Andrea Buran’s Site ^5.0

Dependencies suck; dependencies rule. Other people’s code is like getting other people’s work for free. The downside is that it comes with their opinions, hobbies, and hygiene attached. All code comes bundled with a code smell. Usually, there isn’t anything you can do to prevent it from stinking up the place.

…and even if you have all of that, something being unique does not automatically grant it quality. NFTs operate on the principle that being one-of-a-kind grants something value by default.

In the classic buildup-climax-resolution structure of drama, the JoJo pose is not the climax. A crucial moment has already happened when characters assume their stances. That’s why I think it’s part of the resolution.

In other words, solutions should only be considered if they help us deliver on one of our target opportunities. If they don’t connect to the tree, they should be considered a distraction.

But the problem with not doing anything and just jumping right into the product is that it is generally a good idea to look before you leap. The challenge is to do this in a quick, lightweight, yet effective manner.

When engineers build ad retargeting platforms, they build something that will continually funnel more content for the things you’ve indicated you’re interested in. On average, that’s the correct thing to do, Seyal said. But these systems don’t factor in when life has been interrupted.

The goal with this step is to exhaust every effort of identifying harms your product could cause. You aren’t worrying about how to prevent the harm yet—that comes in the next step.

This is the impact of entertainment on real life. People assume that what they see in movies, tv shows, and social media is real. And they try to mimic it.

Everything is sales also means that everyone is trying to craft an image of who they are. The image helps them sell themselves to others. Some are more aggressive than others, but everyone plays the image game, even if it’s subconscious.

Disabled buttons don’t explain what’s wrong. They communicate that something is off, but very often it’s just not good enough. As a result, too often users are left wondering what’s actually missing, and consequently locked out entirely.

Should they engage in the journalistic practice of building information around a strong central narrative, leading with a protagonist or an anecdote like the one that began this piece? Or should those hoping to accurately communicate science stick with a drier approach to persuasion, one that’s less likely to use the same rhetorical tricks as misinformation campaigns?

When Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, heard of Diderot’s financial troubles she offered to buy his library from him for £1000 GBP, which is approximately $50,000 USD in 2015 dollars. Suddenly, Diderot had money to spare.

Shortly after this lucky sale, Diderot acquired a new scarlet robe. That’s when everything went wrong.

If you want to make sure your application works as expected, is inclusive to as many people as possible, runs efficiently, and is well-designed, then testing needs to be a core part of your workflow, whether it’s automated or manual.

When I say em size is absolutely arbitrary and is not related to anything in the font at all, it’s not an exaggeration. It actually is not!

Instead of thinking of design as a procedure, think of it as a toolbox. For different projects, you need different tools. If you’re asked to pound in a nail, grabbing a screwdriver isn’t ideal.

I make a window bigger when I want to see more information, not the same information presented in a larger size. […] I have no data to back this up, but my intuition says that it’s the amount of available space, not the size of visible content, that people are playing with when they resize windows.

As for the lyrics, I tried to get all the languages I could find and wrote down interesting words in katakana. Then I changed these into words that Japanese people would find cool, so that people could not recognize individual words of any particular language. I had invented my own language.

Spotify is focused on “capturing the share of time listeners spend elsewhere.” This is why Ek talks about “audio” generically, because it doesn’t matter specifically what those listeners are doing elsewhere, Ek just wants them doing it at Spotify instead.

Eradicating these impostor tactics is possible, but it would require tech companies to admit that the design of their systems aids and abets media manipulators.

Even though your plan is liable to become immediately irrelevant, you still need to invest in writing it up. Why? There are two reasons. The first is to surface disagreements that may otherwise remain hidden. […] The second reason is that it provides a platform from which change can be leveraged.

Any time you break up a story based on functional roles (back-end/front-end, for example), you are diluting the story and creating a dependency management game.

If you’re tasked with writing microcopy, first learn as much as you can about the component you are writing for, particularly its constraints. When you finally sit down to write, don’t worry about getting it right the first time.

[…] think about reiterating significant changes in one-on-ones, group settings, via email, and in passing. Change is scary, but the more people hear about something, the less scary it tends to be.

It is certainly the mark of the internet: email, chat forums, social media and comment threads have all engendered a culture of multiple exclamation mark usage and abusage. It’s really interesting!!! The more you use them, the more you need to use them!!!!!! The more you need to use them, the more you increasingly make no sense!!!!!!!!!!!

(A.) The map could be incorrect without us realizing it; (B.) The map is, by necessity, a reduction of the actual thing, a process in which you lose certain important information; and (C.) A map needs interpretation, a process that can cause major errors.

We can’t be afraid of a tale if no one lives to tell it. More survivors can make something seem more dangerous rather than less dangerous because the volume of stories makes them more memorable.

Using a custom element from the directory often needs to be preceded by a ritual of npm flugelhorn, import clownshoes, build quux, all completely unapologetically because “here is my truckload of dependencies, yeah, what”. Many steps are even omitted, likely because they are “obvious”.

Ads are digital goods. What else are ads? Spiritual goods? They are the digital good. They are what is driving the digital economy in the first place! And, yes, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on do have direct transactions built into the apps. And, no, they do not pay any fees to Apple for these in-app transactions.

An option is something you can do but don’t have to do. All our product ideas are exactly that: options we may exercise in some future cycle—or never.

[…] it’s concerning that the Hoover Institute will freely give you Richard Epstein’s infamous article downplaying the threat of coronavirus, but Isaac Chotiner’s interview demolishing Epstein requires a monthly subscription, meaning that the lie is more accessible than its refutation.

The result would be an asynchronous retrospective spread across multiple days in order for the team to collaboratively build off each others ideas and eventually come to an action plan without requiring anyone to wake up in the middle of the night to participate.

While we all hold an opinion on almost everything, how many of us do the work required to have an opinion?

Instead, consider a hundred years as a minimum threshold for long-term thinking. This is the current length of a long human lifespan, taking us beyond the ego boundary of our own mortality, so we begin to imagine futures that we can influence but not participate in ourselves.

Can stories reproduce? Well, yeah, not spontaneously, obviously—they tend to need people as vectors; we are the media in which they reproduce; we are their petri dishes—but they can, and they do.

It’s not that you can’t do something it’s that unless you have literally done everything, you’re choosing not to because the price is too high. Stop lying to yourself.

The key is that the “green path” isn’t set out as a predictable trajectory. It is hacked out of the jungle as you go. You know you are going, are confident you can get there, but aren’t sure of exactly what issues will be encountered along the way.