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Busse's Weekly Retrospective - Issue #2: Fear & Loathing & Social Media & SMS isn't even safe

Chris Busse
Chris Busse
@busse
Last week’s newsletter had a big pre-amble, I’m keeping this part short today. As before, I hope you find at least one new and interesting thing here in the collection of things that crossed my desk this week, and I welcome your feedback! - Busse [chrisbusse@gmail.com]

People
Why Obsessively Following Successful People Online is Dangerous
Convincing yourself that following more famous people online will lead to a better life is dangerous. You’re simply wasting your time.
durmonski.com
I’ve watched Jeff code during keynote presentations at a couple of events in previous years. Awesome to see he still finds the time:
What I Built: Jeff Lawson's weekend projects
Twilio’s CEO Jeff Lawson talks through creative code projects and the lifelong learning of being a developer
www.twilio.com
I’ve always been a fan of both the book and movie adaptation of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. There was a time in my life where I went deep into reading HST’s writings. Turns out it’s the 50th anniversary of F&LLV, so let’s make this one a double-feature:
What “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” Owes to Oscar Acosta | The New Yorker
What “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” Owes to Oscar Acosta | The New Yorker
The inspiration for Dr. Gonzo was not a “300-pound Samoan” but a Chicano activist who believed that Hunter S. Thompson never gave him his due.
www.newyorker.com
Business
I recently added the Indicator from Planet Money to my Podcast subscriptions. This one on Logistics caught my eye, er, ear:
How Logistics And Supply Chain Management Are Getting More Popular
How Logistics And Supply Chain Management Are Getting More Popular
In the high school lunchroom version of business school, finance majors were the popular jocks and logistics majors were… the math club. But nowadays, they’re sitting at the cool kids’ table.
www.npr.org
Alloy accelerates with $100M Series C
Alloy accelerates with $100M Series C
Today is an exciting day: we are announcing our $100 million Series C! The round was led by our long-time mentor and friend Justin Overdorff from Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from existing investors Canapi Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Avid Ventures, and Felicis Ventures.
www.alloy.com
Gartner released their “Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle Management (FLAPIM)” – I plan to analyze and write more about this, looking back over the changes in this analysis over the past five years. Looking at this year’s, there are some interesting changes in who is included and not:
Fintan Ryan on Twitter: "We published the Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle #API Management (FLAPIM) last week and the companion Critical Capabilities for Full Life Cycle #API Management this week. (🧵) 1/14… "
Fintan Ryan on Twitter: "We published the Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle #API Management (FLAPIM) last week and the companion Critical Capabilities for Full Life Cycle #API Management this week. (🧵) 1/14… "
“We published the Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle #API Management (FLAPIM) last week and the companion Critical Capabilities for Full Life Cycle #API Management this week. (🧵) 1/14”
twitter.com
Technology
Krebs with a great breakdown of the Facebook outage this week. This is a good read for both technical & non-technical audiences:
What Happened to Facebook, Instagram, & WhatsApp?
What Happened to Facebook, Instagram, & WhatsApp?
Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from ongoing, global outages. We don’t yet know why this happened, but the how is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records…
krebsonsecurity.com
…on the topic of Facebook, there was some whistleblower testimony, here’s a good “after the fact” article:
What realistically happens next to Facebook following whistleblower revelations
What realistically happens next to Facebook following whistleblower revelations
The market, advertisers and Congress likely won’t challenge Facebook, but other things might.
www.cnbc.com
Two items (2021/this week; 2019) about Syniverse, a company you should be aware of if you aren’t:
Company that routes SMS for all major US carriers was hacked for five years
Company that routes SMS for all major US carriers was hacked for five years
Syniverse hasn’t revealed whether text messages were exposed.
arstechnica.com
How one company you’ve never heard of swallowed tens of thousands of text messages — then spit them back out - The Verge
How one company you’ve never heard of swallowed tens of thousands of text messages — then spit them back out - The Verge
On Valentine’s Day 2019, tens of thousands of text messages were frozen in place and only delivered nine months later in the middle of the night. Here’s how Syniverse became the company to hold those SMS messages, and why some industry figures are worried about AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint’s growing reliance on it.
www.theverge.com
Inputs
I went to the local art museum this week (the world-class Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) and found a sculpture by Donald Judd that I really connected with, more because of some metadata around it. I googled his name, found this post, and bought his book. Turns out it’s over 1,000 pages long and I’m not sure what I’m getting into:
The persistent disbeliever: on Donald Judd's writings
The persistent disbeliever: on Donald Judd's writings
Has there been a more rigorous sceptic than Donald Judd? Set aside, for a moment, the philosophers who only think about the world, and picture Judd in Long Island City at the Bernstein Brothers metal shop in 1970 telling fabricators how to make his work.
www.theartnewspaper.com
Inclusive Naming Initiative
The Inclusive Naming Initiative produces three tiers of language recommendation. These are compiled into lists for easy consumption by adopters. Terms are separated into lists based on the severity of the term in question as well as the level of review the terms have received.
inclusivenaming.org
Paul has some great essays, but I think there is also a way to make “luck” – I’ve started drafting something around my career path and funding “luck” as a result of this tweet:
Paul Graham
@patio11 Success is work multiplied by luck. If either component is zero, the result is zero.
Outputs
I’m working to go paperless … or at least not have a bunch of analog notebooks around, so I ordered a Supernote A5x e-ink table – a competitor to the more well-known Remarkable 2 – a companion device to replace paper notebooks. Full review to come soon:
Supernote
Supernote
Supernote is an elegant note taking device for exquisite writing, reading and annotation.
supernote.com
Radar
Andy’s Tweet below and “The case study factory” go together, just saving you a click to what he’s talking about:
Andy Budd
Super interesting (maybe even important?) article which is nominally about case studies, but is really about an industrialised process for training designers just enough to land a job (but possibly not enough to be good at it).

https://t.co/O18oz9cnHZ
The case study factory
The case study factory
Is the formulaic approach to case studies endangering young designers’ capacity for critical thinking?
essays.uxdesign.cc
Matthew Prince 🌥
One of the smartest decisions we made at @Cloudflare was recognizing that the primary purpose of our blog was attracting employees, not attracting customers.
Security Best Practices for Fintech Application Development
Security Best Practices for Fintech Application Development
Since the turn of the century, the FinTech industry has seen exponential growth that has been equally matched by the threat of payment fraud. As
community.marqeta.com
CTAs
If contact centers are your thing, my company put on a webinar recently on a topic of interest, archived here:
Terazo Webinar: Three Trends Driving The Programmable Contact Center
Terazo Webinar: Three Trends Driving The Programmable Contact Center
Join experts from Terazo and Twilio to learn how programmable contact centers can reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and more.
terazo.com
Misc.
Hundreds of three-eyed 'dinosaur shrimp' emerge after Arizona monsoon
Hundreds of three-eyed 'dinosaur shrimp' emerge after Arizona monsoon
Following a torrential summer downpour in northern Arizona, hundreds of bizarre, prehistoric-looking critters emerged from tiny eggs and began swimming around a temporary lake on the desert landscape, according to officials at Wupatki National Monument.
www.livescience.com
The Obsessive Life and Mysterious Death of the Fisherman Who Discovered The Loch Ness Monster
The Obsessive Life and Mysterious Death of the Fisherman Who Discovered The Loch Ness Monster
A humble Scotsman saw something strange in the water—and daringly set out to catch it—only to have lecherous out-of-towners steal his fame and upend his quest.
narratively.com
Thank you!
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Chris Busse
Chris Busse @busse

Interesting things that have crossed my desk in the past week.

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