I eat URLs for breakfast

Making a tiny star on Earth?

This sounds interesting: by 2013, a first fusion engine prototype.

The National Ignition Facility, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is the world’s largest laser system… 192 huge laser beams in a massive building, all focused down at the last moment at a 2 millimeter ball containing frozen hydrogen gas. The goal is to achieve fusion… getting more energy out than was used to create it. It’s never been done before under controlled conditions, just in nuclear weapons and in stars. We expect to do it within the next 2-3 years. The purpose is threefold: to create an almost limitless supply of safe, carbon-free, proliferation-free electricity; examine new regimes of astrophysics as well as basic science; and study the inner-workings of the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons to ensure they remain safe, secure and reliable without the need for underground testing.

How decisions are made at 37signals - Podcast

In this Q&A podcast, 37signals were asked (jump to the 14:24 mark): When you don’t agree on something, how do you make the final decision?

David Heinemeier Hansson answers:

Usually the one who’s most passionate about it wins.

We’ll talk about something for 10-15 minutes and we have a bunch of arguments and then usually (…) we’ll come to a common understanding based on the arguments, but if not, then whoever’s most passionate about it has the tendency to win.

I seem to remember this was what happened when I originally proposed OpenID and both Ryan and Jason were like OpenID nobody’s gonna get that, so you’re gonna have to answer the support calls on OpenID and I said all right, fine, I’ll do it, and, I did.

Here’s another point about 37signals’ work culture that I find fascinating: they don’t bother much with defined (confined) roles.

Members of the team know why they were hired (designer, developer, sysadmin, support), but the work culture allows for flexibility. There’s room for initiative, for personal exploration.

Taking the above case as an example, the typical way to settle a feature decision would be to have the manager make the call. Note, here, that David is one of the partners at 37signals. He’s got decision-making power and in any other company, he would be part of management, where he could have have offloaded the development and support to someone under him.

But that’s not how they work.

He agreed to develop the OpenID feature — and initially handle all its support emails — by himself, to test the assumptions he made.

There’s something dignifying about allowing a team member to scout a new trail.  It’s dignifying for the one taking that risk, and it’s respectful to the others in the group who don’t have to put aside what they’re working on.

Isn’t it sad, though, how the web industry became so prudent in its work culture.  On illusions of being responsible about what we can deliver, we slice our workforce into swim lanes of job categories. Under the guise of fairness and equity, we end up creating job descriptions that paralyze and demotivate collaboration. I’ll build your OpenID feature how you want it, but I’m not doing the support emails for it, because that’s not in my job description.  

That’s the thing with structure: it’s hard to remove once it’s in place. While clear roles help people know how they’ll be evaluated, it’s also a tax on the work culture’s ability to change direction.

David Foster Wallace on iPhone 4's FaceTime

David Foster Wallace wrote that within the reality of the book, videophones enjoyed enormous initial popularity but then after a few months, most people gave it up.