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You need the same rule to install your CO2-removal machines, except they would be much less efficient, so you need a lot more power.

You seem awfully sure about that. https://www.fastcompany.com/40...

“One CO2 collector has the same footprint as a tree,” says Wurzbacher. “It takes 50 tons of CO2 out of the air every year. A corresponding tree would take 50 kilograms of the air every year. It’s a factor of a thousand. So in order to achieve the same, you would need 1,000 times less area than you would require for plants growing.” The CO2 collectors can also be used in areas that wouldn’t be suitable for agriculture, helping preserve land needed for farming, and they don’t require a water source, unlike some afforestation efforts. They can also run on renewable energy.

Here is a possibility as a start https://www.fastcompany.com/40...

They Write the Right Stuff

I'm not a software engineer, just the old fashioned brick and mortar kind (the ones who build physical systems for the real world that people depend on for life). But this was required reading when I started my job.

Brilliant read, thanks. I loved reading the part about how errors that slip past are meticulously analyzed. When a bug is found and fixed, the entire process is looked at to discover *why* the bug slipped past in the first place.

This is something I instinctively do as a developer, but have never really heard formalized. When I see a mistake that was made, I like to take a step back and ask "was there something I could have done to prevent that mistake from occurring in the first place? What part of the process can be tweaked for fixed to guarantee it doesn't happen in the future?" Essentially, turn each bug into a positive feedback loop for making your software better.

Also, as a bonus, I think we just figured out how to get women back in the tech industry:

Otherwise, the hour-long meeting is sober and revealing, a brief window on the culture. For one thing, 12 of the 22 people in the room are women, many of them senior managers or senior technical staff. The on-board shuttle group, with its stability and professionalism, seems particularly appealing to women programmers.

They Write the Right Stuff

I'm not a software engineer, just the old fashioned brick and mortar kind (the ones who build physical systems for the real world that people depend on for life). But this was required reading when I started my job.

There are several companies attaching plugs to street lamp posts. Potentially every lamp post could be a charge station.
https://www.zap-map.com/lamp-p...
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04...
http://www.independent.co.uk/e...
https://www.fastcompany.com/30...
https://johnbrianshannon.com/2...

It's an easy problem to solve.

How much longer before companies like Facebook and Twitter decide an election?

Somewhere between -1 and -9 years. I'm sure they've been deliberately influencing them for much longer. They both have programs that assist politicians in targeting ads and news to voters. Quick searches turn up open use of Facebook helping politicians. Google will help deliver their message too.

Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. “The Wal-Mart guy’s response was classic,” Young recalls. “He said, ‘Well, we’ve done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We’ve killed it. We can back off.’ ” Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy–although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn’t a critical factor.

So after that whole long story, the end result was that Walmart's insistence on selling Vlasic gallons for under $3 was not the reason for Vlasic's bankruptcy?

Maybe I missed the point?

But then I got to this paragraph:

John Fitzgerald, a former vice president of Nabisco, remembers Wal-Mart’s reaction to his company’s plan to offer a 25-cent newspaper coupon for a large bag of Lifesavers in advance of Halloween. Wal-Mart told Nabisco to add up what it would spend on the promotion–for the newspaper ads, the coupons, and handling–and then just take that amount off the price instead. “That isn’t necessarily good for the manufacturer,” Fitzgerald says. “They need things that draw attention.”

And find that Walmart told Nabisco to just lower their price instead of roping in customers using newspaper coupons that they will inevitably forget to use, or have to buy an unwanted crappy tabloid (I'm thinking "NY Post" with coupons versus "Washington Post" without coupons) just to obtain, for the same difference in price; without the cost to Nabisco of advertising in the newspaper to boot.

And now I'm thinking that maybe Walmart isn't the horrible ogre it's usually portrayed to be. At least in these two cases.

It's been tried. The passengers didn't like it.

I've been following Walmart before it was cool to follow Walmart. They did big data before it was called big data. I used to know a retired VP of Walmart. My favorite Walmart story, is they discovered that sales of Twinkies and Beer went through the roof when an area was threaten by a Hurricane, down south. Seems the Southerns can survive anything if they have an adequate supply of Twinkies and Beer. If you think about it, entirely logical. Beer for if the water supply is compromised. And Twinkies never go bad. Just the combination is yuk. I'd go more with Slim Jims myself. Is the Walmart model finished? I don't think so, I've traveled to some pretty rural areas and in many places, you shop Walmart or you don't shop at all. This is an interesting story about Vlasic Pickles and Walmart. Do business with Walmart at your peril. Ohbytheway, Sears invented that model. https://www.fastcompany.com/47...

"It’s about discovering what’s obviously Lego, but has never been seen before."

https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

Humans will adapt.

Stupid humans who insist on living where the floods are coming ... well, Darwin has a plan for them and their families.

But humans have done stupid things for 20K years and we are still here. A good friend bought a home in Tampa, on the water. I think he's an idiot. The same for people living below sea level in New Orleans. Idiots.

Stock tip - buy companies with experience in dike building. https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

I live at 900 ft above sea level. No earthquakes or hurricanes here. No flooding nearby - though it does happen within 20 miles and we do have occasional tornadoes.

I've lived at sea level, in a hurricane zone, and had 2 ft of water in my home. I moved. Hopefully, my family has passed Darwin's test.

Then it's usually back to business rules for further examination/treatment though. More AI = more software work, not less.

By which, of course, you mean more software work to replace traditional software with AI like Big Blue, which as in this article, figured out exactly which cancer a woman had AFTER they knew she had cancer.

https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/sto...

"Watson was trained on cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City—reviewing research, test results, even doctors’ and nurses’ notes to discover patterns in how the diseases develop and what treatments work best."

https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

If you're not programming AI, watch out!

I can add one more. Position is based on GPS instead of some sort of radar system once cars are in range - at least in the demo. GPS is somewhat accurate on the open road, but Google Maps gives an impression of much higher accuracy than is really possible in a moving vehicle. They snap you to the nearest road based on the curvature you follow compared to the documented curvature of the road (partly pioneered by this guy).

Call it the "Bataan death march," not "jumping through hoops."

Google's hiring practices may have change since the last time I looked at it. Probably because Google and other tech companies are looking away from the universities to hire people without degrees.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3069259/why-more-tech-companies-are-hiring-people-without-degrees

It's been studied, several times over. Here's one you can use for reference. The summary is that in offices where employees have privacy and personal space, productivity is much higher. https://www.usnews.com/opinion... https://www.fastcompany.com/30... https://www.tradegecko.com/blo...

"they are still way cheaper than a taxi despite all the BS"

Hard figures needed. Because, although the rider may pay less, Uber heavily subsidizes rides, and those subsidies must be included as part of the true cost when comparing with taxis.

It's said that Uber subsidizes over half the cost of a ride, so the true cost would be at least double.

So, we should expect the price to the rider to be less than half the cost of a taxi if they're truly cheaper. But, that doesn't appear to be the case. In fact, only when you add a 20% tip for the taxi driver, and only in one city, does that hold true (numbers are old, feel free to dig up more recent ones). In some cases, Uber is more expensive, even without considering the subsidies.

Great read: Man who said no to Wal-Mart

At some point the money must have been too good to pass up, or perhaps Wal-Mart gave them special concessions, because I see Snapper being sold through Wal-Mart now: Wal-Mart search for Snapper.

My favorite article on the subject is now almost 15 years old. December, 2003: https://www.fastcompany.com/47...

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

Of course, U.S. companies have been moving jobs offshore for decades, long before Wal-Mart was a retailing power. But there is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China. Wal-Mart, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s trumpeted its claim to "Buy American," has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States.

I'd love to see an updated story with new numbers, and that covers Amazon.

There are a few companies that refuse to sell to Walmart simply because Walmart's demand for lower prices never ends, and reputation is worth more than selling more.

https://www.fastcompany.com/54...

But then again, eventually everyone does

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sna...

Here's a good description of the problem.

more as hacks than as spec implementers

This was required reading at my organization.

Came across an article (https://www.fastcompany.com/3061686/free-shipping-is-a-lie) a few weeks ago that spells out part of the problem: Amazon loses around 45% of all shipping costs. They can take part of the hit because they have so much volume, but it also has to be paid for somewhere...and how they treat their staff is an obvious area in this instance.

Full disclosure: I also work for an online shop, and we struggle with the idea of 'free shipping'. Since we deal with food, our margins are already low, plus we ship a lot of refrigerated items, so a lot need expedited delivery. In the US it's not so bad (seems like $8 will get many packages just about anywhere in 2 days), but here in Canada, shipping fees are brutal -- even shipping in our own city is a minimum of about $10 -- and no doubt most people expect free shipping as well. As the article points out: it's just not sustainable. 'Free shipping' fees are paid elsewhere down the line.

If you're charging the same price as a brick and mortar isn't the fact that you don't run a storefront where the savings comes in?

Came across an article (https://www.fastcompany.com/3061686/free-shipping-is-a-lie) a few weeks ago that spells out part of the problem: Amazon loses around 45% of all shipping costs. They can take part of the hit because they have so much volume, but it also has to be paid for somewhere...and how they treat their staff is an obvious area in this instance.

Full disclosure: I also work for an online shop, and we struggle with the idea of 'free shipping'. Since we deal with food, our margins are already low, plus we ship a lot of refrigerated items, so a lot need expedited delivery. In the US it's not so bad (seems like $8 will get many packages just about anywhere in 2 days), but here in Canada, shipping fees are brutal -- even shipping in our own city is a minimum of about $10 -- and no doubt most people expect free shipping as well. As the article points out: it's just not sustainable. 'Free shipping' fees are paid elsewhere down the line.

Shopping at Walmart is shopping yourself into poverty. Walmart policy pretty much forces vendors to ship their production to China.

https://www.fastcompany.com/54...

This article brings up an excellent opportunity to revisit They Write The Right Stuff, an article about the rigorous process involved in space shuttle software development.

I had a motorola atrix once. Easily my least favorite/least durable phone ever. I had an otter box case even, it slipped out of my hand from two feet above the ground, landed on the top corner of the phone, and entire screen turned into a spiderweb of cracks. Maybe other motorola's faired better?

Seems like the future for manufacturing in the US is the Elon Musk approach - factories employing as much automation as possible; those will provide jobs for the contractors that build them, but thereafter not so much.

Compared to his "gigafactory" which will make batteries and employ 6,500 people, the future of Tesla manufacturing will be that there are no people on the production line, at all.

Gigafactory
https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

Tesla Factory
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Everyone loves to complain how we lost our manufacturing to China, but the truth is we began losing it a LONG time ago with the "invention" of automation. Companies bringing their manufacturing back to the U.S. will earn big rounds of applause, but in all likelihood, will only be doing so because they're determining that it's cheaper to do without the humans at all.

Should be this one

The correct article is here.

Unfortunately, there are 3 problems:

1. Sony isn't forward thinking. Aside from taking a risk on the PlayStation, they make their bread and butter from insurance, not electronics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...

2. Almost every time Sony tries something proprietary the market tells them they aren't interested.
https://www.fastcompany.com/12...
http://games.slashdot.org/comm...

In fact, except for BluRay, Sony has lost every format war they've ever fought.

* BetaMax/VHS (VHS crushed beta),
* NT casette/microcasette (nobody remembers NT casettes),
* MiniDisc/Flash (held on in Asia, but flash and HDD and CDs won),
* DAT/CD (DAT never made it beyond professional use),
* MMCD/SD (MMCD abandonned, SD became DVD),
* VCD/DVD (VCDs saw some use, but DVD came out two years later and started killing it),
* MemoryStick/MMC/SD/CF/Xd/etc (SD won, even some Sony products use SD rather than MS, CF only sees some professional use),
* ATRAC/MP3 (ATRAC never saw much adoption outside of MiniDisc),
* SACD/DVD-Audio (made irrelevant by digital distribution).

3. Sony is a hardware company -- they really don't understand software.

When you workaround taxes in both the EU and US, I for one encourage Vestager to throw the book at you. Really, when a company like Apple decides to test boundaries of the law, Apple should expect the authorities to do exactly the same.

Word. And in fact to pretend that Apple didn't really know about EU tax rules and Cook is honest (LOL, https://www.fastcompany.com/30... ), is basically equivalent of saying that "Apple isn't crooked, they are just *incredibly* stupid - and so am I" :P

On topic, I'm sure the US generally likes this because without this pressure the money would have stayed in tax shelters. I for one think it's okay to go after companies that are actively speculating against the state, in hope of better future tax breaks...

Yup.

To get the other side of the argument I went to Matt Gardner, the director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (the research umbrella for Citizens for Tax Justice). The CTJ is nonpartisan and nonprofit, and it's funded by some of the same foundations that fund NPR. As it turns out, Gardner energetically disagrees with many of the statements in Cook's letter. Here are his responses to Cook's main points.

A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point By Point

Baseless?

So the question might be reversed, should everyone with the same job description be paid exactly the same, regardless of work output or experience?

This is a good question. All people inflate their own sense of worth. Workers who claim to work 80 hours a week are often making very different choices about how to manage their time as someone who claims to work 40. It's one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect (the other half being that people of high capability often underestimate the difficulty of what they do).

http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb...

Now I'm not saying that you're exaggerating the amount of work you did in comparison to others (especially those tricksy women, amirite?), but it would be consistent with what we know about human nature and the actual data from the workplace of people who claim to work long hours. Studies have shown that the more hours people claim to work over 55, the more they're exaggerating how many hours they actually work. People who claim to work 75-80 hours a week are usually overestimating by at least 20 hours.

https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

Competence is a complicated thing masquerading as a simple thing. No, people who have the same job title as you shouldn't necessarily make the same amount of money. Your pay is based on performance reviews, training, proven competence and a whole slew of other inputs. The problem is, a lot of those so-called metrics have a built-in bias. And in a salaried workforce, those biases can really run rampant. That's why in countries with healthier, more dynamic economies, you will see pay based on seemingly arbitrary measures like job title and seniority. This was an innovation of the labor movement and led to the most productive workforces in the world.

http://www.epi.org/publication...

I have no doubt that you're a competent, hard-working guy. That's my built-in bias because I like you, Ol Olsoc. A lot of times, we find agreement around here. We have things in common. If I were overseeing a performance review of you, I'd probably be predisposed to rate you highly. I'd certainly be predisposed to rate you more highly than the woman who's been a bitch to me every since I made that joke about the one-eared elephant at Miller's retirement party.

Now, get the picture?

I'm wonder if these employees only being paid for 30 hours will only be expected to put in 60 hours?

There are reasons IT is often a salaried position. These reasons are called labor laws. In case people don't know, the hourly rate is actually pretty low for IT professionals after one factors in unaccounted for time.

Death marches are the norm in IT from help-desk support to video game testers. Nothing else can be expected from a whole section of Industry managed by people who put in random deadline dates without even guessing how long something should take. IT planning and scheduling is slightly worse than Hollywood and on part with consumer sales organized around fictional holidays.

If Amazon is hiring part-time workers the may find very quickly that laws have a very clear interpretation about things like on-call, per-deim, travel reimbursement and other concepts. Laws that were paid for by the labor unions of last century before they imploded with corruption.

But this is the twenty-first century. Want slaves but pesky morals and laws get in your way? Just call them 'Unpaid Interns.' Between making copies and running for coffee make them write reports about how wonderful it was. They get Real World Experience of doing stuff for no money that you somehow cannot get in school.

Seriously: spend less time in the seat crushed by anxiety and red tape. Then you'll get more stuff done. The less you work on average the more productive your society is. There have been studies on this.

Coal already gets massive subsidies http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind... http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... http://www.climatechangenews.c... and that doesn't count the huge cost to health care and lost worker productivity: http://www.fastcompany.com/172...

DOE did a study on savings to date through the Clean Air Act (passed through Congress without a single vote against it!) which found the Act had a *net benefit* to the economy for that reason. Nuclear sucks too, but Coal kills more than Nuclear https://www.newscientist.com/a... If someone can get alternative up to coal and nuclear then all the more power to them! :-)

Environmental policy used to be bipartisan https://www.washingtonpost.com... Fuck partisanship!

That 14,000 abandoned wind turbine claim is bullshit: They are old ones which were decommissioned and replaced, so it's like claiming the automobile is a failed idea because there are so many cars have gone to the wreckers. Just more Nimby bullshit. http://skeptics.stackexchange.... http://www.wind-works.org/cms/...

It was a botched link, for who knows why. The link probably was to point to https://news.fastcompany.com/f...

That said, the actual article (with useful info) is actually here: https://consumerist.com/2016/0...

Larry doesn't say much about PHP other than a veiled insult.

What Perl could have learned from PHP is the value of providing an easy learning curve. PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf is, lets face it, a much worse designer and coder than Larry. Interviews with him are scary because of that. He is the kid whole was at the bottom of your coding class, yet churned out a product adored by hundreds of thousands people.

PHP didn't achieve that sort of success because of Lerdorf's flaws. It succeeded despite them. Because of that easy learning curve. Perl's failure to fix its steep learning curve problem is why PHP has survived while Perl has struggled. http://www.fastcompany.com/302... It's also why newer languages like Python and Ruby which fixed PHP's flaws *and* have an easy learning curve did so well.

Perl will always be around, but if it doesn't make a serious attempt to fix the learning curve problem, it'll end up the wrong kind of 1%er.

Chinese cheat. Period. Ex-Soviets and formerly-Cubans do too. No, this is not "racism" — the trait is not genetic, it is cultural. When you are dealing with the abusive State for most of the things, cheating is the only way to have a reasonably comfortable life. It is not considered wrong or dishonest — everybody does it.

Western world weren't cheating quite so much not because they are racially superior somehow, but simply because they don't interact with the State as much as victims of Socialism/Communism are forced to.

It is coming to America as well — and not just with the immigrants, but with the "natives" too, because the State (comparably abusive in all countries) is increasingly in charge of various aspects of our lives. From tax-evaders, to highway speeders swearing they "didn't do it", to "workman's compensation" false claims, to Medicare fraud — cheating the government and the fugly bureaucrats who represent it is Ok.

And then you forget to stop and cheat even the business partners... Consider it PTSD — with Socialism being the trauma.

Kinda kills Spotify's arguments that Apple Music is bad for their business, doesn't it? :D

Did Spotify say such a thing? I've only seen the opposite.

https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

http://www.fastcompany.com/305...

And even a bear trap which is not working all the time :-) BTW: Her is a link to the story: http://www.fastcompany.com/305... The PainMachine was much more fun

That's why it's important to talk about this stuff.

I specifically went into science (then engineering) so that I wouldn't have to talk about this crap and so that I could play in the lab all day with science and computers.

In my more professional industry, rocket science, these decisions occur at a higher marketing level and the engineers just implement whatever specs they are told. Why isn't management being blamed?

The Sabu debacle is quite well documented. And I'm not posting as an AC.

Well who the fuck are you, and what proves the FBI is directing Anonymous?

The Sabu debacle is quite well documented. And I'm not posting as an AC.

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft.

As someone testing and writing software for spacecraft*, I hope that's not true. I really hope that the software of a plane is better tested than the one that I do test, when I take the plane. Same goes for the nuclear power plant close to my hometown. Yes, we did find bugs after launch on several satellites that I worked on. (always feeling bad to not catch them, but most of the time it's interesting to try to understand them based on limited data available)

And the original article is not even speaking about on-board software for the SLS, "only" the ground control software. I would expect that most, if not all, safety-critical part of the software to be embedded. (to avoid any safety measure not to happen in case of communication breakdown. The only safety functions that could be done from ground are the one where the safety problems is in the long term, when you don't have to act quickly.

Just one last comment... space software, late and over budget? That's nominal, right?

* Definition of spacecraft may vary. I have only worked on unmanned satellites, which are part of the Spacecraft definition of wikipedia. If we restrict "spacecraft" to "manned spacecraft" (including launcher qualified for manned space, space station, space shuttle, for example) this may be true.

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft.

You write software to fit the need. Nasa invented the "Agile" approach with Gemini and Mercury, but I doubt any of those guys would have to argue with their management about the need for descope in the middle of an iteration. Software is a malleable form of engineering and a number of approaches can be bought to bare to make it fit for purpose. Your appetite for risk and the impact of that risk is part of the process that decides what that is. After all how many software projects even have risk and issue logs even before we start to talk about formalized processes that double the amount of skilled people you require.

Software for military sub's reactor and civillian avionics are at least two places I can think of that require a high degree of scrutiny, there are certainly a lot more lives at stake. NASA have their own goals and objectives and this is how their processes are implemented.

Start a Softwareproject like that without having it properly planned or the right people involved and your project will go over budget

Well, that's true but it also comes down to application. If you can't afford to get it wrong because people will die, then you engineer it to a high degree of accuracy. If you can't afford to get it right because you need to launch a business then that is a risk you take.

If you are producing a lot of documentation and operational contracts then your project management will have enough milestones and checkpoints to understand *how long it will take* before you are over budget and if you are performing your objectives within budget because coming in under-budget might also mean you didn't plan well enough. Sometimes it's better to ask for extra budget, but only once - and you better deliver.

It was a great article, and it's premise that writing software well is an education that seems to take for ever to permeate makes a lot of sense but fortunately the other great thing about it is it can also be about the people you meet and the things you create. You can use modern software development techniques to produce good quality software that is fit for purpose, like a game for example, that doesn't have to be engineered to a high degree of accuracy. It that case it's better to engineer the process to be fun so people will be more productive because writing software isn't easy.

There was no indication in the article how much accuracy was a requirement for the launch control software.

There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft.
Start a Softwareproject like that without having it properly planned or the right people involved and your project will go over budget manifold inmediately.
No surprise here.

Read this: They Write the Right Stuff

out of academic transparency

See all of those corporate logos all over Red Team's vehicles? Do you really think CMU published the coolest stuff they developed?

https://www.fastcompany.com/10...

http://www.equipmentworld.com/...

https://www.saic.com/

https://www.tttech.com/

jealously-guarded corporate secrets.

Patents are anything but that. In fact they tell the world exactly how you do something.

and another here