Four short links: 26 January 2017
Soda Locker, Building Fabricator, Familied Traveler Advice, and Technically Competent Bosses
- The Soda Locker Vending Machine (Instructables) — genius creation from a high schooler!
- Robotic Fabricator for Buildings (MIT TR) — The In Situ Fabricator1 is designed from the bottom up to be practical. It can build stuff using a range of tools with a precision of less than five millimeters, it is designed to operate semi-autonomously in a complex changing environment, it can reach the height of a standard wall, and it can fit through ordinary doorways. And it is dust- and waterproof, runs off standard electricity, and has battery backup. On top of all this, it must be internet connected so that an architect can make real-time changes to any plans if necessary.
- Lessons Learned From a Million Miles and 5 Kids (Bryce Roberts) — golden advice for travelers with families at home.
- You’re More Likely to be Happy at Work if Your Boss is Technically Competent (HBR) — technical competence is Whether the supervisor could, if necessary, do the employee’s job; whether the supervisor worked his or her way up inside the company; the supervisor’s level of technical competence as assessed by a worker. 35,000 randomly sampled employees at different workplaces. When we look closely at the data, a striking pattern emerges. The benefit of having a highly competent boss is easily the largest positive influence on a typical worker’s level of job satisfaction. Even we were surprised by the size of the measured effect. For instance, among American workers, having a technically competent boss is considerably more important for employee job satisfaction than their salary (even when pay is really high).
