Random 101

Zotero 6

With Zotero 6, you can now:

Open PDFs in a new built-in reader within the main Zotero window, in a new tabbed interface
Clean up metadata for items while viewing their PDFs
Mark up PDFs with highlights, notes, and image annotations
Add annotations to Zotero notes with automatic citations, in a powerful new note editor
Cite other items directly in notes using Zotero’s familiar citation dialog
Insert notes into your Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs documents with active Zotero citations for automatically generating bibliographies
Export notes to external Markdown editors with links back to Zotero items and PDFs

Together with Zotero’s powerful saving abilities and word processor plugins, Zotero can now help you with the entire path from an interesting item online to a cited quote in your final document.

Python finally offloads some batteries

Python has often been touted as a “batteries included” language because of its rich standard library that provides access to numerous utility modules and is distributed with the language itself. But those libraries need maintenance, of course, and that is provided by the Python core development team. Over the years, it has become clear that some of the modules are not really being maintained any longer and they probably are not really needed by most Python users—either because better alternatives exist or because they address extremely niche use cases. A long-running project to start the removal of those modules has recently been approved.

Experiment measures antiproton orbiting helium ion

In Wednesday’s issue of Nature, a new paper describes a potentially useful way of measuring the interactions between normal matter and exotic particles, like antiprotons and unstable items like kaons or elements containing a strange quark. The work is likely to be useful, as we still don’t understand the asymmetry that has allowed matter to be the dominant form in our Universe.

But the study is probably most notable for the surprising way that it collected measurements. A small research team managed to put an antiproton in orbit around the nucleus of a helium atom that was part of some liquid helium chilled down to where it acted as a superfluid. The researchers then measured the light emitted by the antiproton’s orbital transitions.

Contributing to Complex Projects

As a frequent open source maintainer and contributor, I’m often asked: where do you start? How do you approach a new project with the goal of making meaningful changes? How can you possibly understand the internals of a complex project?

These questions apply to any software project regardless of whether they are open source or proprietary, hobbyist or professional. The approach I take is the same in any case. However, a critical difference with professional work is that you have direct access to other engineers who are willing — if not obligated — to help you, whereas open source projects you’re mostly on your own.

Levels of Technical Leadership

This document describes why and how a tech company can offer a career path to its engineering technical leaders, that is, different tracks for “deep ICs” versus “broad ICs”.

Find More Ways to Be an Outsider

The world is full of outsiders: students away at a university far from home, immigrants to a new country, and people who go abroad for work or extended travel. Over the past year, more than 4.4 million American workers quit their jobs in the “Great Resignation,” and many of them became outsiders by joining a different company or moving to a new place, which they perhaps imagined might be friendlier to their personal needs and tastes.

Libmill: Go-style concurrency in C

Libmill is a lightweight coroutine library bringing Go-style concurrency to C language. It also contains simple networking and file access library that allows users to quickly bootstrap application development.

Libmill runs in following environments:

Microarchitecture: x86, x86_64, ARM
Compiler: gcc, clang
Operating system: Linux, OSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD

How should you set prices for your handmade goods?

Setting prices is a big challenge for any business. If they’re too low, you can’t make a profit; if they’re too high, it can be hard to make a sale. So what goes into a smart pricing strategy? We asked Patrysha Korchinski, a certified small business coach in Whitecourt, Alberta, to share her tips.

FlyZero Unveils Final Hydrogen-Powered Airliner Concepts

The Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) has unveiled three zero-carbon airliner concepts developed under the UK government’s FlyZero project, which aims to support the accelerated introduction of hydrogen-powered aircraft.

The three concepts cover the regional, narrowbody and mid-size market sectors. Together they form part of a study that targets zero-carbon emission commercial air travel by the end of the decade. Findings from the project, which concludes that green hydrogen is the most viable zero-carbon emission fuel, include recommendations on how key technology challenges can be overcome, along with market and economic reports and a sustainability assessment.

Home Depot Finds DIY Success with Vector Search

Like all big companies, Home Depot has a list of IT projects that it wants to tackle. When the COVID pandemic hit two years ago and ecommerce activity surged, it accelerated one of them in particular: the development of vector search algorithms to augment basic keyword search on its website and mobile app. Since going live, its homegrown vector search engine has yielded exceptional returns and, most importantly, a more relevant search experience for visitors.