Published
Weekend Reading — A mass Dunning-Kruger event
This week we JavaScript in space, sell more cyber, declare a mass Dunning-Kruger event, read Yoko Ono's Tweets, and meet the duck god of chaos.
Tomasz Łakomy “Fixing tech debt in an enterprise codebase”
Tech Stuff
dashevsky0607rcsgso.pdf Two things I learned this week:
- JWST is not JSON Web Secure Tokens
- The James Webb Space Telescope runs JavaScript
The JWST science operations will be driven by ASCII (instead of binary command blocks) on-board scripts, written in a customized version of JavaScript. The script interpreter is run by the flight software, which is written in C++. The flight software operates the spacecraft and the science instruments.
Sarah Drasner TODO: install and try it out
I've found the Todo Tree extension really helpful, especially on large projects or side projects with a lot of start/stop to keep track of what I have left to do.
You write TODO in a comment and it helps you build a todo list of what's left
Gleek Gleek is a slick text-to-diagram tool. When you want to explain yourself with visuals, but you want to create these visuals from text. That's me.
I'm guessing it's Mermaid but with a nicer UI. You can use it to create flowcharts, ER, class, object, and sequence diagrams.
Steve (Builder.io) 👇 A thread showing clever CSS tricks:
developers will spend $300 on a mechanic keyboard that makes a specific sound and then use it with $400 noise cancelling headphones
Codeball AI is coming for all our jobs :)
My sense from the demo, Codeball would LGTM about half of all the PRs that a human would classify as LGTM. That's to avoid false positives.
Is it saving a lot of development time? I don't think so. But it is moving PR along faster when you're not waiting on busy developers to review. And faster development pipeline helps with building a better product. To me, that is the key benefit.
Codeball doesn't care that much about what the new code does, but focuses on the changes themselves, what changes, and who made the changes. Which — let's be real here — is the same heuristic a busy developer would apply.
- Basic — Metadata directly associated with the Pull Request. For example, number of lines added, removed etc.
- Derived — Data that is indirectly associated with the Pull request. Examples include number of days since last change to file, file ownership ratios, file volatility score, author-file score etc.
- Categorical variables — Derived categories for the Pull Request, for instance the file type categories. A more advanced example category is the perceptual hash of file diffs.
the hardest part of software engineering is finding someone who
- knows why we did that
- still works at the company
- is not on PTO / sabbatical
Eye for Design
If you’re a product designer not obsessed with writing concise copy and thoughtful microcopy, you’re ignoring the most important part of UI design.
Apple Maps vs Google Maps What can you learn from this side-by-side comparison that will make your product better?
Peoples
Biggest permanent change due to the pandemic is remote work:
Office occupancy still down by more than 50% (!) and the return to office trend is starting to plateau
Kevin Aluwi Related:
Now that I'm no longer running a company - going to share my ACTUAL thoughts on WFH vs in-office. My personal observation is that older executives and senior (position-wise, not necessarily age-wise) managers mostly prefer in office 1/9
I don’t think it’s age-related and better tech won’t make the difference.
When your job relies on nonverbal communication, you gain more from working in person.
When people with strong NVC skills get promoted to senior roles, you get leadership that’s eager to return to the office.
Change comes through promotion selection.
Minor: we de-value NVC skills.
Major: pressure from the bottom. Managers get promoted based on what talent they can hire and retain. And that talent chooses WFH.
Over several generations, you get a different population of senior execs.
The high-tech culture has short generations, so this selection process runs quickly.
In a few years, brick-wall open floor plans feel as antiquated as beige-cloth cubicles.
Business Side
‘They couldn’t even scream any more. They were just sobbing’ Ouch.
It may be that future economists view the cryptocurrency boom of the early 2020s as a mass Dunning-Kruger event, fuelled by social media and facilitated by technology; an era in which amateurs took financial advice from fellow amateurs and bet the house on speculative investments. “Admitting that you know nothing just tells you that you’re lucky,” says Roy. “And my ego couldn’t handle that. I didn’t want to be lucky. I wanted to be someone who knew what they were doing. I’m smart, right? Tell me I’m smart, please? That’s how it goes. The whole community reinforced themselves, and each other.”
gaut That's a 4.13 billion dollar idea!
Airbnb is broken. Hear me out.
The space needs disrupting. Think:
- a building dedicated to hosting
- full service
- central location
- guaranteed amenities
- professionally trained staff
- knowledgeable concierge
who’s building this?
Machine Thinking
This is AI witchcraft, it really is. I can describe a web page 'HTML source of a web page called "Yoko Ono's Tweets" that creates random things that Yoko Ono might tweet using Javascript' and the thing actually runs. [Video in next tweet]
(wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops “Et tu, copilot?”
Everything Else
cybr angel “technology design peaked here”
He's a 10 but he calls you "chef" as a sign of respect
on our farm rn we have 16 regular ducks. and then we have reginald. reg is 4lbs of pure hatred in the approximate shape of a duck. he is the duck god of chaos. every night he refuses, with violence, to go inside his coop, despite loving it in there. i hate him but i respect him
Uncle Sammy this wallpaper …
i don't get why ppl pay for therapy. i call my internet's customer service and trauma dump on them for free and then they make sure my internet is working. two birds. i'm so fucking smart
"Mario games teach us that even if something is essentially the same, psychologically it can be completely different. This example is very easy to understand."
The colloquial term “hangry” refers to the notion that people become angry when hungry, but very little research has directly determined the extent to which the relationship between hunger and negative emotions is robust. Here, we examined associations between everyday experiences of hunger and negative emotions using an experience sampling method.
Martyn Schmoll “One of these machines is speed-limited by software. For safety.”
This is how they manufacture stories for you using social media. The person with the desired take will present themselves. The junior Journalist need but pick and choose the one she wants.
They usually delete these after asking them, especially if they're egregious enough.
Wow, wow. This a must. If you're interested in knowing where you most need a mask (a P2/N95) this is a brilliant guide. Vaccines, testing and isolating if sick, and breathing clean air are the 3 key COVID-19 interventions. The last one is by far the most neglected.
jill wohlner “If you’re an engineer, what stops you from dressing like this?”
