Weekend Reading — Smaller portion, same great taste

Alex Gantman “Calendar Battleship: multiplayer fun for all ages! 🌟Now with multiple time zones!🌟”

You may notice this week is a touch different. I'm trying something new.

Most of you subscribe to Weekend Reading by email, and the emails I send are too long. I'm not going to compete with TikTok FYP for your scrolls.

I'm going to edit more, so expect the newsletter to get shorter.

Still the same mix of informative, insightful, and funny. Now more inbox friendly.

Of Interest

Corporate architecture This post has too much good stuff that I can’t do justice with a summary. Check out know how your org works. Best case, you’ll get better at doing your job. Worse case, at least you understand how/why decisions are made. And also this point in particular:

Social media, blog posts and conferences amplify aspirational ideas. There’s nothing wrong with this in my opinion — it’s important to constantly keep pushing the envelope further, after all.

Your organization, however, rewards what you actually get done that benefits the organization, which might be a very far cry from whatever might be de rigueuron social media.

Finish every week like … Weekly updates are underrated. I don’t think enough managers realize what a great tool they are, or how to write them up. Mitra talks more about the why and how.

Loss prevention If you’re a founder, it’s nice to imagine new sales adding up to infinity. The reality is, some customers would dump your product, and high churn can kill your business.

Do you ever wonder why B2C companies have a handle on UX, and enterprise software … not so much? It's the 10x difference in churn. You need all the UX you can get to deal with the leaky bucket that is B2C.

Michael

Einstein worked out relativity with pure thought experiments and you need an A/B test to change some marketing copy.

This Week In Tech

I’ll take “what is cringe rap?” for $3.6b In 2016, $71m worth of bitcoin was lifted from Bitfinex. No update on who the lucky winner was, but this couple was arrested for trying to launder $3.6b of it. Ars Technica explains the mechanics of it.

Authorities seized the bitcoins, and left us with freestyle rap videos like this one. Apparently cringe is not a crime. For more delightful reaction memes.

Reality exposed Likely accidental commit reveals Apple is working on a platform called RealityOS. Which would talk to your iOS device: // allow iOS executables to use realityOS dylibs So we can all speculate this is the new head mounts — glasses? goggles? monocles? — we know Apple is working on.

Reviews in moderation The FTC decided that, if you’re going to publish reviews on your website, you have to keep the balance. And you know they’re serious, to the tune of a $4.2m fine. Watch what you moderate.

Yesterday the FTC announced that online fast-fashion retailer, Fashion Nova had agreed to pay a $4.2 million fine for selectively not publishing negative product reviews. Fashion Nova also agreed it will no longer suppress customer reviews.

Facebluff Facebook threatening to leave the EU. The EU gives them a continental shrug. Went exactly as you’d expect it. Via Jesse Lehrich

For The Fun

3D reaction FIGs This is amazing and I hope it gets published. A pop-up book of memes and reaction GIFs.

There are no stupid questions Reddit asks what are Florida ounces?

I didn't think much of this when I lived in Florida. Many products were labeled in Florida ounces. But now that I live in another state I'm surprised to see products still labeled with Florida ounces.

Richard Ngo

Octopuses are surprisingly intelligent, and reproduce at 1 year old. If we'd started a breeding program 50 years ago, we probably could've gotten them smarter than dolphins by now. A disappointing failure of the long-term mad science ecosystem.

How to not start a fight Via ℳatt

Fun little trick in the Sunday New York Times crossword yesterday: the central theme clue was "The better of two sci-fi franchises", and regardless of whether you put Star Wars or Star Trek, the crossing clues worked