As a user, I'd like every SaaS product I use to give me a Year In Review recap, so I can track the months of my life I spent inside various productivity tools, accompanied by whimsical animations.

Said nobody, ever.

[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

PSA: the Guardian app has a massive Traitors spoiler in the Home feed, for anyone who cares and hasn't watched the final yet.

Bank's IVR asks whether I want hold music, or a "soft, repeated tone" so I know the line hasn't dropped. Cool. Tone, please.

What I thought I'd get: *boop-boop*

What I got: *CLONNNNGGGGG* - a piano chord like something from incidental music in a TV murder mystery.

Very odd choice.

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nice site on deprivation data
deprivation.communities.gov.uk

... which is so hard to break when you have public services now dependent on fines revenue from people making honest mistakes 😔

But this has been the case since at least the 1990s. It's hard to imagine a significantly better digital service without first pulling apart that assumption and the incentives to maintain it.

With train travel specifically, we're assumed to be fare-dodging criminals until we prove otherwise. Most people can show a ticket so that's fine. If somehow I got the wrong ticket, my railcard won't load, or I accidentally joined the wrong train: guilty.

I was really bad at it until at least my early 30s. I decided it was important to me to do better so I learned through reading and watching other speakers, practiced what I'd learned, learned more, practiced more... and now I even enjoy it. (Feedback from audiences is usually pretty good, too.)

even where good MFA is available, some apps will hassle endlessly to provide a phone number as backup. I've weeded out as many as I can, but it feels endless.

I'm also wondering how a generation who've lived online our whole adult lives will keep up with this shit when we get properly into old age.

This thread is really helpful, and highlights how hard some of this is. E.g. phones which have FaceID but not fingerprint. Finger smudges make PIN codes vulnerable. Some online accounts only have 2FA via SMS or email, or worse, send to both at the same time for double the risk.

I got a potato and wire and a copper penny but I couldn’t find a zinc plated screw.

I put it all together anyway, but it didn’t work and now I’m being arrested for attempted battery.

the AWS outage is affecting Ring doorbells. Sky News says “some users can’t see outside their house, definitely scary”

just look outside your window 😅

Mrs R: "There was a woman on the ward today who didn't want to take paracetamol. We've had to explain that we're not giving it to her because she's got a fever and we want her to feel better, but because she's got a fever and if we don't get her temperature down then her baby is going to die."

People say "autism never used to exist" and then you go to the Natural History Museum and the exhibit has a caption like "Born in 1762, The Revd [name] was famously irascible, steadfast in his routine, and dedicated his life to collecting 25,000 rare beetle specimens".

I need you to understand what this country feels like right now for those of us who look different. I'm sitting here, trying to plan for Saturday, make sure I don't even need to go to the corner shop for milk, like it's Christmas Day or lockdown. Why? Because I live near where Yaxley-Lennon will 1/

Why did the palindrome cross the road?

To get a map a mate got.

#palindrome

+1 for 17Track. It's not fancy, but it works. (Except for Royal Mail just lately, but they seem to have some kind of ongoing API nasties which affect their own app as well.)

Manager: "What's this milestone 'Living on a prayer' ?"
Me: "That's the documentation deliverable."
Manager: "What's the status of that?"
Me: "We're halfway there"
Manager: "Why is progress so slow?"
Me: "You fired Tommy"
Manager: "So?"
Me: "Tommy used to work on the docs"

Totally. I've switched a couple of accounts purely on this basis.

Cartoon: A crow is standing on a branch. Another, smaller crow is lying on top of it, on its back, legs in the air. Caption: Velcrow

Velcrow

Birds of a feather stick together.

www.worldofmoose.com/products/vel...

Tech pioneer Stephanie Shirley: ‘I need to make the life that was saved worth saving’ The ‘venture philanthropist’ on her journey from child refugee to billion-dollar businesswoman — and why Britain must do more for those fleeing war today

Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley has died aged 91. She is the subject of I think, one of the best ever FT lunches, which you can read here (registration or subscription required, will post a first 300 clicks free link in the replies):

Oh this makes terrible sense

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We’re looking for technologists from all kinds of backgrounds to join us and use your hands-on experience to help leading institutions around the world adapt for the digital age.

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I’m petrified about today’s science news. Genetically modifying crabs to have cheetah genes? This could go sideways fast.

Emergency Alert day has been confirmed as 7th September. If you have a secret phone for safety go to settings and turn off all government notifications. Setting it to silent or airplane is not enough 🚨 (guidance on each step is on the internet). Spread the word