Friday, July 26, 2024

Friday Links 24-22

Library with seating area in front

This week, I can recommend the long read about the Stream Deck, the one about books, and the discovery about a 55 year old bug in a game.

Last week, my automation for these failed, so you have to endure twice as many links today.

I also said that I wouldn't post depressing news any more. I am sorry, but the climate crisis and pollution made me do it, so it is your fault really.

Leadership

Gossip, Rumors, and Lies - About staff meetings.

3 reasons to stop hating one-on-one meetings - "After all, what’s a manager’s job? To get results and to grow people."

Developing domain expertise: get your hands dirty. - interesting approaches for different companies. Using the product, and shadowing customer support, seem to be good approaches. 

No More Mandatory - "By making something mandatory, you’re taking a rip at my autonomy."

The SECRET To Improve Developer Productivity Is... Being HAPPY?  [YouTube] - surprise! The mentioning of The Mythical Man-Month was unexpected. "Job satisfaction is the no.1 predictor of organizational performance"

Work

The Data Is In: Return-to-Office Mandates Aren’t Worth the Talent Risks - I see many advantages of offices, but this is the one you should care about.

Engineering

Open Source AI Is the Path Forward - is it really open source?

Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source - the real open source. "public money, public code"

How to use the new counted_by attribute in C (and Linux) - you look away for a decade and everything changes. This appears to be quite useful for safety. 

How I Found A 55 Year Old Bug In The First Lunar Lander Game - nice detective work.

Environment 

Urban air pollution and time losses: Evidence from cyclists in London [Paper] - increase in pollution reduces cycling speed. Or: clean cities to go (a bit) faster.

Kew Gardens prepares for climate change tree loss - this is a well-maintained park, now think about all the trees.

PFAS widely added to US pesticides despite EPA denial, study finds - thank you, America!

Sick leaves: tea growers’ climate misery leads to jump in UK prices - this should mobilise the Brits, right? 

Ireland’s datacentres overtake electricity use of all urban homes combined - thank you, Ireland!

Sunday was world’s hottest ever recorded day, data suggests - some of these links could be related. 

Five protesters and one police officer hurt in French reservoir demonstration - the water wars part #113.

Data centers draining resources in water-stressed communities - "Data centers are not a renewable resource."

The band that doesn't want you to drive to their concerts - artists who care about sustainability. 

Microsoft and Google's electricity consumption surpasses the power usage of over 100 countries - no comment.

Urbanism

The Problem with Cities & The Urban Doom Loop Could Still Happen

"To truly recover, cities must diversify their economic base, streamline the construction and conversion of new housing and mixed-use neighborhoods, enhance public services, and double down on what makes urban life attractive in its own right — not just as an employment destination."

Putting design first: six social housing projects from around the world - annoyingly, Denmark is doing it the best again. 

BikeBus Summit ‘24 - all a bit different, all good. 

Cycling your commute can lower risk of death by 47%, as long as you aren't hit by a driver - roll the dice.

Stuttgart's Urban Rack Railway [YouTube] - if you like trams & co.

The qualities of a great bike city aren't what I expected [YouTube] - cities with higher density help, so do politics and vibes. 

Carspiracy - You’ll Never See The World The Same Way Again [YouTube] - sadly, GCN is preaching to the choir.

Random Books

No one buys books - and most books don't earn anything.

Decoding Gen-Z slang and grammar pet peeves with linguist Anne Curzan [Podcast] - I am going to start using "a couple" as meaning "a few" again! Who is with me? 

The Famous Computer Cafe 1985-07-12 Joel Berez (Infocom) and Jack Anderson (Young Astronauts) [Podcast] - a bit about Infocom. 

VNC Resolver - peek into someone's VNC.

'Not harmful to health': Korea's Buldak spicy noodles return to shelves as Denmark reverses recall  - Koreans are still wondering what is going on. 

'Superlubricious' coating radically drops friction between metal parts - is it just me, or is everybody thinking bicycle gears? 

Scared [Comic] - trust the pros. 

[Essay] The Breaking of a Social Contract, or Why I am Switching to Copyleft Licensing - good thinking about the decision. 

Munich, home of the Oktoberfest, to open alcohol-free beer garden - "noting that while there were patrons who could drink 10 beers in a night, few would order 10 fruit juices." someone tell them about non-alcoholic beer. 

How the Stream Deck rose from the ashes of a legendary keyboard - cool story.

Hackers Steal Text and Call Records of ‘Nearly All’ AT&T Customers - snowflake leak.

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment