Interesting Snippets from 2017-10-05

• WebAIM: History of the browser user-agent string

  In the beginning there was NCSA Mosaic, and Mosaic called itself NCSA_Mosaic/2.0 (Windows 3.1), and Mosaic displayed pictures along with text, and there was much rejoicing.

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Interesting Snippets from 2017-10-03

• The Coming Software Apocalypse - The Atlantic

  It’s been said that software is “eating the world.” More and more, critical systems that were once controlled mechanically, or by people, are coming to depend on code. This was perhaps never clearer than in the summer of 2015, when on a single day, United Airlines grounded its fleet because of a problem with its departure-management system; trading was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange after an upgrade; the front page of The Wall Street Journal’s website crashed; and Seattle’s 911 system went down again, this time because a different router failed. The simultaneous failure of so many software systems smelled at first of a coordinated cyberattack. Almost more frightening was the realization, late in the day, that it was just a coincidence.

• dgsh — directed graph shell

  The directed graph shell, dgsh (pronounced /dæɡʃ/ — dagsh), provides an expressive way to construct sophisticated and efficient big data set and stream processing pipelines using existing Unix tools as well as custom-built components. It is a Unix-style shell (based on bash) allowing the specification of pipelines with non-linear non-uniform operations. These form a directed acyclic process graph, which is typically executed by multiple processor cores, thus increasing the operation's processing throughput.

• Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

  When people ask me for tech career advice I find it helpful to lay out the three paths I’ve encountered most in my career: founder, executive, and employee. I’m leaving out investor because the best path to being an investor that I’ve seen starts with being successful (or failing) at one of these three first.

• Rich Geldreich's Tech And Programmer Culture Blog: Things learned while running your own self-funded startup

  Anyhow, running your own company has a number of additional challenges. There are no bi-weekly paychecks, no free lunches, no PTO, no yearly Hawaiian vacation, and no on-site lawyers. You are now in the real world, and you're leaving the high school like corporate drama behind. Everything, including staying financially solvent, is now your responsibility.

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