Least Significant Nibble

If you work with geospatial data and haven't had a chance to work with Carto , you are missing out. Carto is a platform for creating interactive geospatial visualizations on the web. The canned maps that you can build from the web-based designer are surprisingly powerful, especially if you are already familiar with SQL and CSS . If you are a proficient web programmer, you can use their JavaScript API to customize your map in virtually any way you can imagine. Carto hits a sweet spot of simplicity and flexibility that suits me nicely. I work on a team whose job is to help our clients make sense of data. The efficiency with which we can produce Carto web applications frees up our time to add value in other areas. As great as Carto is, one problem that is becoming more pressing is that we're making a lot of the same maps on different data sets. Consequently, we're starting to do a lot of copy-and-paste code reuse . Over the next year, we will be refactoring essential map f...

You will never get read without an eye-grabbing headline. My beef with Schema arose while working through a set of programming problems that are published online. I was interested in using those problems to familiarize myself with the idioms of Scheme and Haskell , with which I am less familiar. The exercise in question asks for the sum of all Fibonacci numbers that do not exceed 10000 and are divisible by 2. For the purposes of this post, the Fibonacci sequence is defined by a recurrence relation: \[ \begin{align} F(0) &= 0 \\ F(1) &= 1 \\ F(n) &= F(n - 2) + F(n - 1). \\ \end{align} \] In an imperative language such as C , this problem can be solved with a program similar to the following one. The logic of this program mimics how a person might solve the problem with a pencil, paper, and a pocket calculator: it keeps a running total of the even Fibonacci numbers as they are computed. This is the kind of code I could write in my sleep, which is why I am interested in ...

Survey data is well known to be an imperfect measure of the truth. The many pitfalls of survey data mean that the numbers must be taken with some healthy skepticism. Evidence-free assertions that black people are three times more dishonest than white people in answering surveys about drug use do not a healthy skepticism make. @voxdotcom These figures based on self-reported drug use are notoriously unreliable. I thought it was your job to report "context"? — Billy Chav (@billy_chav) February 5, 2015

I was biking South down Ladd towards the stoplight at Division, when I heard the Suburban behind me pull around to try a pass. I was going at 25 mph, and there was another car that had just turned off of Division and was heading North in the opposing lane. Once I saw that there was oncoming traffic, I knew there was no way the Suburban could make the pass without causing a head-on collision. But he made the pass anyway! The other car had to slam on their brakes; the right taillight of the Suburban passed a foot from my handlebars. The stoplight at Division was red, so I caught him seconds after he passed me. I tapped on his window and said that he had passed too close. He had given me only a foot, and the minimum passing distance is my fall height (6 ft). He said that he had been "completely in the other lane," and that I should ride further over. Again, I was riding 25 mph--the speed limit--and had I been riding any further over I would have risked getting do...

About 8 years ago, I remarked to my eye doctor that maybe Alan Dershowitz's torture warrant idea wasn't such a bad one if the alternative was no accountability at all. Apparently he thought Dershowitz was an America-hating bleeding heart liberal, though, because he launched into a rant about how the CIA isn't stupid, they know that torture can produce unreliable information, and they always verify torture intelligence against other information gathered. (Other highlights: the ticking bomb scenario proves that using torture to gather intelligence is always justified; we don't know what is going on, so therefore no one should oppose it.) Now that we have the Senate report, we know that my eye doctor was hopelessly naive. The CIA did indeed take intelligence gathered under torture as gospel, sometimes to disastrous ends—nearly letting bin Laden's driver get away, torturing innocent people whose names were given up under torture, etc. I guess I shouldn't be surpri...

Mitt Romney, in No Apology: The Case for American Greatness : I make no apology for my conviction that America's economic and military leadership is not only good for America but also critical for freedom and peace around the world. (Page 2) ... What's chilling to consider is that if America is not the superpower, others will take our place. What nation or nations would rise, and what would be the consequences for our safety, freedom, and prosperity? The world is a safer place when America is strong.... ... The very existence of American power helps to hold tyrants in check and reduces the risk of precipitous war. (Page 10) ... No nation has shed more blood for more noble causes than the United States. Its beneficence and benevolence are unmatched by any nation on earth, and by any nation in history. Abraham Lincoln understood that the destiny of the world was twined to the destiny of America. It is why he called the United States the "last, best hope of...

On November 14, Portland's KGW TV station reported that "Portland Police Chief [Mike Reese] on Monday ordered three officers to remove 'I am Darren Wilson' images from their Facebook pages." Reese's order was not without controversy: Maybe the Portland officers where [sic] expressing their rights of free speech when showing solidarity with their brother? [ 1 ] I think that what they are saying is that they don't support the lynching of a white police officer without benefit of due process, a trial or even charges being brought forward.... [ 2 ] On November 30, six members of the St. Louis Rams entered the field with their hands up in the air, in the "don't shoot" position, protesting everything that has happened in Ferguson over the last few months. The St. Louis County Police Officers Association was not amused. From the official statement by the SLPOA: The St. Louis Police Officers Association is profoundly disappointed with the ...