McFilter: April 2015 Archives

April 27, 2015

Lessons Learned in Software Development. All important, hard-won gems of lessons.
How to Survive the Looming Tech Bubble: Ignore the Gurus. Always good to be reminded, and this is a good reminder, no to believe everything you read.
In praise of friction. A pitch-perfect post about why you should install (this) ad-(and tracking)-blocker.
A Quick Note on Airbnb’s San Francisco Report. This is a fantastic take-down of the statistics quoted by Air B'n'B. You could apply almost all of those complaints to any of the reports that get generated to "prove" how much value tourism/arts/council-or-gov-topic-du-jour bring to the city.
The Slow Death of the University. "What if the value of the humanities [and the arts] lies not in the way they conform to such dominant notions [of society's prevailing ideologies], but in the fact that they don’t?"

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Internet.org is a failed exercise in misdirection. Just because you call something "Internet.org" doesn't mean that it's access to the Internet. Doc Searls provides a perfect critique of Facebook's free-mobile-data-for-Facebook-access programme.
Don't know who to vote for? Then learn who to vote against. "The suffragettes understood that. They understood that democracy does not end at the ballot box. If we are lucky, it starts there. It starts with choosing your enemy. [...] Vote today and change the world tomorrow. We are not as powerless as they would have us believe. Choose your enemy and choose wisely. Good luck."

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Mikey Dickerson to SXSW: Why We Need You in Government "Some of you, not all of you, are working right now on another app for people to share pictures of food or a social network for dogs. I am here to tell you that your country has a better use for your talents." and "this country belongs to you and me and it is exactly as good as we make it. Grownups are not going to fix it for us and billionaires are not going to fix it for us. We either do it ourselves, or nobody does."
The internet won't forget Cameron's lies, and neither will the British people.
Code and Law between Truth and Power. Great lecture from law professor Julie E Cohen about privacy, data, networks and power. Great to see someone pointing out that - like code - law is not a neutral actor in good or bad. There's a write-up of the lecture at We are citizens, not mere physical masses of data for harvesting if you want a shorter read.
Why Are Glasses Perceived Differently Than Hearing Aids?. All technology is assistive, so why is some stigmatised over others?

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Post-Mortems at HubSpot: What I Learned From 250 Whys. Detailing a good approach to technical project post-mortems.
MPs - please post your CVs here. Francis' Democracy Club CVs gets a write-up in the Guardian.
A Year of Reflection. Fantastic set of thoughts on learning curves, relevance and running an agency. That description doesn't do the article justice.
NO DICKHEADS! A Guide To Building Happy, Healthy, and Creative Teams. Lots of insight into how to build a team and set the culture of the company. Especially for "No dickheads allowed. Really! My definition of a dickhead is a person whose ambition for themselves or their own career is greater than their ambition for the project or team."
Welfare Makes America More Entrepreneurial. Giving would-be business founders a better security net is a better way to increasing how many companies we have than increasing the spoils for those which are lucky enough to be successful (by lowering taxes).

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