Hello Ladies: Selling Software to Women

If you’ve seen the excellent Old Spice commercial and you’re a software developer, you should watch this Business of Software presentation next:

I’m on a horse.

[video] Growing A Language, by Guy Steele 53:30

If you care even the slightest bit about programming languages you need to watch this:

If you don’t understand, watch the first 10 minutes to get what he’s trying to do with you.

Japan Reactors Stabilised

“Workers on site have succeeded in increasing the stability of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors, with units 5 and 6 now in cold shutdown. Pressure built up within unit 3 but a more significant venting does not seem necessary now.

External power has now been connected to unit 5 and 6, allowing them to use their residual heat removal systems and transfer heat to the sea. This has been used to cool the fuel ponds and bring the units to cold shutdown status, meaning that water in the reactor system is at less than 100ºC.”

- World Nuclear News

AT&T has fiberoptic splitter copying data to NSA

“…EFF has obtained whistleblower evidence [PDF] from former AT&T technician Mark Klein showing that AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. The undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provides those copies to the NSA…”

- NSA Spying, via Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Higher incentives lead to worse performance in conceptual creative thinking tasks. If every class was like this presentation, I would have a cum laude in engineering instead of a laude cum in Bohemia:

50 Points: Balancing Work & Play

An article with 50 points on balancing work and play (Ben Jones, MIT) holds some great advice for students, even though I don’t agree with all fifty points.

7 Points I Agree With:

42. “Wash your sheets more than once a year. Trust me on this one.”

A strong correlation exists between the number of washes and the number of people sleeping in them.

11. “Don’t date someone your roommate has been in a relationship with.”

Or anyone you want to stay friends with.

7. “…do something fun and irresponsible when you should be studying.”

Scientists Make Mice Immune to Radiation

Dr. Isenberg and his team made the discovery that by switching off a related inhibitory pathway that controls nitric oxide, they could give animals “near immunity to record levels of radiation,” he says.

In mice, when Dr. Isenberg and his team introduced a drug that prevented a protein, thrombospondin-1, from binding to a surface cell receptor called CD47, the animals could endure almost unheard-of doses of radiation with virtually no ill effects.

Perhaps equally exciting, Dr. Isenberg and his team found that while his technique protected healthy cells from damage, it actually increased the effectiveness of radiation treatments on cancer cells.

Alcohol First Distilled So British Could Reproduce

Flirt, but don’t speak: French vs American Culture

The French, says Carroll, will only have conversations with people with whom they are already intimate, while Americans will only touch people with whom they are already intimate. To Americans, conversation does not imply intimacy.

In France, he explained, you always flirt; it means nothing. Americans never flirt and rarely sexualise social encounters.

Americans won’t touch strangers, the French won’t talk to them, but Brits will neither touch nor talk to them. No wonder Britons drink ever-increasing amounts of alcohol. Alcohol was first distilled so that British people could reproduce.

5 Keyboard Cowboy Hacks for Two-Finger Typists

Saving the world from screaming infants:

When I hear a pensioner erase their browser’s entire address bar with a ringing barrage of never-ending backspaces, I cringe the way you might cringe at the sound of a small child screaming on a cramped airplane. While scratching on a blackboard. At 4am during a terrorist attack. While frothing at the mouth.

That’s what backspaces sound like. Short of learning to touch type, you need to master five keyboard cowboy skills to…(read more)

- FreshCode

Starting up with a friend

It seems like a fool-proof plan: start up with a close friend. You’ll get along (obviously), and you’ll get to share the exciting, fantastic, scary experience of starting up with someone you care about. It’s not a bad idea, but there are a few caveats that you should be aware of before you proceed.

- Starting Up With A Friend by Daniel Tenner