The Stack Overflow Podcast

Oracle is in the midst of trying to negotiate and get approved a deal that would allow it to acquire Tik Tok's US Operations, and allow Tik Tok to avoid a ban on its service in the United States. For US citizens, software being banned over geopolitical concerns is a new reality. 

What will happen to the code if the deal goes through? Is there a clean room where software updates are inspected before rolling out? Is data segregated to local servers, and if so, will it be siloed from the rest of Tik Tok's global user base? 

Tik Tok users have thoughts on what is really happening with their private data.

In the second half of the episode we talk about Nvidia's purchase of Arm from Softbank.  Paul and Sara speculate about what this means for our personal computers and mobile devices, as well as its implications for GPU programming, which has found new homes in burgeoning fields like machine learning and crypto mining.

If you're a reader looking to spend some quality time with other book worms, check out this Kickstarter from our friend Jeffrey Zie. 

No lifeboats this week, but be sure to check out this amazing question on the math behind spider webs. 

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Sophie founded Rest of World in 2019 after a decade of living and working across Asia, Africa & the Middle East, and with companies like Uber and Xiaomi. She graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Kennedy School and Princeton University. Sophie is based in New York. Read why she started this publication in her founder’s note. You can subscribe to Rest of World's newsletter here.

In this week's episode we talk about Okash, a peer-to-peer lending app that show what happens when you gamify public social shaming. 

We explore honjok, a South Korean sub-culture that emphasizes a movement away from ambitious professionalism and towards a more stoic loner lifestyle. In some ways, the apps, services, and online communities that formed around this tribe perfectly predicted what many people are experiencing in 2020. "The accidental pioneers of a lifestyle that has been forced on all of us," as Sophie explains.

And finally, we explore what it takes to break into the world of digital finance in Indonesia, where a board of clerics must certify that your code halal - consistent with Islamic religion and law - before you can break into a market of more than 220 million potential customers.

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Along with her work writing and editing, Stephanie works as a product manager at Microsoft and runs Developer Content Digest, a biweekly newsletter with content tips. She has worked for companies like Digital Ocean, Github, and General Assembly.

Twitter: @radiomorillo

eBooks: developersguidetocontent.com

Newsletter and blog: stephaniemorillo.co/links

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Every experienced software engineer can tell you a story about a standardization effort that ended up causing more problems than it solved. Queen Elizabeth's decree adding 280 feet to each mile made it easy to divide up acres, but has haunted those of us stuck with Imperial units ever since. 

Sara dives into micro frontend services and how they can help to add agility to a modern development team. There is a nice article on the topic here, and Sara found it through the Thought Works  Tech Radar.

Pinterest paid just under $90 million dollars to break its lease in San Francisco. Paul and Sara are hearing about lots of developers who are fleeing major cities, and it seems clear that Pinterest won't be the last company to abandon expansion plans or ditch fancy corporate offices for at least the next few years. 

Our lifeboat badge of the week the week goes to Sravya Nagumalli, who explained why Angular is associated with the Single Page App and just what an SPA is anyway. Thanks for sharing some knowledge, Sravya!

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You can read the hilarious tale of how Paul was alerted to "Frenchpoop Butt" here.

Enjoy an all time classic tale of a security expert being outwitted by his daughter. Her approach was not in his threat model. 

Want to try your hand at a little hacking? Here's a fun online game called Telehack.

We asked some teens what would motivate them to participate more on Stack. The answer was obvious: loot boxes. What kind of digital swag would you want receive for helping spread  knowledge across our network? 

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It's dependencies all the way down...

Remote learning is a bad joke. Who has ideas for some tech or gaming inspired solutions? 

What's your favorite way to refer to software of very large size? Everyone's got their favorite nickname for that big ol' pile of code. 

Lemon juice is recommended in lots of natural cures and remedies. But could it also be MELTING YOUR BONES? 

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Here is the Reddit comment that inspired us to reach out to Garry. 

This is the Vice news article that started the thread.  As you can see, the ban has affected a lot of books that would seem to have little bearing on cybersecurity. "Rejected books that are geared towards hacking, such as Justin Seitz’s Black Hat Python, may represent a clearer threat to the Department of Corrections, which fears that prisoners could use those tools to compromise their systems. But how did books such as Windows 10 for Dummies, Microsoft Excel 2016 for Dummies, and Google Adsense for Dummies (marked as posing "clear and present danger"), fail the prison’s security test?"

If you want to read about programs helping prisoners learn to code, check out this story on the Bard Prison Initiative. 

We also did a podcast episode back in January of this year that focused on The Code Cooperative, an organization dedicated to teaching software skills to formerly incarcerated individuals. 

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Our guests this week were two of our employees: Yaakov Ellis and Stephanie Cantor. Yaakov is a Principal Web Developer, Community Advocate on the Public Platform team at Stack Overflow, and Former Team Lead for Internal Development at Stack. Stephanie is the Program Manager for Community Strategy at Stack. 

Want to learn more about how the Community-athon worked? Read up on it here. And yes, of course there was a leaderboard and internet points. 

Yaakov was undercover as a brand new user, but some of his answers gave him away. Can you spot the tell? 

Our very own CEO spent a lot of time asking extremely important and nerdy question on our SciFi Stack Exchange. 

We bumped our engagement from employees by more than 100%. Many questions were asked, much knowledge was spread.

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To start things off, we talk about the launch of Articles, a new content type for Stack Overflow Teams that lets you write longer, subjective pieces. Sometimes it's best to share knowledge through Q&A, but other times you've got complicated, narrative, DevOps recipes or a policy paper and FAQ. Now your knowledge artifacts can all live in one place. 

"The FAQ is the great folk form of the internet" - quotable moments featuring Paul Ford.

If you're interested in another cut at this old saw, Mailchimp.com/developer is Postlight's take on what developer docs should look like. Sara is convinced it's all about the left nav.

Speaking of convictions, a conflict is tearing Sara's home apart. Ben and Paul step in to save her marriage. The question at hand: should managers of developers EVER make technical decisions?

Finally, Paul talks about his experience using Google Cloud Run to build a fun little tool called Ephemeralist. It pulls in random images from public domain collections hosted by museums and archives. Use it to take a break from the negativity of social media or the news. Also, revel in the joy of Paul's neologism, the Browseulator. It recently brought me this little gem.

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Juvoni describes himself as someone who helps people explore ideas and strategies for improvement. He focuses on combining multiple skills, better thinking and tools for thought, inner engineering healthy habits, and discovering how systems in the world affect us.

You can follow him on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/juvoni

You can join the Personal Development Nerds Facebook group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/pdnerds/

The PDNerds discord server can be joined at www.pdn.community

Find Juvoni's book recommendations on his site: www.juvoni.com/books

He can be contacted at [email protected]

If you are or know a Black software engineer, you can recommend they join /dev/color a community dedicated to helping black software engineers empower each other to become industry leaders.
http://devcolor.org/

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