commentary

20. Framing

20. Framing:

Which customer segment is affected? How valuable is this segment compared to the others? What other things are going on in the business that need our attention? You’ll sometimes see live SQL queries and people pulling up past customer research data in a framing session to answer a question or narrow down the opportunity.

The output of a framing session is a well-framed problem: something where the business says “if we can shape this into something doable and execute within X weeks, that will be meaningful to us.” There’s a commitment to spend time shaping, but not yet a commitment to go into a build cycle. That final bet still needs to be made based on how the shaping goes.

[A missing link to a great degree for many companies.]

Screen Shot 2022 03 23 at 2 00 31 PM

The Slap Trap Crap | NextDraft

The Slap Trap Crap | NextDraft:

Because this is an example of the same kind of asinine false equivalence that we’ve seen soil the media for the past several years. There were not two sides to Trump’s habitual lying. There are not two sides to the vaccine debate. There are not two sides to the potential upside of using disinfectant on the inside of your body. There are not two sides to the climate change debate. There are not two sides to the Jan 6 insurrection story. There are not two sides to the 2020 election results. Yesterday, Donald Trump requested that Vladimir Putin dig up and share dirt on Joe Biden’s family. At a time of war, that’s straight up treachery, the kind of anti-American garbage this criminal has been spewing for years. End of story.

Being unbiased does not mean giving lies the same weight as the truth.

[All the yes!]

Here’s what actually happens to all your online shopping returns – Rest of World

Here’s what actually happens to all your online shopping returns – Rest of World:

For a fee, these companies offer to optimize the money-losing headache of returns. Adam Vitarello, co-founder of Optoro, which manages returns for companies such as Target and American Eagle, says his company’s U.S.-based clients restock 90% of their returns, and most of the rest, which Optoro tracks through its platform’s reuse rate, is diverted to secondary channels like eBay, leaving about 4% headed to the landfill. 

But they rely also on the same overloaded infrastructure that the rest of the e-commerce global supply chain runs through once a sale is made. One of Optoro’s logistics partners is UPS, which hired nearly 100,000 new workers during the holiday season to keep up with high online shopping volumes. Rest of World’s AirTagged returns appeared to travel via the U.S. Postal Service, which has experienced unprecedented delays during the pandemic, due to high volumes, worker shortages, and increased labor costs.  Shein confirmed that the U.S. Postal Service is among its own logistics partners.

[I think we shouldn’t expect to pay much low prices for clothes, and also expect that they’ll last for a long time. The “quick fashion” industry is not helping the planet.]

Source: Pixel Envy

Essays: Letter to the US Senate Judiciary Committee on App Stores – Schneier on Security

Essays: Letter to the US Senate Judiciary Committee on App Stores – Schneier on Security:

I would like to address some of the unfounded security concerns raised about these bills. It’s simply not true that this legislation puts user privacy and security at risk. In fact, it’s fairer to say that this legislation puts those companies’ extractive business-models at risk. Their claims about risks to privacy and security are both false and disingenuous, and motivated by their own self-interest and not the public interest. App store monopolies cannot protect users from every risk, and they frequently prevent the distribution of important tools that actually enhance security. Furthermore, the alleged risks of third-party app stores and “side-loading” apps pale in comparison to their benefits. These bills will encourage competition, prevent monopolist extortion, and guarantee users a new right to digital self-determination.

[I think this will break both ways. There will be stores filled with spyware and crap, and none of these folks will be there to help you when that happens. But Apple could have moved in many directions to forestall all of this and instead they were greedy and prideful. So it goes.]

I was a little nervous about a meeting a thread by @EPrecipice

Thread by @EPrecipice on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App:

When talking about our agendas for the day, I told my 5yo I was a little nervous about a meeting I have today. He said, “Mama, I am nervous all the time. I know what to do.” So friends, here is all the advice he could fit into the drive to school:
1. “You gotta say your affirmations in your mouth and your heart. You say, ‘I am brave of this meeting!’ , ‘I am loved!’, ‘I smell good!’ And you can say five or three or ten until you know it.”
2. “You gotta walk big. You gotta mean it. Like Dolly on a dinosaur. Because you got it.”
3. “Never put a skunk on a bus.”
4. “Think about the donuts of your day! Even if you cry a little, you can think about potato chips!”
5. “You gotta take a deep breath and you gotta do it again.”
6. “Even if it’s a yucky day, you can get a hug.”
Extra addition from this afternoon: “Don’t get distracted and your feet will stay on the sidewalk and not too full of snow.”

[Speechless at the emotional wisdom. Also, someone’s else’s child… wanted to be an astronaut. Mom says, study hard, go to college, learn a lot of science, take a physical fitness test. The response? “That’s just 4 things.”]

Fight against hell

Fight against hell:

When people say we’re “fighting for democracy” even that isn’t strong enough.

We must fight so we don’t become a fascist country with slavery for Blacks, ovens for Jews and women turned into baby-producing handmaidens. And for a human-habitable planet.

If you think that isn’t what’s happening, well it is.

  • This country has never actually revoked slavery. A lot of people are still bitter about the outcome of the Civil War. Blacks are not, according to many Americans, entitled to the full rights of Americans.
  • Anti-semitism is also a foundation, not just of America, but most of the world. We heard Trump say that American Jews are really citizens of Israel, which emphatically is not true.
  • And the last one, women as baby-producing handmaidens, that’s what overturning Roe v Wade is for.
  • And of course it’s not just Blacks, Jews and women, there’s a hellish place for every non-white non-male non-Christian American.
  • And who knows why they don’t want to keep the planet habitable for humans. Maybe they think God meant for them (and not us of course) to migrate to other planets. Whatever it is, it’s another form of hell.

Yet journalism still mostly sees it as a partisan horse-race and every step we take into the abyss is bad news for one or two people like Biden or Schumer. Their delusion by now is really a form of insanity. Forget about waking them up, we have to move past them.

The thing that unites us is the hell the Trumpists have in mind for all of us.

[Why ia this not obvious to everyone?]

Source: Scripting News

Time to create

If you haven’t, you should watch “Get Back” the Beatles documentary. Because, ya know, The Beatles.

But if that’s not enough of a reason, here’s another. Many businesses, even those that wish to consider themselves creative in nature, don’t understand the need for slack time or space.

It’ll be easy by now to find a clip of Paul McCartney strumming his bass and pulling Get Back out of the ether. There was no “C’mon Paul, we’ve other things to do!” From the other band members, or the notion of “grinding” that some successful people have embedded in our culture. Work the weekends! Stay late! Up early. Work all day, train all night! That doesn’t work for creativity.

And to be certain I was guilty of the personal version of this when I stayed up late because I find the lack of “traffic” (phones calls, dropping in people to say hi, and vice versa, and lots more) soothing. No FOMO, no I can’t believe I missed you and had to give the gig to this other person.

Still, that’s not how creativity works.

I understand that if you are a professional song writer, or painter, or podcaster, there’s a certain amount of “Just get on with it!” that is necessary. And certainly you can create environments more or less conducive to inspiration. But in the end…as the saying goes you can’t hurry love.

It’s important to develop techniques for progress. Don’t get stuck on the words… anything that fits will do, as the word pomegranate fills in for future and final for George. But we shouldn’t confuse that sort of technique for setting a ten song goal if you want something inspired to be the result.

Don’t be afraid to leave time to create all kinds of stuff, and let them ripen in their own good time.

See also:

Facebook App Reads Accelerometer Data

Facebook App Reads Accelerometer Data:

Zak Doffman (via John Wilander):

Facebook goes even further, using the accelerometer on your iPhone to track a constant stream of your movements, which can easily be used to monitor your activities or behaviors at times of day, in particular places, or when interacting with its apps and services. Alarmingly, this data can even match you with people near you—whether you know them or not.

Just like the photo location data, the most serious issue here is that there is absolutely no transparency. You are not warned that this data is being tracked, there is no setting to enable or disable the tracking; in fact, there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn off the feature and stop Facebook (literally) in its tracks.

Researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk warn that “Facebook reads accelerometer data all the time. If you don’t allow Facebook access to your location, the app can still infer your exact location only by grouping you with users matching the same vibration pattern that your phone accelerometer records.”

[Facebook sucks.]

Source: Michael Tsai

Tesla over the air updates.

Marco Arment on Twitter: “The designers at @Tesla “cleaned up” the bottom bar of the control screen to replace my defroster and seat heaters with this customizable app list. Thanks a lot. But the only “apps” I want there are seat heaters and THE F’N DEFROSTER, HAVE YOU EVER DRIVEN A CAR BEFORE?!

[And then Dave]

Scripting News: Why not drive a Tesla:

I found out in the latest update. I had the temperature in the car set to 65 degrees, the same temperature I have my house thermostat set to. When I got into my updated car, the temperature was 72. It said so very clearly on the big display in the middle of the dash. So I did what I did before, touched the temperature, up pops the environment panel, but I couldn’t find any way to change the temp back to 65. I know how to scan a UI from left to right and top to bottom to find the thing that should be big, in the middle the display. A slider that sets the temperature. It wasn’t there. I sat in the car in my garage for a few minutes before I had a brilliant idea. Try doing it on the phone where the UI didn’t change. Voila. Back to comfort.

[I’ve always enjoyed “over the air” updates for the apps I use. For sure, you’re at the mercy of the developers involved, but overall they’ve worked for me. But I don’t know what to make of these updates Tesla owners are “enjoying”. I’m not sure a purely virtual interface is a good thing in a car where you can’t feel the button or stalk, or more importantly engage with it with “muscle memory”. And all the touch screens seem to suffer from targets that are too small if the car is bouncing even a little (your arm extended toward the screen doesn’t make for the steadiest of platforms to poke a small spot on the screen). Breakage in a car seems like a terrible idea, and burying things so that they’re not easy to find seems even worse.]