At least no countries were invaded first

So the summit between Kim and Trump managed to not start a war, which is a plus, and has shored up Kim’s international stature and credibility at home, which is another plus. But the big win is Trump committing to end war games with its ally for them.

In return Trump got some kind of nebulous promise from Kim that maybe at some point in the future North Korea won’t have any more nukes. Perhaps. But hey, it isn’t like they have ever made this kind of commitment before… right?

And pigs can fly after all

Twelve months ago a Trump presidency seemed as likely as pigs flying. And yet somehow in a perfect storm of a cluster fuck made up entirely of black swans, here we are. Those few USA citizens that could be bothered to actually turn up and vote apparently decided that they would rather watch the American century end in a plummeting inferno of tweets, ego and incoherent policy positions than a slow slide back to a multi-polar world after it’s time as the sole super power.

There are more than enough buses to go around.

Departing staff can really simplify the whole process of assigning responsibility in the work place when things have not gone as well as expected. Though I have not heard of any work place where they actually have literal dummies to take to meetings, most seem content to have a few figurative ones instead.

Sometimes, there actually isn’t a difference worth anything…

Unfortunately, like so many other things that reach buzzword status, the use of testing in business seems to be almost symbolic in application rather than practical. As long as you can put the words “A/B test” or “Multivariate test” on a slide associated with whatever was done you can label yourself as data driven. Planning, actually being able to link what you are testing to a business outcome, follow some kind of a process, no matter how simple or even understanding some basic concepts like p-values, effect size and confidence intervals, that hardly matters.

Sheep with UTF-8 BOM bring on the Endianness of Days

Dealing with text encoding, non-latin characters and certain pieces of software can be a truely fun experience, for Dwarf Fortress values of fun. It is truly a horrible experience and one to be approached with a certain level of fear.

Larger than a data puddle, less convenient than a data mart

This week saw Gartner telling everyone to jump in a data lake and the need to clean up and organise your data being a thing. It is almost as if the quality and management of data some how relates to the value you can derive from it.

I call it job security through deniability…

According to someone I met, apparently ‘Agile‘ means making decisions quickly without recording why. I guess someone missed the bit about “just enough documentation” which answers the requirement of “what would you want to know if you joined the team tomorrow” as a part of the whole thing.

But they left all that data here…

So Facebook did some human subject research, but this time made the critical error of publishing in an acedemic journal. While there has been the occasional measured analysis of the discussion this has generated, for the most part it has resembled diuretic monkeys on speed in a poo flinging contest. You know, like all the other times the words ‘Facebook’, ‘privacy’ and ‘users’ make it into the mainstream media.

You might even make up your own mind

Even with enhanced campaigns, Google is still dealing with dropping CPCs.

The decrease in the average cost-per-click paid by our advertisers was driven by various factors, such as the general strengthening of the U.S. dollar compared to certain foreign currencies (primarily the Euro), the revenue shift mix between Google websites and Google Network Members’ websites, the changes in platform mix due to traffic growth in mobile devices, where the average cost-per-click is typically lower compared to desktop computers and tablets, and the changes in geographical mix due to traffic growth in emerging markets, where the average cost-per-click is typically lower compared to more mature markets.

Though they have pointed at a number of causes, the one that those pesky SEC people seem to keep on coming back to are mobile phones. Specifically ads on mobile phones. Unfortunately requests for detailed information on the impact of mobile on average cost per click across all of Google are still being rebuffed. All those numbers and mobile device classifications sound confusing, and the last thing you want is for someone get the wrong idea and come up with their own conclusions from a bunch of figures.

Like one of those things from Aliens

Facebook bought Oculus Rift, and created some rather strong reactions. One line of conversation is about the ethics of selling a company that took it’s ‘seed funding’ from the community without necessarily reflecting their own wishes. The other is about what kind of evil enhanced social and marketing products Facebook could do with this kind of hardware.

At least in the short term, Facebook may have done Sony and other virtual reality headset newcomers a real favour by strangling the new born puchasing Oculus Rift.