mlevison

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence To Limit Reactance, people need to be allowed to persuade selves. How Florida reduced teen smoking. Instead of telling, cue Reactance, they asked teens what they should do. ex: The students cold called a magazine exec asking why accept tobacco ads with teen readership. Exec, says we run anti-tobacco ads. Teens ask, would they run them for free as a public service? Exec says: "We're in business to make money" -> students: "Is this about people or $$?"

The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

mlevison, 1 month ago to Greek

Google CEO compares AI to Fire and Electricity!! Perhaps he needs to study #Greek Mythology. Does he know what happened to Prometheus?

missmythreyi, 1 month ago to random

Websites with office hours?

lauren, 1 month ago to random

Food Stupidity from Waymo and Uber. Word is they're now testing food delivery by robotaxis. Instead of a delivery to your door, you have to run outside, flag down the car, and remove the food from the trunk. I'm sure this will be REALLY popular. Totally tone deaf.

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence #Reactance We trigger reactance, when we limit the freedom someone has. Especially true, when we want them to do something. To succeed in influencing, we need to give people meaningful real choices.

Where have you had better luck by providing someone choice?

jasongorman, 1 month ago to random

On the topic of how copying & pasting code might impact learning, especially among inexperienced developers, there's research in this area that suggests I might not just be imagining it.

In studies, subjects who were restricted in copying & pasting retained more, but also understood better.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232457619_Exploring_Differences_in_Students'_Copy-and-Paste_Decision_Making_and_Processing_A_Mixed-Methods_Study

arstechnica, 1 month ago to random

Google might make users pay for AI features in search results

Plan would represent a first for what has been a completely ad-funded search engine.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/04/google-might-make-users-pay-for-ai-features-in-search-results/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

cammerman, 1 month ago to random

I would like to lobby for my company to pay for pair/mob/group programming training for my team/department.

Budget-wise, a semi-structured training program is probably going to work better than a longer active coaching engagement. Preferably with a remote option.

I'm aware of a couple folks who have done this, but don't seem to have anything active now.

Does anyone know of someone who currently, actively offers a pair/mob programming training course thing like this that I could reach out to?

mathowie, 1 month ago to random

No matter how far we progress with technology, deep-down it’s usually just another mechanical Turk from the 1700s

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mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence #Failure - We have anti-persuasion radar that can kick in when we feel pushed, even if it's toward something we want. Example - many people want to speak up more in meetings. (Good). Yet when it becomes a corporate thing, now we ask: "Am I choosing to speak up for my own reasons or because it was pushed". Result: We often shutdown.

Who has seen an Agile change go off the rails right here?

Sources: The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

lzg, 1 month ago to random

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mlevison, 1 month ago to random

Shocking news (not really): Return to Office Mandates aren't having the positive effects that advocates expect: https://buff.ly/3OtNmZh

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence #Failure - when you try influence people with a push, you take away their autonomy and they will push back.

In the case of Tidepods and the Tidepod madness, Proctor and Gamble produced videos telling people how bad they were. They recruited a football played nicknamed Gronk (What a great nickname), to tell people not to eat Tidepods. They did all the right things. Yet they made the problem worse.
....

maaretp, 1 month ago to random

Today I accepted a position in a new company, and resigned from my position in the current company. And then the new company remembers they still need to call up references.

Living a bit on the edge, but at the same time believing this is not the edge.

Soon I will be consulting. Either on a bigger company as I expected, or as independent. But I already said I would let this one go.

blog, 1 month ago to random

Book Review: How Big Things Get Done - Lessons From the World's Top Project Manager by Bent Flyvbjerg, Dan Gardner
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/04/book-review-how-big-things-get-done-lessons-from-the-worlds-top-project-manager-by-bent-flyvbjerg-dan-gardner/

Infrastructure is impossible. You have to wrangle thousands of people over dozens of months, with a budget of millions, to deliver something made of hundreds of plans, which has to fit seamlessly into the world. How does any infrastructure get built?

It mostly doesn't. This is the terrifying true story of all the different ways big projects fail.

If you've ever been part of a big IT project, some of the themes will give you flashbacks. What kills me is how normalised this has become. We all know that predicted budgets are little more than crystal-ball gazing. We can see that tiny blockers now lead to catastrophes later on.

In plain English, minor changes combined in a way to produce a disaster. In complex systems, that happens so often that the Yale sociologist Charles Perrow called such events “normal accidents.”

This is as much about human psychology as it is planning. Take this example:

“I once asked an engineer why their cost estimates were invariably underestimated and he simply answered, ‘if we gave the true expected outcome costs nothing would be built.’”

Does that ring true to you? Whether you're justifying your own bit of home DIY, or trying to get a multi-billion project off the ground, of course you're going to lie to yourself!

What I love about the book is that it isn't just pointing and snarking. There are excellent suggestions in there; use experts, plan for disaster, do repeatable actions. Nothing revolutionary - but worth hammering into people's brains.

Most big projects are not the first, tallest, biggest, or anything else too remarkable.

It all comes down to the boring magic of standards. Find a standardised way to do something and iterate on that.

The book is, necessarily, a little dry. I think it could have benefited from a few illustrations. Sometimes a little help visualising data is necessary. Some of the megaprojects could have photos to help demonstrate the scale.

It starts as a somewhat jolly romp through grand failures but, by the end, becomes an urgent plea.

In our present situation, wasted resources and wasted time are a threat to civilization.

We don't have the luxury of wasting billions. We don't have the time to do things twice. Grandiose plans based on untested technology aren't going to save us from the climate crisis.

An excellent book for understanding the reality of building anything.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/04/book-review-how-big-things-get-done-lessons-from-the-worlds-top-project-manager-by-bent-flyvbjerg-dan-gardner/

#BookReview

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

@mattwynne Happy Easter - when you have a moment.

What is the status of the Cucumber/BDD world. What repos/projects should I point people to? I see Reqnroll as a replacement for SpecFlow. Any change in the main Cucumber game?

weddige, 1 month ago to random

Welcome to another edition of "Is this phishing?"

Assume the email is in principle plausible and the transaction ID exists. What is the worst that can happen if you press send?

#phishing

stroughtonsmith, 1 month ago to random

Exercising my EU-given right to run an alternative app store (AltStore) 😜

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