What the Fastly outage can teach us about writing error messages
On June 8, 2021 panic spread across the world as internet users were unable to visit some of their favourite websites, including the BBC, UK government, Reddit, Twitch, and countless others. Anyone not familiar with certain internet technologies might have been surprised by how much of the world wide web depends on such few services and how little it takes to bring it all down. This article explains what Fastly could have done to ease the chaos for those internet users.
target=blank
Not something that most people will care about, but this was something we weren't aware. To anyone that had at least a single lesson on web development, you'll know that a link with an target attribute of "_blank" will open that link in a new tab. But if you were to add any other value into that target (except for a few) it will still open in a new tab. Add another link with the same target attribute and the browser will open those links in the same tab. Mind = blown. But we're yet to find a use-case for it.
The Day the Dinosaurs Died – Minute by Minute
66 million years ago life flourished on earth as it had been for a million years before. Then something happened that would change the course of life on earth. Kurzgesagt's latest video explains the series of events that happened as the asteroid entered the earth's atmosphere.
The Japanese Art of Making Boring Tasks Better
The Japanese have a word ganbaru which translates to "stand firm" but is used to push the idea of committing oneself fully to a task and to bring that task to an end. Having a tedious, boring, or uncomfortable task shouldn't change the way you approach the task.
This is so close to the philosophy we follow at goat. When a task is no longer enjoyable the mantra "if we're not having fun then we're doing something wrong" is echoed and something has to change in order for us to approach the task with enthusiasm and enjoyment so that we can get it done.