DELF is a new framework to help developers implement data deletion in modern applications. Traditional methods for implementing deletion require application developers to write repetitive, error-prone code. DELF’s main novelty lies in enabling developers to implement deletion in every product they build with minimal effort, which takes the form of annotations rather than code. DELF introduces multiple correctness validation techniques to help achieve semantic correctness and avoid mistakes that could potentially lead to retaining data that should have been deleted or accidentally deleting the wrong data.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this technical paper explains how Facebook engineering team has developed a framework to help facilitate the deletion of data in their social graph. This can be used in other contexts.
To me it highlights the primitive state we are in when it comes to permanently deleting the data we produce in our daily activities - so called "data exhaust". But what the framework fails to enable is metadata - for example the inferences that were made from the post such as the political preferences - are not reverted when deletion occurs. Thus the original data still leaves traces - the original event is forgotten but its impact is not. Much more needs to be created to ensure true "deletion" in order to enable that digital systems "forget".
The C4 model was created as a way to help software development teams describe and communicate software architecture, both during up-front design sessions and when retrospectively documenting an existing codebase. It's a way to create maps of your code, at various levels of detail, in the same way you would use something like Google Maps to zoom in and out of an area you are interested in.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: architecture documentation of digital solutions often fails because it is not there (read the code most developers say) or is incomplete and difficult to read. The C4 model, far from being perfect, at least provides a consistent approach that is actually linked to the software code: everyone should be happy. I recommend for all developers!
In our experience, technical due diligence is the single biggest differentiator of deals done well—or poorly. What’s more, technical due-diligence failures can usually be avoided. Almost always, the disappointed acquirer insufficiently vets the technology and discovers too late that it fails to work as advertised. Or the technology does work, but only in constrained environments, and won’t scale. In other cases, crucial parts of the IP turn out not to be owned by the seller.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: organizations spend considerable time and effort for financial due diligence but relatively little on technology due diligence. Often this is due to lack of knowledge at the executive or even at the CIO level - especially when acquiring a new tech or in a new field. In the past, I've come to develop an approach where I perform a 360 degree technology audit that not only dives into the capabilities of the solution (the software code) but also on other essential elements of success (software engineering best practice and processes, design and requirements, etc.).
Over the last 3 years, I've reviewed more than 1,000 pull (merge) requests. During that time I learned a lot - mostly about how not to review code, how to make the process less painful, what makes good-quality code and so on.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: it blows my mind that we still need to write about stuff like this. Everything in the post should be basic #softwareEngineering practice tought in school, required during job onboarding, enforced during work performance reviews and mostly automated by tools.
What is being thought in school? what is the onboarding process for developers?
Performance engineering will be riskier than Moore’s Law ever was. Companies may not know the benefits of their efforts until after they’ve invested substantial programmer time. And speed-ups may be sporadic, uneven, and unpredictable. But as we reach the physical limits of microprocessors, focusing on software performance engineering seems like the best option for most programmers to get more out of their computers.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this is a well known fact, developers are lazy as often the hardware is more powerful than what they need to do the job. But as we reach limits of hardware and as AI improves it seems that we may be able to throw software at the problem and have machine algorithms to improve the performance of systems. The impacts are high, from allowing less powerful hardware to run your app or reducing the cost in high volume applications (think data centers or the billions of internet of things devices).
Read the full paper onScience or just the abstract to get an overview here:
In 2006 we published the first edition of The State of Business Process Management, our comprehensive, international survey of what organizations are doing with business process technologies. We have published this report biannually ever since and this year’s report, The State of Business Process Management 2020, is the eighth market survey report we have prepared.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: business process management (BPM) has been less popular in recent years. As the report correctly states digital transformation may be "a euphemism for large business process redesign that emphasize TI and automation". Is it a case of "when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail"? Maybe. This may be a "BPM winter", similar to what AI has suffered in the past. Having looked at tools from Trisotech recently I can say that they are much more mature than they were, and span a much wider spectrum of problems, from ideation to automation. Yet the process modelling activities remain complex and often require professional support to become a success.
Nevertheless proud to see a Montreal-based company (trisotech) leading the way!
Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it's not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it... Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. We built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that's to build.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: I spent the better part of my life moving physical processes in the digital world. Now the pendulum shifts and we must pour our engineering energy into building things locally - using digital processes, techniques, technologies, from 3D printing to robots to IOT. This is the next 20 years.
Learn about the Spotify model and how it helped Spotify scale agile by emphasizing the importance of culture and network.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: spotify has defined a methodology to organize its teams for agile product development,. This article explains what the core components are: squads, tribes, chapters and guilds. Listen to the videos at the end for an amazing overview.
The Technology Radar is an opinionated guide to technology frontiers. Read the latest here.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this is by far the best radar out there as it is unbiaised and comes from a group dedicated to lead in the custom software development. Should be mandatory reading for any technologist as you may learn a thing or two (me: I had no idea what data mesh was before reading it. Now sur glad I do.)
The cybersecurity skills gap has been plaguing enterprises for years—but despite garnering much discussion and media coverage, little progress is being made.
State of Cybersecurity 2020 looks at questions such as:
How long does it take to fill a cybersecurity role with a qualified candidate?
What percentage of cybersecurity candidates are qualified for the role?
Is retention improving or worsening?
Which cybersecurity skills are in the highest demand?
Are HR teams informed partners in the search for qualified cybersecurity candidates?
Are cybersecurity teams becoming more gender-balanced, and are diversity programs doing enough to help?
What can companies do to staff up more quickly and find better-qualified candidates?
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this in depth study shows that cybersecurity issues in organizations stem from lack of skilled resources. With covid and remote work on the rise, the importance of cybersecurity is higher than it has ever been.
Developers own the whole process. There are no release managers, sign offs, or windows that developers are allowed to make releases in. We have infrastructure to limit the blast radius of bad changes Unfortunately, sometimes things will break, and that’s ok. We have built our infrastructure to limit the blast radius of bad changes. Most importantly, we trust each of our developers to be responsible and own the recovery if their change goes bad. Developers can fast track a fix using /shipit --emergency Once a fix has been prepared (either a fix-forward or revert), developers can fast track their fix to the front of the line with a single /shipit --emergency command. To help our developers make decisions quickly, we don’t have multiple recovery protocols, and instead, just have a single emergency feature that takes the quickest path to recovery.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: how many companies trust their developers enough to let them push in production when they want? All startups do because, well, there is no management structure to prevent it. But once you get big enough, tendency is to gate the process. Shopify is now big enough that they could impose release management but they've decided otherwise. This post shows that it is possible to give developers full control over release and trust the'll make the right decisions. This is devOps IMHO. This IS what I strive for in all my projects.
With 93 percent of companies reporting that digital is critical to achieving their goals, we expect technology leaders will come under increased pressure to plan, measure, and track team performance levers more scientifically. As a result, McKinsey decided to study this topic deeply. We found several forces converging to help bring more “science” to the management side of technology
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: article provides good insights into the best ways to organized digital teams and measure their performance. One key insight: co-location of resources leads to more quality and productivity.
Want to give your coding chops a public workout? Then prove what you can do with the BBC Micro Bot. Billed as the world’s first “8-bit cloud,” and launched on 11 February, the BBC Micro Bot is a Twitter account that waits for people to tweet at it. Then the bot takes the tweet, runs it through an emulator of the classic 1980s BBC Microcomputer running Basic, and tweets back an animated gif of three seconds of the emulator’s output.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this is such a great idea and shows just how much you can do in a few lines of code!
Facebook uses over 20,000 deep features to characterize each account, providing a snapshot of how each profile behaves to make it difficult for attackers to game the system by changing tactics.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Facebook uses large datasets to identify fake accounts. This article explains how.
For the past decade, ThoughtWorks Technology Radar has been the definitive guide to what's hot and what's not in tech.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: I've follow the radar since its inception and published most updates here. I'Ve used their tool to craft my own version of the radar. My take: every time the radar comes out I realize that new technology exists that I was not aware of and that I need to consider!
In our Strategic Apps group at Zapier, we've figured out a way to do standups in a timely manner, make them minimally disruptive, and not add a burden to anyone else. To cut to the chase, we delegated most of the work to a robot, and we do it all asynchronously.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: I like the use of technology when it can reduce tedious repetitive tasks. This is a great example. Agile team perform daily standup meetings which are supposed to be quick information sessions to keep everyone abreast of progress and reduce blindspots. They often turn out to be too long and unproductive when people don't follow rules. Zapier development team has leveraged a bot to perform that task and hopefully achieve same results without wasting people's time. I find it an interesting use of technology.
Building the infrastructure to manage the lifecycle of machine learning models remains a challenge for most organizations. While we have seen tremendous advancements in machine/deep learning…
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: always good to know what others are doing. Here, LinkedIn use of AI. The post has interesting link to LI engineering blog, worth reading.
Skincell Pro Aides in evacuating and eradiating skin problems like a wide range of moles, various types of moles and skin labels Aides in mending the skin of the influenced zone. Leaves no scar blemishes on the skin.
The availability of omnichannel opportunities, and so much demand has paved the way for companies to build their digital strategy on a multitude of websites.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: most organizations have multiple websites to manage (for different countries, regions, departments, products, focus areas, etc.) making multi-site WCMS solutions essential. Yet most multi-sites are not architected the right way ending up with different look and feel, technologies, databases, analytics, etc. This report provides some insights into key decisions to make.
Linus Torvalds transformed technology twice — first with the Linux kernel, which helps power the Internet, and again with Git, the source code management system used by developers worldwide. In a rare interview with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Torvalds discusses with remarkable openness the personality traits that prompted his unique philosophy of work, engineering and life. "I am not a visionary, I'm an engineer," Torvalds says. "I'm perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds ... but I'm looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in."
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: short video on the creator of Linux the operating system that powers most of the digital revolution. his explanation of the personal characteristics that made him great (stubborn, focus, lack people skills) are quite common in the tech world. For those inside my world, this is going to sound familiar. For others, it may help you understand a bit more your strange tech guy in the IT department...
The next evolution of AWS Single Sign-On enables enterprises that use Azure AD to leverage their existing identity store with AWS Single Sign-On. Additionally, automatic synchronization of user identities, and groups, from Azure AD is also supported.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this is huge for inter-system operability and improved management and user experience. It is now possible to single sign-on between Azure and AWS cloud computing platforms. This is a big deal for us geeks... ;-)
SDKs can serve a variety of purposes. There are SDKs for payment processing (such as Cardio, Paypal, Braintree, Stripe, Venmo) and SDKs for user login and authentication (such as Agilebits, Google SignIn, 1Password). Roughly half of the SDKs in apps are marketing and customer experience related, addressing needs such as analytics, attribution, A/B testing and user engagement. Marketing and customer experience services that are the focus of our Periodic Table.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: there are so many solutions you can leverage out there to build apps and solutions, why would anyone build their own?
Curious to know what technologies are used on your competitor’s website?
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: essential tools for any self-respecting geek. Easy to check this out, look in the extension toolbar of their chrome browser and you'll probably see BuiltWith... ;-)
As soon as the power turns on, hackers can gain an advantage.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: we expected cloud computing data centers, like those of Google, protect our data and keep it private. This article dives into the potential issues that can occur when server hardware are compromised at the hardware level - within the silicon that powers the servers and often contains millions lines of code that can be hacked. The post presents a new open-source chip called Titan that should help protect against those threats. Important, essential, should be everywhere.
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WHY IT MATTERS: this technical paper explains how Facebook engineering team has developed a framework to help facilitate the deletion of data in their social graph. This can be used in other contexts.
To me it highlights the primitive state we are in when it comes to permanently deleting the data we produce in our daily activities - so called "data exhaust". But what the framework fails to enable is metadata - for example the inferences that were made from the post such as the political preferences - are not reverted when deletion occurs. Thus the original data still leaves traces - the original event is forgotten but its impact is not. Much more needs to be created to ensure true "deletion" in order to enable that digital systems "forget".