[Links of the day] 04/02/2016 : Hierarchy are bad for human cooperation, Software defined memory and D&D alignement

• Hierarchy is Detrimental for Human Cooperation : really good experimental study demonstrating something that a lot of people intuitively know. However, I have a slight concern regarding the interpretation of their finding. While they pretty much nailed it (see below), I suspect that a more accurate title would have been inequalitarian hierarchy is detrimental. If an organisation is able to deliver similar payoff throughout the layer of the hierarchy the detriment will inherently disappear. However, I have yet to see any organisation achieving this feat!

"""We have shown that achieving cooperation among humans is more difficult when there is an underlying hierarchical structure producing different ranks between people and therefore unequal payoffs for the participants. This result is driven by insufficient contributions from lower ranked individuals who cannot be confident that they will benefit from cooperating."""

• Plexistor SDM : Plexistor Software-Defined Memory (please tell my why every single product out there has to be has to use a hype compliant description....) concept is a generic filesystem for storage, from NVDIMM to NVMe to SSD. They aim to offer a new POSIX filesystem that any application can use rather than trying to modify applications. In short they offer an under the hood tiering mechanism between the different underlying persistent layer.
• Chaotic or Evil? : applying D&D characters alignement system to your project, team and teammate. Next hiring interview: ask all past characters sheet & compare with team (ps: never trust a rogue)