When marketing doesn’t ask science: a costly lesson in UV robots.

In 2020, UV disinfection robots became popular. One company built a powerful UV robot, but marketing ran a big media demo without engineers.

The lamps were meant only for night use (without people). This was forgotten - and journalists got eye burns.

Don't ignore engineers and scientists :) #safety #robots #pr

In the last week or so, #Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella announced that they were going to pull back from doing new feature work for #Windows for a bit, and focus on bug fixes and other quality-of-life improvements for users and administrators. Windows' already shaky reputation has taken a beating over the last year as it seems that every monthly rollup #patch, and many out-of-band #patches, introduce new problems at the same rate as they fix previous ones.

Is this giving you deja vu? It should. Remember a couple or three years ago, when the same guy announced that Microsoft was going to focus on security? They were in the middle of a long spell of brutal security holes found in all their products. Remember how they told their #engineers "If you have to choose between doing a feature and doing security, choose security"?

Remember how you never heard about that initiative again?

It's the same thing here. #PR garbage in service of a narrative that no, Windows' horrible security, usability, and #stability aren't actually that bad, so that MS can focus on their core competencies of buzzword promotion, stock market analyst manipulation, and monopoly abuse.

Perhaps someone in Microsoft management actually believes these refocusing efforts are genuine - but if you don't change the incentives, they won't actually take hold.

#PR #marketing #buzzword #MSWindows #SatyaNadella #security #WeveHeardOfIt #stability #crash #rollup #monopoly #MemoryHole

Voting systems, representation and Labour cowardice (and it was not the membership)

But then Labour nowadays only makes a poor pretence at listening to the party membership - funding is really sought from the rich and powerful.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/04/labour-reform-greens-splitting-vote-unfair-electoral-system

#Labour #PR #Voting #UKPolitics #Cowardice #Starmer