A very non-intuitive UI resulted in a Citibank sub-contractor accidentally repaying a $500m to creditors instead of transferring the money to another account, despite the process being signed off by two other superiors.
Jared Mauch, a network architect at Akamai, couldn't get good broadband at his home in Scio Township in Michigan other than wireless internet . Comcast quoted him $50,000 to lay the cables to his house, so he decided to do it himself.
Dot McCarthy, a farmer from Cronkshaw Fold Farm in Lancashire, has made £50,000 by hiring out her show goats on zoom for £5 per 5 min appearance! The money is being used to keep farm staff employed during the pandemic and convert the farm to newable power to improve its carbon footprint.
Skillfinder is an Australian website that brings together a range of free short courses developed and delivered by a host of tech companies such as Adobe, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and others. Courses are available in a number of categories from Computing Basics and Coding to Machine Learning and Project Managment. E-College is a similar website that is available to residents of The Republic of Ireland, but E-college courses also include exams and certifications.
On December 31, 2020 Adobe Flash reached its official End Of Life (EOL) and on January 12, 2021 Adobe disabled Flash from running. Despite months of warnings and notices, some users did not migrate away from Flash in time and have been forced into some questionable decision making in order to keep critical services running.
On a recent episode of That Great Business Show, Conall & Jamie interview Conor McEnroy, the Irish owner of a bank in Paraguay. The interview is fantastic! Conor tells stories of various adventures in business he has had in South America, like being kidnapped and gun point and being in a hotel when a bomb goes off. The latter section of the interview enters the realm of real talk where Conor spells out the clear corruption that still exists in Ireland.
Martin Rue published a great list of his engineering axioms, principles to live your work life by. The useful advice stretches across the technical and social domains, like "don't pick a solution until you've thought of at least one more" and "treat people who know less than you with respect and patience".
CTO Craft break down different conflict scenarios and the models available for resolution, such as interst-based rational approach, transactional analysis and others, in this useful blog post.
Taylor Pearson published an interesting post describes the disadvantages and fragility of categorising the world using trees rather than using the more efficient semilattices.
The Rhodes Center Podcast is an economics podcast hosted by Mark Blyth from Brown University. In the episode The Fraught, Complex, and Important 'Economics of Belonging', Mark interviews Martin Sandbu about his new book The Economics of Belonging. The excellent interview covers the woes of the political and economic world and previews the solutions offered in the new book.
