Category: Links

Good list.

Dr. Nathalie Maréchal in a very damning essay on targeted advertising has this brutal quote: “That’s all ‘AI’ and ‘machine learning’ is for these companies: getting better at guessing what ads to show you,” (Tim) Libert said. “Every tiny bit of data increases the chances they show the ‘right’ ad so they never stop, they […]

This article actually prompted me to change to passwords in many places where I used biometric access before.

Michael Bungay Stanier: Coaching is an essential leadership behavior. Curiosity is the driving force in being more coach-like. Questions fuel curiosity. Be sure not to read ‘leadership’ as ‘management’. They are not the same. Most managers aren’t leaders. This lack of curiosity Stanier talks about is a dead giveaway as to which type of manager, […]

Emma Thomason: A recent survey of 3,000 employees in eight countries including the United States, Britain and Germany found that nearly half thought they could easily finish their tasks in five hours a day if they did not have interruptions, but many are exceeding 40 hours a week anyway – with the United States leading […]

Kieren McCarthy: By any measure, Facebook as an organization has knowingly, willingly, purposefully, and repeatedly lied. And two reports this week demonstrate that the depth of its lying was even worse than we previously imagined.

It’s hard to argue with Raymond Wong, about how Microsoft really crushed it this year. They quietly ,add great stuff, reminded me a bit of Apple ten years ago. I had to chuckle at this line too: The Windows company started by Bill Gates and mismanaged by Steve Ballmer, has flourished under CEO Satya Nadella […]

Great read, and really shows how little we know about this.

Arno Schuetze: On the recordings, a man and a female companion could be overheard in his home and the magazine was able to identify and contact him through the recorded information, according to the report. That’s a pretty big “human error”. I’m so glad I don’t have one of these eavesdropping devices in my home.

My personal favorite part, is the part where this still surprises anyone. Second only to the part that people still use this shit.

Lauren Goode: At the same time, the value of an activity tracker isn’t always proportionate to the burden of one. They all have these damn proprietary chargers, and you have to charge them all the time, and for what? So they can count steps? The more I thought about it, the more I needed a […]

That’s a way higher price than any monetary expense of paying for the app.

Speaking of the best. This was great.

Rachel Sugar: We have this sense that there is an objective best, and in virtually no area of life is that true. It’s not even that, “Well, there’s the best for me, and then there’s the best for you.” It isn’t even clear that there is a best for me. There’s a whole set of […]

Completely unsurprising, and yet utterly terrifying.

Amy Zegart and Kevin Childs: In the past year, Google executives, citing ethical concerns, have canceled an artificial-intelligence project with the Pentagon and refused to even bid on the Defense Department’s Project JEDI, a desperately needed $10 billion IT-improvement program. While stiff-arming Washington, Google has been embracing Beijing, helping the Chinese government develop a more […]

Jack Nicas and Karen Weise reporting: “Every day as a C.E.O., you have employees coming to you saying, ‘I don’t make enough to buy a house for my family,’ and you already feel like you are paying through the nose,” said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, the real estate site based in Seattle. “Almost […]

This was a lot of fun/work putting together. It’s quite interesting to imagine you have no clothes and you are rebuilding from scratch. We actually wrote these independently, but they came out very similar in areas. My post on this comes Monday. In the mean time, check out how Steve would rebuild his wardrobe.

Jon Evans: Let me reiterate: to write elegant software, you must keep both the macro and the micro vision in your mind simultaneously while working. JIRA is good at managing micro pieces. But you need something else for the macro. (And no, a clickable prototype isn’t enough; those are important, but they too require descriptive […]

Solid read. It is pretty clear that most ‘health’ apps are far more concerned with engagement than with help. Though I suspect most genuinely start off by wanting to help. There’s long been a trend with Nicholas Felton at the top of that, about logging your life to analyze the data. I call bullshit. Most […]