I learnt this week - 28th April 2025

The links today include indicating payment, curiosity in hiring, rebuilding Kafka, the near deletion of Toy Story 2, Internet in a box and an object in space, maybe.

In restaurants, we need a new way to signal that we’re ready to pay

This article proposes a simple lo-tech way to indicate when you are ready to pay the bill in a restaurant, now we no longer put a note or a card visible and pay with our phones instead.

The approach of using a red and green side is very similar to the approach used at some all you can eat restaurants.

It should probably also account for colour blindness by having some other way of differentiating the sides.

Hiring Great People

Curiosity can be a great guide to how successful someone will be. When interviewing we look at the character of the candidate as much as their technical ability.

What If We Could Rebuild Kafka From Scratch?

We used Kafka as the basis for the previous project I worked on and it worked really well but there were some significant pain points.

I really like a lot of these suggestions on how it could be done differently now … almost makes me want to try and write my own … maybe not.

Galyn Susman, the Woman Who Saved Toy Story 2 From Deletion

An amazing story of how a woman working from home for Pixar had the only working backup that was usable for Toy Story 2 when someone accidentally deleted the film.

Internet in a Box - Mandela’s Library of Alexandria

Initially this sounds like a joke - remember the IT Crowd episode. However it is a way to get the best content to those who may not have access to it otherwise.

First man in space. Sort of.

Was the first man made item in space Sputnik 1 or something unexpected? You need to read it - I won’t spoil it.