The all fun pandemic section is back. This week I got flooded by good links. Lots of good stuff going on in cities all over the world and people in my bubble seem to be more aware of what we do to the environment.
Engineering Management
4 Steps to Remote Success: Hiring, Decision Making, Collaborating and Managing with Katie Wilde, VP of Engineering at Buffer [Podcast] - lots of of good stuff about remote teams … which most of us still are
Collaboration Incentives - more from Kent Beck about geek incentives
4 Tips for Shipping Data Products Fast - these also apply to all kind of products
Hack-Week: Embedding Our Values and Causes in Our Product - cool theme for a hackweek and great projects too
Someone noticed that my manager README vanished from GitHub. I already added a note to the old post. I am still considering what to do about it.
The Seven Domains of Transformation - I just scratched the surface of this, but it seems to be an interesting framework for transformations
Steal this micro-feedback strategy from one of the world’s top cycling teams - marginal gains example from cycling applied to management
You’re not just a manager, you’re also a boss - annoyingly yes
Measures of engineering impact - some ideas and examples from companies trying to measure this
Engineering
Four Microsoft Exchange Zero-Days Exploited by China - a bit worrying the amount of zero-days recently
Mysterious Macintosh Malware - I wonder if they forgot the payload
Running Emacs with systemd - this is so simple. I probably should done this earlier.
New Feature: Searching Through Samples in AppSignal - another nice feature for people using AppSignal for application monitoring
Software evolution: the lifetime of fine-grained elements - paper on the life-cycle of lines of code. “Statistical analysis shows that code lines are durable, with a median lifespan of about 2.4 years”
Design Better Avatars - more inclusive!
UX inspiration from history: Sony Walkman - I am a bit cassette nostalgic, this looks into the UX of them
Pandemic
How Garmin Users Prioritize Movement in a Global Pandemic - Garmin looked at the data of what people have been up to in 2020
Yuval Noah Harari: Lessons from a year of Covid | Free to read - long read
If Covid-19 nevertheless continues to spread in 2021 and kill millions, or if an even more deadly pandemic hits humankind in 2030, this will be neither an uncontrollable natural calamity nor a punishment from God. It will be a human failure and — more precisely — a political failure
Will Spain be able to vaccinate 70% of the adult population by the end of summer? - probably not
Double March - stuck here forever
Almost over! It will never be over. Almost over! It will never be over. - at least stuck here for this year
Environment
Fitbit Sense review: a good smartwatch that fails on sustainability - I don’t care about the watch, but The Guardian now includes sustainability in reviews, which is great.
The problem of CryptoArt - it is the energy wasted
Crypto Fart - jwz also doesn’t like it
Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by ’entire countries’ - nobody seems to care
Urbanism
La superilla de l’Eixample: carrers per a vianants, sense asfalt i amb més vegetació [Catalan] - this looks promising, now I wished I bought a flat in those streets
Berlin’s Rent Controls Are Proving to Be a Disaster - it is still early, but I expect it to be
Cycling across Europe in the pandemic - BBC World Service [YouTube]
Low-traffic schemes benefit most-deprived Londoners, study finds - it turns out that it isn’t for the rich, so the rich protesting can stop pretending to care for the rest of the city
Neuer Verkehrsplan: Berliner sollen häufiger Rad als Auto fahren [German] - Berlin has a lot of cyclists, not because of the support of the city, but in spite of
Los carriles bici de Via Augusta y paseo de Maragall, operativos en 2023 [Spanish] - in 2023! I could have used these five years ago
The City Where Cars Are Not Welcome - Heidelberg apparently.
“We all know we have to go in this direction,” he said. “It’s just a question of how fast.”
Where the Bicycle was Invented (and Forgotten): Coventry [Guest Video] [YouTube] - nice report from Coventry, British cities are so pretty
Cycling
Adidas launches Velosamba SPD cycling shoes for city cyclists - oh, nice
Are Electric Bikes Dangerous? - probably not
Immoral and irrational cyclists? Exploring the practice of cycling on the pavement - research paper about pavement cycling … mostly because infrastructure is a bit rubbish
Random Noise
The Nothing Line - I recorded the sound of an empty Underground train and it made me feel a bit weird and spooky [Audio] - this is brilliant, great for background noise
Roxy Music - In Every Dream Home a Heartache [Audio, YouTube] - I discovered this today. TODAY!
Galician noir: how a rainy corner of Spain spawned a new TV genre - I am mostly into Nordic Noire, but maybe I should give these a try
Building the future of work with Google Workspace - some stuff to look forward to. I am using workarounds for most of these at the moment (also on The Verge: Google Workspace picks up new features designed for remote work)
La ausencia de viajeros acelera el abandono de la terminal 2 de El Prat [Spanish] - the older Barcelona airport terminal is basically abandoned
The Nothing Line - I recorded the sound of an empty Underground train and it made me feel a bit weird and spooky - this is brilliant, great for background noise
Benefits of microdosing LSD might be placebo effect, study finds - it is basically the homoeopathy of drugs
Why you should be playing Valheim - I got spammed about Valheim from all directions. I am going to give it a try, but my computer is probably not powerful enough.
Vintage technology: ‘It sounds so much cleaner’ - when did Psion 5 and mini disk became vintage? I am too old.
Radio Hour with Björk [Audio] - a mix set by the Islandic weirdo