There’s something about the mechanics and arms-length nature of the web that just begs companies that know better to treat people in a way that they’d be humiliated to try face to face.
Seth Godin, A bias for scamminess
![“Nutrition Facts”-style label for light bulbs, mandated by the FTC and coming in mid-2011. Seeing data like expected cost and lifetime will help buyers make more informed decisions. [via Reddit]](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4navwqAFv1qz4lm4o1_250.jpg)
“Nutrition Facts”-style label for light bulbs, mandated by the FTC and coming in mid-2011. Seeing data like expected cost and lifetime will help buyers make more informed decisions. [via Reddit]
In the end the organization should be designed to create successful products, products should not be designed to fit the existing organization.
Jasper van Kujik, Company: Align the organization with user needs
![The Downtown Alliance’s vision for a new, more livable, Water Street. As someone who works in the neighborhood, I think this would be a great improvement. [via neighborhoodr-fidi]](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4dp7tk2v01qzmkmuo1_500.jpg)
The Downtown Alliance’s vision for a new, more livable, Water Street. As someone who works in the neighborhood, I think this would be a great improvement. [via neighborhoodr-fidi]
Program managers are rewarded for meeting budget and schedule milestones and obtaining results. Safety generally works in opposition to all that.
Lane Wallace, Why We’re So Bad at Managing Risk
Inevitably, people will point to failures of government as “proof” that government can’t do anything right. These same people never point to corporate abuses as proof that corporations can’t do anything right.
Anil Dash, Ignoring It Won’t Make It Go Away
Hearing something 10 times does not mean there are 10 different pieces of information. But the more you hear something the more likely you are to believe it is true.
David Hirshleifer, quoted in Living in denial: Unleashing a lie
Financiers live in small, panicky urban cloisters, severely detached from the rest of mankind. They are living today in rich-guy ghetto cults.
Bruce Sterling, interview with Chris Arkenberg
…risk is always theoretical until an accident occurs.
Lane Wallace, Why We’re So Bad at Managing Risk
The gradual abandonment of on-the-ground campaign coverage means that polls are fast becoming the only way to glimpse voter sentiment. Since most polls in statewide races (particularly primaries) are automated short-answer surveys, it becomes easy to jump to blunderbuss conclusions like “all incumbents are imperiled” or “the Tea Party movement is all-powerful.
Walter Shapiro, Nikki Haley and Rand Paul Races: Where Have All the Reporters Gone? [via Political Wire]
Increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible.
Clay Shirky, Does the Internet Make You Smarter
That experience taught me a lot about what really matters in programming. It is not about solving puzzles and being the brightest kid in the class. It is about realizing that the complexity of software dwarfs even the most brilliant human; that cleverness cannot win. The only weapons we have are simplicity and convention.
Jonathan Edwards [via Marco Arment]
