Category: NewsFeed

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Q&A with the head of open source at Twitter

In this exclusive interview with Chris Aniszczyk, the Head of Open Source at Twitter explains how company engineers are working on open source technologies internally and contributing to a range of community projects.

Source: An inside look at open source at Twitter – opensource.com

Twitter is built on open source software and this article provides insight into the contributions engineers at Twitter are making to a number of open source projects.

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Because profit is more important than innovation, high school testing still relies on the TI-83 graphing calculator.

But this is also a world where high school math students have to shell out $100 for the same TI-83 graphing calculator that their parents used twenty years ago (or one of its descendants, at least)—instead of using a free app that they could simply download to their phone. Why? Mic reports that the main reason is tradition. Texas Instruments has managed to get its calculators written into the standardized tests used by many schools. And inertia being what it is, it’s really hard to change something like that once it gets set down on paper.

Source: In an age of tablets and e-books, high school testing still relies on the TI-83 graphing calculator | TeleRead

This should serve as a reminder that it isn’t just the legal world that drags its feet when it comes to new and obviously better technology. The world is awash in examples of this sort of thing where a powerful incumbency holds back or outright blocks the adoption of new tech simply to preserve some profit margin. Ignoring, disregarding, or suppressing innovation in the name of maintaining profits especially in a near monopoly market is practically a rule of business.

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Slack booms, adds Head of Platform to guide future growth

Workplace collaboration platform Slack has been a runaway success since opening for business just over a year ago: the company co-founded and led by Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield now has 1.1 million daily active users, with 300,000 of them paying for premium tiers of the service bringing in annual recurring revenue of $25 million. Now, Slack is stepping up its game and getting more serious about how it builds out its wider ecosystem. April Underwood — a longtime director of product at Twitter — has been appointed Slack’s first head of platform, a new role at the company.

As Slack Hits 1M Daily Users And 900K Integration Installs, It Hires April Underwood As Head Of Platform | TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/24/as-slack-hits-1m-daily-users-and-900k-integration-installs-it-hires-april-underwood-as-head-of-platform/

During my talk on Slack at CALIcon15 someone asked why I was putting my internal communication eggs into a basket that may b be home in a year. I replied that I thought Slack would be around next year and for years to come. This move seems to support my position.