Housekeeping: Help improve Normcore Tech!

July 9, 2019

Hey readers! Two quick things today. 1. Reader Survey I’ve been at this newsletter game a little over a month now, and would like some feedback on how I’m...

The reign of Big Recsys

July 8, 2019

If you’ve ever used YouTube’s autoplay feature, Amazon’s “More Like This”, anything on Netflix, or used Facebook’s News Feed, you’ve used one of the most...

Beach reads

$ · July 3, 2019

It’s the Fourth of July in the United States this week, Canada Day in Canada, and, just, generally, summer. In honor of a crazy slow period, I thought I’d...

On Marcus and friends

July 1, 2019

Very frequently, aka every time I log onto my (any one of) my banks’ websites, I’ll be greeted with something like this: Vicki Boykis @vboykisHow I imagine...

Death by kipple

June 28, 2019

I saw this phrase in a piece about adulting a couple months ago and I haven’t been able to forget it: “reverse cardboard origami” - the process of breaking...

The two faces of tech

$ · June 26, 2019

In 2013, a couple months after the Edward Snowden story broke, I attended Strata, a data conference run by O’Reilly (the animal book people). Big data was...

Bearing the internet on our shoulders

June 24, 2019

In (the very unfortunately titled, but strongly recommended) Broad Band (site, GoodReads) , Claire Evans interviews some of the women who shaped the modern...

You don't need Kafka

June 21, 2019

A couple days ago, I was perusing the excellent Data Engineering Weekly newsletter (which I highly recommend subscribing to if you’re in the industry), when...

The life and times of LinkedIn Oleg

June 19, 2019

Oleg came into my life sometime in 2018. I was scrolling aimlessly through LinkedIn, the social network of last resort that I read when I’ve read all of...

The dark side of the mean

June 17, 2019

Poor data - it’s been subject to almost every analogy in the world lately. It’s been called the new oil, the new currency, and the new electricity. Can’t we...

I survived the Aladdin trailer

$ · June 14, 2019

A man with a singular vision, working and inspiring a small team of experts out of a garage in California. Technologically ahead of their time, experimenting...

Are you a leader or a psycho?

June 12, 2019

I got a request from Neil to do a newsletter on leadership, so here I am, ready to do some Thought Leading. (By the way, requests on topics are always...

Two Python paths

June 10, 2019

As I wrote previously, Python is at a bit of a fork in the road as to where it’s headed as a modern language. The latest indicator of changes is the two...

Kim Karda$hian's cash

June 7, 2019

Happy Friday, let’s do a fun celebrity thinkpiece newsletter today. :)One thing that takes up a (startlingly) significant amount of my time is thinking of...

🎶 Summertime and the working is constant

June 5, 2019

Happy June! The weather here in Philly has been perfect the past couple of days, and in between washing chalk off my driveway and buying watermelon every...

It's only a joke, Twitter

June 3, 2019

There’s something about the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge that is super motivating for me in a way that other challenges are not. Every year, I set a...

How do you fake a tornado?

May 30, 2019

I spent a few tense hours last night with my preschooler in our basement because of a tornado warning area, so let’s talk weather. The past couple years have...

Python's Caduceus syndrome

May 29, 2019

This year, according to StackOverflow’s annual survey, Python became the second-most beloved programming language (behind Rust, which is the language people...

We're taking it very seriously

May 27, 2019

Fire Dance, Paul Gaughin 1891Wishing everyone in the U.S. a meaningful and relaxing Memorial Day Weekend. Everyone except First American Financial Corp. On...

The commoditization of data science

$ · May 24, 2019

The Factory at Asnieres, Van Gogh, 1887One of my favorite subreddits is (sorry in advance) r/programmingcirclejerk, because it offers a place to call out...

Our beautiful, broken internet

May 22, 2019

Thanks to everyone for subscribing! Let’s get this party started. Source. In a recent, beautiful piece at Wired magazine, “Why I Still Love Tech”, Paul Ford...

Remember when Paul Graham was right?

May 20, 2019

Paul Graham, one of the most respected voices in Silicon Valley, both from the business and technology side, recently wrote: His replies soon became a chorus...

Welcome to Normcore Tech

May 20, 2019

I’m Vicki, and I like to think about technology in all sorts of different ways. At work, I’m a data science consultant working with a wide variety of...