link friday: pay employees more!, gamifying relationships, free co-pays are probably good
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2013-08-16 13:32:00
Tags: links
Words: 368

- Sorry, It's Not A 'Law Of Capitalism' That You Pay Your Employees As Little As Possible - a good article by Henry Blodget discussing the trend for business to maximize profits at the expense of their employees. With graphs! Lots of depressing graphs.

- When a Relationship Becomes a Game - I'm not sure how to feel about gamification of relationships. On the one hand, it sure seems wrong. But it's easy (for me, anyway) to let a relationship just kind of coast along and not put any thought into it, and this is an imperfect way of prodding one's self into doing more. (and this idea isn't new - I remember people in World of Warcraft logging off saying it was time to grind some rep with the wife...)

- When a Co-Pay Gets in the Way of Health - free markets are great, but health care is not a free market and we should stop treating it as such. The article details a case where eliminating a co-pay made more people actually take their prescribed medicine and probably saved their insurance company money overall.

- A Deeper Look at Austin Plans to Bury I-35 - this plan sounds pretty neat, although expensive. It's similar to what Boston did with the Big Dig on a much smaller scale. I've read a few articles about it so maybe it's more likely to happen than I think? (also, kudos to the headline writer - didn't see the pun until the second time around!)

- 'Less Costly Struggle and Bloodshed': The Atlantic Defends Hiroshima in 1946 - very interesting to read the perspective so close to the actual events.

- Math Advances Raise the Prospect of an Internet Security Crisis - looks like it's possible people are going to make progress on the discrete logarithm problem. (which is the basis of RSA and other encryption algorithms, although not all of them)

- When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart - feeling powerful can suppress your mirror neurons.

- How phone batteries measure the weather - whoa, awesome! Go big data!

- Google Maps Has An Incredible Doctor Who Easter Egg - I'm pretty mad at Google this week, since they blocked Microsoft's Windows Phone YouTube app for ridiculous reasons, but this is pretty neat.

3 comments

Comment from spchampion:
2013-08-16T14:13:19+00:00
I could never imagine Boston before the Big Dig, and from what I can tell it has been an absolute improvement for the city. However, Massachusetts will be paying for it forever. And other projects that would fix traffic are now too expensive to pursue.

Comment from gregstoll:
2013-08-16T14:32:18+00:00
Yeah...burying I-35 is a much smaller overall project than the Big Dig, but I'm sure it would be expensive.

Comment from alteredhistory:
2013-08-16T15:21:42+00:00
A glimpse of the future...?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziHCvpikLh8

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