Four short links: 5 December 2018
NLP for Code, Monolith vs. Modular, Automatic Gender Recognition, and Budget Simulator
- code2vec — a dedicated website for demonstrating the principles shown in the paper code2vec: Learning Distributed Representations of Code. An interesting start to using a productive NLP technique on code.
- Monolithic or Modular — When monolithic adherents look at a modular project, they may think that it’s low quality or abandoned simply because commit count is low and rare, new features are not being added, and the project has no funding or community events. Interestingly, these same properties are what modular adherents will perceive as a good thing, likely to indicate that the module is complete. Monolithic adherents don’t believe a project could ever be “complete.”
- The Misgendering Machines: Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition — I show that AGR consistently operationalizes gender in a trans-exclusive way, and consequently carries disproportionate risk for trans people subject to it. In addition, I use the dearth of discussion of this in HCI papers that apply AGR to discuss how HCI operationalizes gender and the implications that this has for the field’s research. I conclude with recommendations for alternatives to AGR and some ideas for how HCI can work toward a more effective and trans-inclusive treatment of gender. (via Alvaro Videla)
- Occult Defence Agency Budgeting Simulator — a hilarious exercise whose point is about what happens the year after you cut the budget, with parallels to UK fiscal policy left as exercise for the (pixie-ravaged) reader. I’ve long held that simulations are a fantastic way to make a point. (via David Stark)
