Friday Links 22-41

"A collection of links on various topics, including overcoming disillusionment with the executive team, handling feedback, creating incentives for managers to grow, the pitfalls of using microservices, reflections on the state of Ruby and Rails, retaining high performing employees, closing a company for a week, transportation and urban planning in various cities around the world, tourism in Spain, a Netflix episode featuring David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the LastPass breach, and the rescue of abused beagles, as well as several collections of links on various topics."

(summary generated by ChatGPT) 

Last Friday Links of the year, 41 of 52 Fridays. Mostly skipping for holidays or sickness.

All the best for 2023!

Leadership

How Do I Overcome My Disillusionment with the Executive Team? [Podcasts] - as a coach, it makes sense to help the listener to find a way to a better place. Some of it sounded mostly about avoidance. 

What to do when my feedback doesn’t land? - is it just about feedback to help or do you need to set boundaries 

Team Matching Creates Incentives - for managers to grow. I never worked in an organisation that applied team matching. I, personally, like to give hiring managers more autonomy on whom they hire.

Engineering 

The Pitfalls of Treating Microservices as a Blanket Solution - definitely fit them to your teams, products, and organisation capabilities

Year in Review 2022: Tenderlove's Ruby and Rails Reflections and Predictions - Ruby is still sticking around (Rails doesn't get mentioned much)

Work

How to hold on to your high performing employees, with Fresia Jackson. [Podcast] - interesting insights into performance rating systems and reviews 

Why and How We Close Buffer For The Last Week Of The Year - at Devex we did this twice a year and it is brilliant to have everybody away at the same time

Urbanism

Traffic wars: who will win the battle for city streets? - it is not a "war". It is about restoring the balance again. 

Driving Through Paris? That’s Going to Get a Lot Tougher in 2024 - Paris still leading the way of transformation.

London’s lost mega-motorway: the eight-lane ring road that would have destroyed much of the city - narrow escape 

Shifting gears: why US cities are falling out of love with the parking lot - slowly ... very slowly

The Lifesaving Tech Drivers Hate [YouTube] - drivers want to break the law without punishment

Cyclist clears way with homemade bicycle snowplow  [YouTube] - this looks like so much fun, possibly a bit dangerous 

Copenhagen is a City of WEIRD Bicycle Bridges (and some don’t work well) [YouTube] - clearly overrated city, while still being better than most

Vienna Straddles the Danube with Modern TRAINS and Sleek TRAMS [YouTube] - TIL: second-largest German-speaking city! 

Barcelona 'systematically' breached EU air quality directive, rules European Court of Justice - they don't care 

Spain allowed NO2 levels to exceed limits in Madrid and Barcelona, EU court rules - I hope there will be meaningful punishment  

Japan To Introduce Mandatory Helmet Law For People On Bicycles - this is stupid 

Exklusiv Einigung beim Mobilitätsgesetz: Senat will Autoverkehr in Berlin reduzieren und Lieferzonen schaffen [German] - Berlin wants to reduce parking and space for cars ... I believe it when I see it

Random Beagles

‘We did not stop’: How rescue groups saved 3,776 abused beagles - too cute!

Spain tops world’s best tourist villages ranking with three awards - avoid these for a while 

My Next Guest with David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Full Episode | Netflix [YouTube] - he is just remarkable, and Letterman is pretty good too. 

Our country of the year for 2022 can only be Ukraine - "For the heroism of its people, and for standing up to a bully"

LastPass Breach - if you are using LastPass, you might want to switch now. 

Why 70% of Spain is Empty [YouTube] - history and hills 

Beyond microblogging with ActivityPub [LWN] - it's not only Mastodon

The 50 best TV shows of 2022 - time for best-of lists!

Other Links 

• A bit of a link traffic jam from Ben Crowder. It's probably best if you just subscribe to his blog. 
  

• Links #54 
• Links #55 
• Links #56 
• Links #57  
• John Freeborn: Weekly Design Links – 12/27/22
• Bruce Lawson: Reading List 298  
   

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 Links 22-40

Catching up with my podcasts. The Heroko one was fun and so was the one about retrospectives.

If you want to see something impossible, watch the making-of series by Danny McAskill.

Leadership 

Radical Candor S4, Ep. 16: What Do Managers of Managers Do? (The Crank Call From Kim) [Podcast] - goes off the topic a bit at the end :-) 

How Retrospectives, Public Channels, and Asynchronous Meetings Foster Inclusive & Culturally-Diverse Teams (with Alexandra Sunderland, Sr Engineering Manager at Fellow)  [Podcast] - I am a big fan of retrospectives, even if you don't do anything agile, do retrospectives 

Ep - 16 - Leading through change; where do you start? feat. Ryan Tomlinson (VP of Engineering at Healx) [Podcast] - change is tricky.

The story of Heroku [Podcast] - I never used Heroko, but I can see the allure. The backstory is pretty interesting too. 

Reckoning with the force of Conway's Law [Podcast] - what it says on the tin 

Performance Review Incentives - I am not in favour of performance reviews. I like the idea, but I have never seen them implemented in a useful way.

The “tech lead” title is turmoil. Is it worth it? - I have seen this problem in most companies I worked for. I think it is time to reframe it or get rid of the idea.

How to build an apprenticeship program for engineering managers - how to grow your people to EMs

Engineering 

Accelerating Code Delivery By 97% With Yarn Workspaces - monorepos 

Shopify Embraces Rust for Systems Programming - nice, but the migration must be a pain.

Five stars code reviews - another try at defining good code reviews

Work

The current state of mental health in the workplace, with Dr Nick Taylor [Podcast] - this became much less abstract for me recently 

EU institutions prepare to close on pay transparency negotiations - this is taking forever!

TBM 53/52: "Are All Companies Messed Up?" - yes, but some are trying to get better

Urbanism

How the Parking Garage Conquered the City - better than parking lots, but they also bring too many cars into cities

Budapest has the busiest and longest TRAMS in the world! | Trailer: City Unboxed [YouTube] - great public transport. Walking and cycling is a bit meh.

Why Amsterdam is Removing 10,000 Parking Spaces [YouTube] - on-street parking, which is great. Replacing them with underground parking … not so great. 

Rethinking the Mobility Paradigm | FULL Keynote | Marco te Brömmelstroet [YouTube] - framing is important 

Environment

Mapped: Carbon Dioxide Emissions Around the World - go Germany!

Random Electronic Music

‘It was a gateway for people to get into electronic music’: 30 years of Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence  - I know all the songs, but didn't know the album.

Airport security 100ml liquid rule to be scrapped - about time 

The Next Chapter of Reader: Public Beta - a feed reader with all the features from Readwise. I have been trying it out for a while, but the app is just too slow for me at the moment.

2019 - 2022 reading recap. - something for my reading list

Don't buy me this! Gifts not to buy for cyclists this Christmas to avoid a festive faux pas - yearly reminder!

The Continuity of Splines  [YouTube] - this is beautiful 

Danny MacAskill’s Postcard from San Francisco [YouTube] - the making-of the Red Bull video. 

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 Links 22-39

I was out for two weeks with holiday and then a Covid-19 episode.

Today I enjoyed the long read about female British spies.  

Furthermore, some good articles about leadership and how Etsy is scaling. The whole remote work / return to the office discussion hasn't been resolved either.

Leadership

Lessons from a 5x CTO: How to Retain Talent and Run Skip Level 1:1s Through Rapid Growth (with Rob Zuber, Chief Technology Officer at CircleCI) [Podcast] - clearly this was before they let many people go, but still good insights 

Introducing a product delivery culture at Etsy - interesting to see Etsy using ThoughtWorks to help them

TBM 51/52: Shaky Foundations (and Planning Escalation) - going from being reactive to creating a foundation 

Company, team, self.  - starts off about priorities, but really is about how much you value adhering to a plan. 

Three Common PM Role Antipatterns - I had PMs reporting to me in the past, there were some good things about this, but it wasn't ideal. 

The Rands Test - measure where you are in an organisation.

Engineering

Exploring the Basal Cost of software [Podcast] - the baseline costs, like complexity and maintenance

Experiment: The hidden costs of waiting on slow build times - I find these calculations always a bit one-sided. There clearly is a goldilocks point of build speed and costs. 

Password policy: updating your approach - "Don't enforce regular password expiry" "Do not use complexity requirements"  

The cloudy layers of modern-day programming - starts general about "VendorOps", but gets a bit to specific later. 

Peer-Programming a Buggy World with ChatGPT AI - using ChatGPT to create software from scratch. This is pretty cool. I am not worried about engineering jobs yet.

Using the cloud to scale Etsy - more about scaling Etsy. 

Retrofitting null-safety onto Java at Meta - this could be useful for more languages. 

Hanami 2.0: Better, Faster, Stronger - I really hope more people consider this as an alternative to Rails.

Work

520. The Unintended Consequences of Working from Home [Podcast] - what it means for companies and cities 

Raising the Bar from Day 1: Why Talent Acquisition and DEI Go Hand in Hand (with Jackye Clayton, VP of Talent Acquisition and DEI at Textio) [Podcast] - improving the hiring experience 

The Scoop: A Return to the Office (RTO) wave? - I still think there will be just different types of companies and people pick what they like. Or we might find out that one type is simply much more successful eventually.

Three Essential Remote Work Practices for Engineering Teams - structure, communication, and work/life balance. 

Can we finally kill off cheap, disposable conference swag?  - and company swag in general! 

Twitter’s ongoing cruel treatment of software engineers - this is a wonderful train crash to watch. 

My Digital Productivity System for 2022 - I like reading about other people's systems

My Analog Productivity System for 2022 - second part

Mastodon

Bye, Twitter - Tim Bray leaves

Microblogging with ActivityPub  - LWN about the Fediverse. 

PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet - switching from Twitter to another walled garden can't be the solution. 

Mastodon stampede - this is a problem and will get worse when people start up more and more small instances 

Experimenting with Federation and Migrating Accounts - Mastodon needs to scale better in general 

On Running a Mastodon Instance - mostly about the admin part.

Environment 

It's official: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel  - nice. 

New drought restrictions in Barcelona area and northeastern Catalonia from Friday - there are restrictions in my hood since start of the summer.

Urbanism

*RAVE SHUTS DOWN 7 LANES OF TRAFFIC* Drum & Bass On The Bike - BARCELONA [YouTube] - it is a shame that I missed this! Imagine having a city where this would be possible every day. 

Barcelona introduces 'Amazon tax' on delivery companies - "This world and this city cannot cope with receiving a 300g parcel to your home brought by a 1.5-tonne vehicle"

Elon Musk’s Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America - number of people being surprised: zero

Neighborhood Walkability in Relation to Knee and Low Back Pain in Older People: A Multilevel Cross-Sectional Study from the JAGES [Paper] - turns out walking is good for you 

Neighborhoods with walkability enhanced by good access to parks and sidewalks and fresh food stores, easy walking without slopes or stairs, and high population densities, had lower prevalences of knee and low back pain among older people.

The Exceptionally American Problem of Rising Roadway Deaths - increasing again in Germany too.

Random Spies

The secret lives of MI6’s top female spies - brilliant long read about spies. 

PFC bans are set to change the face of all waterproof garments - good to see the cycling industry removing some of these pollutants. Gore-Tex Shakedry is magic, though. 

Literature Clock - a new quote for every minute 

A brand new Linux DRM display driver – for a 1992 computer - keeping m68k alive! 

Blockchains, What Are They Good For? - nothing! 

AWS and Blockchain - also not useful.

Telegram repossesses usernames so they can sell them as NFTs - I guess that is Telegram dead for me too?

Other Links

• Tim Bray: Long Links 
• Bruce Lawson: Reading List 297
• Ben Crowder: Links #53
  

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 Links 22-38

Another Mastodon week. Seems like another wave of users is migrating to Mastodon. 

I also looked into on-call ... for reasons.

And I enjoyed the old Barcelona videos and the article about the USE method. 

Mastodon

How OSI got to Mastodon - good to see more institutions and organisations joining and creating their own instances.

The Fediverse Could Be Awesome (if we don’t screw it up)  - the EFF chiming in … without creating their own instance.

Fedi.Directory - the old school directory of Mastodon accounts 

‘Could this be Twitter without the toxic slurry?’ My week on Mastodon - Zoe Williams

Verifying your GitHub profile on Mastodon - better than the hacks 

Mastodon Is Like Twitter Without Nazis, So Why Are We Not Using It? - from 2017 

#FediBbuzz - trends in the fediverse 

Scaling Mastodon is Impossible - I can't say I agree 

Mastodon and federation - is it Twitter or Discord servers?

Leadership

How to Create a Developer-Friendly On-Call Schedule in 7 steps - quick overview 

Being On-Call - from the SRE Book

Three ways to remove bias from technical interviews - structure, relevant questions, do deeper 

“If only people stopped interrupting and started listening :)” - we all have been in these meetings 

10x Disagree and Commit - you have to be good at disagreeing and committing

The flying wedge. - yes, I don't like this either.

Engineering 

Rust in the 6.2 kernel [$$$] - nice incremental approach

Using the cloud to scale Etsy - the consultants view 

The USE Method - "The Utilization Saturation and Errors (USE) Method is a methodology for analyzing the performance of any system."

Move faster, wait less: Improving code review time at Meta - improving the code review user experience with nudging 

Sapling: Source control that’s user-friendly and scalable - looks nice, but how compatible, just command line?

Urbanism

Enderrocar per construir [YouTube] - Barcelona uploaded some videos about the construction around the Olympics.

Barcelona Connexió [YouTube] - Another Barcelona video. Some of this is great, some of it is still being fixed now.

Electric vehicle shift alone will not solve urban transport woes, says Portuguese minister - surprise 

Wild boars: Catalonia's growing feral pig problem - feral pigs still going strong in Barcelona

Over 400 Covid-era outdoor seating areas in bars and restaurants regularized in Barcelona - mostly taking space away from cars

Random Colours

A 900-Page Pre-Pantone Guide to Color from 1692: A Complete Digital Scan- this doesn't seem accurate

Best WRC Game Ever? WRC Generations | Rally RACC Catalunya | Gymkhana Action [YouTube] - I was not aware that such rigs are for sale, this is amazing and amazingly expensive.  

Poorly Drawn Lines - Never Give Up [Comic]

Meet your new two-factor authenticator: your Commodore 64  - fun!

Barcelona students to take mandatory climate crisis module from 2024 - protests do work!

The Scoop: Tech Layoffs in 2022 - this is looking pretty bleak

Other Links

• Ben Crowder: Links #52- Ben is even busier than me!
• Weekly Design Links – 11/15/22- love the pixelated clothing
  

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 Links 22-37

Another round of Mastodon links. The migration is still ongoing, and Twitter seems to be moving toward the abyss.  

I also enjoyed the $70k Android hack and the weird-old-book-finder.

Mastodon 

bitbang.social - retrocomputing instance

Mastodon Moment - Tim Bray on Mastodon 

Is the fediverse about to get Fryed? (Or, “Why every toot is also a potential denial of service attack”) - Mastodon might have a scaling problem

Mastodon on your own domain without hosting a server - I don't even have a static server at the moment! 

Home invasion - Mastodon's Eternal September begins - pretty negative. I can understand where he is coming from. It is OK to mourn the past, but you have to look forward. 

Exploring Mastodon: Latest Memo: Multiple Mastodon Accounts - Martin Fowler continues his series. I don't really like these work in progress articles. 

A Big List of Mastodon Resources - all the tools and introductions. 

With Twitter in chaos, Mastodon is on fire - CNN

Thousands Have Joined Mastodon Since Twitter Changed Hands. Its Founder Has a Vision for Democratizing Social Media - Time 

Your organization should run its own Mastodon server - yes, especially if you are a media or government organisation.

What is Mastodon, the social network users are leaving Twitter for? Everything you need to know - The Guardian's take

Leadership

Cruel Changes at Twitter - how not to lead 

You should maintain a transition file - "It’s a document that you prepare for whoever ends up succeeding you in your role."

The Seven Levels of Busy - I am aiming for somewhere between Level 3 and 4.

Making a leap into the future - using "leap teams", temporary teams focused on one project to break silos. The pros & cons.

Work

1 in 20 workers will quit if transparency laws reveal they are paid less than co-workers - that seems a lot. Only time will tell.

Elon Musk scraps Twitter’s work from home policy - probably not even legal 

How To Create Serendipity on Remote Teams - this is so hard! Some good ideas anyway.

Engineering

Accidental $70k Google Pixel Lock Screen Bypass - this is a great and random hack 

The Netherlands, Germany and Spain: Which European countries are leading the solar revolution?  - Spain should be leading this 

Euruko ’22: Ruby over Helsinki - a few Jobandtalent people went to the Ruby conference.

Environment

How to move a country: Fiji’s radical plan to escape rising sea levels - "It is not just pulling out 30 or 40 houses in a village and moving them further upfield. I wish it were that simple."

France to require all large parking lots to be covered by solar panels - I have some hope that this means fewer parking spaces

Urbanism

Death of cyclist in Berlin provokes debate over road protests - this discussion is just insane. Another cyclist was killed in Berlin and nobody talks about the truck that killed her. 

El 18 de novembre s’implanten els canvis de mobilitat als quatre nous eixos verds i places de l’Eixample [Catalan] - traffic changes are beginning for the new green corridors / superblocks in Barcelona 

Barcelona Superblock - See details on action set out by the plan for 2030 - overview of the changes

Brasilia: Modernist disaster or deceptively brilliant? [YouTube] - the blocks are a nice idea, but the houses are awful. No wonder people created even worse suburbs. 

Medics get on their bikes to take the load off ambulances [$$$] - London's Cycle Response Unit

Random Adventures

The Interactive Fiction Competition - Some of my first games were text only. I loved Adventure and later the Infocom games. 

weird-old-book-finder - I am mostly entering "cycling" or "bicycle"

CommunityRule is a governance toolkit for great communities. - collection of different community setups 

Garmin Instinct Crossover Series In-Depth Review: It’s Got Hands! - I like this, mechanical hands look pretty 

Our Car Camping Kit - I just discovered this blog. I love camping and really enjoy equipment lists for all kind of activities. 

BookWyrm - kind of Goodreads in the Fediverse. 

vollebak - fancy end-of-the-world clothes

Australia’s Weird Little Time Zone - weirdos

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 Links 22-36

Since Twitter has been going downhill for a while and I am mostly leaving Facebook and Instagram, I have been searching for an alternative. 

Mastodon is the obvious candidate. I had created an account a while ago, and it offers an ad and algorithm free alternative. You can also take control by having your personal server.  

Below are some of the links I found helpful. 

And too many other links. 

Mastodon

Mastodon gained 70,000 users after Musk’s Twitter takeover. I joined them  - I think it is a lot more now.

Martin Fowler: Exploring Mastodon - notes on his journey.

BirdsiteLIVE a Twitter bridge, to keep on following your favourite accounts on Twitter. I haven't tried this yet. 

Masto.host  - a service to host your instance with minimum effort and OK prices. I already started one up. 

fedifinder.glitch.me - find your Twitter people

twitodon - also find your Twitter people 

An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon - a guide

A futuristic Mastodon introduction for 2021 - an intro 

Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse - another guide

Leadership

Why Feedback Hurts -  "Taking feedback personally is a choice. Make good choices." - true, but easier said than done.

Architect(ure) as Enabler of Organization’s Sustainable Flow of Change  [slides] - that looks like a good talk about integrating architecture in different teams and team sizes. 

Advice for Engineering Managers Who Want to Climb the Ladder - in case you would like to become a director … I am uncertain if I can recommend this.  

Shit umbrella is the destroyer of trust - I was a part-time shit umbrella once. It isn't helping anyone.

Better, Faster, and More - what should you want from your new job?

Engineering

I Told You it Was Private - Ruby gem with the nuclear option in case you are using private methods. 

Personal Heatmaps - insight into Strava's heatmap implementation strategy

Technology

How GitHub converts previously encrypted and unencrypted columns to ActiveRecord encrypted columns

OpenSSL vulnerability 

This has been mostly patched now and it delayed the newest Fedora release.

• LWN: OpenSSL 3.0.7 released
• CVE-2022-3786 and CVE-2022-3602: X.509 Email Address Buffer Overflows 
• Schneier: Critical Vulnerability in Open SSL
• OpenSSL warns of critical security vulnerability with upcoming patch  
  

Environment

El miracle que necessita Barcelona perquè aquest 2022 no rebenti el rècord històric de temperatura [Catalan] - Barcelona is continuing to hit temperature records.

Europe’s climate warming at twice rate of global average, says report - possibly up to 3C around Barcelona.

Urbanism

Elon Musk’s first Hyperloop tunnel in California is gone - replaced by parking … that says it all. 

Why car companies should fear the golf cart - "people driving golf carts in her community frequently stopped to chat with neighbors mowing their lawn. “You’re never going to do that if you’re in a car,” she said."

Can Groceries Be Delivered TOO Quickly?! [YouTube] - in cities where it works, most people won't need it.  

New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America - nice, but also "Even the safest areas in the US remain killing fields compared with most of Western Europe."

Wie die Mobilitätswende aussehen könnte [German, Video] -  Are cities without cars possible … of course. 

Children take to the barricades to save School Street - children shouldn't have to do this.

Random Compasses 

Magnetic north, true north and grid north align over Great Britain for the first time in history - I just found this interesting somehow. 

Channel 4 News’ first ever transmission from 1982  [YouTube] - A long time ago, but the news seems so familiar. 

When will the EU end seasonal clock changes? Only time will tell. Access to the comments - can we get on with it, please? 

NDAs, Obsessive Buyers, and $400 for Sublime: Inside the Baffling Revival of the Cassette Tape - yes, I am still on that topic. 

How To Communicate Better on Slack - simple tricks to avoid some back and forth

Other Links

• Ben Crowder: Links #50
  
• Ben Crowder: Links #51
• Weekly Design Links – 11/01/22
• Bruce Lawson: Reading List 296 
  

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 Links 22-35

A mixed bag of goodies this week. 

Since Twitter might get even worse, I am now also publishing on Mastodon.

Leadership

Communication Models and How They Scale - "almost any model works for a group of <100" - I think the problem is that people cling to that for too long

3 big moments that can define your leadership career - start, choose, do

Being a Dynamic Leader - not every leader is the same and not every situation is the same. You have to find your place and also adapt.

Engineering 

Modern PHP features explained - PHP 8.0 and 8.1 - I haven't done PHP for a while, but I still think it is a great community and good to see that they are still iterating. 

Why and how GitHub encrypts sensitive database columns using ActiveRecord::Encryption - the key management is interesting 

How We Use Terraform At Slack - looks like this can get quickly out of hand, even when it seems easy to get started 

Work

Managing and Leading Globally Distributed Teams - mostly common-sense stuff, but I really like Etsy's blog

Environment

Michael Liebreich’s Keynote Speech at World Hydrogen Congress 2022 [Vimeo] - I wonder why they invited him, he is definitely not a fan of hydrogen.

The state of the energy transition - Bill Gates about where we are going. Things I disagree on: "CO2 capture" and "Net zero"

100m highly polluting cars could appear on Europe’s roads after EU move - the industry won

EU reaches deal to ban new combustion engine cars by 2035 - too late

Urbanism

Weatherwatch: how cycling can measure local air pollution - just strap a battery-powered sensor to your bike … brilliant.

Bikes will be kings of the road in Bruges' city centre from now on - we have similar rules in Barcelona

Volker Wissing hat es nicht eilig [German] - in Germany, cities can only implement 30 km/h or car-free zones if they have been proven dangerous. The cities would love change, but the central minister is blocking it.

Sperrung der Friedrichstraße für Autoverkehr rechtswidrig  [German] - one of the effects of the above: judge ruled to revert a car-free street in Berlin.

Plywood Gourmet How thousands of restaurants speedily, messily, and probably permanently took over the street. - taking over streets: good, taking over pavement: not good

2022 10 11 SUPERILLA BARCELONA ENG C40 - promotional video about the new Barcelona Superblocks

Random Keyboards

Review of the Kinesis Advantage360 Professional - This might be my future keyboard.

Modern Warfare 2 Amsterdam Mission (Ridiculous Graphics) [YouTube] - I don't have time to play games, but this is just looking so good. I miss Amsterdam.

Mexico falls back but won’t spring forward as summer time abolished - I, personally, would choose summer-time. 

An inventory of SFPD's Killdozers - we know the US police has lost it a long time ago

Other Links

• Weekly Design Links – 10/25/22 - I haven't seen these for a while. I just love to look at the pictures.
  

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 Links 22-34

A few articles about writing stuff down this week. 

I love the long read about NTP and the podcast about 1984.

Leadership

Putting Amazon’s PR/FAQ to Practice - I am not good at writing long documents, but I like the idea and even one-pagers would be already an improvement to most processes 

Three main reasons I write stuff down - if you can explain it to paper you can explain it better to others and yourself 

The Friday Update: On journaling to get things done - I am currently doing a morning journal, maybe I extend this a bit

Friction Between Product and Engineering; Lack of trust and collaboration slowing down product growth - another interesting part of this series. And another focus on the "First Team" as a solution.

The Three Tech Projects You Meet in Hell - weird, but entertaining take

Technology 

Pocket Casts Mobile Apps Are Now Open Source - this is nice. My favourite podcast player. This could lead to some delightful user contributed features or fixes. 

The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time - I love NTP, it is basically magic 

Environment

Greta Thunberg: “Our politicians will not come to the rescue of planet Earth” - Greta started her protest with 15, she is now 19.

Low Earth Orbit Visualization - so much stuff in space

Random Dystopias

Nineteen Eighty-Four [Podcast] - Maybe it is time to read that book again, the last time was probably around 1984

Your Brain Absolutely Can't Handle More Than 5 Projects at Once, New Science Shows - I might have a bit more currently, but some of them are on suspend mode

What JK Rowling and John Cleese get wrong about cancel culture - "A belief in accountability does not involve condoning threats or violence – and freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequence."

Chemical attraction: some people really are ‘mosquito magnets’, study finds - sorry everyone else 

Study shows e-bike riders exercise less than conventional bike users – but there’s more to it than that - I am not surprised

Other Links 

• Tim Bray: Long 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 Links 22-33

I forgot about the bottleneck series, the new part about Product v Engineering is nice. 

William Shatner's reflections on space are also not what I expected.

Leadership

How Slack’s SVP Approaches Culture, Focuses on Outcomes, and Provides Flexibility (with Brian Elliott, Executive Leader of Future Forum and Senior Vice President) [Podcast] - Plenty of good ideas in here. I like the hybrid meeting moderator and surveying your teams. 

“Should I create a Performance Improvement Plan for my direct report?” - good Playbook on why and when to start a PIP. 

Reminiscing: the retreat to comforting work. - I have been guilty of reminiscing and snacking 

Failed #SquadGoals - an old post about the "Spotify Model" and suggestions to improve it

Bottleneck #03: Product v Engineering - numerous things I recognise happening around me and bad smells I have seen too, especially the "us vs them" attitude.

Making Finance Fun: The Motley Fool's Errand - I like the idea. It is kind of like chaos engineering for HR.

"a monthly company wide drawing takes place to find the employee selected to run a Fool’s Errand. [...], that person is forced to take two weeks off and cut off all contact from the office. [...] The Motley Fool’s ultimate goal is to make sure each team can operate while any member is out. "

How to plan? - not too much

Engineering

A Love Letter to React Native - someone coming from native apps and PWAs

Fewer, happier incident heroes. - I noticed the jumping on incidence in a previous job. Having a well-defined incidence process can really help.

Work

How We Set Communications Expectations As A Fully Remote Team - good idea to write these down. Often the expectation is that everybody is naturally aligned. 

Pay Transparency: What you need to know for 2023 - it is coming, better prepare.

Job Search Retrospective (2022 edition) - Julie has a great blog with many insights and good ideas about jobs. Also see: Anatomy of Julie's Job Search

Urbanism

Road Space Comparison [Comic] - XKCD joins the war on cars! 

'It's a scam': Even after $100 billion, self-driving cars are going nowhere - another $100 billion and another 10 years will surely fix this 

Developing and implementing 20-mph speed limits in Edinburgh and Belfast: mixed-methods study [Paper] - "the overall percentage reduction in casualty rates was 39%"

Cities around the world offered chance to win $1m to build cycle lanes  - money is usually not the problem, political will is

Male drivers three times more likely to be in road collisions with pedestrians - I am not surprised

Random Gorillas

Case of The Missing Gorilla [Podcast] - multitasking doesn't work, even for women

Making a Fremen Thumper [Video] - you never know when you need it

podcast.ai [Podcast] - "a podcast that is entirely generated by artificial intelligence." - scary

‘It felt like a funeral’: William Shatner reflects on voyage to space - not quite what he expected. (Also:  William Shatner: My Trip to Space Filled Me With ‘Overwhelming Sadness’ (EXCLUSIVE) and Blue Origin crew returns from edge of space [YouTube])

‘Absurd’: British Cycling faces backlash after announcing partnership with Shell - what were they thinking? Money, probably. 

1979 Technics Tape Deck Repair (RS-M17) [YouTube] - tape deck repairs are my favourite

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 Links 22-32

The second part of the interview with Meri Williams is interesting. 

I have been playing more with Emacs and got a bit depressed after watching what Toronto has done to the city.

Leadership

Ep - 13 - Why does feedback matter? feat. Meri Williams (ex-CTO Monzo, MOO, Healx) [Podcast] - second part of this great interview 

new little song: "The Re-Org Rag (I'm My Own VP)" [Tweet, Video] - hits a bit close to home

How Uber is Measuring Engineering Productivity - interesting, maybe open source this?

Engineering

Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think - I really prefer having local environments, but the setup is just getting too complicated. Especially since people insist on running OS X. Remote desktops are a step too far, though. 

Why haven’t PWAs killed native apps yet? - still missing some features, discovery, and installation is clunky.

Technology 

NVIDIA and nouveau [LWN] - I am so happy that I got rid of my NVIDIA card. But equally glad that people are still working on improving the situation.  

Emacs Tips - How to Give Presentations with Org Mode - since I am back on Emacs thanks to org-roam, I obviously try to do everything in Emacs now.

Work

What Does an Office Mean? Two Architects Discuss - remember offices?

Urbanism

Eight years of works to revamp La Rambla begin - I am excited for this. I am not certain, if they will be able to get rid of tourists. 

How Toronto Got Addicted to Cars [YouTube] - this is depressing and in parts unbelievable

The tunnel where cycling was mandatory [YouTube] - what happens if you think about cyclists too

Edinburgh 20mph speed limits: Deaths, crashes, and casualties reduced by 20mph limit, researchers say - surprise! 

Business Grew After Controversial Bike Lane Installed, Data Show - more surprises!

Random Cyclists 

‘Dreams can come true’: Uganda’s first female pro cyclist aims for the Tour de France - Nice to see more diversity. I am expecting great things from African cyclists in the future.

All the Docks: How it Went - people make up the weirdest challenges 

Die wir verloren haben [German] - 150k corona deaths is Germany

Opinion Thousands were released from prison during covid. The results are shocking. - 0.15% re-offenders 

Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need - "Finland is the only country in Europe where homelessness is in decline"

Other Links

• Bruce Lawson: Reading List 295

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 Links 22-31

Podcast edition!

I love the Björk: Sonic Symbolism podcast. It brings back so many memories from my time in London. 

The Happiness Lab (in random) and leadership podcasts are also great.

Leadership

Ep - 12 - How do I grow a culture of empowerment? feat. Meri Williams (ex-CTO Monzo, MOO, Healx) [Podcast] - first part of the interview which I really liked.

The Habits of Purposeful Leaders: How to Build Systems of Productivity & Improvement (with Mike Murchison, CEO of Ada) [Podcast] - balance between sync and async, what kind of leadership meetings make sense, what a leadership team is and what not  

The myth of tech excellence in tech leadership - it depends 

The Coach and the Fixer - another good one from Rands 

The people who hire me ask me to help their teams make changes. Most of the time, my first step is to see how I can slash those teams' load. [Twitter Thread] - if you want to move, you need space 

Technology

monomorph - pack shell code into a file with always the same MD5 checksum 

Bash 5.2 released - new command substitution code with better errors 

Getty bans AI-generated art due to copyright concerns - I am worried about this too.

Work 

GOOGLE Safari Themed Environment - I know we don't do offices any more, but I would like a Land Rover in my office please or any of the offices designed by Muse & Co 

'Wednesday plus one' & the 4-day week [Podcast] - two experiences with hybrid and four-day weeks.

Environment

Catalan health department plans law to ban smoking outside schools and on terraces - thank you!

Urbanism

Hawaii’s Suburban Experiment [Podcast] - how Hawaii got infected by suburban sprawl

Can the Best US Bike Cities Compete with Europe? [YouTube] - no

parkulator - display area taken up by parking in cities (Barcelona is pretty good, Andorra la Vella not so much)

Menos coches. Menos edificios modernistas. Más ciudades para la gente [Spanish] - interview with Jan Gehl architect / urbanist.

Random Friends

The Secret to Making Friends as an Adult [Podcast] - you have to invest a lot of time and be lucky

The future of hip-hop: New York [Podcast] - this is a great series exploring the influence of women and queer artists in hip-hop

Move to Your Happy Place [Podcast] - that's what I did

Björk: Sonic Symbolism [Podcast] - series of podcasts with Björk looking into her back catalogue. I enjoy this travel into the past. 

A message about Stadia and our long term streaming strategy - Stadia is going away and Google is refunding all money 

Spain plans ‘digital nomad’ visa scheme to attract remote workers - I hate these schemes and digital nomads 

Stichflamme Dormagen – Tape only  [German] - cassette revival, the German perspective 

The best cassette players for home listening - for some reason, they never include Sonys.

Ill-fated Spanish village poised to be destroyed a third time - my initial reaction was: just leave them be, but they are building in protect areas, which is illegal.  There are enough empty villages around where this is not the case.

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 Links 22-30

Many topics this week. I love the hack of a stolen laptop, the post of cascading goals made me think, good climate news cheered me up and check out random for some fun and funny stuff.

Leadership

Setting your engineers up for success: how Skyscanner created greater clarity in our competencies and pathways to progression - interesting approach, kind of similar to my favourite one from Etsy

TBM 41/51: Why Goal Cascades are Harmful (and What to Do Instead) - interesting. I always thought top down, cascading goals were a good thing. I have to think about this more. 

Dealing with Top-Down Projects - tricky, but good suggestions 

What do you need to know to be a manager? - "Can a lack of subject-matter expertise even be an asset for a leader?"

Seven things you need to know about retaining engineering talent - good summary of the usual reasons why people leave or stay

Engineering

How we merged our main repositories into a single monorepo - I love monorepos! 

From Stolen Laptop to Inside the Company Network - that is quite a hack

Technology

An X11 Apologist Tries Wayland - nice, someone, please convince the Cinnamon people

The SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats Mid-year Review - "At this point we can reasonably claim that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs"

Work

Hacker Stations - more workspace porn 

I Tried A ‘Body Doubling’ App To Help With Focus – It’s Weird But It Works - it's like pair programming for random tasks

Environment 

Rain in Catalonia will be more frequent, violent and unpredictable in future - lovely 

Barcelona bat el rècord històric de nits tropicals: 114 nits sense baixar de 20 ºC [Catalan] - new record of number of nights above 20C in Barcelona: 114 this year

Been Angry [Comic] - me too  

Earth is now our only shareholder. - Patagonia changing its business ownership to a trust, with the money made being invested in fighting the climate crisis 

Reasons for (cautious) optimism: the good news on the climate crisis [Opinion] - that cheered me up a bit 

Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution - "Smoking remains the biggest cause of lung cancer, but outdoor air pollution causes about one in 10 cases in the UK"

Urbanism

Crossing the Street Shouldn't Be Deadly (but it is) [YouTube] - I get so annoyed by short pedestrian light phases

Renovation works to 'detouristify' Barcelona's La Rambla to begin on October 3 - I am curious about how successful this will be 

Uphill battle: How Spain’s Pamplona helped cyclists overcome steep slopes - elevators for bikes 

How Japan Won its ‘Traffic War’ - public transport, less parking and smaller cars 

Why Empty Offices Are Becoming Apartments in Texas’s Big Cities - this is great, we need housing, people want to live in cities and cities need people 

France’s answer to Banksy: the anonymous street artist filling potholes with colourful mosaics - this is brilliant

Small prefab backyard home feels more livable than McMansions [YouTube] - more housing, even if it is for the rich

Random Trombones 

There is no song that cannot be improved by Trombone Champ - I am not convinced, I even want to play it, but the videos are great.

Gratitude [Comic] - me looking at some mindful tips

Bikes4Ukraine - The Story So Far [YouTube] - still lacking donations 

Longest single-volume book in the world goes on sale – and is impossible to read - it's a (stolen) comic

‘Gifs are cringe’: how Giphy’s multimillion-dollar business fell out of fashion - I always hated GIFs, it isn't just the kids 

Cats on Synthesizers in Space - exactly what it says on the tin

Air Force Releases List Of What’s In Its Famous ‘Petting Zoo’ Threat Training Facility - I never thought about this, but it clearly makes sense to have this. 

Dismantling Schengen – half a year at a time - oh, bugger

Other Links

• Links — Prints 2.9 from Ben Crowder

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.