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Friday, October 29, 2021

Friday Links 21-35

Scrabble tiles
Scrabble tiles
Some long reads this week. The one about longtermism and "Great Attrition" are very interesting. 

Management

Ratings as Incentives - I once worked at a place doing the 1-5 ratings, with additional rules that acted as weird incentives. I liked the idea, but it failed in reality.

Experimenting with Focus Weeks and Mob Programming - I still haven't tried mob programming, but then I never got into pair programming either

You can be directive without being a jerk - lots of good tips from Lara Hogan as usual

Squad Health Check model – visualizing what to improve - I came across this and the next one for some reason, interesting approaches to assess teams

How to Create a Team-Health Assessment for Engineering Organizations  - another assessment strategy

The Art of Growing Up: Using the Challenges of Leadership to Attain Radical Self-Inquiry [Podcast] - interview with the coach guy from reboot

Why nobody hires junior developers and what happens next - it is a vicious cycle

Work

‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours - tricky time for employers and even worse if you don't understand what employees want

Has England gone back to the office? [Podcast] - yes and no

Our work went fully remote - Ask Me Anything! [Podcast] - could we stop asking people who have a vested interested in this? 

Environment

Analysis: Fuel-duty freeze has increased UK CO2 emissions by up to 5% - UK freezing tax on driving and flying just around COP26

The $3.50 go-anywhere ticket to fight climate change - this is great, and better than free for all transit in my opinion

Urbanism

Data on Bike Parking in Barcelona - pretty amazing how many dare or have to leave their bike outside in Barcelona. 

A bordo del "bicibús": cientos de alumnos desafían a los coches para ir a clase pedaleando [Spanish] - article about the "bicibus" an bike to school initiative for kids in Barcelona

Busy yet Friendly? Explaining Barcelona’s Av. Diagonal [YouTube] - our office is on this road, the worst thing is that the type of bike-lane changes every few hundred meters

Inside the New Plan to Make Paris ‘100% Cyclable’ - Paris is the rising star of urbanism

Random Words

Word of the Day: procrastinate - one of my favourites 

Drive Failure Over Time: The Bathtub Curve Is Leaking - drives are improving, especially at the beginning of their lifetime 

Cycling notes: the pros and cons of braking with the heel – archive, 1896 - before the disc vs rim brake wars

Learning the ropes: why Germany is building risk into its playgrounds - I never thought about Germany as trying to encourage risc taking

Against longtermism - I hear a lot of positive stuff on longtermism, this puts it into perspective 

Anthony Fauci Could Use a Day Off [Podcast] - cool interview with Fauci

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.

Friday, October 22, 2021

Friday Links 21-34


Lego Cassette
Lego Compact Cassette
Catching up and dreaming of a four day work week. 

Management

The Sabotage List - nice idea to collect the stuff you are probably not going to do for reasons

Always do Extra - if you have slack, do extra, not more of the same

How to Understand the Power Structure [Comic] - funny :-) 

How Amazon Raised the Hiring Bar and Leveraged Narratives for Decision-Making (with Colin Bryar, Former Amazon VP) [Podcast] - interesting, but most things probably don't apply to my or your job 

Want a More Productive Morning Routine? “Pay” Yourself First - I have to work on this, though I already improved a bit. "No mobile before work" for example. 

That Burning Feeling When You’re Right - being right alone is not enough

Engineering 

Lessons from 10k hours of programming [Podcast] - this is a fun discussion about learnings from too many years of programming 

Incident Review and Postmortem Best Practices - some good practices and ideas for incident reviews

Dungeon 251 - talking about the "Second System Syndrome"

A complete guide to code reviews - very good overview ... you have to figure out what you want to optimise for 

Worst Case - planning for worst case AWS outages 

The Original Remote Developer [Podcast] - fun story about Paul Lutus the developer of Apple Writer

Technology

You Can Now Directly Read Data Logs From Tesla Vehicles (Jalopnik) - this would be even nicer if it would really be open

Adventures in Amiga land part 1 - so great people are still writing code for the (virtual) Amiga

Security Risks of Client-Side Scanning - Schneier provides some more context

Try Out YJIT for Faster Rubying - Ruby gets a bit less slow 

Using Machine Learning to Predict Hard Drive Failures - not very useful at this time

The European Parliament Voted to Ban Remote Biometric Surveillance - go Europe!

Work

Make the most of hybrid work with Google Workspace - some new and old features from Google to improve hybrid work

Set aside time for focus in Google Calendar - did we really need a pandemic for this feature?

Remote teams will always need in-person interaction to succeed - interesting to see this from a company that is quite vocal about remote 

Could a shorter workweek be in your future? - I can't imagine it working for myself, but this will come 

Desigual workers vote in favor of 6.5% pay cut in exchange for four-day workweek - I take up to a 20% cut, no problem

Does the 4 Day Work Week Really Work? Gallup and real companies have the true answer.  - interesting stats, but then it derails a bit

Environment 

UK public now eating significantly less meat - still too much though

What made us doubt climate change? [Podcast] - lies

Updating our ads and monetization policies on climate change - Google is doing something about the lies. See also Google and YouTube will cut off ad money for climate change deniers

Urbanism

Vision Zero Reporting - I hope this catches on in the international media

The +1/-2, biking to a suburban hardware store challenge, in Barcelona! [YouTube] - Barcelona didn't do so well 

Barcelona’s ambitious plan to transform the city for pedestrians and green space - slow moving plan

Europe’s best walking cities: Six wonders of the wandering world - I thought Barcelona be on there, but while it is walkable it isn't nice with all the cars

Random Lego

Lego to remove gender bias from its toys after findings of child survey - nice ... this should be normal

Teen Spirit: Nevermind at 30 [Podcast] - maybe I am just a bit too old, but I never really got into it. Rereading Generation X is on my list though.

In Place of War: Around the World in 80 Raves - Techno for a good cause

Puppy perks: should workers get three weeks of paid leave to bond with a new pet? - yes please, but also at least two months per puppy and consecutive if you have more at once

Intro to Cassette Recorder Operation, Maintenance, and Repair - this will be useful in the future. I still have two decks to fix

On an Endless Loop: Tracking the Cassette Renaissance in 2021 - fun to see the new kids joining

This makes a change - a Boombox with a unique feature [YouTube] - I seem to have developed an addiction to tape changers

When Facebook went down this week, traffic to news sites went up - interesting

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.

Friday, October 08, 2021

Friday Links 21-33

stairway towards blue sky
stairway to nowhere

Too many articles about management today!
I got pulled into a rabbit hole about Thomasson Hyperart this week, which was fun.

Management

The Skill of Org Design - great long read about organisation design

How to safely think in systems - "When your model and reality conflict, reality is always right"

TBM 41a/52: Slow Down on Your Own Terms - I like the idea of working in different speeds. When introducing changes for example it is important to slow down (or take a long breath I like to call it) before introducing more

TBM 41b/52: Suitably Detailed Roadmap Items - this is just an expanded tweet, but a log model of planning long roadmaps 

Responsible Tech Playbook [mostly PDF] - collection of guides from Thoughtworks about making better technology decisions 

Learning-focused engineering [Podcast] - about learning and teaching in the context of companies

What Is a User Story? - nice opinionated overview

Asymmetric Workloads: One Way Leaders Can Poison Their Culture - easy thing to step into

Engineering Teams Are Just Networks - it is about the team and not just the individual 

How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum - absence is probably incorrect, but he always goes for the click-bait titles

Why do we recommend working small, especially in a constantly changing environment? - nice diagram to show the effects

Review Notes: Shape Up - I didn't see this back then. I am much mire sceptical and he also lists all the caveats 

Burnout in Software Development - Survey Results 2021 - that paints a pretty bleak picture

Minimize Team Cognitive Load to Increase Flow - this is probably one of the most important thing to think about when creating teams 

Mission on Repeat: To Lead in High Pressure Environments, Get Laser-Focused on the Standards with David Robinson (Former Commanding Officer at the US Marine Corps) [Podcast] - I am still not a fan of taking the military as an example, but this is a great episode 

Engineering

Infrastructure Observability for Changing the Spend Curve - on reducing CI costs

Welcome to the Verica Open Incident Database - pretty cool and timely 

A web developer's 'happiest' announcement: Google Search is saying goodbye to Microsoft's Internet Explorer 11 - best news since Flash's EOL 

Dungeon 235--So I Got to Thinking ... - I love this series. After the plot twist he no gets into the weeds.

How Red Hat uses GitLab for kernel development [LWN] - weird that Fedora didn't choose GitLab

Work

Facebook denies end to 'WFH forever' rule in wake of mega outage - in today's "forever news", ...

Here’s why flexibility, not hybrid, is what employees say they want - clearly

Technology

Submarine Cable Map - pretty, but are these all of them?

Facebook Outage

Investors Spent Millions on ‘Evolved Apes’ NFTs. Then They Got Scammed. - "investors" got scammed with NFTs and then were surprised to be scammed

Environment

‘Eco-anxiety’: fear of environmental doom weighs on young people - I guess that makes me young. Nobody cares about these fears though, while they were very concerned about young people during the pandemic (when it suited them)

Peter Lustig und das Elektroauto (1983) [YouTube, German] - electric car on German TV in 1983

3 new ways to navigate more sustainably with Maps - some nice new features for Google Maps. I wish they would also change navigation to avoid populated areas if possible (also on The Guardian)

Microsoft climate head says planting trees won’t be enough to remove CO2 from the air - surprise!

Urbanism

Berlin’s car ban campaign: ‘It’s about how we want to live, breathe and play’ - in Germany? Hah!

​​What’s the Point of 15-Minute Grocery Delivery? - no point

Birmingham to become a super-sized low-traffic neighbourhood - another town, millions to go, ...

Promenades & Medians of Passeig Sant Joan [YouTube] - my office and former living hood. I hate central bike paths with a passion. I still remember this road before the transformation. It was much worse.

Random Hyperart

Hyperart Thomasson - I came across the term via this tweet. I was always facinated by this, but never new it had a name.  

I’m a life coach, you’re a life coach: the rise of an unregulated industry - MLM?

How Tracking and Streaks Help You Establish Habits and Reach Your Goals - good personal summary about tracking streaks

Animal rights groups call for sterilization methods to control wild boars - the boars are back in town!

‘Email is a zombie that keeps rising from the dead’: the endless pursuit of Inbox Zero - once you get into GTD Inbox Zero just makes sense

 

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.

Friday, October 01, 2021

Friday Links 21-32

image generated by AI about "Revenge Bedtime Procrastination"
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination
Catching up with everything again. Some good long reads in the Work section, especially the report about women in the workplace.

Management

Agile vs Kanban [YouTube] - forget about the "vs", he just gives an introduction to both and some personal opinions

Don't worry, you’re not wasting your mentor’s time. - good to know, now I need some mentors...

1.0 Is the Loneliest Number - "By shipping early and often you have the unique competitive advantage"

Say Goodbye to Your Manager - it is really about "bad managers"

Engineering

Partitioning GitHub’s relational databases to handle scale - the main learning here is that you can get away without doing it for a very long time

Dungeon 230--I'm goin' in. - good post about how we can change everything later and avoid upfront design 

How Backstage Made Our Developers More Effective — And How It Can Help Yours, Too  - we are definitely still too small for this

Improve Your Life with Long Error Messages - "Guru Meditation" 

How to Reduce Memory Bloat in Ruby

Technology

webshit weekly July, 2021 -

"Google, the world's largest repository of algorithmic search expertise, gets trick-fucked by blogspammers and doesn't notice because nobody at Google both speaks Norwegian and gives a shit about search results"

"Bicycling enthusiasts try to figure out why someone without even a Serfas sponsorship has managed to win. Hackernews knows it was because the professional collusion tools failed the old guard, creating an opening for someone to win based on actual physical exertion. One Hackernews is mad that women are allowed to ride bicycles, but it's not clear if the anger is about the competitive aspect or that a woman has a bicycle at all."

A fork for the time-zone database? [LWN] - heartbreaking! My favourite Changelog is getting messy

Set Safari free! - I still can't believe that this is happening, how is not everybody complaining about this?

Now — AWS Step Functions Supports 200 AWS Services To Enable Easier Workflow Automation - this is another nice step to less code

Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus Is Now Generally Available with Alert Manager and Ruler - this is also a good thing for people using AWS

PostgreSQL 14 released - also relase notes and the little things

I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto - well, that is one person of the list! or is it?

Courtès: What's in a package - as a former Fedora packager I can relate

The Framework Laptop is now shipping! - nice, but not for me. The port things look weird and oversized too. 

Bespoke - very cool modular synth, also for Linux

Clive Sinclair and the offbeat brilliance of the ZX Spectrum - we had ZX81, ZX Spectrum, C64, Atari 800 and my TI99/4A in our early home computer "gang"

Remote Work

If You Never Met Your Co-Workers in Person, Did You Even Work There? - maybe

Working From Orbit - this would free up some space in offices. I can't see myself moving to this any time soon though. Linux support is still in the making. 

Women in the Workplace 2021 - very long report, with some positive news but also a lot of work to be done

The data doesn’t lie: what we learned when we tried a 4-day workweek - another successful experiment 

New Microsoft Study of 60,000 Employees: Remote Work Threatens Long-Term Innovation - "Short-term productivity goes up, long-term creativity goes down."

Environment

Can YOU Fix Climate Change? [YouTube] - no

Pollutionwatch: the fight to protect children from dirty air - it is a bit annoying that this even is a fight 

When will countries stop exploring for oil? [Podcast] - sometime between 2050 and never

Waste from one bitcoin transaction ‘like binning two iPhones’ - well done everybody, well done!

Cycling

‘I haven’t looked back’: the women who discovered cycling in lockdown - this is great. I also think I see a lot more women on my rides. Often alone or small groups. 

Lockdown sees cycling gender gap narrow, government statistics reveal - more data on this

Why aren’t more big bike firms tracking their environmental impact? - because it takes time and effort. Good to see Trek giving it a go.

Urbanism

The Unstoppable Appeal of Highway Expansion - people will never learn

Superblocks and tactical urbanism – who owns Barcelona‘s streets? [Podcast] - people do

Tactical Urbanism & Barcelona’s Future [YouTube] - local critique of these

The Liberation of Paris From Cars Is Working - interview with one of the people making this happen

Germany: parking row brews as Green mayor plans to increase fees by 600% - still a bargain

Telosa - billionaire is going to build city from scratch ... two words: "Flying" "Taxis"

A conversation with Bianca Hermansen about Democratic Design in Cities - Ep 16 [Podcast] - interesting perspective, our cities are not often democratic designed, even if we try

Cycling by Design - Scottish cycling infrastructure guidelines (pdf)

ZDF Magazin Royale vom 17. September 2021 [German, Video] - comedy show about German's addition to cars

Random Sleep

Why Sleep Deprivation Kills - that was unexpected

What Is “Revenge Bedtime Procrastination”? - TIL ... I had to look that up recently

The Evolution of Crocodiles [Podcast] - back from the summer break and a great episodes. Crocs!

YouTube to remove misinformation videos about all vaccines - I have some other conspiracy theories I would like to have removed please

9/21/21 - It's Today!

Whistle, Gotham City’s latest superhero, is Jewish. It’s a full-circle moment for the comics industry. - ordered!

Ikea's New Gaming Collection Looks Pretty Good - I was looking for a reasonably cheap new chair!

Dutch are world’s tallest people – but they’re shrinking, study shows - see nutrition

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.