Some onions are too sexy for Facebook
There are regular onions, and then there are onions too sexy for Facebook, a Canadian seed and garden supply store recently discovered.
The Seed Company
Roman Kudryashov
How does data blunder affect battle against Covid-19?
Many Covid cases were initially missed or under-reported due to... spreadsheets and file size limits:
This glitch meant that 15,841 cases between September 25
Drift and Degradation: On Preserving Digital Media
Much of our known history is told through artifacts that we have left behind. We know about how objects and records that are preserved – intentionally, accidentally, or otherwise - drift in meaning over time. How does digital media drift and degrade?
Roundup 007, August 2020
Lots of items this month that caught my eye.
Dear Google Cloud, Your Deprecation Policy is Killing You
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc
Steve
Roundup 006, July 2020
Our Cyborg Collective
https://tinyletter.com/metafoundry/letters/metafoundry-73-our-cyborg-collective-body-ourselves
The whole thing is excellent, but I want to highlight something particular:
I’m spending this
Dear "First Name"
When personalization goes wrong, you get to peak behind the curtain. It's all just a bunch of variables holding together the same message everyone else got.
009 - All About Positioning
Good promotions are all about price, product, and… positioning.
But looks like they approached this one from… the wrong angle.
Ok, I’m done with
Roundup 005, June 2020
“Bad Code Will Get People Killed”
Always insightful points from Benedict Evans:
This partly reflects the current political moment in the USA, but more fundamentally
Roundup 004, May 2020
When the Sum of Two UX Improvements Becomes a Huge Problem
On their own, each “solution” makes sense. Together, they lead to unintended consequences:
Turns
Fixing a Bug In Detecting Nuclear Explosions
This is the story of how I fixed a long-standing bug in one of the U.S.’s systems for detecting nuclear explosions, the ARDU
008 - Subways Beta
There’s a lot of thoughts percolating around this. The most interesting to me is that these sorts of things are common – and totally fine!
Roundup 002, April 2020
The consortium behind New York City’s LinkNYC kiosks is ‘delinquent’ and owes the city millions
I actually came across this back in March and