Notes on data, AI, IT
and security
No marketing fog. The way I think about real problems with founders and managers.
Shellshock: when the old foundation becomes an attack surface
What the bash vulnerability says about the risks embedded in long-running infrastructure, and why this is a conversation for management, not only for the security team.
On-premise or cloud: how to decide when both are reasonable
A practical approach to choosing between local infrastructure and the cloud for companies that do not have an obvious answer.
Industrial robots and telemetry: what the data actually shows
Why collecting data from industrial equipment matters and how a manager should think about the value of that telemetry.
Neural translation is entering product territory
What changed in machine translation in 2014 and why it matters for companies dealing with large volumes of text.
Branching strategy as a release discipline
How a team's approach to version control branches shapes the rhythm of releases, hotfixes, and who can ship what without waiting for whom.
When a data warehouse becomes the bottleneck
Signs that your corporate data warehouse has stopped keeping up, and how to think about the next step.
An API is a contract, not a piece of code
Why the interface between systems matters more than the implementation behind it, and what that means for how you manage integrations.
Microservices: what the term means for business
A breakdown of what actually sits behind the word 'microservices' and how a manager should think about this architectural choice.
Docker 1.0 and the new discipline of release
The Docker 1.0 release is not about containers. It is about the runtime environment becoming as manageable and reproducible as the code itself.
After Heartbleed: the audit you actually need to run
Nearly two months have passed since Heartbleed was disclosed. A look at what is worth checking and doing if you have not done it yet.
Text analysis becomes practical: what it means for business
Natural language processing tools have reached the point where they can be used without a research lab. What to do with that.
Microservices: architectural choice or management decision
Why moving to microservices is not purely a technical decision, and what a founder needs to understand before such a project starts.