On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs | Strike! Magazine Ever had the feeling that your job might be made up? That the world would keep on turning if you weren’t doing that thing you do 9-5? David Graeber explored the phenomenon of bullshit jobs for our recent summer issue – everyone who’s employed should read carefully… On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? So what are these new jobs, precisely? These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.” It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.
Bjarne Stroustrup - The Essence of C++: With Examples in C++84, C++98, C++11, and C++14 | GoingNative 2013 C++11 is being deployed and the shape of C++14 is becoming clear. This talk examines the foundations of C++. What is essential? What sets C++ apart from other languages? How do new and old features support (or distract from) design and programming relying on this essence? I focus on the abstraction mechanisms (as opposed to the mapping to the machine): Classes and templates. Type safety and resource safety are key design aims for a program.
Github For Everything | Wiredcraft We're huge fans of Github at Wiredcraft. We started using it in 2009 and haven't looked back. While it initially mostly replaced our code tracking tool (I believe we were then using Redmine), it now is the single most important platform for our team to collaborate, on all levels, from code to HR. How did we get there? We went through using a few tools over the years; Basecamp, Open Atrium or more recently Trello for threaded discussions, Redmine for issue tracking, IRC or Campfire for chats, Wikis, Hackpad and files, in Dropbox or Git, for documentation... It became painfully obvious over time that we were spreading ourselves thin. This meant convincing the entire team to adopt a new workflow; not something particularly easy to do with a team of technologists mostly focused on shipping stuff. One platform to rule them all First, let me illustrate how our current approach is actually impacting our communication. Juha joined our team two months ago. Epilogue
Thiel Fellowship Applications open for 2014 2012 Thiel fellow working in science here. I definitely don't see the fellowship as a substitute for a proper academic training in the sciences. A solid training is important; I have benefited greatly from my academic roots and support (Harvard). In that context, the fellowship represents a supplement to my academic training, exploring the translational science that lies between basic research and commercialization. I'm taking a detour from the traditional course of study primarily so that I can spend some of my time working in the aspects of translation that extend beyond the lab. In my biomedical field, that is everything from medical workflow to regulatory affairs to product pipelines to validation studies. More broadly, I'm doing this exploration in the context of a tractable project that has involved both research and commercialization. I'm still learning many things, some in academic research settings and others in commercial settings.