Category: Blogging

This piece has an approachable voice and an inspirational message—Hustle.

“There was only one problem: If I wanted to get four dozen donuts, that was going to be an upfront cost of $25. That was my first economics lesson. I needed liquidity, man. I needed $25 to make $25, and I didn’t have that kind of money. I was 13.
So I had to convince all the kids to give me cash for their donut a day ahead of time. So right before lunch, when everybody was hungry, I’d walk around with a sheet of paper taking orders for the next day. The deal was you had to pay me then, and the next morning you’d have a fresh donut waiting for you when you got to school. Who’s gonna turn that down?
Remember, though — this is Compton in the early 2000s. I’m walking around asking people to give me money. I’m asking people to trust me. I learned that I could get people from all walks of life — gang members, nerds, jocks, teachers, lunch ladies — to trust me with their dollar. It was a really valuable lesson that I’ve carried with me my whole life: If you’re a man of your word and people can count on you, it cuts across all lines.”

Source: The Donut Hustle | The Players’ Tribune

Read this attorney’s summary of the new OS X EULA, because you’re definitely not going to read the whole thing yourself.

I decided to upgrade my Mac to El Capitan, but my computer said, on one condition: I must “carefully” read and agree with something. It even provided a tiny cozy display window for viewing it.
And so I did what anyone else would: I cleared my afternoon schedule and got right down to business; reading, carefully, the entire document. It turns out that I was much too pessimistic! I needed only 33 minutes.

Source: OS X El Capitan License: in Plain English | The Robb Report

TL;DR: Cuba has more Internet infrastructure than you may think, and the rest is getting built by Chinese companies… probably to aid censorship.

If Chinese companies continue to be Cuba’s internet provider of choice, it’s easy to imagine a criollo rendition of Beijing’s “Great Firewall,” with all the censorship, limited access, and surveillance that implies.
“Cuba wants to go from a model that basically doesn’t need censorship on the internet because there practically is no internet” to using the web as an instrument of control, Henken, the sociologist at Baruch College in New York, told me. “We tend to erroneously think of the internet in the West as having automatic tendencies in terms of freedom … [but] instead of having the internet change China, China changed the internet.”

Source: Havana’s Hotspots | The Verge

I’ve been fortunate to have mostly-positive interactions with recruiters, but I can totally understand how they could cross lines and get super-annoying… especially if one is hard up for work.

To my fellow IT workers – don’t fall for the idea that recruiters are a necessary evil.  Block their emails.  Block their calls.  Stay in touch with old colleagues.  Learn to network.  Join groups, boards and mailing lists for your field and remember to post on them when trying to hire.  Every time you fill a job through your social network a recruiter goes hungry.  Remember, the more money you suck out of the recruitment ecosystem the fewer Shitheads it can support.

Source: Don’t Feed the Beast – the Great Tech Recruiter Infestation | mockyblog

Is it OK to notice a problem and do something small to make it better, or is it better to do nothing at all?

If you implicitly believe in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics, then to confront the scope of suffering in the world is to make it your fault, and then if you don’t throw everything you have at the problem you’re as “bad” as PETA or Mr. Thornley or Uber or BBH Labs.
But what if – what if noticing a problem didn’t make it any worse? What if we could act on a problem and not feel horrible for making it just a little better, even if it was an action that benefited ourselves as well? What if we said that in these instances, these groups weren’t evil – it’s okay to notice a problem and only make it a little bit better.

Source: The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics | Almost No One is Evil. Almost Everything is Broken.

A delightful, whimsical journey of “The Little Printf” as he meets developers and explores their worlds with curiosity…

In the end though, it is only when you solve problems with a human face that you can feel truly right; What is essential is invisible to the computer.
It is the time you have spent on your system that makes it so important”, the man added, “and when you lost sight of why it made sense to spend time on it, when it became a game of pride, it caused more grief than relief.

Source: ferd.ca -> The Little Printf