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An Ohio Startup Rebuilds Lives One Piece of Fried Chicken at a Time

A millennial entrepreneur hires from inmates and homeless people who struggle to find work even in a strong economy.

Click to view the original at politico.com

Hasnain says:

This was a heartwarming personal interest story about a man who started a business hiring ex convicts and giving them the second chance that is so sorely needed to help them rehabilitate.

Posted on 2018-07-01T04:42:31+0000

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The Rise of Bullshit Jobs

A bullshit job is a job which is so pointless that even the person doing the job secretly believes that it shouldn’t exist. And there are more now than ever.

Click to view the original at jacobinmag.com

Hasnain says:

Solid read on jobs, labor, and ends on a good use case for UBI.

“Because, you know, why am I complaining? If I complain to someone they’re just going to say, “Hey, you’re getting something for nothing and you’re whining?” But it shows that our basic idea of human nature, which is inculcated in everybody by economics, for example — that we’re all trying to get the most reward for the least effort — isn’t actually true. People want to contribute to the world in some way. So, that shows that if you give people basic income, they’re not going to sit around and watch TV, which is one objection.

The other objection, of course, is that, maybe they will want to contribute to society, but they’re going to do something stupid, so that society is going to be full of bad poets and annoying street musicians, street mimes everywhere, people developing their crank perpetual-motion-devices and whatnot. I’m sure there’ll be some of that, but look: if 40 percent of people already think their jobs are completely pointless, how is it going to be worse than it already is? At least they’re going to be a lot happier doing that stuff than they are filling out forms all day.”

Posted on 2018-07-01T04:05:53+0000

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Montreal Moving Day: what happens when a whole city moves house at once?

1 July is Canada Day. But in Quebec, which has twice had referendums on independence, it’s when tenancies traditionally end – leading to mayhem on the streets

Click to view the original at theguardian.com

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mikeash.com: Friday Q&A 2018-06-29: Debugging with C-Reduce

Debugging a complex problem is tough, and it can be especially difficult when it's not obvious which chunk of code is responsible. It's common to attempt to produce a reduced test case in order to narrow it down. It's tedious to do this manually, but it's also the sort of thing computers are really....

Click to view the original at www.mikeash.com

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Hasnain says:

I wonder what can be done to correct this perception.

“Fewer than half of Americans know that most immigrants in the U.S. are here legally. Just 45% of Americans say that most immigrants living in the U.S. are here legally; 35% say most immigrants are in the country illegally, while 6% volunteer that about half are here legally and half illegally and 13% say they don’t know. In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, lawful immigrants accounted for about three-quarters of the foreign-born population in the United States.”

Posted on 2018-06-30T06:08:46+0000

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How not to structure your database-backed web applications: a study of performance bugs in the wild

How not to structure your database-backed web applications: a study of performance bugs in the wild Yang et al., ICSE’18 This is a fascinating study of the problems people get into when using…

Click to view the original at blog.acolyer.org

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Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall With the Macbook Pro Keyboard

A titan of tech and industrial innovation has been laid low by a mere speck of dust. Last week, Apple quietly announced that they were extending the warranty on their flagship laptop’s keyboard by four years. As it turns out, the initial run of these keyboards, described by Jony Ive as thin, preci...

Click to view the original at ifixit.org

Hasnain says:

“This is design anorexia: making a product slimmer and slimmer at the cost of usefulness, functionality, serviceability, and the environment.

A repairable pro laptop is not an unreasonable ask. Apple has a history of great keyboards—they know how to make them. There are very successful laptop manufacturers who consistently earn 10/10 on our repairability scale. Apple fans are already making noise about the dearth of new Macs, especially upgradable options for professionals. Fortunately, Apple seems to be listening with their new warranty program.

Which brings us back to the point. Why did it take so long, and so many complaints, for the repair program to be put in place? Why do you need to send your MacBook Pro away for upwards of a week for a repair? That’s easy: because Apple made their product hard for them to repair, too. Apple’s new warranty program is going to cost them a lot of money.

Apple’s profit on every machine that they warranty under this new program has been decimated. There is a real business impact caused by unrepairable product design. Samsung recently had a similar experience with the Note7. Yes, the battery problem was a manufacturing defect. But if the battery had been easy to replace, they could have recalled just the batteries instead of the entire phone. It was a $5 billion design mistake.”

Posted on 2018-06-28T05:53:57+0000

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He Sold Drugs for $225. Indiana Took His $42,000 Land Rover.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Constitution has anything to say about civil forfeiture laws that let states take property used in crimes.

Click to view the original at nytimes.com