy. Now, while it may be hard to predict what innovations PayPal’s platform will enable, it’s safe to say that the payment industry is going to change dramatically. As money becomes completely digitized, infinitely transferable, and friction-free, it will again revolutionize how we think about our economy.

(link) [Wired]

12:20 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

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