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Double Booking Dark Pattern on AirBnB
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1–2 minutes·
No comments on Double Booking Dark Pattern on AirBnBI recently booked a single night stay in London with AirBnB, who promptly told me on completion of payment that I already had a booking confirmed for that night, and would I like to cancel one of them? It’s easy to cancel, but you don’t get a full refund; AirBnB keep the booking fee, which was…
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There’s no question that Twitter’s self-inflicted mishaps and dreadful behaviour has driven people to Mastodon, but I also think that the move towards blogging and a slower, more artisanal form of short-form updating is fundamentally a reversion to the mean. Which is to say: even if @Jack (Twitter’s CEO) wasn’t an utter asshole, I think…
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A GDPR omen in the Guardian today. While this is technically opt-in because users must affirmatively click “Continue” to receive emails, the strong resemblance to EU Cookie notices where everyone hammers “Continue” is surely deliberate.
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Make Browsing Great Again
Spot the Difference What if I told you that reading online could once again be a pleasant, focused experience? What if you could stop mindlessly clicking on Buzzfeed and Gawker articles with enticing titles? And what if it were really easy? My friends: I’m not talking about adblocking. Adblocking is Browsing 101 — an essential foundation to…
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Invariable Reinforcement
Our office manager Sophie passed me the phone. “It’s someone from Google,” she said. I raised an eyebrow. Perhaps this was an invitation to an event, or another chance to test prototype hardware, or something even more magical. I unmute the phone. “Hello?” “Hi, I’m Tim, from Google Digital Development. I’d love to talk about…
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Guardian comments are destroying civilization
A vast swathe of people now believe that it’s impossible to have intelligent debate online. This is not an unreasonable belief; scroll down on any newspaper website, let alone YouTube, and you’ll discover the shouting matches that inhabit most comments sections. Jessica Valenti recently wondered whether we shouldn’t simply shut down all comments, like Popular…
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The Long Decline of Reading
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” – Steve Jobs on eBook readers and the Amazon…
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My Daily Read
“You’re better off reading a bunch of blogs than most columnists.” – me, earlier today. Every time I open the Guardian, or the Times, or any other newspaper, I am disappointed by the poor quality of the columns and editorial. For the most part, they’re barely-informed polemics that are constrained by word limits and motivated…
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Meeting Room Yield Management
Six to Start is based in a large building containing dozens of managed and serviced offices. On the way to the shared kitchen at work, I noticed two empty meeting rooms. It occurred to me that, just like an empty seat on a plane, an empty meeting room is lost cash. Sure, there is a…
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Berlin Calling
Three people – a doctor, the CTO of an up-and-coming web company, and the CEO of an up-and-coming 3D game engine company – have independently told me the same thing in the last month. It’s time to move to Berlin. In any discussion of where I work and what I do, the subject of London’s…
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