bertil.bsky.social

There is apparently 17.45 billion payment cards with PIN around the world, and 15% of those are randomly generated. Assuming randomly generated PIN codes are all evenly likely, there are 261,750 people wondering why everyone is discussing their specific PIN code right now.

I would love to hear from Ret. General Randy George today. I understand he might want to enjoy his second day of retirement, and after giving so much, he certainly deserves to, but it seems the US needs someone with some authority to speak up.

Why is Kate McKinnon leading in a Polish docu-fiction? youtu.be/phN7tqYaa08

God, give me the confidence of autocorrect, in the middle of a conversation about discounts, contracts, negotiations, pricing and signature to confirm that the sentence is “Is the sake done?” Yes, sake, an essential part of commercial relationships.

I was surprised by the scale of the data centers announced by big tech—the land area mostly: it’s not that hard to make them higher, more dense. I’m curious if they didn’t make big announcements to scare people & once electricity and water become scarce, rile up local groups to prevent new entrants.

Fifteen Years xkcd.com/3172/

In parts of the world not in the news: I saw a young mother trying, frustrated, to unlock a pram, and two burly construction workers immediately jumped to help, pointing at the right latch. One explained in broken Swedish he got the same model second hand during his parental leave and it was great.

All washing machines mention how this program can take that much weight of clothes, which is cool, but… How do you tell how much you’ve put and if it’s too much?! Do you have a scale in your laundry and weigh your bags?

Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait. My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.

Car Size xkcd.com/3167/

Living in the Future benefit: the combination of Google Maps public transit directions and phone-tap onboard payment makes it SO EASY to take public trams/buses/metros when traveling now. It’s fantastic not to have to resort to taxis just for lack of easy access to the local transit ticketing system

This is wonderful news, but waiting for the day after the Nobel Prize is announced to mention it is a class act. youtu.be/bhExSMZt1zs

Learning about customer support principles from my local soup dealer

I have complained here that YouTube ads were really irrelevant. They aren’t getting much better (who wants to buy a university-lab grade microscope?) but they occasionally… Look, I know I should be unloading the dishwasher and not watching Chandrila Niamos remixes, but trying to sell me tablets…

I can’t believe that Apple didn’t provide all those people whose lives were saved by Apple Watch with a webcam from this century. I mean it would be rude to ask for more, but…

Sometimes, genius doesn’t need good lighting.

Fox News couldn’t stop talking about the mass shooter more. I guess that’s what counts as Swan Lake in the US? That’s grim. Newsmax isn’t particularly focused.

For people at the back: this week, or maybe next year, millions will die, some survivors will be radicalized and attack carbon-intensive infrastructure or decision-makers. Mass migration in the billions will flee the hottest area.

You know how some ads have to add caveats at the end because they are promoting a regulated service? And how are always read way too fast to not eat into the ad time budget? I just heard one of those in Polish. Eminem *wished* he had a flow that quick and that smooth.

I lived in touristy Paris too long: I notice lost tourists. Last night, step into Stockholm town hall. A guy was looking around, maybe lost? Then his wife pulls a camera, and he pulls a large golden medal from his pocket & a big smile. I guess he’s been here before. Looks different in winter.

My bus driver just put on some racing gloves. We are about to Harry-Potter-Night-bus this traffic jam…

My job is made a little bit harder by having to explain that a lot of very smart people, using enormous computers, have decided that about 30% of my time should be spent watching ads for the same video game, that, inexplicably, is nothing like those ads.

"First the leader removes those with expertise and independent thinking from the government and replaces them with leaders who are arrogant, ignorant, and extremely loyal. Next he takes steps to centralize his power and claim unprecedented authority." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Today, I saw more than 25 ads encouraging me to: - sell my car; - get a new car; - get new tires for my car; - fix the windshield of my car; - effortlessly change tires of my car; - buy a much better car than the one I have. If you work with cars, you ad agency is stealing from you.

Happy Pi day!

Black Mirror Season 7. No, really, they can somehow think of something worse. I’ll be hiding under my bed.

It might not be a top priority for everyone but I think we can all agree “Don’t make Steve Rosenberg concerned” should be a rule for a lot of people.

Here’s how I think about global warming (and a couple other things)

Early on at Facebook, the nascent Content Policy team organically developed a set of aphorisms to guide our work. A set of simple-ish “north stars” to navigate by, keeping us on track while coping with of the ever growing and diversifying torrent of reports. 🧵1/9

I must know people who can help Craig out. (Yes, it’s that Craig, and he’s trying to help teachers in the US get supplies.)