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Writing Testable JavaScript · An A List Apart Article
It’s easy to look at all of this and say, “Wait, you want me to write more code to do the same job?”
The thing is, there are a few inescapable facts of life about Making Things On The Internet. You will spend time designing an approach to a problem. You will test your solution, whether by clicking around in a browser, writing automated tests, or—shudder—letting your users do your testing for you in production. You will make changes to your code, and other people will use your code. Finally: there will be bugs, no matter how many tests you write.
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Interstate Bridge Collapses in Washington State - NYTimes.com in which Mother Nature does a hell of a job lighting yesterday’s infrastructure disaster.
(I hope everyone in the Mount Vernon area and northwards is okay. Also, Skagit is pronounced with a soft ‘g’ like ‘j’.)
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Gender Balance in News
Open Gender Tracking Project is a software program that collects digital content from news sources and analyzes gender balance within news organizations. The project was created by Irene Ros and Adam Hyland of Bocoup and Nathan Matias of the MIT Center for Civic Media.
The program collects data on who is writing the articles and who the articles are written about. It also measures audience response data directly associated with specific articles (like how many times a post is shared in social media). The goal of the program is to make news sources aware of content diversity (or lack thereof) so organizations can work toward maintaining a balanced set of voices.
For the most part, women are currently being underrepresented in digital media.
Via Guardian:
In the UK, newspaper front pages rarely include women, and women write a minority of articles. Women are prominent at the Daily Mail, where they write most of the celebrity news, fewer news articles, and almost no sport. Even when publications do include women, they’re often at the mercy of their audiences. 20% of Telegraph opinion articles are written by women, but women’s opinion articles attract only 14% of the Telegraph’s shares and likes on social media.
And according to studies done by the Women’s Media Center, in both legacy and newer news sites, women are too often relegated to writing about “pink topics” like fashion, relationships, and food, rather than urgent and/or international issues.
On a positive note, Global Voices, an international citizen media news site, is one of the only news organizations currently known to have equal gender participation. According to The Guardian, 764 women wrote 51% of all articles from 2005-2012.
Related: Gender balance is the new rage. I just wish somebody had spread the word to the Wikiverse: Wikipedia Bumps Women From ‘American Novelists’ Category. — Krissy
Image: Screenshot of graph from Open Gender Tracker
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A haiku from the article: How Tracy Mack-Askew, Chevrolet Vehicle Line Manager, Does It
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Michael Wines, An Underground Pool Drying Up
Portions of the High Plains Aquifer are rapidly being depleted by farmers who are pumping too much water to irrigate their crops, particularly in the southern half in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Levels have declined up to 242 feet in some areas, from predevelopment — before substantial groundwater irrigation began — to 2011. (via An Underground Pool Drying Up - Graphic - NYTimes.com)
(via emergentfutures)
- Why the hell do I have to keep updating the apps on my iPhone all the time?
- Most are driven mainly by curiosity rather than the desire to show off their certificates to any potential employer, and none has paid for a verified certificate. Consider Anna Nachesa, a 42-year-old single mother in a village near Amsterdam who logs on to MOOCs for several hours each night after dinner with her teenage kids. She has always found TV boring, she says, and for her, MOOCs replace reading books. She is a physicist by training, with a degree from Moscow State University, and she works as a software developer. “This stuff is actually addictive,” she says. In some ways the lure is like Everest: Some want to climb it to see if they can. “The Dutch have the proverb ‘If you never shoot, you already missed,’” she says.
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Is There Really a Second-Term Curse?
President Obama is facing one of his roughest stretches in office after questions about the government’s response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, the admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it inappropriately targeted conservative groups which sought tax-exempt status, and the revelation that the Justice Department subpoenaed communications by The Associated Press.
In reaction, some commentators have written about a second-term curse – the supposed tendency of presidencies to unravel, especially because of scandal, in their second term.
Full Story: Nate Silver at NYT
- Alarmed by the scope and audacity of the breach, the company went public with the news in January 2010, becoming the first U.S. firm to voluntarily disclose an intrusion that originated in China. In a blog post, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said hackers stole the source code that powers Google’s vaunted search engine and also targeted the e-mail accounts of activists critical of China’s human rights abuses. As Google was responding to the breach, its technicians made another startling discovery: its database with years of information on surveillance orders had been hacked. The database included information on thousands of orders issued by judges around the country to law enforcement agents seeking to monitor suspects’ e-mails. The most sensitive orders, however, came from a federal court that approves surveillance of foreign targets such as spies, diplomats, suspected terrorists and agents of other governments. Those orders, issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are classified.
- Can Karp put on the big-boy pants, hire a Sheryl Sandberg character, and create a money-making machine? Because if he’s not sure, and he’s not ready for a long, hard, uphill fight, he should sell.
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A haiku from the article: ‘Woke Up Lonely,’ by Fiona Maazel
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Airline Creates Bespoke Novels Timed That Last As Long As The Flight
The Australian airline Qantas aims to provide a unique experience by offering a selection of specially curated books, each of which is just long enough to last the duration of your flight.
Some forward thinking of providing media tailored to the environment it’s meant to be consumed. File under media moment.
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Yahoo’s board has approved a deal to buy New York-based blogging service Tumblr for $1.1bn (£725m; 857m euros), US media reports say. The acquisition is expected to be announced on Monday. The deal was a “foregone conclusion” and was a unanimous vote by the board, tech blog AllThingsD reported, citing sources close to the matter. If confirmed, it will be CEO Marissa Mayer’s largest deal since taking the helm of Yahoo in July 2012 Analysts say that by acquiring Tumblr, Yahoo would gain a larger social media presence and enhance its ability to attract younger audiences. It will also help Tumblr generate more revenue from advertisements. On its home page, Tumblr says it hosts 108 million blogs, with 50.7 billion posts between them. Under the terms of the acquisition, Tumblr would continue to operate as an independent business, the Wall Street Journal said, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. (via BBC News - Yahoo ‘to buy Tumblr for $1.1bn’)
UPDATE: Business Insider says “David Karp Says Yahoo Is Not Buying Tumblr”. But we’ll see what’s officially announced tomorrow, after another 24hrs of anonymous sources, position analysis, stock shorting and speculation.
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The NYT's Amanda Cox on Winning the Internet - Features - Source: An OpenNews project
Via:
Interesting stuff on what does well online> MT @albertocairo: summary of @amandacox’s@openvisconf keynote source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles… #dataviz
— Peter Aldhous (@paldhous) May 18, 2013
