🔗 Google loses two execs: one for Messaging and Workspace, another for Payments

Two thoughts I came away with after reading this.

The first is an attempt to understand how Google can think that they can put out anything — the version of US Google Pay app for example — and expect people to flock to it. I no expert, but I’m not sure why the physics of user adoption should be any different if you’re a multi-billion dollar company. People will use your software if it’s good, and they won’t if it’s not. And if you force people to change their habits because you want to completely throw out your existing version for “reasons”, you’re giving users an opportunity to choose whether they want to even continue using your stuff.

It happened to me when they shutdown Inbox. I had the opportunity to change to something else, which I did: Fastmail. Since I was forced to change my habits, I may as well have changed them for the better.

The second — and this is probably obvious — is that the a good indication of the health of one of Google’s app is how often they rebrand it. Since it’s launch, Gmail has always been Gmail. I can’t even name what Google’s messaging app is called now.

🔗 Internet Explorer was once synonymous with the Internet, but today it’s gone for good

So long, Internet Explorer. We sadly knew you all too well.

Worth pointing out that support for an “IE compatibility mode” won’t be removed from Edge until 2029, so can we really say that IE is dead?

🔗 How I Experience the Web Today (via Daring Fireball)

I think most people have seen this. What got me to post it here, apart from bookmarking it, was wondering how anyone with a real website like this expects visitors to stick around, let alone visit it again in the future.

🔗 Don’t defer quality

This resonated with me today. I’ve been thinking on how we can use what we’ve built a few months for something new, and just how much easier it would have been if we’ve built it as designed, rather than rushed it out to meet a deadline. A perennial problem.

🔗 A New Hope for Object Storage: R2 enters open beta

I’ve been looking forward to giving R2 a try for a while.

🔗 Facebook on 30 Percent Platform Fees: ‘Hold Our Beer’

Meta talking about platform fees for the metaverse feels to me like a school rock-band talking about how they’d divvy up revenue from ticket sales before they get their first gig.

🔗 Not an April Fool: Dyson announces apocalyptic filter-headphone combo

Yes, the product is weird, but what prompted this link-post is the remark about this being a “perfect addition to your Mega Man cosplay project.” I believe in the games, you could always see Mega Man’s mouth.

🔗 Stay on the bus

The subject here is photography but I think it can be applied to any other creative endeavour out there. Resonated for me as well.

🔗 A big bet to kill the password for good

Lot of talk about getting the user experience/OS compatability right, which is good. But I see no real indication on how they’re going to get the millions of app/website developers to switch to this. Hope they’ve considered that.

🔗 Go 1.18 Release Notes

Happy “generics finally in Go” day.

(I wouldn’t call myself someone who was itching for the Go devs to add generics; but now that they are in the language, I’ll probably use them).

🔗 Kubernetes 101

A pretty good introduction about the fundamentals of Kubernetes, and also the post in question here.

🔗 Simulating Amazon DynamoDB unique constraints using transactions

A technique to simulate a uniqueness constraint on a field not used in the key. Came in handy for solving a problem I was having with DynamoDB today. I wrote more about it here if you’re curious.

🔗 Why Simple Is Smart

A collection of useful writing tips for journalists, but I think would also be helpful for anyone else writing online.

🔗 No, Apple Did Not Crowdfund :focus-visible in Safari (via Daring Fireball)

I see nothing wrong with this. Apple has got their own priority backlog of work for Safari, but the fact that Safari is open source means that if others have different priorities, they have the ability to make these changes to the project directly, should they be capable of doing so. What these other contributors choose to do, and how they choose to decide this, is their business.

I’m not expecting regular users of Safari to understand this distinction between open-source project owners and contributors, but I’d had though that web-developers, whom I imagine deal with open-source software all the time, to know better. So it’s either that those complaining are not aware that Safari is an open-source project, or they do know and are just jumping on the rage bandwagon for whatever reason they may have. If it’s the latter, then I think they’re doing themselves a disservice.

🔗 SpiceDAO wins a $3 million auction to buy an extremely rare storyboard book of Dune, only to learn that owning a book doesn’t confer them copyright

My face is getting sore with all the palm prints on it. 🤦

🔗 Wordle and IP law: What happens when a hot game gets cloned

I guess the moral of the story is that you might have the legal right to do something like clone a game, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get off looking honourable doing so.

🔗 The Algorithmic Ad Monster Cometh for Podcasts

I’m starting to hear more of these types of ads in the shows I follow, and I despise them. I agree with the statement of the ads being part of the product. I tend to listen to host-read ads. I definitely skip the automated ones.

🔗 Microsoft fixes harebrained Y2K22 Exchange bug that disrupted email worldwide

Dates are hard, but it seems to me that treating the first two digits of a signed integer as the year when it’s so close to the overflow value is just asking for trouble.

🔗 Woman lost @metaverse Instagram handle days after Facebook name change

She had it for 10 years, and only got it back once the media caught wind of the story. It’s possible that this was a mistake, but as far as I’m concerned, Meta has lost the benefit of the doubt here.

🔗 Write 5x more but write 5x less (via The Daily Graph)

This post itself is interesting but what made me want to link to it here is that this is one of those blogs where you can easily fall down a rabbit hole by following every link on the page (in a good way).

🔗 Users revolt as Microsoft bolts a short-term financing app onto Edge

Oh, Microsoft. You spend all this time and effort trying to win back users to your browser, with some success. Then you disrespect them with a move like this? Not great.

🔗 File Not Found

Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years: the concept of file folders and directories, […], is gibberish to many modern students.

Kids these days. 😄