To do this, you need to install a modified version of Karabiner-Elements and edit the profile in ~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json
Full instructions: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/issues/8#issuecomment-279196849
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Clocking in
Today the tech world has been abuzz with the story of Ahmed Mohamed who has arrested for bringing a clock to school, and still hasn't gotten it back from police.
Whether it's racism, anti-Muslim sentient, or just the drive to criminalize and punish innocent behavior in the name of safety, the general consensus, at least among non conservatives, seems to be that reaction to him by his school and the police was way way out of line.
Mark Zuckerberg and Obama, as well as a host of luminaries and companies involved science and tech have reached out to show support for the boy. And that's good, and to be applauded.
But we in Tech are reacting to what feels like an egregious violation, and ignoring the fact that this is an issue that goes beyond one kid in Irving, Texas's experience. We have a job beyond just being nice to one kid.
First, while the specifics of this issue will likely be called into question, we have to acknowledge that children of color face harsher discipline in general, even for the same infractions. Not just high schoolers, even preschool black children face harsher punishment. This is in part because of increases in zero tolerance policies that have lead to even minor offenses leading to suspension, expulsion, or event arrest over minor offenses like truancy or smoking.
So first of all, discipline is unfair. However, second, tolerance is now a bad thing. I'm not sure what the argument is that says kicking out a kid for misbehaving teaches them to behave better. And doing it for minor actions seems ludicrous to me.
Many of us in tech and science grew up privileged. One of those privileges was likely that if we did something cool at home, we felt safe showing our teachers and mentors. If we did something problematic, our intentions, whether to cause harm or not, were considered. Now, that privilege likely wouldn't have been afforded to people of color... but the solution is not a broken system where we take that privilege away... we need schools and communities where we extend the privilege to tinker, to make, to receive the benefit of the doubt to everyone. Great minds that could be inventing better futures don't get the education they deserve, and everyone loses. But even if it's just a normal kid that doesn't get their education... someone that could work a job and be a good citizen might instead end up in prison.
It's not enough to do things for Mohamed. We need to do things to make life better, proactively, for young people who want to learn, bright or not. We should talk to PTA meetings and neighborhood groups about the freedom to make and tinker. We should write to our legislators and local politicians. Not that we have to do everything, but we should try to do something.
Like I said, we have a job. We want to disrupt things, make the world a better place, we need to think not just about server processes and operating systems, but about justice processes and school systems.
Whether it's racism, anti-Muslim sentient, or just the drive to criminalize and punish innocent behavior in the name of safety, the general consensus, at least among non conservatives, seems to be that reaction to him by his school and the police was way way out of line.
Mark Zuckerberg and Obama, as well as a host of luminaries and companies involved science and tech have reached out to show support for the boy. And that's good, and to be applauded.
But we in Tech are reacting to what feels like an egregious violation, and ignoring the fact that this is an issue that goes beyond one kid in Irving, Texas's experience. We have a job beyond just being nice to one kid.
First, while the specifics of this issue will likely be called into question, we have to acknowledge that children of color face harsher discipline in general, even for the same infractions. Not just high schoolers, even preschool black children face harsher punishment. This is in part because of increases in zero tolerance policies that have lead to even minor offenses leading to suspension, expulsion, or event arrest over minor offenses like truancy or smoking.
So first of all, discipline is unfair. However, second, tolerance is now a bad thing. I'm not sure what the argument is that says kicking out a kid for misbehaving teaches them to behave better. And doing it for minor actions seems ludicrous to me.
Many of us in tech and science grew up privileged. One of those privileges was likely that if we did something cool at home, we felt safe showing our teachers and mentors. If we did something problematic, our intentions, whether to cause harm or not, were considered. Now, that privilege likely wouldn't have been afforded to people of color... but the solution is not a broken system where we take that privilege away... we need schools and communities where we extend the privilege to tinker, to make, to receive the benefit of the doubt to everyone. Great minds that could be inventing better futures don't get the education they deserve, and everyone loses. But even if it's just a normal kid that doesn't get their education... someone that could work a job and be a good citizen might instead end up in prison.
It's not enough to do things for Mohamed. We need to do things to make life better, proactively, for young people who want to learn, bright or not. We should talk to PTA meetings and neighborhood groups about the freedom to make and tinker. We should write to our legislators and local politicians. Not that we have to do everything, but we should try to do something.
Like I said, we have a job. We want to disrupt things, make the world a better place, we need to think not just about server processes and operating systems, but about justice processes and school systems.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Fisher-Yates Shuffle, Reservoir Sampling, and Random permutations of N
I recently had a conversation with someone who introduced me to the concept of Reservoir Sampling, which is a technique of generation for a combination of k randomly selected elements when there are N elements total, where N is unknown or larger then available memory, and you must select elements without replacement.
Here's a version I just wrote:
That would look like:
That said, with reservoir, you won't have a random permutation of the elements. And shuffle uses extra memory if the length of the card pile is very long, and you only need some k cards.
Thus:
import random
arr = []
current = 0
while (current < return_count):
rand = random.randint(0, current)
if current < return_count:
arr.append(arr[rand])
arr[rand] = iterator.next()
current += 1
for item in iterator:
if rand <= return_count:
arr[rand] = item
current += 1
return arr
Here's a version I just wrote:
import random
"""
iterator is an Iterator/Generator object for a streamand N >= k
"""
def reservoir(iterator, return_count): arr = [] current = 0 for item in iterator: if current < return_count: arr.append(item) else: rand = random.randint(0, current) if rand <= return_count: arr[rand] = item current += 1 return arr
That would look like:
import random
def shuffle(cards): deck = [] current = 0 for card in cards: rand = random.randint(0, current) if rand != current: deck.append(deck[rand]) deck[rand] = card return deckThat said, with reservoir, you won't have a random permutation of the elements. And shuffle uses extra memory if the length of the card pile is very long, and you only need some k cards.
Thus:
import random
def resshuffle(iterator, return_count):arr = []
current = 0
while (current < return_count):
rand = random.randint(0, current)
if current < return_count:
arr.append(arr[rand])
arr[rand] = iterator.next()
current += 1
for item in iterator:
if rand <= return_count:
arr[rand] = item
current += 1
return arr
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Nurse Scheduling Problem and Optimization
I had an interview on Friday, and one of the questions has been on my mind, because I didn't really like how vague my answer was. It was presented as a design problem, but really it's a software engineering problem. And it's a problem that I might be working on, if hired.
It turns out that it's something of an instance of the Nurse Scheduling Problem. Nurses need to work a certain number of shifts, shouldn't have back to back shifts, should work about equally each week, then you have to consider different skill levels, shift preferences etc.
This isn't the exact question, of course... I'm not getting hired at a hospital. But considering I've been scheduling a lot of interviews, it strikes me that having software engineers do technical interviews of candidates is something of the same problem. Less busy, but still, a structure lots of people in tech can understand.
It's easy to think of additional constraints, either hard constraints which if violated make a schedule invalid, and soft constraints which can be used to rate valid solutions. Maybe you have an open office, and two people shouldn't interview simultaneously if they work next to each other. Soft constraint. Some people can interview for front end, some for back end, some for mobile, some for embedded, some for multiple. Maybe you have all of those at your company, and need to assign individuals to particular candidates. You may not give a good interview if you assign the embedded guy to interview someone to see if they actually know android development. Hard Constraint.
Let's say we have d developers who can interview, i individuals interviewing, and t time slots that a candidate says they are available and lets say we want to organize based on week.
Even with just d and i and the hard constraints, the naive solution will be in polynomial time. Now finding the optimal solution, with the soft constraints, the time slot issue... this is the nurse scheduling problem, and it's NP hard.
Imagine you are a manager assigning people, that's a lot of things to keep track of. Add in sick days, projects that are priorities, and a manual system is going to be pretty stressful and complicated.
So obviously I'm not looking for an optimal solution. But I've been thinking on heuristics that might be helpful.
Time slots where only one person is scheduled are easier to sub for.
Everyone may be equal, but multiple certifications can sub for more people, and can interview more people.
It strikes me that there are a variety of ways to simplify the problem. So I'll try to solve the general problem programmatically and handle corner cases in an adhoc manner.
list available time slots in a calendar. Have the the Candidates pick one time slot to commit to, then reschedule if needed. If a time slot overlaps, have a rough indication of interviewers available. Green for multiple interviewers, red for 1, disabled for 0.
Limit time slots. A morning slot and an afternoon slot. If none of the time slots work, the candidate can inform the company of when they are available by emailing.
Keep track of how many interviews a person does in a week, and when randomly selecting individuals, prefer selecting people who have done less.
I don't need to have an optimal solution, just a reasonably good one that makes finding workable solutions easier. And it's okay that I didn't have perfect answers. I don't need to design a perfect system, just one better then what they have currently. Optimization isn't always about finding the optimum way to do things. As long as you can make something better, you have improved it.
It turns out that it's something of an instance of the Nurse Scheduling Problem. Nurses need to work a certain number of shifts, shouldn't have back to back shifts, should work about equally each week, then you have to consider different skill levels, shift preferences etc.
This isn't the exact question, of course... I'm not getting hired at a hospital. But considering I've been scheduling a lot of interviews, it strikes me that having software engineers do technical interviews of candidates is something of the same problem. Less busy, but still, a structure lots of people in tech can understand.
It's easy to think of additional constraints, either hard constraints which if violated make a schedule invalid, and soft constraints which can be used to rate valid solutions. Maybe you have an open office, and two people shouldn't interview simultaneously if they work next to each other. Soft constraint. Some people can interview for front end, some for back end, some for mobile, some for embedded, some for multiple. Maybe you have all of those at your company, and need to assign individuals to particular candidates. You may not give a good interview if you assign the embedded guy to interview someone to see if they actually know android development. Hard Constraint.
Let's say we have d developers who can interview, i individuals interviewing, and t time slots that a candidate says they are available and lets say we want to organize based on week.
Even with just d and i and the hard constraints, the naive solution will be in polynomial time. Now finding the optimal solution, with the soft constraints, the time slot issue... this is the nurse scheduling problem, and it's NP hard.
Imagine you are a manager assigning people, that's a lot of things to keep track of. Add in sick days, projects that are priorities, and a manual system is going to be pretty stressful and complicated.
So obviously I'm not looking for an optimal solution. But I've been thinking on heuristics that might be helpful.
Time slots where only one person is scheduled are easier to sub for.
Everyone may be equal, but multiple certifications can sub for more people, and can interview more people.
It strikes me that there are a variety of ways to simplify the problem. So I'll try to solve the general problem programmatically and handle corner cases in an adhoc manner.
list available time slots in a calendar. Have the the Candidates pick one time slot to commit to, then reschedule if needed. If a time slot overlaps, have a rough indication of interviewers available. Green for multiple interviewers, red for 1, disabled for 0.
Limit time slots. A morning slot and an afternoon slot. If none of the time slots work, the candidate can inform the company of when they are available by emailing.
Keep track of how many interviews a person does in a week, and when randomly selecting individuals, prefer selecting people who have done less.
I don't need to have an optimal solution, just a reasonably good one that makes finding workable solutions easier. And it's okay that I didn't have perfect answers. I don't need to design a perfect system, just one better then what they have currently. Optimization isn't always about finding the optimum way to do things. As long as you can make something better, you have improved it.
Friday, December 5, 2014
A work flow for setting up front end development professionally on ubuntu
Introduction
I noticed that there wasn't a really good step by step guide for setting yourself up professionally to develop a web app from step 1 on Ubuntu. I'm a vim user, and setting vim up for javascript is a whole other post or two, but this should be editor agnostic. I don't know if this is perfect, for example I will probably add a test runner and test framework.Suggestions for things to add, especially test setup, are welcome.
- Karma and Jasmine for unit testing?
- Protractor and Selenium Web Driver for End to end testing?
Summary of steps
- Install Requirements to build nvm and git
- Install nvm
- Make your .bash_profile source nvm and install the stable version of nodejs
- Make your .bash_profile run nvm use stable
- Use npm to install yo, grunt-cli, and bower
- Run yo and install angular generator
- Run yo angular to generate angular
- Use grunt serve to display an example front page
- Use yo to add angular directives, controllers etc.
- Develop your app
1 Install Requirements to build nvm and git
We are installing nvm so we don't have a local version of node and don't have to constantly invoke sudo to install stuff with npm.First we install requirements to build nvm as well as download it:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev curl git-core2 Install nvm
You can use the very insecure and easy to hijack:curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.20.0/install.sh | bashChoose the Manual Install:
git clone https://github.com/creationix/nvm.git ~/.nvm && cd ~/.nvm && git checkout `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags`3 Make your .bash_profile source nvm and install the stable version of nodejs
add the following to your .bash_profileexport NVM_DIR="/home/lawrence/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
NVM_SYMLINK_CURRENT="true"run the following to install the latest stable version of node.
nvm install stable4 Make your .bash_profile run nvm use stable
Add the following to the bottom of your .bash_profile to have node always runningnvm use stable > /dev/nullrun nvm use stable in your shell and there you go.
5 Use npm to install yo, grunt-cli, and bower
simple:npm install --global yo bower grunt-cli6 Run yo and install angular generator
type yo at the command line and search for angular, then install it.yoWhat are grunt tasks? Minification of javascript files for example.
7 Run yo angular to generate angular
yo angular8 Use grunt serve to display an example front page
grunt serve9 Use yo to add angular directives, controllers etc.
run yo as needed.10 Develop your app
Simple enoughSaturday, October 5, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
Samsung Hackathon
This past Weekend I attended a Hackathon, my first, presented by Samsung, over at the PayPal Campus in San Jose. It had a variety of sponsors, including Immersion Haptics and PayPal.
The website was on http://hackathons.splashthat.com/
I thought I would comment on what I thought done right, and what could have been improved in my opinion.
First of all, it was a large and successful event, where 21 teams presented.
They fed us 4 meals over two days, and had snacks, candy, and drinks to boot. The food was plentiful, and there were vegetarian options, which was nice. There was plenty of food, and they didn't clear left overs away immediately, so I had a slice of pizza from lunch at 3 am, and mexican food from dinner after breakfast.
There was also keg of beer those over 21 could get a drink from with dinner. I don't know what type of beer, but it was tasty.
They opened up a bunch of rooms on two floors for our use in the building.
In fact, the staff, both the PayPal employees and the event staff were wonderful and welcoming. There were volunteers there, including one guy, I believe from Holland, who stayed the whole night and kept going. People from the company who were helping with the API stayed until 8, and were there in the morning.
There were people there willing to help with the APIs, (but see below).
They gave us phones to work on, in exchange for Driver licenses, and later, credit cards (no charge), so that we could keep the devices over night. This helped a lot, especially with the Chord API, since it is Samsung specific.
There were however a few things that I thought could have gone better. They didn't prevent me from enjoying the Hackathon, but I think the sponsors could have gotten more engagement from us with a few small changes.
The Chord API was hard to use in projects in Eclipse, and the Technical Evangelist suggested to multiple people that they base their project on the sample code for the chord demo, instead of showing how to include it. We ended up having to do that to get it working, and having to create a new repository to do so.
They also said that there were issues with the Emulator... this was true, since even on a separate wifi AP, we could only get the emulator to receive, not send.
The Chord API seemingly worked differently on different devices. Our app would crash the Note Phablet we were given, but not other phones. We also had issues with the same xml rendering certain items on one phone, and not on another, crashing depending on the order of devices, and updates triggered by Chord messages only running on one device.
Given that all the Phones were Samsung devices, this suggests app development across devices may require a lot of testing for idiosyncratic differences. Given the short timeline of the Hackathon, and our lack of experience with Android we were unable to fix several device specific issues before final submission, which effected the appearance of our final work.
The Immersion Haptic API was fairly easy to use in Eclipse. That said, there were no instructions for including it in the Android Studio beta, so we ended up switching to Eclipse from that. I did talk to someone passing out Immersion swag later in the day (see below) and mentioned this, and they said they would find out if there were Android Studio instructions in the pipeline, but I never saw them again, even when I went looking.
Not a huge thing, and understandable, but something they may want to look at in the future, when Android Studio and it's build system become the default for new developers and official documentation.
Also, I believe the Immersion Haptic API License requires you to mention them. It would have been nice if sample code/xml for this had been provided for the many teams who were new to Android.
They opened up rooms, which was good because there was a lot of crowding to start with, and the initial room had speakers playing music which a few of us found distracting. We were able to spread out, move furniture around, and nobody got upset with us. It's hard to find a room that will hold 700 + people, but I think they could have used video conferencing equipment in the rooms so that people didn't have to crowd into the initial room for announcements. Alternatively, they could have removed the tables and chairs to fit more people, and split us up for development.
PayPal wanted people to try their APIs, and a few teams did, (including the overall winner, Split, who had an awesome check splitting app).
However, the prizes were all for the Chord API or Immersion Haptics API. I think PayPal would have gotten more engagement if the prizes had mentioned using their API, or they had sponsored a prize themselves. Unfair, given all they did for us, but developers are going to focus on what the Hackathon instructions say, and the PayPal API wasn't mentioned until the opening announcements.
I didn't attempt to use it, so I am not sure that there were people from PayPal to help, but I think so. I did glance at the documentation, and it was very nice.
Some swag like T-Shirts for the Hackathon and from Immersion was given out to people who came early. But many people left after the first few hours meaning that the swag went to people who didn't necessarily engage with the Hackathon beyond showing up.
PayPal dumped a box of old swag on a table near the beginning of the day (10 am maybe?), and it went quickly. I did get a sweet multitool. But that could have been saved for people who engaged with the Hackathon, or even used as a Prize.
Immersion did give out cards with usb drives and copies of their software later in the day after many people had left. That was the right thing to do, waiting.
I would note that at least one team demoed an app for using the Chord API to notify friends about swag.
I personally had a great time. I learned a lot about Android development, quick prototyping, git, etc.
You can see our project on https://github.com/bdettmer/RockPaperMonsterHack
I am interesting in using all three API's in the future. I appreciated the effort it takes to run a Hackathon, and the cost. I only mention the above in the hope that
future Hackathons can be more productive for the companies.
#samsung #samsunghackathon #immersion #paypal
The website was on http://hackathons.splashthat.com/
I thought I would comment on what I thought done right, and what could have been improved in my opinion.
First of all, it was a large and successful event, where 21 teams presented.
They fed us 4 meals over two days, and had snacks, candy, and drinks to boot. The food was plentiful, and there were vegetarian options, which was nice. There was plenty of food, and they didn't clear left overs away immediately, so I had a slice of pizza from lunch at 3 am, and mexican food from dinner after breakfast.
There was also keg of beer those over 21 could get a drink from with dinner. I don't know what type of beer, but it was tasty.
They opened up a bunch of rooms on two floors for our use in the building.
In fact, the staff, both the PayPal employees and the event staff were wonderful and welcoming. There were volunteers there, including one guy, I believe from Holland, who stayed the whole night and kept going. People from the company who were helping with the API stayed until 8, and were there in the morning.
There were people there willing to help with the APIs, (but see below).
They gave us phones to work on, in exchange for Driver licenses, and later, credit cards (no charge), so that we could keep the devices over night. This helped a lot, especially with the Chord API, since it is Samsung specific.
There were however a few things that I thought could have gone better. They didn't prevent me from enjoying the Hackathon, but I think the sponsors could have gotten more engagement from us with a few small changes.
API issues, Rooms and Prizes
First of all, a large focus of the Hackathon was on the Samsung Chord API. The Chord API didn't work over the PayPal wifi network. That should have been tested to begin with, fixed if possible, or more widely announced otherwise. We were able to get it working over wifi direct, but we could have been told to do that.The Chord API was hard to use in projects in Eclipse, and the Technical Evangelist suggested to multiple people that they base their project on the sample code for the chord demo, instead of showing how to include it. We ended up having to do that to get it working, and having to create a new repository to do so.
They also said that there were issues with the Emulator... this was true, since even on a separate wifi AP, we could only get the emulator to receive, not send.
The Chord API seemingly worked differently on different devices. Our app would crash the Note Phablet we were given, but not other phones. We also had issues with the same xml rendering certain items on one phone, and not on another, crashing depending on the order of devices, and updates triggered by Chord messages only running on one device.
Given that all the Phones were Samsung devices, this suggests app development across devices may require a lot of testing for idiosyncratic differences. Given the short timeline of the Hackathon, and our lack of experience with Android we were unable to fix several device specific issues before final submission, which effected the appearance of our final work.
The Immersion Haptic API was fairly easy to use in Eclipse. That said, there were no instructions for including it in the Android Studio beta, so we ended up switching to Eclipse from that. I did talk to someone passing out Immersion swag later in the day (see below) and mentioned this, and they said they would find out if there were Android Studio instructions in the pipeline, but I never saw them again, even when I went looking.
Not a huge thing, and understandable, but something they may want to look at in the future, when Android Studio and it's build system become the default for new developers and official documentation.
Also, I believe the Immersion Haptic API License requires you to mention them. It would have been nice if sample code/xml for this had been provided for the many teams who were new to Android.
They opened up rooms, which was good because there was a lot of crowding to start with, and the initial room had speakers playing music which a few of us found distracting. We were able to spread out, move furniture around, and nobody got upset with us. It's hard to find a room that will hold 700 + people, but I think they could have used video conferencing equipment in the rooms so that people didn't have to crowd into the initial room for announcements. Alternatively, they could have removed the tables and chairs to fit more people, and split us up for development.
However, the prizes were all for the Chord API or Immersion Haptics API. I think PayPal would have gotten more engagement if the prizes had mentioned using their API, or they had sponsored a prize themselves. Unfair, given all they did for us, but developers are going to focus on what the Hackathon instructions say, and the PayPal API wasn't mentioned until the opening announcements.
I didn't attempt to use it, so I am not sure that there were people from PayPal to help, but I think so. I did glance at the documentation, and it was very nice.
Swag
Swag, IMHO should promote the company to interested parties.
PayPal dumped a box of old swag on a table near the beginning of the day (10 am maybe?), and it went quickly. I did get a sweet multitool. But that could have been saved for people who engaged with the Hackathon, or even used as a Prize.
Immersion did give out cards with usb drives and copies of their software later in the day after many people had left. That was the right thing to do, waiting.
I would note that at least one team demoed an app for using the Chord API to notify friends about swag.
Final Thoughts
I personally had a great time. I learned a lot about Android development, quick prototyping, git, etc.
You can see our project on https://github.com/bdettmer/RockPaperMonsterHack
I am interesting in using all three API's in the future. I appreciated the effort it takes to run a Hackathon, and the cost. I only mention the above in the hope that
future Hackathons can be more productive for the companies.
#samsung #samsunghackathon #immersion #paypal
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)