Programming

There has been intense excitement in recent years around activities labeled "data science," "big data," and "analytics." However, the lack of clarity around these terms and, particularly, around the skill sets and capabilities of their practitioners has led to inefficient communication between "data scientists" and the organizations requiring their services. This lack of clarity has frequently led to missed opportunities. To address this issue, we surveyed several hundred practitioners via the Web to explore the varieties of skills, experiences, and viewpoints in the emerging data science community. We used dimensionality reduction techniques to divide potential data scientists into five categories based on their self-ranked skill sets (Statistics, Math/Operations Research, Business, Programming, and Machine Learning/Big Data), and four categories based on their self-identification (Data Researchers, Data Businesspeople, Data Engineers, and Data Creatives). Further examining the respondents based on their division into these categories provided additional insights into the types of professional activities, educational background, and even scale of data used by different types of Data Scientists.In this report, we combine our results with insights and data from others to provide a better understanding of the diversity of practitioners, and to argue for the value of clearer communication around roles, teams, and careers.

Benchmarks can reveal the truth – well, some of the truth – about technologies. A well-constructed benchmark can provide a way to compare performance, reliability and other metrics that can make a difference in comparing product quality and effectiveness. But you have to look closely at what a benchmark is measuring and how it was run – and, even then, take its results with a large grain of salt. Here’s how to approach benchmarks and their touted results.

I have finally managed to understand one of the most unusual databases of today, Datomic, and would like to share it with you.

Not all systems are based on events or facts. In some problem spaces events make complete sense; they are about facts that are happening over periods of time. But a lot of systems are instead focused on information that flow through a process, Greg Young explained at DDD Exchange Day in London last week, using handling of a mortgage application inside a bank as an example. By Jan Stenberg

We’re pleased to announce Composer support for PHP applications. This has been one of our most requested features, and should make it even easier for you to manage your apps. If you’re already using Composer, you can dive right in. If not, now is a great time to try it out. We recommend Composer for all PHP apps! What is Composer? Composer is a popular dependency manager for PHP. With it, you can specify project dependencies in a composer.json file and Composer will automatically handle the rest. For more information about Composer, take a look at the project website. Why is It Useful? Composer allows you to manage third-party dependencies separate from your code, decluttering your repository. What’s more, it makes updating your dependencies a snap. Just run composer update and Composer will fetch the latest compatible versions. How Can I Use It? Using Composer with Engine Yard is very simple. We’ll detect the presence of a composer.lock file in your repository, and automatically install your app’s dependencies. To get started with Composer for Engine Yard, take a look at the documentation. The post Announcing Composer Support appeared first on Engine Yard Developer Blog.

CVE DescriptionCVSSv2 Base ScoreComponentProduct and Resolution CVE-2011-1528 Improper Input Validation vulnerability 7.8 Kerberos Solaris 11.1 11.1 CVE-2011-1529 Improper Input Validation vulnerability 7.8 This notification describes vulnerabilities fixed in third-party components that are... [Read More]

Games for Change has announced that the game concept Safe Sex with Friends is the winner of the 2013 SEXECT.ORG Game Design Competition. The three finalists were Safe Sex with Friends, SexEd Super Task Force, and Check/Mate. After hearing presentations from all three finalists (during the 10th Annual Games for Change Festival) and thoughtful deliberation by jurors (Matt Parker, Lana Dakan, Lucinda Holt, and Naomi Clark,) Safe Sex with Friends was selected as the winning game.read more

A Nokia Lumia smartphone brought you by Huawei? The idea might seem preposterous, but Richard Yu — chairman of the Chinese manufacturer's consumer business unit — says his company is "considering" such acquisitions. "Maybe the combination has some synergies," Yu told The Financial Times. Of course, he quickly clarified that any deal hinges on Nokia's willingness to be bought out. "We are open-minded," Yu said. Nokia's stock jumped upward as news of the executive's unprompted remarks spread. The struggling handset maker has given no indication it's for sale, however. In fact, Nokia is in the midst of a significant hardware push, having just released the Lumia 925 and Lumia 928; an "EOS" Windows Phone featuring a 41-megapixel camera is... Continue reading…

JavaOne San Francisco September 22 - 26, 2013 "You will be in geek heaven: great minds getting together and talking about technology 12 hours a day" explains TailTarget Chief Scientist Fabiane Bizinella Nardon, a long-time speaker at JavaOne. Machine-to-machine communications,... [Read More]

Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) was released over a year ago and since then there has been tremendous interest and adoption.  There’s plenty of talks that explain the fundamentals of PXC, but we’re starting to reach a threshold where it’s easier to find folks with PXC in production and such the need for more advanced talks has arisen.As such, I wanted to shift gears from the standard introductory talk and focus instead more on some key questions/issues/pain-points for those with PXC in production already.   As such, I’m giving a webinar entitled Percona XtraDB Cluster Operations on June 26th 2013 from 10-11AM PDT.  Topics will include:Backups from the clusterAvoiding SSTFlow ControlWhat and How to MonitorTuning best practicesThis webinar is not meant to necessarily be exhaustive, but to cover key topics that administrators of PXC will commonly ask about.  You can register for the webinar here.The post MySQL Webinar: Percona XtraDB Cluster Operations, June 26 appeared first on MySQL Performance Blog.