Four short links: 28 December 2016
Throughput vs. Quality, Software is Hard, Video Witchcraft, and TOPS-20 Simulator
- Throughput vs. Quality — road widening is wonderful for boosting throughput — that is, it gets more people and cars onto the road. Yet, it’s mediocre or worse for improving the quality of life of the typical resident. An economist, engineer, or technocrat typically believes that boosting throughput is important, but voters usually are less impressed. Western democracies are encountering more problems that have this logical structure and bring an analogous clash of values.
- Writing Software is Hard — Getting started programming today has never been easier. From open source to superb books and tutorials to bootcamps, it’s a splendor. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that programming has also never been harder to master, in both depth and breadth. There has never been more languages, more concepts, more frameworks, libraries, tools. It’s impossible to know, let alone understand, it all.
- Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment — this will blow your mind. Check out the video demonstration. (via Vaughan Bell)
- TWENEX — a simulator of the PDP-10 OS, TOPS-20. (via Seth Morabito)
