Arhiva: iunie 2021

Seeing the flurry of IPOs and acquisitions in the tech space I didn’t somehow expected StackOverflow to be sold to Naspers/Prosus. I actually think it’s the best outcome, since the buyers will probably want to increase the value of the asset and Naspers has a history of doing this successfully and not selling assets after fluffing them up a little bit.

Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.

This is, in some ways, the best possible outcome. Stack Overflow stays independent. The company has plenty of cash on hand to expand and deliver more features and fix the old broken ones. Right now, the biggest gating factor to how fast we can do this is just how fast we can hire excellent people.

From Joel on Software

Also, the press release from Prosus:

With expertise in scaling communities in high-growth markets globally, Prosus can help accelerate Stack Overflow’s growth ambitions, with a particular focus on reaching a wider international community, while also further scaling the company’s Teams product to position Stack Overflow at the center of product and technology development within major enterprises globally.

Prosus has built a significant presence on the enterprise side with a focus on the future of workplace learning. Prosus will reach 90% of the Fortune 100 across its corporate learning companies including Stack Overflow, Skillsoft, Udemy and Codecademy.

I genuinely don’t know if this interview with Marc Andreessen is a parody or the real thing (apparently it is the real thing), but you should read it nevertheless.

Henrich describes in his book how some people (us) are culturally WEIRD — Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic — but most people in the world aren’t. Yet.

[…]

I find this thesis enormously compelling and largely optimistic. I predict that we — the West — are going to WEIRDify the entire world, within the next 50 years, the next two generations. We will do this not by converting non-WEIRD people to WEIRD, but by getting their kids. Their kids, and their kids’ kids, are going to grow up on the Internet at least as much as they grow up in the real world, and the pull of WEIRD culture will overwhelm all existing non-WEIRD cultures. I realize this is a very strong claim, but this process is already underway; at this point I think it’s inevitable. The cost of this will be a collapse of global cultural diversity exactly as you and Rozin predict.

From here: The Dubrovnik Interviews: Marc Andreessen – Interviewed by a Retard – Fisted by Foucault.

via Marginal Revolution

I realized I didn’t really think too much about accessibility. I mean, I don’t have any issues whatsoever to limit my day to day life in any way.

So this is why it’s interesting to read this article, on a blind TikTok star’s favorite accessibility apps:

Do you know how you look?
How does a blind person socially distance?
How does a blind person pick up guide-dog poop?

Her followers and fans have sent her those questions and hundreds of others—all of which she’s answered with her signature candor, charm, and wit.

For Edwards, starting her TikTok channel last year was as much about self-preservation as educating others. “I would go out in the world and get this underlying discrimination and not be able to put my finger on it,” she says. “I would think, ‘Am I going crazy? It’s 2020. This can’t be happening.’

“But when I started answering those questions, it was like a weight was lifted. I got to another level of accepting myself, because you have to be quite strong to answer questions like ‘Can you brush your teeth?’”

There was an additional benefit: The more questions she responded to, the more thoughtful the questions became. “Do you dream in pictures? What do you see? Thinking about how to articulate that helped me develop as a person,” she explains.

It’s a really educational and eye opening read.

Via DaringFireball

Featured photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash