Four short links: 11 October 2017
Out-of-Print Scanning, Developing ARSudoku, Testing Chatbots, Remote Work Culture
- Books From 1923 to 1941 Are Now Liberated (Internet Archive) — a little known, and perhaps never used, provision of U.S. copyright law, Section 108h, allows libraries to scan and make available materials published 1923 to 1941 if they are not being actively sold. My favorite so far: Your Life: The Popular Guide to Desirable Living, which is about being liked, tips from millionaires, and health (“Laxatives: The Great Illusion! The golden rule for constipation victims is: Treat Your Colon Kindly”), even sex: “The Frigid Wives of Reno: An eminent scientist offers counsel and comfort to one wife out of every four in America.” (wince)
- How We Built the ARKit Sudoku Solver — if you haven’t seen it, it’s magic: you look at a Sudoku, and it’s solved. Highlights: the digit recognition was trained on 600,000 example Sudoku puzzles…and then got confused when pointed at a screen, did the math and used his own server instead of AWS.
- Playbook for Testing Chatbots — a nice structure for testing something quite free-form.
- Company Culture Makes or Breaks Remote Work — Lots of people I speak to are worried about remoters not working, which is evidence of a culture that doesn’t trust its people. But honestly, it’s easy to tell if remote people aren’t working because tasks don’t get completed. THIS!
