👋 Hello, we’re Haystack and welcome to our once a month edition of our newsletter. Each month we share all the latest goings on in all things tech. 👨💻
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💥 Big Tech & Start-ups
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As life resumes in the UK with entertainment facilities now open indoors, some aren’t as happy as others. Bitcoin experienced a four-month low this month and plunged 14% last Wednesday. Ether also saw a huge fall of 28% last week.
So what’s the deal? 💰
Chinese regulators announced last Wednesday that they were banning banks and payment firms from using cryptocurrencies.
The week prior, Elon Musk announced Tesla plans to suspend the use of Bitcoin as a payment method.
There’s also currently a petition to get Elon to divest from dogecoin... In these unregulated markets, it feels unfair that one man can cause people to become millionaires overnight, right? Unless you’re one of the lucky few...🎲
🔭 Science & Future Tech
“50% of the carbon reductions needed to get to net-zero will come from technologies that have not yet been invented” 🔬
On Sunday, BBC interviewed US Special Envoy on Climate John Kerry and activists were not happy about the above quote. Where the f*** are these technologies? 🤯 Well, something Kerry neglected to highlight is that some of them HAVE been invented. They are just in their infancy and have a way to go until deployment. 🌱 Watch this space, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
💻 Programming, Design & Data
Snippet from Airbnb feature updates
Once again leading the way in design and engineering, Airbnb recently released its latest roundup of service upgrades for its platform. It’s been a turbulent year for the bookings company, with global travel grounded, a huge amount of layoffs (which were handled exceptionally well given the circumstances) and a delayed IPO - they’ve been through the thick of it. But, coming back with a bang and seemingly stronger than ever, Airbnb’s CEO, Brian Chesky has managed to navigate his company into an IPO despite being in the midst of a global pandemic and recently announced his latest vision for the company and travel as a whole.
Chesky hopes to manifest his vision for the company through its latest roundup of feature releases. We’ve listed a few of our favourites below 👇
P.s. if you haven’t already, we’d recommend checking out Airbnb Design and Airbnb Engineering & Data Science for a sneak peek behind the scenes.
⚙️ Random useful tool of the month
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Video up your Github 🎥
Github officially announced last week that their video feature is moving out of Beta and will be available for anyone on the platform. Some of the benefits of having a video upload feature include:
Replicating bugs quickly 🐞
Sharing more in-depth, complex code issues 🧠
Walk-throughs of prototypes, and the ability to share end-to-end interactions 🚗💨
Uploading from anywhere, Android and iOS apps fully supported 📲
🚀 Sponsored Roles
Dev
Sporty Group: Frontend Engineer (Remote)
Ao: Software Developer (Manchester)
Ori Industries: Senior Software Engineer - Backend (Remote)
Ori Industries: Senior Software Engineer - Frontend (Remote)
Design
Ori Industries: Senior Product Designer - UX/UI (Remote)
Gear4Music: UI Designer (York/Manchester/Remote)
Sage: Senior UX Designer (Newcastle upon Tyne)
Visualsoft: Digital Designer (Stockton-on-Tees/Remote)
Data
NCFE: Data Engineer (Newcastle upon Tyne/Remote)
Sage: Principal Data Scientist (London/Manchester/Newcastle/Remote)
Atom Bank: Data Scientist (Durham/Remote)
Asda: Data Architect (Leeds)
♻️ Blog Snippets
Why Developers code at night
Many developers will agree that they prefer to work at night due to the minimal background noise, meaning no distractions. Read more
What problems do Hackathons solve?
It's no surprise that hackathons have taken place to relieve the stress of the COVID-19 crisis. "We need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have." Read more
Developer Stories: Meet Nikhil
"One of the biggest challenges I faced was constantly operating outside of my comfort zone, I was always being put in situations that I wasn’t comfortable with." Read more
Relearning HTML to gain new insights
How often do you go back to basics? Even if you're proficient in web development, and are highly skilled, it can prove beneficial to relook over the basics. Read more
👏 Round-up
Look after yourself
This month saw mental health awareness week come and go, with people all over the country talking about mental health and how to take better care of yourself.
Did you know that men aged 45 – 49 still have the highest rates of suicide in the UK? And from 2018 to 2019, this rate increased. It’s a scary statistic. Our three male co-founders all shared their own personal experiences with mental health over the years. CEO, Chris Bone shared this very honest story.
“Like many of my generation, mental health wasn’t really on the agenda growing up. I was kind of taught at home (and certainly at school) that the answer to the question “How are you?” was always “Fine.”
So I guess I came to really think about and understand mental health much later on, which was down to being educated by two outstanding social campaigns that stuck with me, “Ask Twice” and “It’s Okay Not To Be Okay”, and I was hugely affected by losing a school friend and football teammate to depression aged 40.
The fact that suicide is the leading cause of death for men of my age is terrifying.
I’m still not amazing at talking about my feelings. It feels really awkward to me, but it is something I am working on and it feels less awkward the more I do it. I realise that particularly as a father of four and employer, the more open I am the more likely others are to be open with me.”
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