there  could  be  snakes  in  here

WORM (adj.): Write Once, Read Many (times). A particular use pattern in databases, that allows for faster but less safe NoSQL systems. bitterant (n.): bitter chemical, applied to things like antifreeze to stop children and other animals eating them. bruxism (n.): excessive grinding of teeth. Apparently it is not painful, but still horrendous to me. relevance engineer (n.): A data scientist focussing on search or recommendation. (I note keenly the shifts in terminology which imply any devaluation of the hot and silly coin in my pocket, "data science"; on the recent StackOverflow survey a large chunk of people responded "machine learning specialist".) incentive compatibility : One of the most important ideas in economics, but I never learned the name in 4 years of indifferent study. "I don't agree with him at all, but we are incentive-compatible." to die in harness (v.): Melodramatic version of death in service . It is the official term...

Don Knuth at his home organ A trained musician knows hundreds of pieces, many of them from " standard repertoire ", a list of classics. I'm getting by in a statistical / computer scientific career, despite not being trained per se in either. What's in the computer science / IT / hacker repertory? Here is a list of things you should be able to use or define by the end of a good computer science undergraduate degree. (Starred are ones which will enhance your life most, whether with hundreds of thousands of pounds, or hundreds of hours, or a larger practical-ethical expansion. Career improving ones are pretty obvious, but in computing the divide between the fascinating or improving, and the employable, is narrower than elsewhere.) MINDSET Get into DIY, in its grand philosophical sense: create, not just consume.** Portfolio , not resume! Demystification of tech.** ...and thus participation in the defining activity and mindset of the age.* ...and thus scep...

E/N site (n.): An "Everything/Nothing" site. (As in, "means everything to the person who's writing it, and nothing to everyone else".) The 90s word for blog. Greek life (US n.): Amusing Ivy League slang for the frat / sorority system. Gives rise to excellent shite like this: ...After nearly three decades of operating in the shadows, the Greek organizations could find themselves under the University's regulatory oversight or banished altogether, President Tilghman said May 5. "At the moment I am keeping an open mind about all options," including retaining the University's existing policy of non-recognition, Tilghman said in an e-mail to PAW. One way to ban Greek life , she said, would be to require matriculating students to pledge not to join fraternities or sororities... decompensation (medical n.): a system's eventual failure ( after adapting to a disorder). Something Greek about it. cadastral (n.): by taxable value; ...

£0.02 : earplugs £16: room in a flatshare with 3 others in far East London. £1.50 : power smoothie breakfast £3 : Tesco lunch £1.50 : Peter Special dinner £1 : Misc (toiletries, friends, whatevs) £0.40 : supplements (amortized) £0.40 : bike maintenance (2 x 6 miles per day commute is hard on it) (amortized) £0.30 : charity shop clothes (amortized) £0.20 : internet £0.00 : council tax (included in rent) £0.00 : library books £0.10 : electricity £0.00 : heating. it's London. This isn't a minimal per diem - you could live in a car , or benefit from nepotism of some sort - but pretty optimal in 4D nutrition/comfort/employability/thrift space.

Advanced Persistent Threat (infosec n.): In cybersecurity, the worst foe. These people are 'Advanced' relative to a script kiddie or a skilled troll. Better funded, more patient, able and willing to try several different avenues of attack. A state actor (or a corporate black operator in a cyberpunk book). They will get in: the question is if you notice, and how much damage they do when they do. A conventional hacker or criminal isn't interested in any particular target. He wants a thousand credit card numbers for fraud, or to break into an account and turn it into a zombie, or whatever. Security against this sort of attacker is relative; as long as you're more secure than almost everyone else, the attackers will go after other people, not you. An APT is different; it's an attacker who -- for whatever reason -- wants to attack you. Against this sort of attacker, the absolute level of your security is what's important. It doesn't matter how secure you are...

If you think academic social science is bad , you should see what goes on in corporations.

Sat an IQ test. Pride: 1, irrationally * Maths assignment #5, Jacobians and Fourier analysis. Pride: 3. Started making SymPy uni notes. Pride: 4 Big idea: an Age of Em visualisation. Pride: Wrote about learning but not internalising. Pride: 3. Wrote a snarky little bit about the qualitative and quantitative. Pride: 1 Wrote about Pi and Tau. Pride: 2. Wrote again about the maximum wage. Pride: 1 Fixed the pipeline (not my job) with bash and long hours. Pride: 3. * I once argued with a gay friend about what I saw as misuse of the concept "pride" in world Pride events. You should only be proud of things you have actually done , not just proud of who you are .** I insisted that the broader concept they're looking for - in conducting an intentional, public valuation to counter ancient and systematic degradation - is "esteem". In the general population, I argued, this confusion is one cause of the vast and hollow parade of a...

nut 'graph or nut graf (n.): That ugly, mise-en-scene opening paragraph in every news article ever. Tries to answer who, what, why, when, where in two sentences. vanity shingle (US pej. n.): a small film production company founded by a celebrity for projects starring themselves. Incorporates shingle : archaic metonym for a small company, via the chalked signboard showing its name outside; or the set clapperboard? bomb-ass : exemplary; highly laudable; successful, op. cit . gaggle (US n.): an off-camera press conference with the White House Spokesman. Fairly routine, but recently made sinister by selectivity. to calque (v.): to translate word for word, or to give an etymology, instead of actual contextual usage. e.g. this clumsy note from Arrival . garnishment (US n.): an ongoing, court-ordered deduction from your wages. To pay fines or debts. Something about the sound is sinister. erfi (n): the imaginary error function . One day I might stop encountering ...