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Friday, November 15, 2024

Friday Links 24-30

The open mouth of a hippo sticking out of the water

Two podcast recommendations today: the one about culture fit and the one about Escobar's hippos.

Leadership

The wrong way to think about culture fit [Podcast] - It is very hard to get this wrong. Similar as values. It is just to easy to abuse.

How Infrequent Retrospectives Reduce Learning Cycle Time and Make Everything Worse - retrospectives are still my favourite part of everything agile.

Using systems modeling to refine strategy.

Engineering 

Martin Fowler Reflects on Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code [Podcast] - another good episode. I would argue that the book could have been a handful of blog posts. If you exclude the reference. 

Build Your Own Radar: Using the Technology Radar as a governance tool [Podcast] - I think thise makes sense for every reasonably sized engineering team. 

Your Security Plan - simplified way to think about your security. 

Migrating in-place from PostgreSQL to MySQL - pretty cool. 

Demystifying The Regular Expression That Checks If A Number Is Prime - what?

Environment

It took 68 years for the world to reach 1 terawatt of solar PV capacity. It took just two years to double it - change is possible if we don't get stuck on the old way of doing things.

2024 'virtually certain' to be warmest year on record, scientists say - I think this has been confirmed by now? 

‘Used like taxis’: Soaring private jet flights drive up climate-heating emissions - thank you rich people!

EU emissions fall by 8% in steep reduction reminiscent of Covid shutdown - some good news.

Urbanism & Cycling

The cyclists tracking down their own stolen bikes - this is probably a bad idea in most cases.

Bicycles save lives: How bikes have been critical after Spain's Valencia floods

100,000 Chinese students join 50km night-time bike ride in search of good soup dumplings  - now I want those dumplings.

Pedestrian-friendly cities have lower rates of diabetes and obesity - not surprising.

Launching a new guide for taking bicycles on trains - very basic at the moment

Central Paris To Limit Through Motor Traffic From Next Week - How long will it take until Paris makes it to the top of the Copenhagenize list?

Random Hippos

The cocaine kingpin’s wildest legacy: what can be done with Pablo Escobar’s marauding hippos? [Podcast] - possibly my favourite invasive species?

Bland, soggy slop or scratch-cooked chilli and pancakes? The best and worst hospital food around the world – in pictures - they all looks good? I would go for the Taiwanese one.

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, November 01, 2024

Friday Links 24-29

A park somewhere
This week's recommendations: the podcast about lawns and why cars are so scary at Halloween.

Leadership

Why Your Meetings Suck (And How to Fix Them): Insights from Dr. Steven Rogelberg 6 | 37 [Podcast] - focusing on 1:1 meetings

Measuring Developer Productivity with Diff Authoring Time [Podcast] - the use case is improving developer experience tools and not measuring developers.

TBM 318: Why Orgs Become Too Tall - again a good overview from John about the causes, some of them are difficult to work around.

Eng org seniority-mix model. - if you want to reduce spending on senior engineers, you have to reduce hiring them, but also reduce promoting into that level.

Urbanism and Transit

Jaywalking is now legal in New York City - the rest of the world: "what?" 

Forget tainted candy: The scariest thing on Halloween is parked in your driveway - "But the biggest reason may be that American streets and cities are designed for cars, and not people."

Crossing the USA by train - did I post this already? It's great anyway, and makes me want to travel large distances by train. 

How Many Hydrogen Transit Trial Failures Are Enough? - people are still clinging to this fuel.

Stuttgart 21: Europe’s Most Controversial Rail Project | DW News [YouTube] - that does look a bit overdesigned, but it will be great once it arrives.

Random Lawns

Lawns: Is yours giving sun king or pink flamingo? [Podcast] - blame the French!

When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female? - great project, and now I am curious when it will happen. 

Clothes Line Animals Series - pretty art.

The Unlikely Inventor of the Automatic Rice Cooker 

"Another clever sales technique was to get electricity companies to serve as Toshiba distributors. At the time, Japan was facing a national power surplus stemming from the widespread replacement of carbon-filament lightbulbs with more efficient tungsten ones." - maybe we see more things switch to electric when energy prices will go down in the future

The Unfettered Selfishness of Digital Nomads - "I think the least we can ask of these people is that they spare us all the self-serving posture of enlightenment."

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.