UXP2 Dark Patterns is an interesting website that describes five different types of dark UX patterns, such as sneaking and forced action, and provides a name and shame list of sites using these patterns against their users.
In 1935 a Soviet miner named Alexei Stakhanov set a record by extracting 102 tonnes of coal in a single shift, compared to the shift average of 7 tonnes. Stakhanov was hailed as the new standard for super workers in Soviet Russia and used to create a new movement called Stakhanovism to promote workers giving their all in the service of their work. Eighty-five years later, this cult of work is alive and well in the corporate workplace where employees are expected to hand over their lives to their jobs and play the corporate power & optics games that are rife in that environment.
Melvin Conway stated in 1968 that "Any organisation that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organisation’s communication structure.". Andreas Wolff published an interesting post on CTO Craft about using an inverse Conway Law when designing the struture of an organisation.
a16z surveyed 226 company CEOs in their portfolio about their company's plans around remote and hybrid working post-Covid. Two thirds of companies plan to use a hyrbid working model with employees in the office for off-sites or 1 to 2 days per week.
Adam Polak at The Software House published an interesting overview piece on the state of software architecture approaches available in 2021, complete with design patterns, case studies, and micro-services.
The Hustle published an interesting piece looking at the market for Bob Ross paintings, and why owner retention could be why they are so hard to buy despite Bob Ross being one of the most prolific famous painters in history, painting around 30,000 pieces during his life.
Noteworthy.ie published an interesting deep dive into the emissions data of Irish companies. They look at the trend in company emissions since 2013 and highlights the gaps in the data available.
In 2018 the high roller database of a casino was stolen, via a smart fish-tank thermometer! Hackers were able to access the network through the connected thermometer and complete the heist without setting foot in the casino.
A bug in an airline reservation system resulted in all female passengers on a Tui flight that select Miss on their booking to be allocated a child's weight of 35kg on the aircraft load sheet instead of the standard weight of 69kg. This error resulted in the pilot calculating takeoff thrust using a weight figure that was 1,200kg lighter than the real weight of the aircraft.
