More quick links

More of what caught my attention lately:

• "Make infinite computing resources available internally ... Give teams the resources they need to experiment ... All employees should be limited only by their ability rather than an absence of resources or an inability to argue convincingly for more." ([1] [2])
  
  
• "Accept that failures will always happen and guard ... [against] cascading failures by purposefully causing failures" ([1] [2])
  
  
• "The importance of Netflix’s recommendation engine is actually underestimated" ([1] [2])
  
  
• Courts are getting more skeptical about software patents ([1])
  
  
• Nice way of putting it: "The prevailing business culture in the banking industry weakens and undermines the honesty norm" ([1] [2])
  
  
• "[On] the overcrowded, overstuffed, slow-loading web, you are bound to see a carnival of pop-ups and interstitials — interim ad pages served up before or after your desired content — and scammy come-ons daring you to click. Is it any wonder, really, that this place is dying?" ([1])
  
  
• A very effective social engineering attack "compromised the accounts of C-level executives, legal counsel, regulatory and compliance personnel, scientists, and advisors of more than 100 [major] companies" ([1])
  
  
• An 11 hour Microsoft Azure cloud service outage that impacted just about everyone using it worldwide, including internal users like MSN.com and Xbox Live ([1])
  
  
• Stack traces at arbitrary break points in Google's cloud services running live with near zero overhead ([1] [2])
  
  
• Free SSL certificates (for HTTPS) from a non-profit out of EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, and Akamai ([1])
  
  
• The journal Nature makes its papers free for everyone to read ([1] [2])
  
  
• Combining neural networks like components yields new breakthroughs ([1] [2])
  
  
• Robotics guru Rodney Brooks says, "Relax. Chill ... [The press has a] misunderstanding of how far we really are from having volitional or intentional artificially intelligent beings." ([1])
  
  
• Undersea drones are enabling new feats: "The first time ... the black sea devil anglerfish ... has been filmed alive and in its natural habitat" ([1])
  
  
• Bats jam the sonor of other bats when they're both trying to catch the same insect. It's like a dogfight up there. ([1])
  
  
• Great tutorial on CSS and HTML just launched by Khan Academy and jQuery's John Resig ([1])
  
  
• Fun visualization of the periodic table by how common the elements are in the earth's crust, ocean, human body, and sun ([1])
  
  
• Hilarious parody of the Amazon Echo promotional video ([1])
  
  
• South Park has a surprisingly good (and funny) criticism of freemium games that gets all the issues correct around preying on people with a tendency toward compulsive gambling ([1] [2])
  
  
• Great Dilbert comic on how engineers think of marketing ([1])
  
  
• Good Xkcd comic on over-optimization ([1])
  
  
• Loved this SMBC comic: "He said I wasn't very good at math" ([1])