Friday, January 08, 2021

Post Holiday Friday Links

C64 Generator

A bit of a catch-up issue of the Friday Links. Full of urbanism, randomness, a few of 2020 reviews and the usual engineering management.

Relatively few podcast were released over the holidays. I managed to catch up with my back-log (for a while).

Management

What are our core values and practices for building software? - cool summary about Thoughtsworks engineering values. I think they probably apply to a lot of companies

Packlink engineering vision for 2021 - I find it a bit messy, but did pick up some good ideas like the Tech Radar. I also find that I think less about technologies now and more about general direction

TBM 52/53: Real Teams (Not Groups of One-Person Teams) - Totally agree. I am rereading Peopleware and  they also go on about this. Team Topologies instead pretends that there are no individuals.  

Tech Lead Management roles are a trap. - they are also a reality in most small to medium sized companies.

What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry - that is fricking long! 

TBM 2.1/52: Continuous Roadmapping - isn't this how everybody does it?

Building On-Call Culture at GitHub  - great insight how to think about code ownership in a mononlith and how to map that to on-calls

Technology

Extracting Personal Information from Large Language Models Like GPT-2 - this is pretty bad and just the beginning. 

Russia’s SolarWinds Attack - good write-up by Schneier 

Ruby 3.0.0 Released - we are going to stick with 2.7 for a bit longer, but they are finally thinking about performance.

HTML over the wire - I now have a rule: read what DHH thinks and do the opposite 

Visualizing GitHub’s global community - pretty new home page. Also see: How we built the GitHub globe 

Balancing the needs around the CentOS platform - CentOS was still trying to rescue their image in December. I think they have given up now. 

When Should You NOT Use Rails?  - in 2021 maybe? Good points though and also mentioning other sensible frameworks 

Commits are snapshots, not diffs  - someone trying to explain Git again :-) 

RubyConf 2020 [YouTube] - all the talk videos

Microservices Monitoring: Using Namespaces for Data Structuring - good tips from AppSignal, if you do use Microservices (or just many services)

Just desserts: Baking with AI-made recipes - great idea and surprisingly successful - more on the behind the scenes

Bootstrappable builds [LWN] - interesting concept, but seems a bit academic 

Urbanism

11 places that prioritise people over cars - Barcelona's super blocks are included as usual

The Future of Offices When Workers Have a Choice - I like the idea of more of a mix of living and working areas. This already exists in many European cities, but seems rare in the US.

Removed London bike lane blocked by parked cars most of the time – study - this is a surprise to no one. Good use of technology though. It is also weird how people remove pop up bicycle lanes while we are still in the middle of a pandemic

Been doing some gaming on the holidays. There's a lot of differences between different city building games, and it reflects the places where they're designed. Here's a thread on SimCity, Cities Skylines, Transport Tycoon, A-Train, and Soviet Republic. - comparison of city games with screenshots and how realistic they are from an urbanist perspective 

Before: 19th Century $1-building; Now: luxury house/pizzeria [YouTube] - should I feel bad about liking this kind of gentrification? I don't care! I want a fire station. 

Supermanzanas, o cómo devolver al peatón la ciudad robada por los coches [Spanish] - looks like Madrid might be planning super blocks too. Good visualizations in the article. 

Barcelona is redesigning 21 downtown streets to prioritize people, not cars - more about the new (not really) super blocks.

Cycling Injury Risk in London: Impacts of Road Characteristics and Infrastructure

"When compared to no infrastructure, this study found that protected cycle infrastructure reduced odds of injury by 40-65% in the morning commute, whereas advisory lanes increased injury odds by 34%. Junctions were found to increase injury odds threefold; higher pedestrian density also increased injury odds. This study supports growing evidence of a ‘safety in numbers’ effect."

Two-way street: how Barcelona is democratising public space - even more about Barcelona streets

2020

LWN's 2020 Retrospective - predictions for 2020 were generally off a bit  

A year with Covid -19 [Podcast] - Year review from Science in Action, with report snippets over the year 

Athletes Don’t Quit - Strava community in numbers. The graphs in relation to lock-downs are interesting. And Brazo de Hierro's photos are great.

2020: Year In Review - World Bicycle Relief is still my favourite charity. Mostly because of bicycles. 

Random Generators

Patch notes just dropped - generated with Totally Rad Generator

42 Douglas Adams quotes to live by - all gems. It might be time to reread some of his books again. I haven't read Last Chance To See or the original Hitch-hikers Guide for a long time. 

Burning the furniture: my life as a consumer  - nice long read. I am a self confessed IKEA guy.

Extreme Time Value of Money: Late-stage Career Planning - Kent Beck about how career planning changes with age

Rear View Wheel Vol.15 End of Year 2020 - a bit naughty to just post people's rears, but nice cycling photos 

Unhealthy snacks to be banned from checkouts at supermarkets in England - maybe Brexit has some advantages in being able to make these rules faster?

Sewed own popup dome-home for need, been selling them since [YouTube] - now I want a dome, but that doesn't really fit our style 

Why Barcelona Is Becoming a Hub for Travel Startups - clustering? 

Organic meat production just as bad for climate, study finds - Organic milk are quite a bit better though. Eggs might be worse.
 

How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing - I am still on my Zettelkasten mission, this also touches the subject. I also want to get better at extracting information from books I read. 

Do We Lose Skills Because of Technology?
[Podcast] - no, we learn other things

Other Links

Friday Links Disclaimer
Inclusion of links does not imply that I agree with the content of linked articles or podcasts. I am just interested in all kind of perspectives. If you follow the link posts over time you might notice common themes though.
More about the links in a separate post: About Friday Links.

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