News You Can Use: 2/21/2018

  • Whatever Happened to Generation X?

    That’s partially why, collectively, no one’s ever thought much of us. The boomers have for the most part ignored us, treating us like hapless little kids. And when the millennials came along — a group just as large and self-obsessed and overly dramatic as their parents — we became the forgotten middle children. We weren’t the “me” or the “me, me, me” generation. We were more like the “meh” generation, stuck between two cohorts who never stop talking. Lately, our sense of invisibility has felt particularly acute in Philly, a town still run by people in their 50s and 60s — but being remade to suit the tastes of people in their 20s.

    http://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/01/27/generation-x-philadelphia/

  • Comcast may force us to rethink the definition of “cord-cutting”

    For the fourth quarter, Comcast said it lost 33,000 traditional pay-TV subscribers while gaining an impressive 350,000 high-speed internet customers. All told, the company ended the quarter with a net increase of 243,000 new customers. For the full year, that number was up by 777,000 customers.

    Comcast further boasted that it has signed up more than 1 million high-speed internet customers for 12 consecutive years. In other words, a lot of cord-cutters still need that cable cord–even if they’d rather watch Netflix than channel surf through an old-fashion cable TV lineup.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40521015/comcast-may-force-us-to-rethink-the-definition-of-cord-cutting

  • The hidden role informal caregivers play in health care
  • HR has lost the trust of employees. Here is who has it now

    A superior has made a pass at a subordinate, and an executive of the company asks that the subordinate be fired to “clean up” the situation. An employee repeatedly makes homophobic, racist, or sexist remarks to their colleagues, but the company has deemed the individual critical to the functioning of the sales team, and so is merely given a warning. Company morale is suffering and complaints are showing up on online sites like Glassdoor, so HR is charged with “fixing” the company’s rating. A well-performing employee is repeatedly given poor performance reviews to make their firing tidy.

    All of these examples are hypothetical, but they are archetypes for the near daily news of HR abuses that are now been regularly published around the world.

    Independent Apps are becoming a solution:

    Clearly, people want to talk about the problems at their workplace. But venting to anonymous colleagues is about the least effective approach to ameliorating the underlying conditions making workers unhappy in the workforce. That’s why other apps are exploring how to handle difficult conversations at the workplace in a better light, often with the blessing of HR departments themselves.

    Bravely is one such app. The company, based in New York, was founded by Toby Hervey, Sarah Sheehan, and Rasesh Patel as a platform to facilitate the kinds of hard conversations that need to happen for a workplace to thrive. Their concept is to connect workers who might be struggling bringing up a matter at work with expert “Pros” who are trained executive and life coaches who can help a worker think through their options and how best to raise their voice at a company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/10/hr-has-lost-the-trust-of-employees-here-is-who-has-it-now/?ncid=rss

  • Conversation Topics That Should and Shouldn’t Be Discussed in the Office

    Despite the strict views that some people and industries have about what’s appropriate office conversation, talk is talk and people are going to do it either way. So what’s the hottest topic of conversation? Politics. Seventy-four percent of people agree that politics is the most common subject, and that’s likely due to the rocky 2016 election and the current state of American politics right now.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308815

    Source: InsuranceQuotes (click the link to see the whole infographic)

Photo: Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez

News You Can Use: 2/14/2018

  • Our Obsession With Working Hard Is Ruining Our Productivity

    Success is not about hard work. It is absolutely about focus and ensuring you use your time productively. But when we constantly talk about how hard we’re working, we perpetuate the idea that you have to work all the time to succeed in this world, and you just don’t.

    What you should be doing is deciding what will really move the needle forward for what you’re trying to accomplish each day and week, and focus on that. Focus. If you get done what you decided you wanted to get done, you get to quit.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40527825/our-obsession-with-working-hard-is-ruining-our-productivity

  • The House That Spied on Me

    I (the smart home) had the same view of Kashmir’s house that her Internet Service Provider (ISP) has. After Congress voted last year to allow ISPs to spy on and sell their customers’ internet usage data, we were all warned that the ISPs could now sell our browsing activity, or records of what we do on our computers and smartphones. But in fact, they have access to more than that. If you have any smart devices in your home—a TV that connects to the internet, an Echo, a Withings scale—your ISP can see and sell information about that activity too. With my “iotea” router I was seeing the information about Kashmir and her family that Comcast, her ISP, could monitor and sell.

    https://gizmodo.com/the-house-that-spied-on-me-1822429852

  • The 2020 census is in serious trouble
  • You can’t buy an ethical smartphone today

    Smartphones, and consumer technology more generally, don’t just have the potential to harm the people building them. There is also the enormous environmental damage caused in the handsets’ production, through resource extraction, intensive manufacturing and transport. “If you’re wanting to buy a[n ethical] phone right now, your choices are limited,” says Greenpeace’s Gary Cook, “and Fairphone has done the most in terms of current manufacturers.”

    The organization found there’s plenty of environmental blood that can be laid at the door of the smartphone. In the last decade, production of the devices has consumed nearly 968TWh, enough to power India for a year. In 2017, smartphones, and related products, made 50 metric tons of e-waste — discarded smart devices and their accessories — and it’s only going to get worse.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/06/ethical-smartphone-conscious-consumption/

  • How To Transfer To Another Role Within Your Company

    This goes beyond delivering excellent results–it’s important to maintain a positive attitude about what you’re currently doing, even when you’re not 100% excited about it. That being said, if you’re looking to move into a different function that requires an entirely different skill-set, you also need to show you possess those abilities already. How? Take on a couple projects that are relevant to your desired role to showcase what you can do.

    Before I made the jump from customer service to business development, I took on extra work to help resolve customer issues related to our partnerships. I became an expert in the product and technical details of the product integrations we had with our partner companies. As a result, the business development team included me in their conversations with partners, and I helped negotiate and resolve the technical aspects of our partnership deals.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40520524/how-to-transfer-to-another-role-within-your-company

Photo: Mayur Gala

News You Can Use: 2/7/2018

  • Child development experts want Facebook to pull its Messenger Kids app

    The experts have written an open letter urging Facebook to pull the child-focused messenger app, saying that “younger children are simply not ready to have social media accounts,” reports the Guardian. The letter was spearheaded by the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood and signed by over 100 child health experts, doctors, and educators. In it, the signatories argue: “At a time when there is mounting concern about how social media use affects adolescents’ well-being, it is particularly irresponsible to encourage children as young as pre-schoolers to start using a Facebook product.” The Messenger Kids app was launched in December and aimed at children under 13. It offers a host of parental controls, and Facebook says the data collected from the app will not be used for advertising purposes. Facebook has not yet responded to the open letter.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40523795/child-development-experts-want-facebook-to-pull-its-messenger-kids-app

  • Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey’s DX dive into virtual medicine

    Blackwell and his team started rolling out the first phase of Horizon’s digital transformation strategy last year by launching pilot web and mobile services that improve the member experience and make it easier for participants to understand their benefits. These services detail which doctors are available, explain how much services will cost, and let a patient schedule a visit.

    The Phase 1 rollout lets individuals take a more active role in the administrative nuances of medical care, which really isn’t anything new. In fact, it is quickly becoming virtual business as usual for users who routinely use their smartphones or mobile devices to order pizzas, groceries, or a ride across town and prefer the same “tap and swipe” convenience for medical services.

    During the first phase, Horizon also adopted a full agile development and methodology, which included assigning a product owner for the digital platform —something the hospital IT department never did before. The insurance provider also revamped the physical space for the digital team, creating an open environment with no walls or barriers.

    https://www.cio.com/article/3251724/digital-transformation/horizon-blue-cross-blue-shield-of-new-jerseys-dx-dive-into-virtual-medicine.html

  • How To Learn To Love Mondays Again

    If you chronically dread Mondays, explore where those feelings come from, says Nicole Lewis-Keeber, a psychotherapist and coach based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve robbed half on my Sunday or more in the corporate world or as an entrepreneur already worrying about what’s going to happen for the week,” she says.

    Lewis-Keeber recommends looking at the reasons why you’re dreading Monday. Is there a project that’s troubling you? Are you struggling in your job or having issues with an individual? Once you name the source of your bad feelings about heading back to work at the end of the weekend, you can begin to reframe it or take action to resolve it.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40521664/how-to-learn-to-love-mondays-again

  • This Is What It’s Like To Not Own A Smartphone In 2018

    But it’s more than just addiction and information overload. In the rush to adopt and upgrade devices, we’ve collectively given up a lot–our privacy and data chief among them. Consider this recent video highlighting an average smartphone user whose GPS coordinates were shared with third parties 3,545 times over the course of a single week, based on permissions she gave in those user agreements no one reads.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40522828/this-is-what-its-like-to-not-own-a-smartphone-in-2018

Photo: KT

News You Can Use: 1/10/2018

  • The Worst Job in Technology: Staring at Human Depravity to Keep It Off Facebook

    The well-being of content moderators “is something we talk about with our team members and with our outsourcing vendors to make clear it’s not just contractual. It’s really important to us,” says Mark Handel, a user research manager at Facebook who helps oversee content moderation. “Is it enough? I don’t know. But it’s only getting more important and more critical.”

    Former content moderators recall having to view images of war victims who had been gutted or drowned and child soldiers engaged in killings. One former Facebook moderator reviewed a video of a cat being thrown into a microwave.

    Workers sometimes quit on their first or second day. Some leave for lunch and never come back. Others remain unsettled by the work—and what they saw as a lack of emotional support or appreciation—long after they quit.

    Shaka Tafari worked as a contractor at messaging app Whisper in 2016 soon after it began testing a messaging feature designed for high-school students. Mr. Tafari, 30, was alarmed by the number of rape references in text messages he reviewed, he says, and sometimes saw graphic photos of bestiality or people killing dogs.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-worst-job-in-technology-staring-at-human-depravity-to-keep-it-off-facebook-1514398398

  • How To Deliver Your Presentation In Half The Time You’d Allotted

    Layering. This approach simply means designing your presentation from the inside out. The inner “layer” is your key message–the most important takeaway you want your audience to leave with. The next layer consists of your other major points that directly support that key message. Then you have the details that support those key points–which together make up a third layer. Think of it kind of like dressing for cold weather: If you get too warm, you can always take off a layer. Similarly, if you get short on time, you can take off one of the outer layers. What’s really important is that you communicate your inner layers effectively.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40513468/how-to-deliver-your-presentation-in-half-the-time-youd-allotted

  • Oneplus and Tencent: Exploring China’s technological revolution

    This is a nice follow up to SourceCast Episode 101
  • Four Reasons Resumes No Longer Work

    Technology has changed the marketplace, and HR is the only vertical that hasn’t seen a rapid transition, says Carisa Miklusak, CEO of the algorithmic hiring platform tilr. “Right now tech isn’t giving people a fair opportunity to compete,” she says. “Before you blame the resume, you need to understand that they’re a byproduct of old employer values. Titles and years of experience are no longer a person’s number-one currency.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40512551/4-reasons-why-resumes-no-longer-work

  • Mark Zuckerberg Resolves to ‘Fix’ Facebook in 2018

    Last fall, Facebook lurched into crisis mode after disclosing that Russia-backed entities used its platform and advertising tools to spread divisive messages to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The admission sparked a rare set of congressional hearings where lawmakers grilled officials from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

    More recently, several former Facebook executives and employees have expressed remorse for helping build a platform that they said was designed to foster dependence on Facebook. Those comments eventually prompted Facebook to acknowledge that certain types of social-media use could be harmful to users’ mental health.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-resolves-to-fix-facebook-in-2018-1515104645
    This is a nice sentiment, but how? Details would be nice. Zuck should have a plan before he made a comment about it.

Photo: Jeremy Bishop

News You Can Use: 11/22/2017

  • For Tech’s Deepest Problems, Women Are The Canary In The Data Mine

    The book proposes this simple but radical solution: Women should not try to adapt to the male-centric corporate world, instead women should “lean out” and create their own companies. “I’ve figured out a way to create safe space for myself in tech,” wrote Shevinsky.

    In a recent conversation, we discussed how the culture of overwork contributes to the problem of misogyny in many companies, and about how the singular focus on growth and profit drowns out ethical concerns that in the long run ultimately ruins companies. We also spoke about how feminism has said all it can, and yet things don’t seem to be getting better. And we discussed how a hostile workplace for women often indicates that a company has other ethical issues as well.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40494460/for-techs-biggest-problems-women-are-the-canary-in-the-data-mine

  • The Surprising Thing I Gained When I Switched to a Remote Workforce

    One way that businesses are trying to stem employee turnover and are working to improve employee well-being is embracing the paradigm shift to a telecommuting workforce, aka “working from home.” A 2014 PGi survey of 1,000 workers found that 80 percent of their employers offered a telecommuting option, and about half of these employees exercised this option at least once a week. The millennial generation is all about this lifestyle, where 68 percent of millennials are more interested in a position that involves working from home and 64 percent would like the opportunity to work remotely.

    Also:

    One of the aspects of telecommuting that I didn’t think of when we first started was the increase in quality hires I was able to make. Before the switch, we were pigeonholed into hiring from the localities surrounding our business, or hiring someone who was willing to make the long commute every day — something that weighs heavily on even the best of employees.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/304422

  • A pro wrestler’s guide to confidence
  • It’s Time to Tax Companies for Using Our Personal Data

    The data tax could be a minor cost, less than 1 percent of the revenue companies earn from selling our personal data, spread out over an entire industry. Individually, no company’s bottom line would substantially suffer; collectively, the tax would pull money back to the public, from an industry profiting from material and labor that is, at its very core, our own.

    This idea is not new. It is, essentially, a sales tax, among the oldest taxes that exist, but it hasn’t been done because assigning a fixed monetary value to our data can be very difficult. For a lot of internet businesses, our personal data either primarily flows through the business or remains locked within.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/business/dealbook/taxing-companies-for-using-our-personal-data.html

  • The Washington Post Is A Software Company Now

    Since 2014, a new Post operation now called Arc Publishing has offered the publishing system the company originally used for WashingtonPost.com as a service. That allows other news organizations to use the Post’s tools for writers and editors. Arc also shoulders the responsibility of ensuring that readers get a snappy, reliable experience when they visit a site on a PC or mobile device. It’s like a high-end version of Squarespace or WordPress.com, tailored to solve the content problems of a particular industry.

    By offloading the creation of publishing tools and the hosting of sites, media companies can concentrate on the journalism itself rather than the technical requirements of getting it in front of readers. Scot Gillespie, the Washington Post’s chief technology officer, says that Arc’s value proposition is “let us run the CMS [content management system] for you, the creation of circulation. You focus on differentiation.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40495770/the-washington-post-is-a-software-company-now

Photo: Felix Russell-Saw