API – Jupiter Broadcasting

The change would be aimed at enticing developers to continue investing in Alexa as a voice assistant platform, by giving those app makers more data that could help improve their software over time. Amazon’s goal, according to The Information, is to stay competitive with more recent entrants in the smart speaker market, like Apple and Google.

The post Mike the Botter | CR 266 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Okay Google, Take Over the World | CR 235

chris — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 16:05:09 +0000

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— Show Notes: —

Hoopla

Pebble confirms Fitbit sale: Hardware is dead, software in maintenance mode

Pebble Time 2, Pebble Core, and Pebble Time Round watches will never ship.

Hype Driven Development

I call this trend Hype Driven Development, perceive it harmful and advocate for a more professional approach I call “Solid Software Engineering”. Learn more about how it works and find out what you can do instead.

Chris Pick:

A Simplified Approach to Container Orchestration

PiCluster is a simple way to manage Docker containers on multiple hosts. I created this
because I found Docker Swarm not that good and Kubernetes was too difficult to install currently on ARM.

PiCluster will only build and run images from Dockerfile’s on the host specified in the config file.

This software will work on regular x86 hardware also and is not tied to ARM.

Mike Hiring

Android Developer Remote

The post Okay Google, Take Over the World | CR 235 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hats Off to Wayland | LAS 445

chris — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:23:05 +0000

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— Show Notes: —

Brought to you by: Linux Academy

Fedora 25

Fedora 25 released! – Fedora Magazine

Fedora 25 provides many bug fixes and tweaks to these underlying components, as well as new and enhanced packages, including:

Docker 1.12 for building and running containerized applications
Node.js 6.9.1, the latest version of the popular server-side JavaScript engine
Support for Rust, a faster and more stable system programming language
PHP 7, offering improved performance and reduced memory usage
Multiple Python versions — 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 — to help run test suites across several Python configurations, as well as PyPy, PyPy3, and Jython

Wayland in Fedora 25

Fedora 25 Linux arrives with Wayland display support

The big news for desktop users in Workstation is the Wayland display server has finally replaced the legacy X11 Window server. Wayland has been in the works since 2008. The point of Wayland is to provide a smoother, richer experience for graphical environments. X also had a huge amount of functionality that was no longer being used.

On top of Wayland, Fedora 25 Workstation runs GNOME 3.22. This latest desktop claims to offer multiple file renaming, a redesigned keyboard settings tool, and additional user interface improvements. If, like me, you’re not a GNOME fan, Fedora 25 also supports spins with other default desktops. These include KDE, XFCE, LXDE, MATE, and Cinnamon.

Changes/WaylandByDefault – FedoraProject

How To Test

Boot a fresh F25 workstation install.
Verify that the login screen is running under Wayland (you can do so by looking for a process called gdm-wayland-session in ps -ef output)
Verify that the session chooser offers ‘GNOME’, ‘GNOME on X11’ and ‘GNOME Classic’, and that ‘GNOME’ is selected by default.
Log into all three of these sessions and verify that ‘GNOME’ gives you Wayland (you can verify this by bringing up the GTK+ inspector in a gtk3 application and checking what backend is used), while the other two end up with X11.
Change the gdm configuration by adding WaylandEnable=false and reboot
Verify that the login screen comes up under X
Verify that only X-based sessions are offered in the session chooser
Log into the Wayland-based session again
Use the desktop normally, and verify that there are no obvious instabilities, or Wayland-specific bugs or performance problems

FreeMedia

The Fedora Free Media Program is a volunteer initiative by local Fedora Ambassadors and contributors to distribute Fedora Media (DVDs) for free to individuals who can’t afford to buy or download Fedora. There is no funding from Fedora for this initiative. The media comes from volunteers from around the globe that coordinate their efforts using Fedora Infrastructure.

Questions – Ask Fedora:

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

My Mower Runs Linux

After about 6 months of doing research on hardware and embedded systems I finally have a decent working prototype and it runs LINUX! All design, programming, GIS tools, and supporting tools, like field HUD, are all linux (Arch and Ubuntu).

Open Source at DigitalOcean: Introducing go-qemu and go-libvirt

Desktop App Pick

Midnight Commander

After last week’s app pick many wrote in to suggest we take a look at…

GNU Midnight Commander is a visual file manager, licensed under GNU General Public License and therefore qualifies as Free Software. It’s a feature rich full-screen text mode application that allows you to copy, move and delete files and whole directory trees, search for files and run commands in the subshell. Internal viewer and editor are included.
Midnight Commander is based on versatile text interfaces, such as Ncurses or S-Lang, which allows it to work on a regular console, inside an X Window terminal, over SSH connections and all kinds of remote shells.

Spotlight

The $89 ARM Laptop

Sent in by Dennis K.

PINEBOOK is a 11″ or 14″ notebook powered by the same Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit Processor used in our popular PINE A64 Single Board Computer. It is lightweight and comes with a full size keyboard and large multi-touch touchpad for students and makers.

Using the mini HDMI port, the PINEBOOK can be connected to a larger external HDMI diplay or TV for presentations.

Build-in MicroSD Card slot allows users to expand their data storage up to 256 GB with a microSD Card (SD, SDHC, SDXC).

Stickers – Super Key Sticker with Any LAS Sticker While They Last!

JB Stickers – Imgur

Chris’ Personal YouTube Channel – MeetBSD and Behind the Scenes Noah Vist Videos Soon

— NEWS —

Do you want nerdy, boring, file syste… – Straw Poll

Tor Phone Is The “Super-secure Version Of Android”, Developed By Tor Project

Aptly named Tor Phone, this new phone has been designed by Tor developer Mike Perry. It’s based on Copperhead OS, an Android distribution that comes with multiple security enhancement. In the past, Google’s Android security team has accepted many Copperhead patches in their Android code base.

Mission Improbable: Hardening Android for Security And Privacy | The Tor Blog

Systemic Threats to Software Freedom

Unfortunately, not only is Copperhead the only Android rebuild that supports Verified Boot, but the Google Nexus/Pixel hardware is the only Android hardware that allows the user to install their own keys to retain both the ability to modify the device, as well as have the filesystem security provided by verified boot.

This, combined with Google’s _increasing hostility_towards Android as a fully Open Source platform, as well as the difficulty for _external entities_to keep up with Android’s surprise release and opaque development processes, means that the ability for end-users to _use, study, share, and improve_the Android system are all in great jeopardy.

UbuCon Europe 2016 – Welcome & UBports Announcement – YouTube

FSOSS 2016 – YouTube

Debian putting everything on the /usr

One of the reasons for the change is that the current hierarchy _creates “busy work”_for developers, as Russ Allbery explained in January. He argued the change would mean “we don’t have to try to harass a thousand package maintainers into doing essentially untestable busy-work to try to move things around between __/usr_, _/bin_, and _/lib__to support a tiny handful of systems for which other approaches are available.”

Jay (Microsoft project manager) knows the score when it comes to Linux performance

Tor Phone – The Secure Android

The Tor Project has released Tor Phone–a privacy-focused and secure version of Android mobile OS. It’s based on Copperhead OS, a hardened Android distribution. Tor Phone also uses OrWall to force all the connections over Tor network.

Upcoming XFS Work in Linux v4.8 v4.9 and v4.10+, by Darrick Wong )

For the past year I have been working on a bunch of new features for the
XFS filesystem on Linux. Modern-day XFS is a direct descendant of the
original XFS code from SGI Irix that was donated long ago. The goals
are the same — XFS is intended to behave consistently as it scales to
large storage and many files.

Feedback:

Mail Bag

Name: Craig
Subject: UPS that Will Come via UPS

Message:

Hey Dudes,

Not a direct related Linux question, but it does have to do with my System76 Ratel so there is that. So I have been using my Ratel for a few months now. Real nice machine. plug plug. With the winter approaching and possible electricity failures due to ice and snow, etc.; I am now serious on the lookout for a Uninterrupted Power Supply for my Ratel. Not sure where to start. You guys are IT Gurus, what would you suggest my options should be?

Thanks for LAS and all the shows!

Amazon.com: CyberPower OR700LCDRM1U Smart App LCD UPS 700VA 400W SNMP/HTTP Rackmount: Electronics
Name: Peter D.
Subject: Arch Trackpad Problems solved by GDM
Message:

Noah,

I recently installed Antergos on my Oryx Pro and experienced similar problems with the trackpad.

I found that by replacing LightDM with GDM fixed the problems with the trackpad. After switching to GDM, additional setting show up for the trackpad including tap to click.

Also after switching to GDM, the two finger scrolling worked better in particular the horizontal scrolling.

Call in: 1-877-347-0011

Catch the show LIVE SUNDAY:

— CHRIS’ STASH —

Chris’s Twitter account has changed, you’ll need to follow!

Chris Fisher (@ChrisLAS) | Twitter

Hang in our chat room:

irc.geekshed.net #jupiterbroadcasting

— NOAH’S STASH —

Noah’s Day Job

Altispeed Technologies

Contact Noah

noah [at] jupiterbroadcasting.com

Find us on Google+

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The post Hats Off to Wayland | LAS 445 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Noah Switches to Arch | LAS 442

chris — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 21:20:05 +0000

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— Show Notes: —

Brought to you by: Linux Academy

Noah’s Last Ubuntu Straw

redshift-gtk-git

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

The NES Classic, Runs Linux

Unless you want to desolder flash memory from the motherboard, looks like it's impossible to add new games to NES Classic. pic.twitter.com/jc99WSrNJj

— Peter Brown (@PCBrown) November 2, 2016

GPL is Included in the on screen menu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOZ38n1QZ3Y&t=16m35s
The NES Classic is a $60 Single Board Computer Running Linux – Slashdot

With a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7, 256 MB of RAM, and 512 MB of NAND Flash, it is typical of the hardware found in Linux single board computers, like the Raspberry Pi 2. Surprisingly for Nintendo, there does not seem to be any custom components in it, and it looks like it even does run Linux.

Brutal Doom 64 mod – Mod DB

Desktop App Pick

SSH Power Tool

The SSH Power Tool (sshpt) enables you to execute commands and upload files to many servers simultaneously via SSH without using pre-shared keys. Uploaded files and commands can be executed directly or via sudo. Connection and command execution results are output in standard CSV format for easy importing into spreadsheets, databases, or data mining applications.

Advantages

Since sshpt does not utilize pre-shared SSH keys it will use provided credentials for all outgoing SSH connections. This has many advantages:

Can be used immediately: No need to spend enormous amounts of time setting up pre-shared keys.
More secure: A server with pre-shared keys is a huge security risk. It literally holds the keys to the castle! With sshpt you can perform all the same tasks as with pre-shared keys with less risk to your infrastructure.
More compliant: Executing commands as root via pre-shared keys makes it hard to figure out after-the-fact who did what (root as a shared account). When an administrator (or user!) uses sshpt to execute commands it is much easier to figure out “who did what and when” from an auditing standpoint.

Spotlight

Gruik.

It’s a free & open-source note-taking service. A space where you can store notes, tutorials, code snippets… by writing them in markdown and then keep them private or public.

Stickers – Super Key Sticker with Any LAS Sticker While They Last!

Super Key Sticker with Any LAS Sticker While They Last!

— NEWS —

LessPass

Stop wasting time synchronize your encrypted vault.
Remember one master password to access your passwords, anywhere, anytime.
No sync needed.

It’s official: Oracle will appeal its “fair use” loss against Google

Oracle’s post-trial motions, which the district court judge rejected, indicate the tack it might try to take on appeal. It could focus on jury instructions that it viewed as improper, or Oracle could simply argue that the evidence presented at trial was so overwhelming that no reasonable jury could have found in Google’s favor.

VoCore2: $4 Coin-sized Linux Computer with WiFi

Coin-sized Linux computer & smart router, target to make wireless life easier, fully open source.

Move over Raspberry Pi, here is a $4, coin-sized, open-source Linux computer | ZDNet

VoCore2 is an open source Linux computer and a fully-functional wireless router that is smaller than a coin. It can also act as a VPN gateway for a network, an AirPlay station to play lossless music, a private cloud to store your photos, video, and code, and much more.

The Lite version of the VoCore2 features a 580MHz MT7688AN MediaTek system on chip (SoC), 64MB of DDR2 RAM, 8MB of NOR storage, and a single antenna slot for Wi-Fi that supports 150Mbps.

All this for $4.

Spend $12 and go for the full VoCore2 option and you get the same SoC, but you get 128MB of DDR2 RAM, 16MB of NOR storage, two antenna slots supporting 300Mbps, an on-board antenna, and PCIe 1.1 support.

Both versions of the VoCore2 have a power consumption of 74mA at standby, and 230mA at full speed. With this low power consumption, a small 9800mAh battery pack can power it for more than four days.

Feedback:

To celebrate the awesome traffic we've been getting, if you add #SwitchTo76 to your order notes, we'll waive your ground shipping! #Linux pic.twitter.com/jxUQEvEEyd

— System76 (@system76) October 31, 2016

Mail Bag

Name: Name: Andrew D
Subject: Chris was right

I think Chris’ stance on Lenovo being the problem and how they should be ashamed for building a non linux compatible machine was off target. Yes Intel are the issue here, but not Lenovo.

If Microsoft or any other company goes to a hardware manufacturer asked for a feature or specification to make their product stand out (like in this case better battery life), then there is no reason why that hardware manufacturer should not do that.

Just because it makes it makes it Linux incompatible seems to be the uproar here.

I didn’t see people grabbing pitchforks when the Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 etc didn’t have standard windows support from the ARM processor.

Noah was dead right with this one. It’s disappointing that the last words on the topic were ‘Shame on Lenovo, they will never make that mistake ever again. +1 for the good guys’

Apart from that, loved the rest of it.

Name: James S
Subject: F.LUX approval by me

Hello, this is James from past las chatrooms and i recently saw where both of you use flux and i have been having back and other pain and was wondering if this would help. Doubtful to most, but between using flux and staying out of the sunlight considering the medications i am on i thought i would give it a try.

What have i got to lose right? I am in process of saving money for starting up a linux laptop business and i want to express my sincerest thanks to the developers of this program as well as you at jb for putting this flux program into the spotlight. I no longer have much joint back or shoulder pain and though i was having seizures and falls i have had none since Monday of last week. Thanks to you and the developers i am leading a new life. Thanks so much!

Call in: 1-877-347-0011

New Show: User Error

User Error | Jupiter Broadcasting

Catch the show LIVE SUNDAY:

— CHRIS’ STASH —

Chris’s Twitter account has changed, you’ll need to follow!

Chris Fisher (@ChrisLAS) | Twitter

Hang in our chat room:

irc.geekshed.net #jupiterbroadcasting

— NOAH’S STASH —

Noah’s Day Job

Altispeed Technologies

Contact Noah

noah [at] jupiterbroadcasting.com

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The post Noah Switches to Arch | LAS 442 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Bag of jQuery | CR 221

chris — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 08:53:38 +0000

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— Show Notes: —

Weekly Challenge (that’s not always weekly)

Samsung Recalls New Galaxy Note7 Due to Exploding Batteries [Updated] – Mac Rumors

According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, an unnamed Samsung official says the company is conducting an investigation and is expected to announce the results this weekend or early next week. Samsung has indeed traced the explosions to the battery of the device and is in talks with Verizon and other U.S. business partners to figure out how to deal with the issue.

Hoopla

Qualcomm will reportedly not support Nougat on Snapdragon 800/801 Androids

Qualcomm “will not release graphics drivers” for either the 801 or 800 CPU, so the “HTC One M8 and other devices” based on said processors “won’t get official Android 7.0.” Going deeper, it sounds like this odd “refusal” to support a pair of still very robust SoCs relates to Nougat’s Vulkan API integration, a new high-performance 3D graphics standard the SD800 and 801 are simply not compatible with.

Apple Might Pull Your App!

Effective immediately Apple will be going through the App Store looking for apps that have not been properly maintained and ultimately will remove them from the App Store.

Seriously, turn in your Galaxy Note 7 before it explodes

A small percentage of units—35 have been identified so far—have exploded or caught fire while charging due to a flaw in the phone’s lithium battery. Yep, exploded.

In 1 minute, Slack founder will make you rethink how to sell innovation

What we are selling is _not _the software product — the set of all the features, in their specific implementation — because there are just not many buyers for this software product.

Apple Invites Media to September 7 Event: ‘See You on the 7th’ – Mac Rumors

Apple today sent out media invites for an iPhone-centric event that will be held on Wednesday, September 7 at 10:00 am at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California. Media invites (via The Verge) offer up a first look at the theme of the event and feature the simple tagline: “See you on the 7th.”

Spec Sheet Shows iPhone 7 Plus With 256GB Storage and Lightning EarPods – Mac Rumors

A photo claiming to show a specification sheet for a 256GB-capacity iPhone 7 Plus has been circulating online today.

Feedback

Pmbenjamin comments on Docker Dumpster Fire | CR 220

The post Bag of jQuery | CR 221 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Botpocalypse Now | CR 217

chris — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 16:24:32 +0000

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Special guest Ryan Sipes from Mycroft joins us to discuss his ambitious projects & fulfilling the mission of an open source project.

Plus our thoughts on the impending Bot revolution, the “Internet of APIs” it all depends on & the massive shift that bots could cause in the industry.

We start it all off with a new Coding Challenge!

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— Show Notes: —

Meet Mycroft

The Adapt Intent Parser is an open source software library for converting natural language into machine readable data structures. Adapt is lightweight and streamlined and is designed to run on devices with limited computing resources. Adapt takes in natural language and outputs a data structure that includes the intent, a match probability, a tagged list of entities. The software was developed at Mycroft AI by a team led by Sean Fitzgerald, formerly one of the developers of both Siri and Amazon Echo.

Mycroft Core

Mycroft Core is the primary module that makes up the Mycroft Artificial Intelligence platform. Mycroft makes use of the Adapt Intent Parser, Speech-to-Text software, and Text-to-Speech. The idea behind the platform is to be able to voice enable any device and turn it into a smart personal assistant, able to perform a variety of tasks. Mycroft is often used to refer to the hardware product produced by Mycroft AI, Inc. – so to avoid confusion, the software stack is often referred to as “Mycroft Core”.

Mimic by Mycroft and VocaliD

Mimic is a fast, lightweight Text-to-speech engine developed by Mycroft A.I. and VocaliD, based on Carnegie Mellon University’s FLITE software. Mimic takes in text and reads it out loud to create a high quality voice. Mimic’s low-latency, small resource footprint, and good quality voices set it apart from other open source text-to-speech projects.

OpenSTT | An Open Source Speech-To-Text Project

The OpenSTT project is aimed at creating an open source speech-to-text model that can be used by individuals and company to allow for high accuracy, low-latency conversion of speech into text.

Currently there are no open source speech-to-text models available, instead this technology is locked deep within large companies either tied to only their own proprietary products and services or behind expensive APIs that, in many cases, don’t respect user privacy.

OpenSTT is being led by members of the Mycroft A.I. team as they strive to create a powerful voice interface and artificial intelligence platform. Our goal is to make this technology available to as many people as possible. We do this by leading development of open source projects, OpenSTT is one of these initiatives.

The post Botpocalypse Now | CR 217 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

WWDC Hypercap | CR 209

chris — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 16:51:01 +0000

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We start with some developer news of the week, then dig into the best bits from WWDC.

Plus Mike shares his thoughts on some new hardware & the guys discuss the mystery of differential privacy.

Thanks to:

Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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— Show Notes: —

New app preview launch. Try it out while in Beta for a 25% off discount: https://t.co/bLkpTDG7IU
Checkout GitMasque!@ChrisLAS #Mac

— Michael Dominick (@dominucco) June 13, 2016

Hoopla

Faster App Review Times
Subscription Model
Apple’s App Store now has over 2 million apps

macOS Sierra (“Tabs everywhere”)

Continuity
Auto unlock – Tied to a device like the watch.
Universal clipboard
Optimized storage: Moves older files to the cloud. Auto clean up scripts. Takes on AppleJacks and other Mac tools.
Apple Pay on the web. Supports Touch ID on the iPhone.
Apple heard you like Tabs…
New file system spotted in macOS Sierra [Updated] | Ars Technica

Swift Playgrounds

Apple brings coding to the iPad with Swift Playground

Introduced as a new way for children to learn how to code, Apple will bring its Swift programming language to iPad with Swift Playground, a touch-friendly way for beginners to grasp the basics.

“Swift Playgrounds will revolutionize the way people learn to code.”

“Combining the powerful Swift programming language and the powerful capabilities of iPad.”

“We believe coding should be a required language in all schools. Swift Playground will be free.”

Swift Playgrounds = the new HyperCard?

— John Gruber (@gruber) June 13, 2016

iOS 10 (“The mother of all releases”)

Apple Beta Software Program
iOS 10
New lock screen, expanded notifications, interactive notifications.
Google Now like today screen filled with 3rd party widgets.
Siri gets an API: Apple opens up Siri to app developers
Siri built into Calendar events, looks ups, multilingual typing on the fly.
Photos: Advanced Computer Vision. Face finding, done local. Object recognition. Works across devices to bring moments together
Caller ID API
Voip apps get integration with call/lock screen and contacts app
iMessage Apps (SDK)
Differential privacy

In cryptography, differential privacy aims to provide means to maximize the accuracy of queries from statistical databases while minimizing the chances of identifying its records.

Differential privacy formalizes the idea that a “private” computation should not reveal whether any one person participated in the input or not, much less what their data are.

The post WWDC Hypercap | CR 209 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Fair-use Frustrations | CR 208

chris — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 16:08:29 +0000

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Mike & Chris have very different opinions on how interview tests should be conducted & this week they try to come to some common ground. Plus the real reasons to develop software on Linux are not the ones often cited, bit more on Google’s fair use & the master plan to get Mike to move to the west coast.

Thanks to:

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— Show Notes: —

Hoopla

Hiring a programmer? Ditch the coding interview and get back to basics

So before we go any further, let’s establish one very simple truth: coding interviews are worthless.

Why Develop Software On Linux

From my point of view, Linux is indeed a superior platform for developers, and that is becoming increasingly so due to a number of critical factors that have improved in the last ten years. Every year, our toolset srengthens, and does so at an exponential rate in comparison to the relatively stagnant Apple and Microsoft ecosystems.

Flatpak is gaining momentum

The Xdg App project has been renamed to Flatpak to get an easy-to-remember name and reflect that after almost two years of development it’s finally ready for broader adoption.

Google’s fair use victory is good for open source

Hurst is wrong in asserting that Google’s fair use victory means that anyone can freely appropriate whatever they want from open source and other programs. All that the jury verdict means is that Google made fair use of the Java API packages. Anyone else who appropriates elements from another firm’s software would have to defend a legal challenge on much the same grounds that Google did: either by claiming that the elements appropriated were not within the scope of protection that copyright law provides to software developers or that the appropriation of those elements was fair use.

The Google/Oracle decision was bad for copyright and bad for software

Though Android shares important elements with Java, Android is not a Java platform; it does not pass the tests that Sun and Oracle developed, and it is not designed to do so. Google deliberately chose to reject elements of Java’s design that it didn’t like, leaving a hodge-podge that is Java in some places but not-Java in others.

That lack of interest in interoperability means, in my view, that Google’s use of the Java APIs should not qualify as fair use.

Mike Moves to the West?

Software for the marijuana industry set to yield high returns

The post Fair-use Frustrations | CR 208 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Revenge of the Swift | CR 204

chris — Mon, 09 May 2016 14:54:27 +0000

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In a podcast far far away, you asked for it & this week we delivered. It’s code review time, with a twist!

Plus the FUD seems strong with the second Oracle v Google trial, we attempting to do some busting, Dropbox falling back to reality & 30 years later why we still love QBasic.

Thanks to:

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— Show Notes: —

Hoopla

Second Oracle V Google Trial FUD

Calling / using apis is the not the issue
Re-implementing them is.
Google Employees were found to have literally copy / pasted Sun / Oracle source and even failed to remove the copyright headers
No material impact on the average dev with the possible exception of Google moving to OpenJDK

Cost cutting at Dropbox and Silicon Valley startup

The change at Dropbox, last valued at $10 billion, shows even the most richly valued and highly funded startups are no longer immune to the changing tides of Silicon Valley.

A weaker VC funding environment and freezing tech-IPO market have forced startups of all sizes to take cost-cutting measures and focus more on profits – signifying a shift in the free-spending, growth-at-all-cost culture that had seeped through Silicon Valley over the past few years.

As startups cut back on perks and delay their IPO, employees could grow frustrated and decide to join larger, more established companies that offer better benefits and stock liquidity.

Swift School

CR204 Code Sample
? VS !
Swift and nil safety
Comparison to Objective-C nil system
Comparison to other languages

Mike’s First Swift .app

Swift as a language
Swift with AppKit
Swift vs ObjC

30 years later, QBasic is still the best

Yes, QBasic is a terrible procedural language. It introduces one to concepts widely considered harmful, uses awkward syntax for implicit declarations, is not case sensitive, is non-zero-based, etc. the list goes on… When developing a skill, it is much better to acquire the right reflexes from the start rather than have to correct years of bad practice. Following this advice, I should have probably started off with the basics of the ruby language which I love. Yet, while most of those QBasic concepts are today generally considered as red flags by our peers, they each served a very specific purpose at the time: to keep the language simple and accessible, a notion that every other language has left behind in favor of flexibility, complexity and logic.

I installed QBasic on my son’s 11″ HP Stream today, having to hack a DOSBox manual installation. He double clicked the icon on his desktop and in a split second, we were in the IDE, greeted with the introduction screen which brought back so many memories to my mind

The post Revenge of the Swift | CR 204 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Brave New Code | CR 198

chris — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:05:24 +0000

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Is Google dumping to compete with Nuance as they prepare to unleash their voice API to developers for free? Mike updates us on his Linux switch adventure, his new toy & a couple of important PSAs.

Plus feedback & more!

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— Show Notes: —

Hoopla:

Google opens access to its speech recognition API, going head to head with Nuance | TechCrunch

Google is planning to compete with Nuance and other voice recognition companies head on by opening up its speech recognition API to third-party developers. To attract developers, the app will be free at launch with pricing to be introduced at a later date.

Mike’s New Toy — Nexus 5X

PSA

XCode 7.3 breaks debugging on AppCode until the update
Code for America | Brigade

Linux Adventure Pt 2

Feedback:

The post Brave New Code | CR 198 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hybrid Hijinks | CR 196

chris — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 14:49:04 +0000

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Whenever we discuss Hybrid development, a big elephant is sitting in the room. This week, we give this elephant the mic.

Then, reflecting on a recent Android development project, the guys discuss the sticky side of Frames.

Plus an update on Mike’s Ubuntu experiment & more!

Thanks to:

Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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Hoopla:

Inside The Murky Process Of Getting Games On Steam

First Preview of Android N: Developer APIs & Tools

Native VS Hybrid Throwdown

Your Hybrid App is Going to Kill You

Feedback:

Michael Dominick on Twitter: “Is it wrong that I like #java more than basically every other language with the possible exception of #objc?”

The post Hybrid Hijinks | CR 196 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Librem 15 is FAN-tastic! | LINUX Unplugged 132

chris — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 18:56:42 +0000

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We discuss the official release of Vulkan, look at who has shipping code & why this is much bigger than you might realize.

Plus Chris share’s his first hands on impressions of Purism’s Librem 15 laptop, some big Ubuntu Mobile noise, the Linux security bug you need to patch for right away & more!

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Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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Pre-Show

Purism Librem Shipping Status

Follow Up / Catch Up

Ubuntu Phone To Gain Biometric Security Features

Ubuntu Phones running secure biometric identity tools will be demoed at next week’s Mobile World Congress.

Canonical has partnered with ConsenSYS and BlockApps to provide “web wallet and biometric identity tools on Ubuntu devices” using Ethereum, the decentralized public blockchain protocol.

Maru is open source! – Maru Blog

_I’ve gotta say, the open source community never ceases to amaze me. I’ve had emails from people asking if they can help test Maru on other devices ___on a Sunday___. How many normal people do you know that willingly want to give up their Sundays to help test software?

TING

Ting – mobile that makes sense

Google Online Security Blog: CVE-2015-7547: glibc getaddrinfo stack-based buffer overflow

FFmpeg 3.0 Released, Supports VP9 VA-API Acceleration

There are many changes to FFmpeg 3.0 and among them are:

Extensive native AAC encoder improvements
VA-API VP9 hardware acceleration.
Zero-copy Intel QSV transcoding.
Cineform HD decoder

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean: SSD Cloud Server, VPS Server, Simple Cloud Hosting

Vulkan 1.0 Released: What You Need To Know About This Cross-Platform, High-Performance Graphics API

AMD Simplified: Vulkan API – YouTube
Vulkan – Industry Forged
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Docs
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-CTS

Open-source Vulkan drivers for Intel hardware

The Intel Open Source Technology 3D Graphics Team is excited to announce the availability of our Vulkan driver for fifth and sixth generation Intel(r) Core(tm) processors (Broadwell and Skylake). The driver passes the Vulkan 1.0 Conformance Test Suite on these platforms and have experimental support for older platforms.

AMD state they will support Vulkan on Linux in an upcoming amdgpu driver, not ready yet

AMD has been participating in Vulkan’s development since its inception and providing builds of our Vulkan-enabled driver to game developers for many months. As we transition into the public phase, our initial driver release enables Vulkan support for select Radeon(tm) GPUs on Windows(r) 7, Windows(r) 8.1, and Windows(r) 10. An upcoming release of the amdgpu Linux driver will also feature Vulkan support.

Gaming: Radeon GPUs are ready for the Vulkan API

Today is an exciting day for PC gaming enthusiasts: the Khronos Group has announced immediate public release of the open standard Vulkan(tm) 1.0 graphics API! To mark the occasion, we’ve posted a Radeon Software beta for Vulkan. This graphics driver is primarily intended to enable a wider audience of game developers to work with Vulkan on Radeon(tm) graphics.

Vulkan Driver Support | NVIDIA Developer

Windows driver version 356.39 and Linux driver version 355.00.26 provide beta support for Vulkan.

Nvidia release Linux beta driver with Vulkan

Vulkan demo running on ARM Mali GPU

Demo to show ARM’s implementation of Vulkan, the new graphics API from Khronos, running on a Mali GPU. You can read how we did it here

ARM Mali Graphics: Porting a Graphics Engine to…

Here Are Your Vulkan Download Links

Qt Company Joins Khronos, Working On Vulkan Support In Qt

The Qt Company confirmed in this blog post that they are working on implementing already Qt support for Vulkan.

Talos and Vulkan Q & A

Ok, first, in GPU-bound scenarios (ultra settings, resolution higher than full HD), you’ll see lower performance, 20 to 30% lower. This is work in progress, and we (both Croteam and IHVs) are analyzing and optimizing the performance. We’ll get to the bottom of this!

Vulkan Webinar – Khronos Group Events, Seminars and Presentations

Date: Feb 18, 2016, 9:00am (PT)
Location: Online Webinar

What’s Vulkan all about? Learn more about this upcoming new graphics and compute API directly from Khronos, the people who have been creating it. In this 1-hour session, we will talk about the API, and also go into details about the Vulkan SDK from LunarG, and much more. We’ll of course end with a Q&A session, and a recording of the session will be available here.

Linux Academy

Linux Academy | Linux and AWS Online Training

Librem 15 – IS HERE!

Librem Laptop – Earliest Bird

Librem 15: A Laptop That Respects Your Rights

Memory: 8GB +$100
Storage: 500GB SSD +$275
Drive Bay: CD/DVD ROM
Screen: Full HD (1920×1080)
Keyboard: English (US)
AC Adapter Power Plug: US

Qty 1 $1,824.00 ea.

Shipped 286 days late! Originally expected to ship on April 2015

No Ethernet in Librem 15?

Librem 15: A Laptop That Respects Your Rights – Purism Librem 15 rev1 vs rev2 | Crowd Supply

Purism Librem 15 rev1 vs rev2

Support Jupiter Broadcasting on Patreon

The post Librem 15 is FAN-tastic! | LINUX Unplugged 132 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Code Saves Time | WTR 48

chris — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 12:39:04 +0000

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Coraline is a web developer for a health company, working to reduce the amount of screen time for doctors & nurses by providing better tools.

Show Notes:

Are you looking for the transcription? Please let us know you use it and we may bring it back!

WTR Transcription Poll

The post Code Saves Time | WTR 48 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Advertising Cold War | CR 172

chris — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 21:03:04 +0000

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Mike and Chris discuss malware getting injected into unsuspecting developers apps. Then the advertising cold war that’s brewing, how it impacts users, content creators & developers.

Also our top three must haves before you sign any development work contract.

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Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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Hoopla

The Right Way to Ship Software

Feedback

The post Advertising Cold War | CR 172 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

No Crying In Coding | WTR 39

chris — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 03:40:09 +0000

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Carolyn went from working in data science to mobile developer at Lookout Mobile. She discusses writing “magic hands” to automate her old job & what it’s like to self teach.

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Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: So, Angela, today we talk to Carolyn and she is a recent mobile developer at Lookout. She comes from a data scientist background and we have some really interesting chat about her transition and just all the things that she’s gotten into; what’s been hard, what’s been awesome, and it’s a really good time.
ANGELA: Yeah. And before we get into the interview I just want to mention that you can support Women’s Tech Radio by going to Patreon.com/today. It is a subscription based support of our network. It supports all the shows, but specifically this show, Women’s Tech Radio. So go to Patreon.com/today.
PAIGE: And we got started by asking Carolyn what she’s up to in technology these days.
CAROLYN: Yeah, so I have sort of an interesting story of, or at least I think it’s interesting, of how I got into tech. I was a business major, not sure what I wanted to do with my life. Ended up in operations at a big company, but I always really, really loved data and I just loved spreadsheets and i met someone that let me, sort of taught me SQL and taught me how to be faster with what I was doing with SQL and I found out I really loved SQL. So I sort of just started building from there. I ended up at Lookout which is a mobile security anti malware company and just sort of opened my eyes to a lot of technology. I started as a data analyst. Started managing the data warehouse and then earlier this year just moved over to Android development. So I’m learning a lot. So I’m new to engineering, but I have been speaking engineer, that’s what I say, for a very long time. So right now I”m working on a side project which we’ll be releasing at the end of this year and currently learning RxJava, which is pretty new. It’s really cool, but there’s definitely not really a lot out there about it. So I spend my days currently just really doing a lot of learning.
PAIGE: All right. So I will admit, I am not familiar with RxJava. How is it different than normal Java?
CAROLYN: It deals with like streaming data and so it’s really good for when you’re trying to chain things together without, you know, the data might not be available yet.
PAIGE: Oh, okay. So it’s Java non-blocking?
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: Cool. You can probably continue explaining that for the audience.
ANGELA: And me.
PAIGE: Oh yeah.
CAROLYN: Well I’m still wrapping, I was just, like, so I, earlier this year did an online Android boot camp while I was still doing my data job and managing the data team and just sort of doing 20 things at once. And now, once I started to feel like I really got a foothold in Java, we decided to use RxJava and now I’m relearning a lot of things. So it’s still, I’m still feeling like I’m in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language. So I’m definitely, it’s made me actually have this huge respect for Netflix, because they are the ones that wrote the Android library for it and they’re just doing so much cool stuff over there. And they have a lot of good tutorials about it. So I definitely recommend, there’s a podcast about it and the head at Netflix is talking about RxJava. It’s really interesting. So I can add that to the show links for you guys too.
PAIGE: Netflix is really interesting because they, essentially their stack, they’re really stack agnostic where they look at their teams and they say do what you need to do to get your job done. And find the best way to do it. So I know that they have angular, amber, you know, they have imbedded team. The have the RxJava team and they all just kind of talk together because they really piece these pieces out. It’s really fascinating how they’re kind of making that work with being probably one of the biggest data companies in the world right now.
CAROLYN: Yeah. Well they’re definitely finding, you know, if there’s not a tool out there that meets their needs, they’ll build it. I have a friend who’s a doctor and I was explaining this concept to her and she was like this is so weird. She was like, why would they build it and open source it? You know. For me, personally, one of the things I actually stumbled upon in the tech community, which I didn’t really realize, is just the amount of support that people are willing, and companies are willing to give each other. I mean, there’s obviously companies that are competing and hate each other, but at the same time, I’m sure if you got their engineers together they would talk shop and share things they’re doing and it’s really cool. When I decided to be an engineer, late last year, I had so many people that were giving me free materials and helping me and the tech community, like every night of the week you can go to a meetup and have dinner and meet people and have people help you. Which was sort of a happy accident to find out about the tech community in general.
PAIGE: Yeah. I totally love that. And I love that it comes out of some of our roots of open source and being able to reach out and touch each other’s projects and just help out. I was listening to a podcast recently, ironically, and they were talking about how they’d opened sourced their website, kind of, It’s a paid service. The guy was like, I”m shocked because every week we get somebody who just pops in and was like hey I forked your website and made this change, because I found this problem and here it is back. And this guy that fix things is a paid customer of theirs, but he’s still jumping in to fix things for the company. It’s just like-
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: Really awesome.
CAROLYN: Yeah. Actually, the boot camp that I did, um, is Code Path, which is a link in the show notes. And what they do is they go out to companies and do consulting and then they also have a boot camp if you are an engineer that you can, if you’re already two or three years in you can go. So I wasn’t like a candidate to be part of their boot camp. And even part of the consulting, my company said they’d pay for it, but they said you really need to learn Java before you do this boot camp. So they gave me all the materials for free. And they just said I could learn it on my own, which was pretty awesome. And had calls with me and sort of got me started on my path, just totally pro bono, which is really awesome.
ANGELA: That is really awesome.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: Very cool. Okay. So as a developer, I have to ask, how is it that it was SQL that grabbed your attention, because most developers I know just absolutely hate working in SQL, like we will avoid it like the plague. I actually kind of got my start in SQL as well, so I do like it, but most people I talk to they’re like I love all this web stuff, please don’t make me write SQL.
CAROLYN: Yeah, so what’s funny is the engineers on my team, when I see the SQL queries are writing I’m like, I’m so happy because that’s a place I can teach them and be like whoa this is not good. So what happened was, I was working for Williams Sonoma, which is, they also own Pottery Barn and they run it as this big monolithic company where they don’t really care if people are efficient and they would be perfectly happy with people just entering data all day instead of making efficient processes or systems. It was my first job out of college so I didn’t really know that life didn’t really have to be like that. So I was spending a lot of time manually going in and doing things and I just so happened to meet someone in my company named Mark Grassgob [ph] who really opened the door for me. He’s like just learn SQL and you can do this job that took you all day, you can do it in like 20 minutes. So it was more just a fact of me being like this is pretty powerful. These people are really living in the dark ages. So we literally wrote a script that would do our jobs for you. We called it magic hands. And then we’d go to coffee and no one that i worked for really — they just wanted us to get the work done. They didn’t know that we could eliminate everyone’s jobs and we’re like — we called it magic hands. It was so funny. We’d unleash magic hands on three computers and then realize oh the system couldn’t take that much input so we’d bring it down to two. And then it would enter in a price of a million dollars for a couch instead of $1,000 or something and so we’d get a call from like, you know, tech team in India overnight when something process blew up, so we definitely had to fine tune magic hands. Then I moved over to the technical team after that, because they sort of saw she can actually be on this team and do this without having really a background. And then once I moved into data, it’s like SQL is king no matter what anyone says about big data and all these big data tools. It really, the backbone of everything is really SQL. So learning how to do efficient queries will make your job so much happier. If you write SQL wrong you’re going to give people wrong answers. So on the data side, you know, SQL just, to me, just made so much sense. But I guess it was sort of the first real programming I ever got my hands on. I love it.
PAIGE: I actually have had a couple friends recently who have asked me, because I kind of learned SQL the hard way by just throwing my head against Access, which is probably the worst interface ever.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: But do you have any good recommendations for books for online resources for SQL, because it’s kind of like this weird black hole where i can learn almost everything else online and I can’t seem to find anything good for SQL.
CAROLYN: The thing about SQL is that you will not be good at it. You will not really get your hands around it until you actually use it. So it’s one of those things where you need access to a dataset and you need questions to answer and then you’ll get it. So there are resources out there. I actually, when I was hiring data analyst as a manager I just created my own dataset and posted it for people and then had them answer some questions to show me they knew SQL or not. It’s really a learning by doing kind of thing. Which I guess most things are. But if you don’t have an interesting dataset to work with and you’re not trying to solve interesting problems, you’re just never going to pick it up. But I haven’t really found, there are available datasets out there and as bad as Access is and it gives you the graphical interface, don’t use that, you need to actually physically write it out. If you use Access, if you get access to a dataset dump it into Access and then use the, just handwriting the SQL, you know, you’ll get it.
PAIGE: Yeah, totally.
ANGELA: So in the form that you filled out before the show you said that you’re still trying to figure out why you never thought to be an engineer before.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
ANGELA: I think there’s a lot of people that don’t know that the way their personality and skills would make them perfect for a position. What would you recommend people do to figure out what best to be or do or try?
CAROLYN: I’ve been thinking about his a lot, actually. When I was younger, I grew up in San Diego and it was very much a beach culture, like very dude broey. It wasn’t cool to be smart when I was a kid. That’s how I felt. I was networking the internet in my parent’s house, like running the wireless, created their wireless, and I was one of the first people on Napster stealing music and creating CDs. I had this little computer in my room and my friends would come over and they’d be in their bikinis like beep, beep, let’s go to the beach. Did you make us CDs? I’m just like, you know, like stealing music off the internet. But to me, it was like, I mean this is like 1998 so I was really probably one of 10,000 people doing this.
PAIGE: We might have shared that stolen music together.
ANGELA: Yeah, I was just going to say, yeah 1998, that was golden year too for Napster and WinAmp.
CAROLYN: Yeah, totally.
PAIGE: It’s really kicks the llama’s ass.
ANGELA: Yeah.
CAROLYN: But for some reason it never crossed my mind that I was really good at this. I was way more interested in it than any of my friends. But instead I just was like, I’m just going to go to the beach and we’re going to try to get beer and do all these things. And I’m trying to figure out why it never crossed my mind to do that. But I also think it was a different time and technology wasn’t, people weren’t talking about technology. People weren’t interested in talking about apps. You know, like 1 in 20 people had a cell phone back then.
ANGELA: Right.
CAROLYN: So I think maybe it was just kind of like that time. When I went to college I was a business major and I thought I would just do business. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I think I had all the tools and I knew that i loved computers and I loved building things, but I never really had someone set me down. I never really had that career thought. I just sort of followed the path that I thought was laid out. And it really wasn’t until like mid last year that I thought I could really be an engineer and do it. It was really — what sort of tipped me was all these boot camps coming out and people just going and doing it. I had this deep — this thought of what would I do if I could do anything and I wasn’t scared to do it? To me, engineering was it. Lookout was incredibly supportive and let me move teams, which was really great and sort of a rare find in a company that would support someone to do this. So I got really lucky. But, you know, I think now with Women Who Code and a lot of organizations asking these questions of why women aren’t engineers, I think it’s because no one ever asked me and I never asked myself. And now that it’s sort of becoming the norm, you know, I’m hoping that more women will sort of naturally follow the path to be an engineer, because I think if there would have been more of that growing up that I probably would have found that path earlier.
PAIGE: That’s actually a part of why we started the podcast is because, you know, you say oh it was a different time then. And it was actually my conversation with a 16 year old that spawned me to start this, because I had this conversation and the 16 year old is good at math, enjoyed science, liked tech stuff, you know, didn’t do the assembling computers thing because nobody really do that anymore. But I was like, well have you considered being a programer? And she was like, no that’s for boys, right? And I was like, whoa.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: And this was last year.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: But I do think it’s changing. I think organizations like Women Who Code Girl Develop It, Chick Tech, all these different things are kind of getting in there and saying hey guys, or hey ladies you can do this too. And there’s no reason, like — like I like to say, girls type just as well as boys.
ANGELA: So I haven’t been to a boot camp, but it seems like that might be, aside from trying to join Women Who Code or another place like that that would support you, but the boot camp might help you. Is it like a conference where you can go and listen or watch different parts of development?
CAROLYN: I did a lot of research on boot camps at the end of last year and there’s some good and — there’s a lot of good, but there’s also a lot of bad. You can’t expect to just go somewhere for three months and then come out and be a fully fledged engineer and be ready to work, you know. So this boot camp is just a once a week for two hours for eight weeks kind of thing. Or I think it’s twice a week for two hours for eight weeks. But they are teaching mobile development to people who are already engineers. They just gave me — they record their lectures and they have all their assignments online and they just gave me access to their materials so I could write — I could work on apps on my own. I’d say it definitely took me a lot longer to get through it and I ended up just doing the parts of the boot camp that really applied to what I”de be working on at Lookout so I could just get up to speed faster, but, you know, their boot camp, there would be like a week of work would take me three weeks or something just to get done. Definitely was like, it took me a while to get through it. But it really is, I couldn’t say enough good things about Code Path. They do some really cool stuff. And they’re really smart guys. Actually, all men, but they do have a lot of women that go to their boot camps, so.
PAIGE: There’s definitely a really wide range of what we’re calling a boot camp right now. We have Codepath which is this kind of part-time thing. ANd there will be other online part-time things. And then there’s even in-person part-time things where you can go in the evenings and it’s a full five days a week. The boot camp that I worked out of is full five days a week. It’s a 16 week program if you do it at night or a 12 week program if you do it in the day. And it is full stack development. You go from the front end all the way through the back end. And I think that’s probably the most common is that it’s essentially two to three months. Some of them go out as far as six months of get in there, get your hands in code, have a portfolio at the end kind of a thing. But agree with you, Carolyn, that you can’t go into a boot camp expecting to come out the other end like a full fledged developer unless you work your butt off. And there are companies hiring beginners. I think that the market is getting a little bit saturated, because there are so many boot camps.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: I’m in Portland, it’s a fairly small city, and I think right now we have five boot camps.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: And one of them is turning out two classes of 60 people each every 10 weeks.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: So it’s getting a bit saturated, but the market is still there.
CAROLYN: Yeah, and so I have friends in San Francisco that are recruiters and when I was switching over they were like whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t do boot camp. Don’t do it. We can’t hire people out of boot camps. There’s like 1 out of 20 that are hireable, you know. And so I was like, okay. And I had some talks with them and they were like, you have to — if you’re going to do a boot camp you also have to have another strategy of how you’re still going to become and engineer, you know. You do the boot camp but where are you going to — who is going to take you on as a junior developer? You need to have all those things sort of lined up.
ANGELA: Right.
CAROLYN: Or else you’re just going to do the boot camp and then go do something else.
PAIGE: Yeah. And I think that there are some things coming into the market that are trying to fill that. There’s a couple places like Thoughtbot has apprenticeship programs. A couple of the other bigger dev shops have that where you can kind of transition from beginner into intermediate. And then there’s some online stuff like Think Full or Upcase where you can kind of build those skills after boot camp. And, of course, I’m always a fan; I think the biggest thing in our industry and most industries is mentorship. Like finding a mentor. Finding those people and going out and shaking hands.
ANGELA: Which you’d likely find at Women Who Code or Meetups or-
PAIGE: Totally.
ANGELA: The social aspect of it.
PAIGE: Meatspace as we like to call it.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: For nerd speak.
ANGELA: Whenever I hear meetspace I picture M-E-A-T.
PAIGE: That’s what it means.
ANGELA: Oh. Not M-E-E-T?
PAIGE: No. It’s it’s M-E-A-T.
ANGELA: Oh.
PAIGE: Meatspace.
ANGELA: Why?
PAIGE: Because we’re nerds and it’s not digital, so it’s fleshy, so it’s meat.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh. Okay. Interesting. Okay.
PAIGE: Sorry.
ANGELA: Wow, that’s a great, I’m glad, okay. Continue with the interview.
PAIGE: Yeah. So you talked a little bit. You’ve moved over to the Android team. What’s fun and what’s hard about Android? I haven’t really dug in on Android development. I’ve done some iOS.
CAROLYN: What’s really fun about Android is, you know, day one you can open up your Android Studio and download the STK and create a page. It has like a button, you know, and you can click the button and it can like play a song. You can do that in two days. You can publish it to the app store. You could put it on your phone. There’s definitely this — you can hit and API and pull data back. You know, you could do that in a couple days, learn all that from scratch. So there’s a very easy sort of, like, you know, there’s a link on Learning to Code in the notes where it’s a graph of — at first you, like, peek. It’s like a honeymoon at first. ANd everything seems really easy, but as you sort of start to unfold things, Android is really complicated and there’s 9,000 versions of Android that people are running out there and different sized devices and tablets and people are going to be using your app only on Wifi, and there’s so many things to think about. As you want to do more, you get royally confused very quickly. So it’s cool to just sort of get up and running and get started, but there’s a lot to learn. There’s things you have to think about like battery usage and memory and all these things that you don’t really deal with if you’re a web developer. So it’s definitely a lot to get started. I work on a team where there’s a lot of senior engineers and a lot of people that really know what’s going on, so it’s like, it’s fun but it’s also — you know, you take some hits to your ego a little bit, because I feel like I used to know everything about the data warehouse and stepping into something where you don’t know what’s going on and you really have to feel your way through it, it can be a shot to your ego and how you feel about yourself. I always say, like, sometimes i feel like Tom Hanks, like when I get code reviews, like in a League of Their Own where he’s like, “There’s no crying in baseball.”
PAIGE: Uh-huh.
CAROLYN: Like, I literally have to tell myself, there’s no crying in coding when I get a lot of comments on a code review or I just totally, like — it’s a lot of falling down. A lot.
PAIGE: I’m so glad I’m not the only person that says, there’s no crying in coding.
CAROLYN: Yes, I say that to myself all the time.
PAIGE: Me too.
CAROLYN: It makes me feel better, because at least I’m out there. I’m out there and I”m like, they’re always like, oh no you’re doing really, really good, you just have this — where you just want — I want to be — I don’t want to say, I want to be perfect, but I want to be contributing and I don’t — I want to be getting things done and moving forward and writing really good code and you’re not going to do that when you move into engineering for like a year or two, you know. So just setting those expectations. You just have to lower your expectations for yourself a little bit.
PAIGE: Yeah. I think — this is a talk that I have with a lot of — I meet a lot of junior developers through Women Who Code and explaining to them, like listen I”ve been doing coding for a lot of years as a professional now, and there’s rarely a week that goes by where I don’t go, wow I feel like I know nothing.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: I”m totally Jon Snow. It’s not fun.
CAROLYN: But then when I share that feeling with other developers they’re like, welcome to being an engineer.
PAIGE: Yep, exactly.
CAROLYN: That’s what everyone says to me. They’re like oh you were frustrated all day and the last 10 minutes of your day everything made sense and you got it to run, like that’s your life.
PAIGE: Uh-huh.
CAROLYN: And I kind of love that. Like, personally. I actually really love that. I love working all day on a problem . To me, the day goes by in 30 minutes to me, even if I want to cry sometimes. It’s fun and I feel like I’m using more of my brain than I ever did before.
PAIGE: Yeah, it’s like 30 minutes of success after an entire day of the crying game.
CAROLYN: Yeah.
PAIGE: It’s totally, it’s where you’re at. And I think that knowing that going in, I like to say that programmers need to be eternally optimistic because it will work this time, I swear.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember you can find a full transcription of this show over in the show notes at JupiterBroadcasting.com. YOu can also subscribe to the RSS feeds.
PAIGE: And while you’re there you could also reach out to us on the contact form. Let us know what you think about the show or any guests you might like to hear. Don’t forget, we’re also on iTunes and if you have a moment leave a review so we know how we’re doing and how we can improve the show. If you’d like to reach out to Angela and I directly, you can use WTR@JupiterBroadcasting.com for an email or check us at at Twitter, @HeyWTR. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post No Crying In Coding | WTR 39 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The Price Isn’t Right | CR 167

chris — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:10:16 +0000

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Developers are excited by Google’s announcement that Android will support Vulkan. We explain what Vulkan is, the issues developers face around openGL, & why Mike is a bit skeptical.

Plus market data suggest we’ve reached peak iPad & tablets are not selling. Is it worth creating anything but consumption based apps for tablets? We’ll debate.

Plus some audience submitted topics, Apple’s 30% cut, feedback & more!

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Google's adoption of #Vulkan for Android graphics should ensure that all Linux-based platforms standardize on Vulkan. Yay Google!

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) August 10, 2015

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The post The Price Isn't Right | CR 167 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hamburger Non-Helper | CR 166

chris — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 14:13:04 +0000

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The big debate over today’s biggest UI compromise comes to life, Microsoft open sources its iOS-apps-on-Windows compatibility layer, the process of evaluating a new language, plus a book recommendation & more!

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Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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The post Hamburger Non-Helper | CR 166 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.