Posted on
by

These are my session notes from Defrag 2014 (#Defragcon).

I normally break my notes out and add some context to them, but I’m short of time, so I’m simply posting raw notes below.

Followup

  • Slack — superior chat, with channels and per channel notifications. Lots of integrations. Seems better than both Campfire and Hip Chat.
Chris Anderson
3D Robotics
  • Use drones for farmers to spot irrigation, pest problems, soil differences.
  • Can’t see the patterns from the ground
  • Visual and near-infrared.
  • Push button operation: One button to “do your thing”
  • What it enables:
    • better farming.
    • produce more with less resources.
    • don’t overwater.
    • don’t underwater and lose crops.
    • don’t apply pesticides everywhere, just where the problem is.
    • tailor to the soil.
  • it’s big data for farmers.
    • it turns an open-loop system into a closed-loop system
George Dyson
author Turing’s Cathedral
From Analog to Digital
  • Alan Turing: 1912-1954
  • Turing “being digital was more important than being electronic”
  • It is possible to invent a single machine which can compute any computable program.
  • Movie: The Imitation Game — true movie about Alan Turing
  • Insisted on hardware random number generated because software algorithms to generate random numbers cannot be trusted, nor can the authorities (whom he worked for)
  • John von Neumann: continued Alan Turing’s work, always gave him credit.
  • Where Turing was hated by his government, von Neumann got everything from his government: funding of millions of dollars.
  • Baumberger: made his riches in retail, decide to found an institution of learning
  • “The usefulness of useless information” — just hire great minds and let them work on whatever they want, and good things will come.
  • Thanks to German-Nazi situation in the 1930s, it was “cheap” to get jewish intellectuals.
  • The second professor hired: Albert Einstein.
  • In Britain, they took the brightest people to work on encryption. In the US, we took them to Los Alamos to build the atomic bomb.
  • ….lots of interesting history…
  • By the end of Turing’s life, he had moved past determinism. He believes it was important for machines to be able to make mistakes in order to have intuition and ingenuity.
  • What’s next?
    • Three-dimensional computation.
      • Turing gave us 1-dimension.
      • von Neumann gave us 2-d.
    • Template-based addressing
      • In biology, we use template-based addressing. “I want a copy of this protein that matches this pattern.” No need to specify a particular address of a particular protein.
    • Pulse-frequency computing
    • Analog computing
Amber Case
Esri
Designing Calm Technology
  • 50 billion devices will be online by 2020 — Cisco
  • Smart watch: how many of the notifications you get are really useful, and how many are bothering you?
  • Imagine the dystopian kitchen of the future: all the appliances clamoring for your attention, all needing firmware updates before you can cook, and having connectivity problems.
  • Calm Technology
    • Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown describe calm technology as “that which informs but doesn’t demand our focus or attention.” [1]
  • “Technology shouldn’t require all of our attention, just some of it, and only when necessary.”
  • The coming age of calm technology…
  • If the cloud goes down, I should be able to still turn down my thermostat.
  • Calm technology makes things to the peripherally of our attention. Placing things in the peripherally allow us to pay less attention to many more things.
  • A tea kettle: calm technology. You set it, you forget about it, it whistles when it’s ready. No unnecessary alerts.
  • A little tech goes a long way…
  • We’re addicted to adding features: consumers want it, we like to build it. But that adds cost to manufacturing and to service and support.
  • Toilet occupied sign: doesn’t need to be translated, easily understand, even if color-blind.
  • Light-status systems: Hue Lightbulb connected to a weather report.
  • Light-LEDs attached to Beeminder report: green, yellow, red. Do you need to pay attention? Instead of checking app 10 times a day, nervous about missing goals.
  • We live in a somewhat dystopic world: not perfect, but we deal with it.
  • Two principles
    • a technology should inform and encalm
    • make use of periphery attention
  • Design for people first
    • machines shouldn’t act like humans
    • humans shouldn’t act like machines
    • Amplify the best part of each
  • Technology can communicate, but doesn’t need to speak.
  • Roomba: happy tone when done, unhappy tone when stuck.
  • Create ambient awareness through different senses
    • haptics vs auditory alerts
    • light status vs. full display
  • Calm Technology and Privacy
    • privacy is the ability not to be surprised. “i didn’t expect that. now i don’t trust it.”
  • Feature phones
    • limited features, text and voice calls, few apps, became widespread over time
  • Smartphone cameras
    • not well known, not everybody had it.
    • social norm created that it was okay to have a phone in your pocket. we’re not terrified that people are taking pictures: because we know what it looks like when something is taking a picture.
  • Google Glass Launch
    • Reduced play, confusion, speculation, fear.
    • Had the features come out slowly, maybe less fear.
    • but the feature came out all at once.
    • are you recording me? are you recording everything? what are you tracking? what are you seeing? what are you doing?
    • poorly understood.
  • Great design allows people to accomplish their goals in the least amount of movies
  • Calm technology allows people to accomplish the same goals with the least amount of mental cost
  • A person’s primary task should not be computing, but being human.
Helen Greiner
CyPhy Works
Robots Take Flight
  • commercial grade aerial robots that provide actionable insights for data driven decision making
  • PARC tethered aerial robot
    • persistent real-time imagery and other sensing
    • on-going real-time and cloud based analytic service
    • 500-feet with microfilament power.
    • stays up indefinitely.
  • 2014: Entertaining/Recording
  • 2015/16: Protecting/Inspecting: Military, public safety, wildlife, cell towers, agriculture
  • 2017/18: Evaluating/Managing: Situation awareness, operations management, asset tracking, modeling/mapping.
  • 2019: Packaging/Delivery
  • “If you can order something and get it delivered within 30 minutes, that’s the last barrier to ordering online.” because i only buy something in a store if I need it right away.
  • Concept delivery drone: like an osprey, vertical takeoff but horizontal flight.
  • Tethered drone can handle 20mph winds with 30mph gusts.
    • built to military competition spec.
  • how do you handle tangling, especially in interior conditions?
    • externally: spooler is monitoring tension.
    • internally: spooler is on the helicopter, so it avoids ever putting tension on the line. disposable filament.
Lorinda Brandon
@lindybrandon
Monkey selfies and other conundrums
Who owns your data?
  • Your data footprint
    • explicit data
    • implicit data
  • trendy to think about environmental footprint.
  • explicit: what you intentionally put online: a blog post, photo, or social media update.
  • implicit data
    • derived information
    • not provided intentionally
    • may not be available or visible to the person who provided the data
  • The Biggest Lie on the internet: I’ve read the terms of use.
  • But even if you read the terms of use, that’s not where implicit data comes in. That’s usually in the privacy policy.
  • Before the connected age:
    • helicopters flew over roads to figure out the traffic conditions.
  • Now, no helicopters.
    • your phone is contributing that data.
    • anonymously.
    • and it benefits you with better routing.
  • Samsung Privacy Policy
    • collective brain syndrome: i watched two footballs out of many playing over the weekend. On the following morning, my samsung phone showed me the final scores of just the two games I watched.
    • Very cool, but sorta creepy.
    • I read the policy in detail: it took a couple of hours.
  • Things Samsungs collect:
    • device info
    • time and duration of your use of the service
    • search query terms you enter
    • location information
    • voice information: such as recording of your voice
    • other information: the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content offered through a service.
  • Who they share it with.
    • They don’t share it for 3rd party marketing. but they do share for the purpose of their businesses
    • Affiliates
    • business partners
    • Service providers
    • other parties in connection with corporate transactions
    • other parties when required by law
    • other parties with your consent (this is the only one you opt-in to)
  • Smart Meter – Data and privacy concerns
    • power company claims they own it, and they can share/sell it to whom they like.
    • What they collect:
      • individual appliances used in the household
      • power usage data is easily available
      • data transmitted inside and outside the grid
    • In Ohio, law enforcement using it to locate grow houses.
  • Your device != your data
  • Monkey selfies
    • Case where photographer was setting up for photo shoot.
    • Monkey stole camera, took selfies.
    • Photographer got camera back.
    • Who owns the copyright on the photos?
    • Not the photographer, who didn’t take them.
    • Not the monkey, because the monkey didn’t have intent.
    • So it’s in the public domain.
  • Options
    • DoNotTrack.us – sends signal that indicates opt-out preference.
    • Disconnect.me – movement to get vendors to identify what data and data sharing is happening.
    • Opennotice.org – minimal viable consent receipt, which creates a repository of your consent.
    • ClearButton.net – MIT project to express desire to know who has your data, work with manufacturers.
  • Innovate Responsibly
    • If you are a creator, be sensitive to people’s needs.
    • Even if you are doing altruist stuff, you’ve still got to be transparent and responsible.
How to Distribute and Make Money from your API
Orlando Kalossakas, Mash-ape
@orliesaurus
  • API management
  • API marketplace: find APIs to use
  • Devices connect to the internet
    • 2013: 8.7B
    • 2015: 15B
    • 2020: 50B
  • App stores
    • 1.4M: Google play
    • 1.2M: Apple
    • 300k: Microsoft
    • 140K: Amazon
  • Jeff Bezos:
    • “turn everything into APIs, or I fire you.”
    • A couple of years later
  • Mashape.com: hosts over 10,000 private and public API
  • Google / Twitter / Facebook: Billions of API calls per day
  • Mashape pricing
    • 92% free
    • 5.6% freemium
    • 1.4% paid
  • Consumers of mash ape APIs more than doubling every year.
  • API forms:
    • As a product: the customer uses the API directly add capabilities
    • As an extension of a product: the API is used in conjunction with the product to add value.
    • As promotion: The API is used as a mechanism to promote the product.
  • paid or freemium flavors
    • pay as you go, with or without tiers
    • monthly recurring
    • unit price
    • rev share
    • transaction fee
  • depending on business model, you might end up paying developers to use your API
    • if you are expedia or amazon, you’re paying the developers to integrate with you.
  • Things to consider…
    • is your audience right?
    • Do your competitors have APIs?
    • Could they copy your model easily?
    • How does the API fit into your roadmap?
  • Preparing…
    • discovery
    • security
    • monitoring / qa
    • testing
    • support
    • documentation*
    • monetization*
    • *most important
  • How will you publish your API?
    • onboarding and documentation are the face of your API?
    • Mashape: if you have interactive documentation, consumers are more likely to use it.
  • Achieving great developer experience
    • Track endpoint analytics
    • track documentation/s web analytics
    • get involved in physical hackathons
    • keep api documentation up to date
    • don’t break things.
Blend Web IDEs, Open Source and PaaS to Create and Deploy APIs
Jerome Louvel , Restlet
  • New API landscape:
    • web of data (semantic)
    • cloud computing & hybrid architectures
    • cross-channel user experiences
    • mobile and contextual access to services
    • Multiplicity of HCI modes (human computer interaction)
    • always-on and instantaneous service
  • Impacts on API Dev
    • New types of APIs
      • Internal and external APIs
      • composite and micro APIs
      • experience and open APIs
    • Number of APIs increases
      • channels growth
      • history of versions
      • micro services pattern
      • quality of service
    • industrialization needed
      • new development workflows
  • API-driven approach benefits
    • a pivot API descriptor
    • server skeletons & mock generations
    • up-to-date client SDKs and docs
    • rapid API crafting and implementation
  • Code-first or API-first approaches
    • can be combined using code introspect ors to extract, and code generators to resync.
  • Crafting an API
    • swagger, apiary, raml, miredot, restlet studio
    • new generation of tools:
      • IDE-type
      • web-based
    • example: swagger editor is GUI app
    • RESTlet visual studio
Connecting All Things (drone, sphero, raspberry pi, phillips hue) to Build a Rube Goldberg Machine
Kirsten Hunter
  • API evanglist at Akamai
  • cylon-sphero
  • node.js
  • cylon library makes it easy to control robotics