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Showing posts from November, 2020

On misplaced incentives

 A few years back a recipe site would be like this: Google recipe --> Click --> Find recipe Now, it is like this: Google recipe -->Click-->Irrelevant story of the recipe -->Irrelevant picture ---> Still more irrelevant stories about the recipe --> Please check out my other recipes-->Useless version of recipe ---> Some more random pictures or ads --> and after what seems like 17 scroll downs is the recipe hidden away in the footer.  Obviously scroll through links pay in ads or page views I guess. Last week I went to the bank for a minor service issue. One of the "customer service" persons helpfully walks up, hears my problem so empathetically I actually make the mistake of thinking it is solved - and then helpfully says, "Sir, close the account and open another one" And after waiting for ages - when nobody could care about - suddenly on realising I was there for something more than a service issue - a swarm of people became interested in