In another life I worked for Oracle in the UK and thence onto the US. When I first met my boss to be, the UK offices were in Richmond. By the time I had joined, they had moved to Chertsey. Within a couple of years we had moved to Bracknell and around year 6 (by which time I was in San Francisco), Reading became their home.

Trying to find some picture of the buildings for a different reason and came across this.

Just a couple of examples. Click through for the mess that it was.

How sad.

The Cherstey offices were always my favorites and home to good friends and good people working on so many things including Oracle’s FIRST applications - delivered through C.A.S.E. Who knew it had fallen into such disrepair? The photos seem to date back to 2015 … but looks like they are no more - and an elderly care home is now there. I wonder if there any residents today that worked in those office back then?

It was long enough ago.

This post originated as a comment in another thread, but it made me think more - again - about how language is constantly being twisted to operate against people.

I wrote

“Language is powerful - funny how we use the term ‘right to work’ state - rather than ‘union busting’ state ….

and

It’s like how we used to have data warehouses - but now we have data ‘lakes’ and ‘mountains’ that we keep in ‘farms’ - so that we can ‘harvest’ information … it’s all so wonderfully natural - and nothing to worry about …

What say you?

Stone Age culture in the Orkney islands

When I was eight years old, we took a family trip to the Orkney islands off the north coast of Scotland. I don’t know why we went there particularly, but it was amazing. I almost don’t want to go back because it might break the spell the place has cast over my life.

I was 18 when I did that journey (sans family)

Never been back - despite it being amazing. Not really thought about it before - but I think subconsciously Doug has drawn out my reasoning.

In case you hadn’t noticed - I am in a bit of a catch up mode.

This for example is a set of links that clearly at one time all connected in my head, but for the life of me - I can’t see that now. That said - I am pretty sure that all of them date back to January 2021.

Work

Tom Evslin - Who’s Pocketing the Profit - I think we know!

Josh Bersiin - The Crusade For Employee Experience: How Did We Get Here? - I find it telling that ‘Employee Experience’ is so far behind ‘Customer Experience’ - just in case you had any doubt where Corporate priorities lie.

Free Speech

Benedict Evans - Speech and Publishing

Beyond Platforms: Private Censorship, Parler, and the Stack | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Robin Rendle - Hijack

Apple and Chips

Stratechery - Intel Problems

… Truly horrible.

So when I read Google Slides is actually Hilarious … sadly on Medium (oh the irony - the ignominy of publishing your Google Slides takedown on Medium!), it needed to be shared.

With Commentary

I have long had no truck for the Google Office Suite … so was delighted to discover this piece and realize that I am not alone and neatly summarizes the challenges of using that excuse of a piece of software.

PowerPoint is bad enough - but it’s only when you try Google slides that you truly understand how great it really is (no snark - truth),

As an Apple user I have used the Apple iWork suite for more than years. Back in the day I used to have PowerPoint installed so I could create in Keynote, export to PowerPoint and then fix the few oddities that occur when you run such a routine.

These days I don’t even have MS office installed. All three apps export ‘nicely’ to MS and thence onto Google should somebody on the planet decide that what the deck needs is some ‘Google magic’.

Of course everyone loves Google because you can share and co edit … personally I get that in the doc world … but a decent presentation should not be designed</> put together by committee.

Seriously - STOP.

Ok ok … if you must and you want to share and co develop a deck and are a Mac user - have you tried Keynote? They offer the app - for free - on the web. You can share your presentation and anyone with the link and creds can now edit.

Is that experience rock solid? Well it’s not perfect - but it’s a whole lot better than wrestling with Google crap.

Common wisdom regularly references Pareto - even while not knowing who the hell Pareto is. A humorist might even say that 80% of people who quote the 80/20 rule have never heard of Pareto.

Turns out it might even be worse.

Sturgeon has 90% of everything is crap .. and Andreesen agrees (Apple News Link to WSJ)

Seemingly even about his own fund.

”But doesn’t Sturgeon’s law also apply to investing in startups? A typical venture fund has a home run, a few companies with middling returns and lots of smoking holes in the ground. “We have a limited partner that has comprehensive data,” Mr. Andreessen explains. “For top-end venture funds, the good news is that it’s not 90% failure rate, it’s 50%. This is for top-decile venture.” So maybe Sturgeon’s law doesn’t apply. But wait. The 90% of funds below the top decline do worse. Sturgeon’s law rules. Mr. Andreessen pauses, raises an eyebrow, and nods in agreement.”

VPNs Poor Privacy and Security Practices.

(From ‘Consumer Reports’). As a ‘consumer' - not helpful.

Example …

“We found that 12 out of 16 of the VPNs we looked at either inaccurately represented their products and technology, or made hyperbolic or overly broad claims about the kinds of protection they provide their users.”

But which ones?

Wouldn’t a summary detailing some kind of ‘league table’ be useful - rather than just blasting the industry as a whole?

Idle thoughts.

Proving that ‘sound thinking’ might not be the same as ‘thinking with sound’.

I created a Numbers file from the information you sent over.

I exported it to Excel and sent that file to you.

Now you have the file, you can change the Excel.

I can’t change the Excel file, because I don’t intend to pay Microsoft to use a product that is inferior to what I already have installed.

BTW - you have a Mac, and so you also have Numbers.

Tell me again why you pay to use a product that is not as good as the free product you already have on your computer?

.. and don’t tell me because you are doing serious number crunching … I have seen the spreadsheets you created!

/J