Summer Sunnsets I am off tomorrow, so Friday Links come on a Thursday. I could blame the list being shorter than usual on this, but in reality I have been spend most of my time watching the twins reacting to music I like (see link below). ManagmentHow to Build and Scale High-Performing Teams with David Sakamoto, VP of Customer Success at Gitlab [Podcast] - interesting perspective from a non technology fully remote VP ...
Tea in a microwave? This week a bit light on the management and COVID-19 links. I balance it with lots of depressing news and some uplifting urbanism developments. So grab a tea and a biscuit ... WorkingCollaborating During Coronavirus: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work - apparently we are having more, but shorter meetings and work more hours. Definitely more meetings for myself, but not shorter and I am too lazy to work more hours. ...
This week Garmin exploded, the UK decided that cycling isn't so bad after all, remote working is still a thing Management When We Need to Move Quickly We Work in Task Forces. Here’s How We Set Them Up - Kind of common sense, but as usual it is interesting how Buffer approaches it. Zef’s Razor - I am going to spoil it: "People have good intentions" - this applies to live in general I guess More Uninterrupted Time At Work for You and Your Organization - good summary about what you and your organization can do to reduce interruptions When your coworker does great work, tell their manager - tell everybody! Antifragile - Manage Your Team Under Pressure: Adam Wolff (VP of Engineering, Robinhood) [Podcast] Empowering Your Team to Lead Fulfilling Lives with Vlad Magdalin, CEO of Webflow [Podcast] Technology The State of Ruby 3 Typing - Is it just me or does this look awful and awkward? A long list of GRUB2 secure-boot holes - this looks painful and you might not want to update your CentOS / RHEL yet. Mycroft: an open-source voice assistant - this doesn't seem to fix the privacy issues and there are seem to be some problems with the company as whole Highlights from Git 2.28 - default branch can be something besides 'master' now, speed ups with bloom filters and small feature improvements Remote working The Implications of Working Without an Office - “What impact has working from home had on productivity and creativity?” Google employees will work from home until at least summer 2021 - with the state the States are in at the moment this is not really surprising, it will be interesting to see how this will shape Silicon Valley in the future. Our remote work future is going to suck - it will probably suck, for some people more than others and the jury is still out if it will suck more or less than office work Urbanism A COVID-19 story in Amsterdam written by bike - Lot of photos. I love the one titled "Heavy Police presence during COVID-19" Sant Cugat finançarà el 50% de la compra de bicicletes - small city close to Barcelona is supporting bike purchases, they also used the opportunity of the current crisis to expand their cycling network Dutch city redraws its layout to prepare for global heating effects - with governments doing not a lot it is up to cities to react, this is happening all over the world France to ban heated terraces in cafes and bars - I think they are also regulating air conditioning, but I can't find it now. There seems to be a change coming in the UK with a new "cycling revolution", though this doesn't seem to be backed up with new money. Cycling ambitions for England move up a gear with No 10 plansResidents to get new decision-making powers in cycling ‘revolution’What do Highway Code proposals mean for pedestrians and cyclists? Random FlightsMicrosoft’s Flight Simulator is a ticket to explore the world again - I used to play this on the Amiga back in the day. When I say "play" I mean: lift off, fly for ages over a landscape that always looks the same and then crash into the ground when trying to land. I wonder if this runs on anything i have. Tim Bray: Not an Amazon ProblemAmazon is a perfectly OK company, to the extent that planetary-scale sprawling corporate behemoths can be perfectly OK in 2020. Which is to say, not OK at all.Garmin was targeted by a ransomware attack. Nobody is quite sure if they handled it well or not. There was a definitely a lack of communication during the outage from Thursday to Monday! It is also not clear if they paid the ransom, which would be illegal in the US. Garmin outage caused by confirmed WastedLocker ransomware attackGarmin obtains decryption key after ransomware attack Garmin Hack’s $10M Ransom Payment, $10M Tax DeductionSchneier: Images in Eye ReflectionsIn Japan, a cyberstalker located his victim by enhancing the reflections in her eye, and using that information to establish a location. 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.
I like looking at pictures of other people's office set-ups. With most people working from home at the moment you see more and more nice workspaces especially tuned for video conferencing. I was lucky enough to have a space and a reasonable set-up already. By chance I also had ordered bits and pieces before everything was sold out on Amazon. There are a few things I still want to improve. The light is not ideal for video conferencing and I am also going to try a separate microphone for better sound. DeskMy basic desk set-up is always the same. This is the first time I have two big screens, but I always have the same keyboard, headphones and mouse. I think this goes back to at least 2000. In our currently closed office I have the same again and when I start a new job I usually bring the devices with me as not every company lets you freely choose. The computer is always running the current version of Fedora Linux, often upgraded over many years. 1. Dell Monitor U2719DC UltraSharp. I really just wanted one of these as I still had another very old monitor. This one came with a pixel error and Amazon send a replacement, but never managed to get the pick-up of the broken one sorted. So now I have two and use the one with the broken pixel for the not important stuff, like Slack. I think the broken pixel is not even a broken pixel, but an insect stuck between the layers - a real bug. 2. Dell Monitor U2719DC UltraSharp - the nice one, which has my browser, shell and Emacs. 3. Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 GB layout - while I am always looking for new fancy hacker keyboards I have stuck with this one. I have another one in storage in case this one breaks. 4. Logitech Mouse G502 Hero - my mice and keyboard are always wired, which limits choice a bit. I have pretty big hands and like a mouse that fills them. 5. Logitech Mousepad G440 - matchy-matchy with the mouse. I could do with a smaller one, because of the hight DPI of the mouse. 6. Sony Headphones MDR-1RBT - I am a bit addicted to headphones. I have three different Sony MDR-1 versions (RBT, ABT and R). I love the fit and sound. 7. PC AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB, 1TB, build up recently, also has a cheap fanless graphics card 8. Chair - from my first job/start-up, still works 9. APC BX1400U-GR Back-UPS BX, power outages and brownouts are quite common in Spain and even more so in the countryside. This protects the computer, there is another one for the routers and NAS. a. Fleximounts F6 monitor arm for laptop - it works, not a lot of movement b. Fleximounts F6D monitor arms for screens - same for two devices c. Logitech C920 HD Pro - I am lucky I ordered this in time, it works, I probably won't upgrade any time soon. The Logitech Brio is also silly expensive. SupportNot directly related to work, but supporting the main computer. d. Thinkpad T430s on a arm and T470s on the floor - laptops from work, I use them in the office and here when I need another small screen or different device. One of them also has Windows on a partition for devices that require Windows for firmware upgrades e. AmazonBasics paper shredder - goes together with the messy GTD stack on my desk, everything that I don't file goes into this one. f. Synology DS218+ - backup of the computer, Syncthing backup, all my music and films. g. USB Charging station (with Raspbery Pi running Syncthing on top), with various USB-A, micro-usb, and USB-C connectors and one for Garmin watches h. Rubbish router from provider i. AmpliFi HD Router - super simple set-up, annoyingly only with a mobile, supports multiple mesh repeaters that are all over the house j. HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 - maybe I should have gone for a laser? I don't really print a lot k. Thermometer / Barometer - it is way too hot in my office SoundI like my old school Hi-Fi components. If I had unlimited money I would just be buying this stuff on ebay the whole day. The combination of the Sony amplifier and JBL speakers gives a sound I love. The amplifier is also connected to a Chromecast Audio for multiroom sound, computer and headphones. l. Tape deck Sony TC-K790ES - needs some work, the rubber transport bands disintegrated and need replacement, which is a bit tricky m. Tuner Sony SA3ES - I never use it, but it is pretty! n. Amplifier Sony TA-542E - this must be pretty old too, still works fine o. JBL Control 1 Pro speakers - come with mounts for the wall and look sleek Art & MemoriesSince we bought the house and I have no further move is planned I made some effort to finally put all kind of stuff on the wall. p. Sven Vaeth & Paul Cooper flyer 17-7-93 Warehouse Cologne q. Photo from the Space Shuttle signed by Astronaut Robert Crippen r. family s. My dad and myself on our last holiday together. I have no idea why we shake hands. t. family u. X-Ray Cyclist by Nick Veasey sold by IKEA. Nick is one of my favourite artists and this is the cheapest way to get a great quality print. v. Newton MessagePad 130 - I really did use this back in the days. It is a bit bulky. w. Palm V, Palm Tungsten T, Ericsson t39 with extra antenna and calculator from school - this was my "smartphone" back in the days when phones got smaller every year. I sometimes connected it with bluetooth to the Palm for connectivity on the go. I miss small phones. x. random memories box: old business cards, passport, party flyer, motorcycle key y. Curves Calendar - don't google that. It has photos of mountain roads for each month to remind me of cycling. I just get a new one every year and replace it.
cyberpunkProduct Managment The Evolution of Product at Buffer and the Next Step: We’re Hiring a VP of Product - can I have one too? This sounds so familiar. Engineering Rebuilding messaging: How we bootstrapped our platform - how Linkedin is changing to a new messaging platform and database. Machine Learning for a Better Developer Experience - How Netflix is using machine learning to better handle their logs. Twitter engineers replacing racially loaded tech terms like 'master,' 'slave' - this is happening in a lot of companies and open source projects and is great to see. GPT-3 Is Amazing—And Overhyped - the uber regex strikes back hacker-laws - all of them on one place. I discovered them through the Changelog: Laws for hackers to live by [Podcast] Engineering Management In search of higher engineering productivity: A data first remote working perspective - nice to see some numbers put to it. It is really just about progamming, it doesn't track the difference in remote meetings. Build vs buy decisions in the age of software abundance - this is getting worse very day. It is not even "buy" even more, with so many ready made open source libraries and projects out there. Uber: Introducing Domain-Oriented Microservice Architecture - I am not sure if this will help in the mess that are microservices, but good luck to them. It is a good article though with some tips for different company sizes:In small organizations, the operational benefit likely does not offset the increase in architectural complexity. Furthermore, microservice architectures often require dedicated engineering resources to support which may be out of budget for an early stage company or else suboptimal from a prioritization perspective. Team Objectives – Overview - good long read critique of OKRs for teams. Jump to the summary if you like. COVID-19#SmartDevelopmentHack: Germany searches for COVID-19 solutions - "Are hackathons the solution?" ... in my experience probably not. Coronavirus: The great contact-tracing apps mystery - The main mystery for me is why we don't have one in Spain yet, or ideally one that works across Europe. There are multiple open-source versions out there (from Ireland & Germany for example) that could be used, but every country needs to reinvent the wheel and sometime in the future they all will have to be linked up. Also check out the Europe COVID-19 Tracing App Tracker. Returning to the Office Safely - pretty guide from the OmnicomGroup for their offices. COVID19aldiaBCN - all the Barcelona COVID-19 stats and maps you will ever need Over half of coronavirus patients in Spain have developed neurological problems, studies show Radiolab: Dispatches from 1918 [Podcast] It’s hard to imagine what the world will look like when COVID-19 has passed. So in this episode, we look back to the years after 1918, at the political, artistic, and viral aftermath of the flu pandemic that killed between 50 and 100 million people and left our world permanently transformed. SecurityGarmin services and production go down after ransomware attack - this is probably the worst nightmare for any company. They are still down as I am writing this. Password Book (Multi-coloured) - at least you are not loosing it to ransom-ware. The sad, slow-motion death of Do Not Track - kind of expected, the pressure from the other side is too strong. Schneier: On the Twitter Hack - no commentMaybe this hack will serve as a wake-up call. But if past incidents involving Twitter and other companies are any indication, it won't. Underspending on security, and letting society pay the eventual price, is far more profitable. I don't blame the tech companies. Their corporate mandate is to make as much money as is legally possible. Fixing this requires changes in the law, not changes in the hearts of the company's leaders. Urbanism“Silent majority” of Britons back active travel infrastructure – but vocal minority drown them out - you only need some loud voices to stop progress Ride easy with new biking features in Google Maps - Google is making routing for cycling better. It was already pretty good where it is available, but it is good to see that they are constantly improving it. 'We Heard Birds.' Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on How Lockdown Offered a Glimpse at a Greener City Episode #250 – In conversation with the rock star of parking, Donald Shoup - He is mostly about proper charging for parking. I agree, but we should also reduce parking and give it back to the people. Keeping JournalsAfter coming across one article about journaling recently I decided it might be worth a try. Of course I started with a bit of research first. There are many articles that say it is probably as good idea. Possibly bordering at being a bit pushy / passive aggressive. To Be An Effective Leader Keep A Leadership JournalWhy You Should Start a Journaling Habit + How to BeginThe More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a JournalWant to Be an Outstanding Leader? Keep a Journal. To Be An Effective Leader Keep A Leadership JournalTransform Your Effectiveness with a Leadership JournalThis is how journaling can make you a more effective leaderThere are some common formats and sometimes people who sell you preformatted notebooks.The Clear Habit JournalBullet JournalMorning PagesBestSelf - Self JournalIn the end I decided to be agile and just start something with the stack of Moleskins and pens I already own. Random Lawrence Polishing Lawrence - I remember when I still found editing Wikipedia pages fun. Now there is are so many rules and politics involved that I can't be bothered any more. "Lawrence of Arabia" is a topic by my heart though. Which productivity method is right for you? - Spoiler alert: it might have to do with Todoist. JWZ: Recent Movies and TV - jwz watches stuff so I don't have too. Looks like there are some good shows on at the moment though. Pointless Job Requirements - maybe we have to rethink job ads What We Learn When Humans Race Against Horses - I listened to a podcast about this once. Humans are amazing, so are horses. Classical Fix: Nadine Shah - no idea who she is, but this was fun. I also discovered Scott Walker (Scott Walker: Farmer In The City [YouTube]), which made it worth it already. 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.