People Steal All Kinds Of Shit From Restaurants, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: People are the worst, skyscrapers will be made from wood, and why more people aren't majoring in computer science.
Of Course People Steal Shit From Restaurants All The Time
If you've ever doubted the inherent goodness of humanity, well, don't read this Bloomberg piece on the various stuff people steal from restaurants. Decorations, candles, salt and pepper shakers and even a leather bound wine list? Christ, who are these people? "It's been such a long and stressful week, let's go somewhere nice and blow off some steam and also commit grand larceny," is what must be going through their heads.
They say the true test of a person's character is what you do when no one is looking. But it would appear a more accurate assessment would be what you do when you're two drinks in and the apps just arrived.
In The Future, The Skyscrapers Might Be Made From Wood
Steel, concrete, glass. These are the building materials for chumps. This week, WIRED's Liz Stinson highlighted the experimental work behind The River Beach Tower — a potential 80-story Chicago skyscraper constructed from wood.
Is this happening because engineers and architects have unlocked some hidden secret within timber? Not exactly — they've figured out how to make it strong enough to draw level with steel with a process known as cross-laminated timber. Is this because wood is inherently cheaper and more sustainable than traditional building materials? Not really — the only consolation is that wood could act as a sink for CO2 emissions, which, after Trump pulls the US out of the Paris climate agreement, will be like trying to absorb the ocean with a Brillo pad.
The simple, and frankly unsatisfying answer, is that architects have realized that they can build a skyscraper from wood, and are hoping that someone will pay them a nice sum to make that dream happen.
[Wired]
The Push To Learn To Code Isn't Making More CS Majors
Even a casual observer of the world would come to the conclusion that coding is so hot right now. You have this website, Facebook, which is very popular. You have this technology, the smartphone, which is very popular. You have this show, Silicon Valley, which is very popular thing. Three very popular things, all three of them requiring code.
As such, it wouldn't be crazy to assume that this industry — one where world-spanning, life-changing services are generated from literal keystrokes and rewarded with billions and billions of dollars — would be attracting more graduates. You would assume that the number of people graduating with a degree in computer science would increase.
Not so, as Dang Wang, a tech analyst, recently blogged about. According to data Wang pulled, CS degrees have remained relatively flat over the past decade. Why, exactly, Wang is hesitant to definitively say.
Seeing that Digg is a website that also employs developers, I asked them for their thoughts. They, too, did not have any definitive answers but offered a series of situations that might keep that number down. One sentiment: If you're you're working on AI at Facebook at Google, you probably need a CS degree, but you probably don't need one to make WordPress templates. Another was that unlike more legacy professions — doctor, lawyer, and so on — it's possible to break into the industry without a college degree. Yet another suspected that we've yet to quite see the Silicon Valley bump hit our nation's schools.
One question that neither Wang or anyone else is really asking is: Should there be more CS majors out there?
[Dan Wang]
A Large Portion Of The Country In Unsure How To Spell 'Beautiful'
Look, we're all human. Spelling is tricky, and when you have a device that grants you easy access to the Infinite Knowledge Of The Internet, why not just Google that word you're having a brain fart over.
The wise folks at Google recognized this trend, and made a map of the US — charting out the most common search query for "How to spell…" for each state. A cursory glance reveals that out of the 50, five states — that's California, Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky and New York — seem to get hung up on "beautiful." That said, it's not as bad as Wisconsin, which has trouble spelling its own damn name. Cheeseheads.
[Google]
