“I can’t say I have their kind of fire in my gut, but I probably have some old bits of tennis ball.” On LinkedIn, nobody knows you’re a dog. (tags: dogfunnylinkedinrecruitersemployment)
A term that once described jobs where being friendly and cheerful was seen as part of the job has apparently been co-opted to mean “someone expects me to do something”. (tags: emotionlabourworkrelationships)
A nice little web game where you try to break a threaded program by executing a critical section in two threads at once. It’s pretty neat. (tags: programmingthreadsconcurrencylocksgame)
British film company put together a live action first person shooter and invited people on Chatroulette to play. The “making of” video linked at the end explains how they did it. (tags: chatrouletteshooterfirst-personlivegames)
“So it is with deep sadness that I observe the current culture of intensity in the tech industry. My intellectual conclusion is that these companies are both destroying the personal lives of their employees and getting nothing in return. A candidate recently deciding between Asana and another fast growing company told me that the other team starts their dinners at 830pm to encourage people to stay late (he’s starting here in a few weeks). I also hear young developers frequently brag about “48 hour” coding sprints. This kind of attitude not only hurts young workers who are willing to “step up” to the expectation, but facilitates ageism and sexism by indirectly discriminating against people who cannot maintain that kind of schedule.” (tags: workproductivityrestcrunchovertime)
Here’s an “Unbelievable” show in which Boghossian (“A Manual For Creating Atheists”) talks to Tim McGrew, who’s reasonably well known for his arguments in favour of belief in miracles. I’ve linked to a set of comments from “MrShamuto” where he undertakes more or less the process Boghossian describes in the books, of Socratic dialogue with “AdeToz”, a Christian. It is long and occasionally interrupted by other people who are bonkers, but it’s interesting to see Boghossian’s stuff in action. (tags: street-epistemologyepistemologypeter-boghossiantim-mcgrewphilosophyevidenceunbelievablepremier christian radiosocratic)
amymea, writing in the ex-Mormon Reddit, takes to task someone who argues that the “testimony of the spirit” is good evidence that Mormonism is true, by listing a bunch of other people who had strong feelings upon reading their own religious texts. (tags: mormonismredditfeelingsfaithreligionevidence)
Mallory Ortberg is fun. “100% of women want to have sex with a man who embodies the fox version of Robin Hood from the cartoon Robin Hood, but most do not actually want to have sex with a fox or a man dressed as one.” (tags: mallory-ortbergfunnyreadingsexdesirebooks)
1 Kings 18 re-imagined as if Baal had a William Lane Craig on his side. Fun times. “A Pasta Sea” is a good name for an ex-Christian blog, too. (tags: bibleapologeticsahabbaalelijahfunnyparody)
“As the NHS faces its worst winter in years, Robert Colvile provides an in-depth, first-hand account of the pressures facing the health service.” Interesting: combination of people unable to see a GP quickly enough and hospitals unable to turf old people to social care quickly enough. Targets sometimes provide perverse incentives. (tags: nhshealthhealthcaremedicinehospital)
Author shares my frustration that Labour apparently has no balls: “Every unchallenged Question Time assertion that people aren’t allowed to talk about the topics that they are themselves talking about on national television at that very moment. Every word from the party’s self-appointed detectors of the legitimate feelings of thick-headed bellends. All of it has been leading to precisely this point, at which politicians explicitly talking about sending them back are seen as engaging in respectable conjecture, and posting a picture on the internet is a sackable offence.” (tags: ukippoliticsimmigrationracismlabour)
“When you finally do come across one of the good guys out there, why does it always turn out that he’s either taken, gay, dead, or available?” Via Phil. (tags: datingfunnyparodyonion)
“Perhaps the most deeply held tenet of a certain version of anti-oppressive politics – which is by no means the only version – is that members of an oppressed group are infallible in what they say about the oppression faced by that group. … Let me give an example. A gay person is typically much better acquainted with homophobia than a straight person. Moreover, a gay person has a much greater stake in what society does about homophobia, so their view on the matter is more important. However, there is nothing about the experience of being gay in itself that enlightens a gay person about the ethics of sexual orientation. To take a dead simple case, you don’t have to hear it from a gay person to know that homosexuality is ethically just fine.” (tags: politicsfeminismactivismculturerationalityproblematic)
Cornwall is the centre of GCHQ/NSA’s taps on undersea cables. This blog post puts the picture together from a bunch of sources. Via Bruce Schneier. (tags: gchqcornwallcableinterceptionnsaundersea)
I remember seeing a photo of an old-ish computer surrounded by its programming team in the computing museum at Bletchley Park. Most of the team were women. This blog/podcast looks at what happened in the USA. (tags: womencodingcomputersfeminismsexismtechnology)
Make replacement in Python which finds file dependencies by using strace to work out which files the compiler reads. (tags: pythontoolsbuildmakeprogramming)
Things to bear in mind before starting on your quest to replace Make, especially if you’re writing your own replacement. (tags: makebuildprogrammingtools)
