Making software intelligible in a biweekly podcast. New episodes every other Monday morning. Hosts @davekopec & @beccajayed https://xitter.cf/t.co/05yIdaS07h
Joined August 2020
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Shareware was an important software distribution mechanism for decades, and @mossrc's recent book, "Shareware Heroes," finally gives it its due.
In our latest episode we had the privilege of interviewing Richard about the history and impact of shareware.
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Computer Science from Scratch: Building Interpreters, Art, Emulators, and ML in Python comes out today!
This is the perfect book for an intermediate Python programmer who wants to learn more about the layers of the software stack under their programs.
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The Classic Mac OS refers to the operating system that Apple Macintosh computers ran from 1984 to 2001 (System 1 to Mac OS 9).
Prolific Classic Mac OS hacker, Elliot Nunn, joins us to discuss how it worked at a technical level.
#MARCHintosh
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The incident last month involving CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor software was according to some people, the most impactful computer bug of all time. In this episode we explain the bug, why it happened, and its larger implications.
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We discuss the ethical and economic implications of ad blockers.
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What is Machine Learning?
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Software that is old and no longer commercially available is termed "abandonware." Is it legal and ethical to download abandonware?
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Grace Hopper was an iconic computer scientist. She created the first programming language, FLOW-MATIC, with English-like syntax, making computers accessible to people who were not mathematicians or technicians. We explore her life and accomplishments.
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The democratization of computing began with the introduction of BASIC alongside the Dartmouth Time Sharing System in 1964. Amazingly, a team of undergraduate students @dartmouth led by math professors John Kemeny & Thomas Kurtz were key to the development.
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When a sophisticated machine learning model is trained, say one for generative AI, often a large amount of copyrighted material is used in the data set. Is that legal? If so, why?
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This week we looked at the Google Search Antitrust lawsuit. What's at issue and why does it matter? We also weigh-in on whether we feel the government's case has merit.
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Happy Halloween! 🎃
Now here's something truly scary: Google made 78% of its revenue last quarter (~$60 billion) by harvesting your data and showing you ads. 📈
We explain the categories of their revenue & the regional breakdown in our latest episode. 🎧
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Our 2020 episode on iOS vs. Android still holds up.
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What is a Sandbox?
Isolation is key.
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In the month of September we hit about 10,000 listens in a single month for the first time. Thanks to all of our listeners!
Caches are little bits of fast memory that improve performance throughout hardware and software. In this episode we explain what they are and where they're typically used.
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In our latest episode we discussed hash tables. What are they used for and how do they work?
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Understanding open source licenses is critical if you're a software developer. What are your rights and responsibilities when you incorporate an open source library in your program?
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FreeBSD, now 30 years old, is perhaps the most important operating system that most people have never heard of.
In this episode we explain what it is, why folks sometimes deploy it instead of Linux, and discuss some surprising places it's found. #FreeBSD
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