Author: Charles

Where Woman Work, a magazine

I learned about a new website today: Where Woman Work. The site is all about exploring employers and the work that woman do there.

I was hoping the site was all about the workspaces that women create. I’ve collected photos of people’s workspaces over the years, and long ago, I collected screenshots of people’s desktops. I remember the customized windows “skinning” days, to many different Linux desktop / window managers.

I’ve always been fascinated by the environment people create around them. Workspaces seem to subconsciously communicate things about people in a very true sense- the person is focused on work, with varying levels of vanity or self-awareness. https://pin.it/6aGy2Lx

Chatbot offers study help in unreliable Internet areas, FoondaMate raises $2M

“South African study-by-text startup raises $2M. A South African edtech firm that offers a study-by-text service for students with unreliable internet access has raised $2 million in seed funding. FoondaMate, founded in 2020, offers an AI-powered chat bot to provide students with study materials via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.” EdWeek

Learning scientific studies through careful highlighting

From Andrew Bihl:

In my experience, much of learning technical information comes down to drawing categories and relationships. I’ve found while reading that by highlighting statements according to their purpose, I can more quickly understand the information being presented. It also helps me stay focused and see which statements I didn’t comprehend on first pass. I assign statements to one of five functions:

  • points

  • limitation

  • evidence

  • value

  • background

Via Hacker News

What will happen to America’s focus on decency?

quillette.com/2021/10/15/the-exhibitionist-economy

The twin sister research team of Pelin and Selin Kesebir arrived at similar conclusions by drawing on a large corpus of books. They found that rising American individualism had led to a decline in “general moral terms” including decency and conscience and a 74 percent decline in “virtue words” such as honesty, compassion, and patience.

Reduce the “ands” to succeed in software startups

The general rule is optionality is strength.  When there are lots of ways for things to go right, that is a strong position even if you haven’t actualized one of those ways.

The converse of this is a business that has extra “and” clauses — even more than usual. Marketplaces, for example, almost never succeed. When they do succeed, they are often durable and profitable, which makes them a smart bet for a Venture Capitalist that can maintain a diversified portfolio of attempts, but for the individual business it’s a tough road.

–Jason Cohen / ASmartBear via HackerNews