Four short links: 9 December 2019
Learning from Incidents, ISBN Changes, Prisoner's Dilemma, and Load-bearing Skeletons
- Learning from Incidents — super useful articles on doing what it says on the box. (via duckalini)
- Say Goodbye to the 10-digit ISBN — ISBNs started out using a 10-digit number, but later transitioned to 13-digit numbers as the supply of unused numbers ran low. It has been standard up to this point to have a 10-digital ISBN that corresponded to the 13-digit ISBN [by prefixing it with 978], but the BISG reports that practice will be going away with the adoption of the 979 prefix. Parallels to “just put 19 on the front of the year” left as exercise to the reader.
- RIP Social Darwinism (Cory Doctorow) — Prisoner’s Dilemma games are often cited as evidence of intrinsic selfishness, but what if it turns out that telling people that selfishness is OK is why they behave selfishly, whereas a normative statement of solidarity turns that on its head?
- Load-bearing Skeletons — a phrase that will stick with you.
