In this week's podcast InfoQ’s editor-in-chief Charles Humble talks to Data Scientist Cathy O’Neil. O'Neil is the author of the blog mathbabe.org. She was the former Director of the Lede Program in Data Practices at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Tow Center and was employed as Data Science Consultant at Johnson Research Labs. O'Neil earned a mathematics Ph.D. from Harvard University. Topics discussed include her book “Weapons of Math Destruction,” predictive policing models, the teacher value added model, approaches to auditing algorithms and whether government regulation of the field is needed.

Why listen to this podcast:

- There is a class of pernicious big data algorithms that are increasingly controlling society but are not open to scrutiny.

- Flawed data can result in an algorithm that is, for instance, racist and sexist. For example, the data used in predictive policing models is racist. But people tend to be overly trusting of algorithms because they are mathematical.

- Data scientists have to make ethical decisions even if they don’t acknowledge it. Often problems stem from an abdication of responsibility.

- Auditing for algorithms is still a very young field with ongoing academic research exploring approaches.

- Government regulation of the industry may well be required.

Notes and links can be found on http://bit.ly/2eYVb9q

Weapons of math destruction

0m:43s - The central thesis of the book is that whilst not all algorithms are bad, there is a class of pernicious big data algorithms that are increasingly controlling society.

1m:32s - The classes of algorithm that O'Neil is concerned about - the weapons of math destruction - have three characteristics: they are widespread and impact on important decisions like whether someone can go to college or get a job, they are somehow secret so that the people who are being targeted don’t know they are being scored or don’t understand how their score is computed; and the third characteristic is they are destructive - they ruin lives.

2m:51s - These characteristics undermine the original intention of the algorithm, which is often trying to solve big society problems with the help of data.

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In this week's podcast QCon chair Wesley Reisz talks to Machine learning research scientist John Langford. Topics include his Machine Learning system Vowpal Wabbit, designed to be very efficient and incorporating some of the latest algorithms in the space. Vowpal Wabbit is used for news personalisation on MSN. They also discuss how to get started in the field and it’s shift from academic research to industry use.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Vowpal Wabbit is a ML system that attempts to incorporate some of the latest machine learning algorithms.

- How to learn ML: take a class or two, get accustomed with learning theory and practice.

- ML has moved from the research field into the industry, 4 out of 9 ICML tutorials coming from the industry.

- It’s hard to predict when you have enough data.

- AlphaGo is a milestone in artificial intelligence. It uses reinforcement learning, deep learning and existing moves played by Go masters.

- Deep Learning is currently a disruptive technology in areas such a vision or speech recognition.

- What’s trendy: Neural Networks, Reinforcement and Contextual Learning.

- Machine Learning is being commoditized.

Notes and links can be found on http://bit.ly/2b4YNqQ

How to Approach Machine Learning

6m:12s To start learning Machine Learning, Langford recommends taking a class or two, mentioning the course by Andrew Ng and another course by Yaser S. Abu-Mostafa.

6m:50s It is recommended to get accustomed with learning theory to avoid some of the rookie's mistakes.

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In this week's podcast, professor Barry Burd talks to Shuman Ghosemajumder. Ghosemajumder is VP of product management at Shape Security and former click fraud czar for Google. Ghosemajumder is also the co-author of the book CGI Programming Unleashed, and was a keynote speaker at QCon New York 2016 presenting Security War Stories.

Why listen to this podcast:

With more of our lives conducted online through technology and information retrieval systems, the use of advanced technology gives criminals the opportunity to be able to do things that they weren't able to do.

- Cyber-criminals come from all over the world and every socioeconomic background, so long as there's some level of access to computers and technology.

- You see organised cyber-crime focusing on large companies because of the fact that they get a much greater sense of efficiency for their attacks.

- Cyber-criminals are getting creative, and coming up with ways to interact with websites we haven't thought of before.

- You can have very large scale attacks that are completely invisible from the point of view of the application that's being attacked.

- The context of what are you are using software for is more important than just going through an understanding of the code level vulnerability.

Notes and links can be found on http://bit.ly/2atBFgk

The People Behind Cyber-Crime

5:28 - There are all kinds of different personalities and demographics involved. Cyber-criminals come from all over the world and every socioeconomic background, so long as there's some level of access to computers and technology. Even in cases where a cyber criminal doesn't know how to use technology directly, or how to create something like a piece of malware, they can still be involved in a cyber-criminal's scheme.

6:29 - A scheme which uses large groups of individuals and which doesn’t necessarily need to have skills itself, is stealing money from bank accounts. Being able to transfer money using malware on people’s machines from one account to another account that the cyber-criminal controls still involves getting that money out. That last step can involve a set of bank accounts that are assigned to real individuals.

More on this:

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In this week's podcast, QCon chair Wes Reisz and Werner Schuster talk to Caitie McCaffrey. McCaffrey works on distributed systems with the engineering effectiveness team at Twitter, and has experience building the large scale services and systems that power the entertainment industry at 343 Industries, Microsoft Game Studios, and HBO. McCaffrey's presentation at QCon New York was called The Verification of a Distributed System.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Twitter's engineering effectiveness team aims to help make dev tools better, and make developers happier and more efficient.

- Asking someone to speak at your conference or join your team solely because of their gender does more harm than people think.

- There is not one prescriptive way to make good, successful technology.

- Even when we don't have time for testing, there are options to increase your confidence in your system.

- The biggest problem when running a unit test is that it is only testing the input you hard code into the unit test.

Notes and links can be found on http://bit.ly/2al6BRp

Engineering Effectiveness

1:24 - The purpose of the engineering effectiveness team is to help make dev tools better, and to make Twitter's developers happier and more efficient.

2:44 - The team is trying to make infrastructure so that not every team has to solve the distributed problem on their own, and give developers some APIs and tools so that they can build systems easily.

More on this:

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In this week's podcast, Barry Burd talks with Wendy Closson. With over a decade of experience immersed in development and championing agile practices, Closson coaches technology leaders to manage effectively, respond reasonably, and navigate the choppy waters of business. Closson's presentation at QCon New York was entitled Syntactic Sugar for English: Pragmatic Eloquence.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Software is a very abstract experience, so it can be difficult to communicate ideas about software to people outside.

- The majority of people in teams want to remain in their comfort zone, so don't want to change.

- Many problems that may seem technical in nature have to do with outside experiences.

- The algorithmic approach to communicating has to do with creating new habits around our speaking.

- With a single word you can elevate a population or destroy a friendship.

- Simplicity is divinity, where someone can look at your code and understand your intentions, and the same in real-life communication.

- Compromise isn't always the best thing. If no one's really feeling passionate about it, that's not going to create the best code.

Notes and links can be found on http://bit.ly/29Co4X2

How Understanding Developers Helps Coaching

1:20 - Software is a very abstract experience. It doesn't really live in the physical word, so it can be difficult to communicate ideas about software - using it or creating it - to people outside the software world.

1:58 - It's possible to manage without direct experience... When you think of your job as a service leadership job. It's your job to facilitate, to trust, to understand what people are saying. But without the background, that trust can be hard to keep; a lot of things can get lost in translation.

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In this week's podcast, Barry Bird talks to Courtney Hemphill, a partner and tech lead at Carbon Five. With over ten years of experience in software development, Hemphill has done full stack development for both startup and enterprise companies. Hemphill's presentation at QCon New York was entitled Algorithms for Animation.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Why developers in startups or enterprise firms should care about creating animations

- The interfaces we interact with in software are becoming more dynamic

- If you don't know what's wrong, you don't know how to fix it

- The most common code smells, according to Llewellyn Falco: Clutter, long lines, long methods, duplication, and inconsistency

- How do we make- in an agile way- the architectural work visible, and not ignore it?

- How do you have an incremental architecture and get measurements? If you say you're going to go away for six months and figure it out, that's not very measurable.

Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/29kq2ds

Why Developers Should Care About Creating Animations

1m:05s - The interfaces we interact with in software are becoming more dynamic.

1m:30s - We are moving closer to natural user interfaces, and this is something software engineers across the board need to consider when they are developing programs. You don't just have a pointer and a mouse and a keyboard- you can squish and stretch things, using your fingers and your hands.

1m:55s - Animations need to feel real, and that is all based in Math and Physics.

2m:15s - The animations you see on websites have always been an opportunity for us to have a more fundamental learning about what the program does without needing a lot of instruction.

2m:38s - Animation functions almost as a way for people to discover and explore an interface so they can interact and engage with it more easily.

The Importance of Animation Resembling Reality

3m:00s - If you've ever put on an Oculus Rift and experienced "judder" and felt immediately sick, that's the most extreme version.

3m:31s - If a computer is running slowly and you see frames dropped, you are sensing something underlying that is not right, and you immediately distrust it.

3m:42s - The further away you get from something that is smooth, the more you start to mistrust the platform and the data behind it.

Natural Textures vs Cartoon-Like Textures [...]

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In this week's podcast Richard Seroter talks to James Shore, author of The Art of Agile Development and one of the original signatories of the Agile Manifesto. Also on the podcast are Llewellyn Falco, creator of the open source testing tool ApprovalTests and co-founder of Teaching Kids Programming, and Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, inventor of Responsibility-Driven Design, as well as the author of books including Designing Object: Oriented Software and Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities and Collaborations.

Why listen to this podcast:

- A lot of people know how to do TDD and refactoring for the back end, but not for the font, but the basics are the same.

- The basics of Test-Driven Development are the same for the front or back end.

- If you don't know what's wrong, you don't know how to fix it.

- The most common code smells, according to Llewellyn Falco: Clutter, long lines, long methods, duplication, and inconsistency.

- How do we make, in an agile way, the architectural work visible, and not ignore it?

- How do you have an incremental architecture and get measurements? If I say to you I'm going to go away for six months and figure it out, that's not very measurable.

Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/1Pse2r1

1m:10s - The talk 'Agile Engineering for the Web' was about how do you bring typical Agile engineering ideas like TDD and refactoring to the front-end languages.

1m:33s - A lot of people know how to do these things on the back-end, but when you get to the front end a lot of people just throw up their hands.

2m:24s - I see CSS bugs all the time, because it's very hard to refactor CSS without breaking something.

Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ. http://bit.ly/1Pse2r1

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In this week's podcast Richard Seroter talks to Lisa Crispin who works on the tracker team at Pivotal Labs, and is an organiser of the Agile Alliance Technical Conference. Lisa is the co-author of several books on Agile Testing, and is also the 2012 recipient of the Agile Testing Days award for Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person.

Richard also talks to Justin Searls, software craftsman, presenter of "How to Stop Hating Your Tests" and co-founder of Test Double, a company whose goal is to "improve how the world writes software."

Why listen to this podcast:

- Agile is mainstream, and being adopted by big enterprises, but there's a place to help small companies and startups.

- Cloud Foundry pair testers to write production code with the programmers.

- Developers have to be focused on right now, testers have freedom to look at more of the big picture

- People know testing is good and there a lot of tools for it, but some tools are ill-conceived.

- We need a better language for talking about good QA and full stack testing.

Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/1U0ip8Q

2m:00s - The first XP universe conferences were mainly about XP practices, values and principles, and were attended by developers

2m:17s - Over time, topics moved towards processes and frameworks, and the number of developers who attend Agile conferences has gone down dramatically.

3m:51s - Now Agile is mainstream, it's being adopted by big enterprises, but there's a place to help small companies and startups. That's usually where the innovation comes from, and the Agile Alliance wants to encourage innovation.

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In this week's podcast QCon chair Wesley Reisz talks to Heather Fleming, who is the VP of product and program management at GILT, where she is responsible for not only the customer-facing website, but also back office things from distribution to order processing.

Why listen to this podcast:

- GILT treats every person as an individual, with a skillset that is outside their responsibilities.

- You should be able to be your authentic self wherever you are.

- Google found creating a psychologically safe work environment was key to high performing teams.

- You can kill a great team by taking away their autonomy and empowerment.

- Great engineers that want to be managers are fearful of losing their skill, and great engineers that don't want to be managers are put in those roles and are terrible managers.

Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/1U2Wgq9

1m 49s - One of the things that makes the culture at GILT so special is the "ingredients framework" that considers every person an individual, with a skillset that is outside what their title might say and what their role and responsibilities might be.

3m 29s - One of the team ingredients is called "motivator" - the ability to make sure that the team understands what they're working on, and more importantly the "why" and how it's driving business or customer value.

4m 35s - The relationship you have with your co-workers should be deeper than many of us are allowing them to be, because they are like your second family.

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Attend Heather Fleming's session at QCon New York 2016, Jun 13-17: http://bit.ly/1U2f3og

In this week's podcast QCon chair Wesley Reisz talks to Matt Ranney who is the Chief Systems Architect at Uber, where he's helping build and scale everything he can.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Expanding a company and team at this rate is genuinely hard. Lots of mistakes have been made along the way.

- Microservices allow companies to grow rapidly but have a cost in terms of aggregate velocity.

- Uber is gradually moving its marketplace development from Node.js to Go and Java. Java is used for the map services.

- Aggressive failure testing is used extensively in Uber.

- Some early design choices - like using JSON over HTTP - make formal verification basically impossible.

Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/1TH8app

You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. http://bit.ly/24x3IVq

Attend Matt Ranney's session at QCon New York 2016, Jun 13-17: http://bit.ly/1TH75ht