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)
A fun rant against tech recruiters in the UK, who are apparently a bunch of wide-boys (or spivs, to use the old fashioned term). I haven’t used one for over ten years, so I don’t know how accurate it is, but HN’s discussion on it had some people saying it rings true. (tags: recruitersjobstechnologywork)
“Standard approaches to the arrow of time typically require a rare statistical fluctuation, or, often, the smuggling in of assumptions about initial conditions. Their work offers evidence that ordinary gravitational dynamics may itself be enough to produce the simple “initial” point that can give time a direction.” (tags: entropytimephysicsgravity)
Via Hacker News, where there’s the usual debate about all this. Previously I’ve read research which says you can get gains out of doing it for short bursts but must then rest: longer periods of overtime end up producing less, not more. This article is more about the cultural impact, though. (tags: workprogramminghoursovertimebusinessproductivity)
Linked to the Hacker News thread rather than the original post as the commenters at HN came up with some good additional ones. (tags: worksoftwarejobsinterviewinterviewing)
Scott at Slate Start Codex points out that there’s no good evidence that those “Don’t be that guy” posters have reduced the incidence of rape. (tags: societycrimeadvertisingpostersrapestatistics)