Category: Friday Links

Friday Links: RDMS, Bitcoin, and Facebook

By Ashish Datta | Leave a Comment on Friday Links: RDMS, Bitcoin, and Facebook

Congrats! You’ve survived the first full work week of 2015. Hopefully your resolutions are still intact and if they’re not there’s always next year. Shockingly informational links ahead so hold on to your hats.

Are there any reasons to use PostgreSQL DB over MySQL DB?

PostgreSQL vs. MySQL is as close to a religious war as you’ll get in the database world. If you’re wondering about the pros and cons of PostgreSQL then check out this Quora thread. Read More >

Efficient Marketing Research for Startups Using Facebook Advertising

Market research is hard, especially when you’re on a budget. Luckily for you Facebook is a great underutilized tool to perform research and validate some hypotheses. Learn More >

Bitcoin: Looking forward to 2015

The price of Bitcoin might be falling off a cliff but there’s still big things ahead. adatta02 expands on a pmarca Tweetstorm to see what’s in store. Keep reading >

Friday Links: The PHP edition

By Ashish Datta | Leave a Comment on Friday Links: The PHP edition

Welcome to 2015! Hopefully everyone had a great New Years Eve and is gearing up for 2015. There’s been a slew of PHP related news over the last week or so and we’ve got it wrapped up just for you.

How we made editing Wikipedia twice as fast

The Wikipedia foundation switched to running HHVM and the results are nothing short of impressive. They’ve provided a full breakdown of the process, considerations, and results. Read More >

PHP’s new hashtable implementation

PHP7 is getting a new implementation for it’s venerable hashtable data structure. @nikita_ppv who wrote the new implementation explains the details of the PHP5 version and how the new one is better across the board. Read More >

PHP Install Statistics

Is the version of PHP you’re running secure? Statistically probably not. @ircmaxell runs the numbers to analyze what portion of PHP installs are probably running insecure versions.
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Friday Links: How the magic happens

By Ashish Datta | Leave a Comment on Friday Links: How the magic happens

Happy holidays to everyone! Hopefully the eggnog has been flowing freely and if you’re in the Northeast you’ve been enjoying the unusually warm weather. I’d been planning to post the usual link roundup but changed my mind. I ended up seeing The Imitation Game last night and it inspired me to do something different. The movie is definitely worth seeing and if you work in technology it illuminates a connection to a shared past that most of us don’t often think about. So continuing in this theme, here are four links that’ll help explain how the actual sausage gets made.

Church–Turing thesis

This is the big one. Developed independently by Church and Turing, and eventually formalized by Kleene this axiom serves as the foundation for computer science. It lays out a framework for computation and defines the limits of what problems can be computed.
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How does a computer chip work?

Skipping over a few decades of research (and vacuum tubes) puts us at modern microprocessors. Today microprocessors are found in basically every piece of consumer electronics including your TV, car, tablet, and obviously laptop. But how do these actually work? At a fundamental level, it’s not as complicated as you think.
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Why should I learn about compilers?

Now we’ve built a microprocessor but how do we do anything useful with it? You’ve probably heard people talk about “programming languages” and a compiler is the tool that makes them magical. Read on to learn how a compiler translates text written by humans into instructions a machine can understand.
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How Does the Internet Work?

Ok we’ve established what can be computed, how processors work, and how we program them. Now we just need to get online. Unfortunately, it’s a morass of acronyms but the pieces generally fit together logically.
Read Now >

Friday Links: Obama codes, MSFT <3 BTC, and hacked k-cups

By Ashish Datta | Leave a Comment on Friday Links: Obama codes, MSFT <3 BTC, and hacked k-cups

It rained, it snowed, but hey it’s Friday! Grab some beers and snack on some links.

Now you can exchange bitcoins to buy apps, games, and more at Microsoft

It’s a post Ballmer world and Microsoft is making big moves. Starting immediately, you can use Bitcoin to fund your Microsoft account to buy apps and Xbox content. Get the details >

Async – Cooperative Multitasking for Hack

Evaluating Facebook’s new Hack programming language? Well check out how it supports cooperative multitasking. Hint: It’s pretty sweet. Read more >

Keurig 2.0 DRM Bypass

Have a shiny new Keurig 2.0 but don’t want to pay for the premium K-cups? Well KeurigHack has you covered. Get some scotch tape and drink those cups. Details here

Obama Becomes First President to Write a Computer Program

In support of CS education and the “Hour of code” project, President Obama wrote some Javascript. Rumor has it a fist bump was also involved. Read the story >