» How to turn a smartphone into a boring tool.

I will try to do the same now with my iPhone, by:

• Deleting Twitter and Instagram
• Removing everything from the home screen except the apps that I actually frequently use
• Removing all widgets from the home screen
• Setting “discrete” notifications to “off”
• Disabling notifications for most apps except for my work chat and work mail program, as well as the messenger where I stay connected to my family
• Scheduling D&D mode from 1 hour after work to 1 hour before work
• Disabling notifications on the lock screen

I will try this out for one week and see how it goes!

» Useful rules for interpreting metrics, such as Lead Time or Cycle Time.

» Here’s Spotify’s Retro Kit.. Even though it’s a few years old, it’s a good read, and a good complement to my all time favorite, the Retromat.

» Currently, this post about how shoddy code causes 6 minute long loading times in a game is going around. I think this is an interesting case, because it underlines the fact that if you are selling goods which are exceptionally high in demand, and for which there is no competition, then you can drastically save on quality. And that includes customers having to suffer minute-long loading times, either because no one noticed, or, more likely, no one cared.

And there will be no consequences! It does not matter how annoyed people might have been with GTA Online, they will still buy GTA VI, because the mechanisms of capitalism don’t really apply in this context.

» Make some music with Google’s AI driven Blob Opera.

» Interesting article on reverse engineering the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine. I have a background in Biology and Bioinformatics, so I feel quite at home in this article, and I appreciate how the author took their time to break this all down.

» This is what a photo looks like after 8 years of exposure. This is how it happened:

Regina [the photographer] was interested in capturing images without the use of modern technology; in this case using a beer can lined with photographic paper as a pinhole camera. She placed a can on one of the Observatory’s telescopes, which had been forgotten about until September this year when it was finally removed by the Observatory’s Principal Technical officer.

» Send an email into a dumpster fire.

» IKEA stops delivering their paper catalogue - but they have put all their old catalogues online.