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Erschienen am 14.2.2013

How Facebook Uses “Ginormous Data” to Grow Its Business (Wade Roush, Xconomy)
"At least 1,000 of Facebook’s 4,600 employees use the back end every day, mainly to monitor and understand the results of the tens of thousands of tests that are being run on the site at all times. Which leads to a larger point: there is no single Facebook. As a product, Facebook is about as Protean as a non-mythological entity can get."

Sina Weibo introduces "Rage Face" emojis, a la 4chan/Reddit rage comics (Jason Q. Ng, Blocked on Weibo)
"Someone at Sina thought it worth implementing a whole panel worth of emoji that began strictly as an English-language meme—and an often times mean-spirited one at that. Rage comics are rather passe now in America, having peaked in popularity a year or two ago."

Need Support for Gmail Or Facebook? Good Luck (ReadWrite, Matt Asay)
"Once upon a time, vendors like Apple and Microsoft sold you things and then stood by the phone, happy to help resolve any problems that might arise from the use of their products. But in the modern world of free services, you get what you pay for: nothing."

The Sheikh And I: Ghostwriting For A Crown Prince In Exile (Michael Janofsky, Los Angeles Review of Books)
"It all started with a cryptic phone call. As a newly minted freelancer, after 24 years reporting for The New York Times, I was juggling several projects when a long-time friend left a voicemail message, saying, "I have a strange gig for you if you’re interested.’"

The Importance of Excel (James Kwak, The Baseline Scenario)
"You should pause whenever you hear that banks’ quantitative experts are smarter than Einstein, or that sophisticated risk management technology can protect banks from blowing up. At the end of the day, it’s all software. While all software breaks occasionally, Excel spreadsheets break all the time. But they don’t tell you when they break: they just give you the wrong number."