InfoWorld magazine does these every year. They look at the best of open source software in a range of categories. It’s mostly the usual suspects, but every year I’ll find one or two projects that I haven’t heard about.
Thoughts on tech and random things I find on the web
InfoWorld magazine does these every year. They look at the best of open source software in a range of categories. It’s mostly the usual suspects, but every year I’ll find one or two projects that I haven’t heard about.
This post about automation drew my attention. It’s well written and tries to address some of the problems with automation and the general attitude with “automate all things”. However, I don’t think the problem is with automation itself. This goes back to the root problem of complex systems that develop emergent properties, resilience engineering and “black swan” events. The author himself has a great post on the this topic.
When automating a repetitive task, the chance for error and more imporantly the chance for a disproportionately significant impact is very low. When you’re using automation to walk through a complex tree logic, the impact of an error increases considerably. The problem with automating for rare events that include multiple components are:
So, I think it’s the wrong way to talk about the problem. Automation is a secondary factor which amplifies existing problems with system complexity. These are some of the guidelines to follow to design around it:
A couple of relevant articles that are really talking about the same thing:
1. An example from aviation, which has been dealing with complexity and resilience for a long time. The title is very fitting: “Want to build resilience? Kill the Complexity”. Equally applicable in almost every field.
2. Architecture of Robust, Evolvable Networks. That’s an abstract and the actual paper is here. He talks about internet as a whole, but smaller networks are often a microcosm of the very same thing.
This article attempts to answer if blowing into Nintendo cartridges helped. I don’t care what anyone says. It did work. What’s fascinating is that it was before the Internet days with forums, newsgroups, chat rooms and so on, yet everyone knew about it.
Another great comic from TheOatMeal. It will really hit home for dog owners.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/dog_paradox
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