We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction -
A fascinating interview with Nick Bostrom, a professor at Oxford. Bostrom uses philosophy & math (probability theory) to explore ideas related to human extinction, such as the likelihood of catastrophic events and our chances of surviving them.
Despite the title, the interview doesn’t try to make the case that we humans are doomed. There isn’t as much talk about apocalyptic asteroids as you might expect. Instead, they discuss transhumanism, space colonization, and moral philosophy. And what’s especially intriguing is that Bolstrom’s conclusions are based on trusted statistical models.
A few of the most interesting ideas to me were:
It’s a long read, but definitely worth it. Save it to Instapaper or Readability and read it when you can really focus.
Great link for a Monday!
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They [made] the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make:
They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.
” —That’s from Joel Spolsky’s classic essay Things You Should Never Do.
If you’re a product developer you’ve probably had the urge to rewrite a working product from scratch. I certainly have.
Us developers get a warm, fuzzy feeling when we imagine the opportunity to start from a clean slate. To re-architect moving parts that don’t make sense. To rewrite aesthetically ugly code in a shiny new language. To eliminate infrastructure choices that are hindering development.
These might seem like rational reasons to rebuild. But Joel makes an important point that most developers overlook in their state of greenfield wanderlust:
It’s important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time. First of all, you probably don’t even have the same programming team that worked on version one, so you don’t actually have “more experience”. You’re just going to make most of the old mistakes again, and introduce some new problems that weren’t in the original version.
Joel outlines many other reasons developers & managers convince themselves a complete rewrite is the best course of action, and more importantly, why it rarely makes sense for a business to totally rebuild their product.
If you’ve ever considered rewriting from scratch, or have actually gone ahead with it, you’ll get a lot of value from reading the full article.
Today Microsoft Announced the new logo for Windows 8. Dropping the iconic rainbow-flag is a bold step for them, and I think it’s an improvement. However, there are a few reasons I think the new logo falls short:
You can read more about the new Window logo on Brand New.
Canada debates bill would allow electronic surveillance without a warrant -
In a dictatorship, freedom is immediately displaced through force. In a democracy, civil liberties are gradually eroded through fear-based legislation.
Saying this bill “targets child porn” is simply a rhetorical attempt to negatively frame & dimiss anyone opposed to unchecked electronic surveillance.
“I WOULD DEARLY LOVE TO BUY SOME SHIT BUT THESE MOTHERFUCKERS WON’T SELL IT … they deserve to loose revenue for the way they AREN’T SELLING their content.” — Yarrr. A spot-on article about the reasons people pirate TV & movies, and why the content distributors themselves are to blame.
“… creativity is a function of two underlying factors, enthusiasm and experience. Enthusiasm provides the motivational force behind persistent effort, yet enthusiasm in the absence of the second factor yields just original work. Experience gives the achiever the ability to separate wheat from chaff and to express original ideas in a more intelligible and persistent fashion. Yet experience in the absence of enthusiasm produces merely routine contributions. Genuine creativity requires the balanced cooperation of both enthusiasm and experience.” — From Marc Andreessen’s Age and the entrepreneur. It’s a great exploration of how age is (and isn’t) correlated to creativity.
Responsive Web Design: Standard or Feature? -
The folks at Paper Leaf have put together an overview of the things web agencies must consider when determining their approach to responsive web design.
It’s a tough question, and one that agencies need to ask themselves. Are responsively-designed websites a standard feature included in all website projects (which necessitates an increase in price), or are they an add-on that clients can choose to pursue or opt-out of?
The quote above from The end of social totally sums up how I feel about Facebook’s new frictionless sharing: automatically posting read news, watched movies, or listened-to songs.
Facebook’s real value comes from Likes. When a friend shares something, it means they’ve put their seal of approval on it. “This is a good thing.” And, in todays world of information-overload and endless choices, recommendations from friends are increasingly how we decide which things to try.
Frictionless sharing does the exact opposite. Instead of only showing me the good stuff, it shows me everything and doesn’t help me filter the good from the bad. Instead of telling me “these are the things you should try”, frictionless sharing less me “these are all the things you could try.”
It’s not how people work offline, either. When you’re looking for a good movie to watch you don’t ask your friends to list of all the movies they’ve seen. You ask them to name their favourites. When a friend tells you they just tried that new Thai restaurant, you don’t blankly nod in acknowledgement; you ask them if they liked it.
There is utility in Facebook likes. That utility is lost with automatic sharing.
There’s been a lot written on this topic lately, but I this this paragraph is the most concise I’ve read:
Frictionless sharing isn’t better sharing; it’s the absence of sharing. There’s something about the friction, the need to work, the one-on-one contact, that makes the sharing real, not just some cyber phenomenon. If you want to tell me what you listen to, I care. But if it’s just a feed in some social application that’s constantly updated without your volition, why do I care? It’s just another form of spam.
A great checklist of things to consider when writing microcopy — buttons, help text, and success/error messages — for your website or application.
Microcopy is an often neglected aspect of user interface design. It’s tempting to provide generic button text (“Save”, “Cancel”) or form labels (“Blog title”, “Email”) and leave it at that.
But microcopy is a great opportunity to educate users on how a feature benefits them while also reinforcing their mental model of your application. And it adds that important human touch to your interface. For example:
Polishing your microcopy adds clarity, and makes your users feel like they’re accomplishing something tangible rather than just using faceless software.
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