Friday Links 24-09

I loved the essay about 40 years of programming by Lars Wirzenius. 

The coaching session about career goals is also great, independent of the topic.

Leadership

How Do I Balance My Career Goals with My Company’s Needs? [Podcast] - great coaching session. 

Breaking Down Barriers: How Field Trips to Different Team Offsites Spark Cross-Team Collaboration - I love this idea. 

Leadership requires taking some risk. - "sometimes bottom-up leadership requires obfuscating the work being done"

Friction isn't velocity. - change creates friction (in the form of more work), and change feels good, even if the result might not be better.

Engineering

40 years of programming - good summary about engineering and leading projects (at the time of writing, there is an SSL error)

How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes - I'll put that on my long to-do list. 

Code samples for the opening chapter of Refactoring - love this. It is missing Perl, Ruby, and Elixir, in case you are bored.

Urbanism

People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities—Until They Live in One - “If you go back a year or two later, people will just say: well, this is the best thing we ever did.”

Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to massive investment and it’s not stopping -

Cheating Automatic Toll Booths by Obscuring License Plates - crimes in cars are fine.

Random Radios

Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio - now I want one of these too!

Threads has entered the fediverse - there will be a shitstorm, let's see how it ends.

US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones - good!

Shaped like information - always funny. I am all for Hoboz! 

How the world sleeps, according to Garmin Connect sleep score data - unsurprisingly Spain isn't doing great.

Other Links

• Bruce Lawson: Reading List 315 

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 kinds 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 24-08

Quite a mix of topics. I recommend the podcast with Cal Newport and the article about learning to ride a bike ("Stumbling can be lovely")

Leadership

Joe Militello, Chief People Officer at Pagerduty: Why You Need to Rethink Your People Strategy [Podcast] - people strategy has to be part of every team.

Story: Leaving LinkedIn - Choosing Engineering Excellence Over Expediency [Podcast] - not really about leadership, but an interesting inside view about what makes someone leave.

How to be productive without burning out, with Cal Newport [Podcast] - speed vs sustainability. 

The “10x engineer:" 50 years ago and now - the "surgical team" idea always seemed a bit weird to me, even 20 years ago, when I read it.

Measuring Developer Productivity via Humans - about the benefits of qualitative metrics.

How I set expectations for skip levels - I am looking into skip levels at the moment.

Engineering

time_t is not GMT - it has no TZ.

Environment 

Air pollution levels have improved in Europe over 20 years, say researchers - not in most cities.

How did Norway become the electric car superpower? Oil money, civil disobedience – and Morten from a-ha - I always enjoy the a-ha part.

Olive oil becomes most wanted item for shoplifters in Spain - it is still cheaper than everywhere else.

Urbanism / Transit

OMFG DINOSAURS AND TRAINS!!!!! (with TierZoo) [YouTube] - it really isn't Germany's fault!

Health gains of low-traffic schemes up to 100 times greater than costs, study finds - surprise! 

Government tried to bury report which found that Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are effective and popular - no surprise!

Random Tea

Storm over a teacup [Podcast] - about Nepalese tea.

Berlin’s techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list - thanks for making me feel even older.

OldWeb.Today - use an obsolete browser, on an obsolete OS, to view dead web pages.

Dial Up Modem Sounds, from 300 bps to 56K [YouTube] - best subtitles ever?

Oh, that's what happened to Kickstarter - close web3 call!

My 5 Step Journey Towards Ergonomic And Fast Typing - I really should learn to type at some point!

‘We cranked up the madness’: Jack Davenport and Steven Moffat on making Coupling - still funny … even if a lot of it is outdated.

Learn your farm animals with AI! - "mock" "qlick"

2023 Garmin inReach® SOS Year in Review - busy west coast. 

Stumbling Can Be Lovely - "The hardest part is the launch, Hal says."

AI Prompt Engineering Is Dead Long live AI prompt engineering - let's just have the AIs doing the job of making the AIs doing our job.

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 kinds 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 24-07

 

Good urbanism videos today. 

If you got some time, I can also recommend the podcast about bonuses and the four part series about the bicycle industry bubble.

Leadership

Do bonuses actually make us work harder? [Podcast] - it is very tricky, and can go awfully wrong.

The Hagakure #76: Why Are You Not Hiring Junior Developers? - Your juniors will be faster seniors than you expect. But AI is working against them. 

How to Run an Async Retrospective? - I wonder how useful these really are.

Engineering

How GitHub uses merge queue to ship hundreds of changes every day - I like this, even on a smaller scale.

programmingfonts.org - because you can never have enough of them. 

Playing audio files in a Pi Pico without a DAC - I probably would use a DAC. 

List of 2024 Leap Day Bugs - thankfully this happens only every four years … since we are apparently not great at it. 

strudel - "a new live coding platform to write dynamic music pieces in the browser! It is free and open-source and made for beginners and experts alike."

Work

In-Depth: How Does Working From Home Influence Teamwork? - many studies, non-conclusive.

Workchat: workplace culture has never been more complicated [Podcast] - Let's see if "Chronoworking" becomes a thing. 

How to Handle a Retreat: 16 Tips from Bufferoos as We Head to Cancún  - Step 1: head to Cancún.

Urbanism

Why Is It So Hard To Cross The Street? (& What You Can Do To Help)  [YouTube] - the flag thing is still hilarious.

Drop Bar Girls and my homage to the road bike - cycling chic is back.

Should Cities be Circles? [YouTube] - yes, Circleville is a thing. 

How the Dutch SOLVED Street Design [YouTube] - this should be possible everywhere. 

What are the benefits of low traffic neighbourhoods on residents in London? [YouTube] - following the "culture war" around the LTNs is a weird look into the UK.

Random Emojis

On Families and Equality - this is a difficult problem to solve, none of the solutions are ideal. And yes, I now subscribe to a blog about emojis.

How did the bike industry get into such deep trouble? [Podcast] - if you are interested in industry bubbles, or bikes, this is a great four part series.

‘Hard Miles’: The Hollywood Movie That Could Boost Bicycling - new cycling film! 

Hairy Bikers chef Dave Myers dies at 66 - RIP

Content Nation Backlash Highlights Mastodon’s Toxicity - the Fediverse needs to chill a bit. 

Easy-to-make kimchi - Kimchi in general isn't that hard. This is a good way of making it. 

‘It makes me so sad’: church re-emerges from reservoir as Spain faces droughts - my drought update. 

Feeds all around - useful tool to find RSS feeds of your Mastodon network. 

Carve Her Name - "Every day women have, and are, making history. ​Find out what happened on this day, and carve her name with pride."

Other Links

Weekly Design Links – 03/05/24 - I love the Thai Tuan Dang's art and the N64 book.

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 kinds 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 24-06

The flag of Ukraine at Kyiv City Hall

It has been two years since Russia's invasion and beginning of the unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.

There is fatigue and attention, and headlines are turning to the next topic.  

I'm not as down about it now as I was two years ago, as it really got under my skin. 

Now I stay mostly current with the news to not forget. I am impressed by The Guardian's continued reporting on this.

Ukraine

The Worst Morning Ever - a memory of the first 24 hours of the war.

Nastia @ Vernadsky Library in Kyiv 2024  [SoundCloud] - it is wonderful how some life continues as normal.

Two years of war in Ukraine – then and now - in pictures.

A train through Ukraine: a journey into the stories of two years of war

Engineering 

Story: Beautiful Code - Inside Greg Wilson's Vision for Software Design [Podcast] - interesting story about getting into code and teaching it.  

time_t Hard Mode - my favourite topic: time zone changes!

Today in "Daylight Savings Chaos Monkey" - every four years we learn about the mistakes we make.

Increase Test Fidelity By Avoiding Mocks - I quite like mocks! Not using them can also quickly get out of hands if you have many dependencies. 

Are Aurora Performance Claims True? - deep dive into the claims … it depends, but it appears to be true.

Work

Periodic Face-to-Face - I was lucky to meet some coworkers already in my first month, and I know many people are eager to do the same around conferences. 

RTO doesn’t improve company value, but does make employees miserable: Study - it is good to see some studies around this. Until now, it was just camps shouting at each other.

Four-day week made permanent for most UK firms in world’s biggest trial - 51% is technically most :-)

Environment

European parliament votes for watered-down law to restore nature - good, except for the watered-down part. 

Rise of fast-fashion Shein, Temu roils global air cargo industry - another thing we really don't need.

Urbanism

Europe Spends More on Roads than Rails (with Real Time History) [Podcast] - mostly about Germany because it is so depressing.

In the beginning (of generative AI) [Podcast] - it is astonishing how dead ML and data science is, after being on the hype train for the recent years. 

A hydrogen tram for Görlitz: about the worst idea I can imagine - the hydrogen hype continues.

The cities stripping out concrete for earth and plants - pretty. 

I Biked (Almost) Everywhere for a Month - "I had more mental energy for work and play and felt more intimately connected to the places and people in my city."

How to find space for bike lanes in clogged cities [YouTube] - Paris showing others how to do it. I really have to visit soon. 

Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment - "1 in 34 deaths are caused by cars and automobility"

Magnificent City Transformations: 6 Before & After Photos - I expect there was a lot of resistance to change, and now nobody wants to go back.

Random

BERLIN TYPE - I like the Berlin station lettering. This new font is nice too.

Analog Cassette Tape is Mounting a Comeback - the never-ending comeback.

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 kinds 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.