JangoSteve

Keep in mind that there's no rule that says there must be a correct answer. If the only way to do something is approach A or approach B, and people don't like either approach, then other options include figuring out a new approach C or not doing the thing.

This is even crazier, because a webpage could load the iframe or img tag lazily, long after the page has been opened and is in the background because the user left the tab open, and the user would have no way of knowing which page is responsible for opening Zoom.

Furthermore, in Chrome, the webpage can set a timeout which brings the browser window back into focus. So for example, if Zoom usually takes about 1 second to open, then the browser could set the timeout for 1100ms, so that zoom is only visible to the user for a split second before it's backgrounded with their camera enabled. Either of the following will bring Chrome back to the foreground:

    setTimeout( function() { alert("Hi") }, 1100)

    setTimeout( function() { var win = window.open("https://www.google.com", '_blank'); win.focus(); window.close() }, 1100)

The latter is a little less of an alert to the user that something has happened, since it could be used to reload the current page without the offending image or iframe tag, which would look to the user like the page just randomly reloaded itself.

This is timely. Our startup just had an article written about our use of SBIR grant funding with some tips at the end:

https://bbcetc.com/sbir-related/ann-arbor-company-is-an-engi...

Yeah, that's a good point. The question here isn't whether or not to have an infotainment system that integrates with Android Auto and Apple Car Play, it's whether to interface with it via a touch screen or physical input (or both).

> They have 2. One for power and one for data.

I don't think I've ever seen a touch screen with only two wires. For one thing, even power requires two wires, not one. Data for a touch screen typically requires more than one wire as well, especially considering there are two completely distinct types of data a touchscreen must transmit, those being display output and touch input.

Most touch screens I'm aware of have wire connections more like this:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-2-4-color-tft-touchscree...

> Usually they're replacing a lot more than 2 buttons/knobs.

Not usually. Other than the Tesla, most cars retain almost all of their knobs/buttons in addition to the touch screen. In fact, the linked article in the OP says they're basically replacing the touch screen input with a single volume knob that lets you additional tilt and push it. Other cars, like BMW with the iDrive, usually have a single knob that lets you rotate and scroll through menus and push to select. Granted, it's not a simple knob, since it requires multiple degrees of input, but even a plastic knob that allows rotating, tilting, and pushing is probably cheaper than a touch screen when shared across models and mass produced.

I still think the bigger savings is probably the software updates required to constantly support and make your vehicle's physical input compatible with every new update of Android Auto and Apple Car Play, which the auto-makers have no control over and can only ever play catch-up. At least with a touch screen, they know that's where the Android and Apple engineers spend their own time making compatible.

The other place it probably saves is designing and laying out the interior, since it's easier to design an interior with fewer purpose-focused inputs. I'm not sure though if the touch screen would actually be easier though, since it can't be broken up across different small areas, and the entire thing has to be within both reach and active field of view. Especially the screens on top of the dash, since those often are designed to retract, which means the space they retract into needs to be designed around the HVAC and electrical systems between the firewall and dash.

Either way, both of these savings though would be on the design and engineering side, not the bill of materials.

None of this is untrue with touchscreens. They also have wires and connectors and must be certified.

This argument doesn't make a ton of sense to me. It seems like an inconsistent comparison to compare a single touchscreen to many customized knobs/buttons/etc., when you could also compare a single set of knobs/buttons/etc. to different screen sizes across models.

Car companies don't tend to custom-design knobs/buttons/etc. for each model. They tend to reuse the same ones across many models to save on development and manufacturing costs. They also already modularize these knobs and buttons across different "accessory classes". You can probably see this in your own car even, if you see anywhere on your car's center console or dashboard which has plastic caps where it seems like more buttons or knobs belong. Those are likely buttons/knobs for additional functions in optional feature packages.

Also, even for the same screen size across models, you'd still likely need custom bezels since most models are differently sized and thus have different dashboard shapes/sizes within which the screen is mounted.

Especially with how high-resolution touchscreens in cars are becoming in new models, I doubt they're cheaper than a handful of plastic knobs and buttons.

My guess is that it's exactly what they said. It's probably harder from a software perspective to adapt touch-screen-based interfaces like Android Auto and Apple Car Play to physical controls, and those difficulties probably come up over and over as the versions of these interfaces on the phones are constantly being updated, and the car must continue supporting more and more versions at one time.

I think the response was reading more into the meaning behind what pg said than the actual words he used. This makes sense to a degree, since what pg actually said makes little sense unless you read more into it. When people say startups are for rich kids, they probably don't mean you _have_ to be rich to succeed in startups, since there are plenty of examples to the contrary. What they mean is that your chances of success are significantly higher when you already have means.

So pg arguing that startups aren't for rich kids probably isn't just a claim that you don't need to be rich to start a startup, because that would be a response to a claim no one is making. I think this is why it's reasonable (maybe incorrect, but reasonable) for some people to infer that pg is trying to discredit the underlying notion actually meant by such claims as he referenced, which is that building a successful startup is often less of a meritocracy than we'd like to believe.

Of course we could argue all day about the nuances of each argument, and what was said versus what was meant. But we all know this is the problem with any claim made on Twitter; it invites inference, since abbreviated excerpts don't allow for proper context or dialogue.

That is actually an incredibly interesting anecdote about the catepillars. Thanks for that!

It's kind of funny, because your second point about the unprettiness of the rose's surroundings being equally valid as the prettiness of the roses reminds me of how I started liking some of the foods I had hated as a child.

At some point in my young adulthood, I started appreciating tastes for what they were, as experiences. In this way, I began thinking about the sensations that foods triggered, and how interesting and different the foods I didn't used to like were. It made me start appreciating them just for being able to experience the uniqueness of the taste and texture, and next thing I knew, I no longer disliked those foods.

> Does a flower stop being pretty just because you don't expect or desire it to be pretty?

Sometimes. If I didn't desire it to be pretty, then I may have never planted it. By not desiring it to be pretty, we limit ourselves to enjoying only those flowers planted by others or by nature. Maybe that's enough. Or maybe there's less in the world to enjoy when so many people stop desiring to enjoy. Or maybe our appreciation for the beauty of a flower is simply heightened when it's the fruit of our investment in planting and nurturing it, which was motivated by our expectations and desire for it to be pretty.

> It may also be stamped upon in the next moment by a passer-by.

It has less chance to be trampled if my desire for it to live motivated me to take measures to maximize its chances of survival, such as planting it in a garden where it's less likely to be trampled, or watering it, or giving it better soil in which to grow.

There are probably good lessons to be learned from both points of view. Having expectations may be the necessary evil that drives us to change things for the better. But it also makes us less happy when they don't pan out. In fact, I think that's the message in the many sayings about changing what we can and accepting what we can't.

I wouldn't call myself a ruthless executor, but I do tend to ship more projects than not. The last startup I co-founded was acquired about 5 years ago, and my current startup is doing well so far. This is a long post, but it hopefully ties together by the end.

One thing I've noticed though is that it's hard to actually categorize people as ruthless executors and as being completely self-motivated without knowing the actual details of their situation. While it's true that some are better at it than others in relative sense, I also think it's true that a significant amount is affected by situation and occurrence.

What I mean is that, it's often easier to maintain motivation when people are using a product, giving it praise, when it's growing and/or making money, and a host of other things. You may see someone you think intrinsically has a lot of self-motivation, but maybe they're just better at recognizing and fueling themselves from small victories, and they know how to get those victories, small or large. This can work the other way too though, as sometimes these victories are complete luck and happen as unintended consequences from the things you do or people you know.

It's easy to look at two people who started two different projects two years ago; one has grown their team to 10 people and making a lot of waves, the other gave up on the project 6 months ago; and think the former is a ruthless executor and the latter is not. But maybe the former person had no more traction than the latter 6 months in, but they met someone at an event who connected them with their first paying-customer-to-be, then they met with them and got a lot of valuable feedback which motivated them to release an MVP especially for that customer, which then garnered two more customers, which motivated them to spend some time marketing, which led to more customers and so on. Maybe the former person would have given up after 8 months if none of this had happened. And yet the latter person didn't get any of this and yet still persevered and remained motivated for 18 months absent these external motivators. You could argue the latter person is more self-motivated than the former.

I guess the thing I'm getting at here is, there's a difference between being motivated and being self-motivated. Self-motivation is necessary to persevere through the times with not external motivators. But in the long-run, which is what you're asking about, it's not enough. You need external motivators, too. This is where co-founders can help. This is also where customers can help. Both of those are difficult to come by, and require knowing and meeting people, not just building things.

That said, there are a few things I've noticed that really help with self-motivation in the time that you need motivation, and here is a list that may be particularly appropriate at the "25-50% of the journey" mark. Again, these won't get you all the way there, but they may get you far enough to the next external motivation milestone to make a difference:

1. Get a graphic designer to create an actual, polished design for your interfaces and/or landing page. It's amazing to me, how much I and my team, as engineers, are motivated by how polished and "official" something looks. It can be a renewed wind in the sails.

2. Create documentation for it. This can be as simple as a README or as involved as a launch-ready landing page. Even just opening a new Google Doc to start writing is a big step forward, and you'll need it eventually anyway.

3. Once you've got some screenshots or the semblance of a README, post it on a local startup channel or message board. It might not yet be ready for prime time launch of Product Hunt or Hacker News, but I find local communities to be much more supportive of works in progress, and valuable sources of feedback early on.

4. Take a scheduled break from it. Having a separate hobby that has nothing to do with software can be helpful, whether it's sports, crafts, music, or whatever.

There are probably others, but this might be enough to get started. That's actually a great segue into another technique that helps me. Often times when I'm lacking in motivation to get something done, I find myself thinking of how far I am from the goalpost, and since I don't have a clear vision of how to get there, I stop working on it until the vision comes to me. This makes it hard to get back to it though, as the complete vision may never come until I make more progress... sometimes the vision doesn't come until I'm already there, at which point the vision is only clear in hindsight.

To counter this, I've started distinguishing between things that are only valuable when complete versus things that are valuable even when only partially completed. If part of it is useful, then go ahead and do that part.

The above list, for example, may be useful even though I only listed the first four things I could think of. I almost didn't write this post, because I don't have time to refine my thoughts or complete the list. But it's just a post on a forum, so anyone is free to read my long, unrefined post with an incomplete list, or skip it. So, I might as well post it in case it helps anyone. If enough people find it helpful, maybe I'll come back some day and use this as an initial outline to create a more complete list with a more refined message.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I'm not sure if it answers your question exactly, but these are some of the things I think about when considering my own ebb and flow with motivation.

I agree, and it's a bit too early on the timescale of publications to see a paper that re-analyzes all that has previously been published on the topic in light of this information.

That said, we've found around 2,500 articles which discuss SIRT6 [1], which is about 10 times more than the 267 articles that cite the retracted study according to the article. Based on this, I would assume most of what we do know about SIRT6 would still hold up.

[1] https://mastermind.genomenon.com/detail?disease=all%20diseas...

I had recently read that too, but it was more specifically about the idea of willpower rather than decision-making fatigue per se. Here is the article where I had seen this, though going back to it, I don't see citations to the studies it's mentioning:

> If ego depletion does turn out to be wrong, it’s striking how seemingly well-established it became before more rigorous investigations dispelled the assumptions it rests on. The story of its rise and fall also shows how faulty assumptions about willpower are not just misleading, but can be harmful. Related studies have shown that beliefs about willpower strongly influence self-control: Research subjects who believe in ego depletion (that willpower is a limited resource) show diminishing self-control over the course of an experiment, while people who don’t believe in ego depletion are steady throughout. What’s more, when subjects are manipulated into believing in ego depletion through subtly biased questionnaires at the outset of a study, their performance suffers as well.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/against-willpower

EDIT: It appears the studies are cited at the bottom of the article.

I think I understand what they were saying above, and I don't think it's the interpretation that dragonwriter makes in a sibling comment.

They weren't saying that kodz4 was using NVC. They were saying that the problem they have with NVC is that it has the potential to come off the same way that kodz4's comment has the potential to come off.

They were saying that kodz4's comment felt disingenuous to them because it asserts their opinion that NVC is good by stating it as fact, and that they would eventually realize this "fact" only once they have "a few big unrecoverable screwups in life" (thereby implying that since they don't like NVC, the only explanation is that they have never experienced such things in life).

The implication is that the reason for their disagreement on the value of NVC is because those who value it have learned more from life than those who don't value NVC.

And yet, the comment is worded empathetically, starting with, "It takes time." And it ends with the advice, "And then pick up the book," which could be interpreted as veiled condescension since it again assumes the person hasn't read the book, because if one knew the information contained in the book, there's no way they could disagree.

It re-frames the discussion of two alternate opinions, as an assumption of fact versus "haven't yet learned the fact." This is disingenuous, since it assumes one side must have more information than the other, instead of acknowledging the possibility that each side just has different information.

And I think they were simply saying that this disingenuous re-framing of discussions to further one's own goals or opinions in hopes the other side doesn't recognize the disingenuous re-framing of the discussion, is something that NVC and kotz4's comment had in common.

In the same way that the person using NVC may not be doing it disingenuously though, so to might kodz4 realize they're treating their own opinion as a fact. But that may also be the problem with such forms of communication, that they have the potential to be interpreted as disingenuous even when they're not.

I'm not sure any highly-scaled, mature application is on a standard unmodded anything stack.

Looks like the bullet gem does what you want.

https://semaphoreci.com/blog/2017/08/09/faster-rails-elimina...

https://github.com/flyerhzm/bullet

EDIT: It looks like this was already mentioned in another thread. I guess I don't understand the issue if that doesn't solve your problem.

There is technically a way to link/unlink Google Analytics from Google Ads:

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1704341?co=ADWO...

There are also ways to configure Google Analytics to fuzz IP addresses, essentially de-anonymizing them, as well as setting up explicit data retention periods.

EDIT (responding to grandparent comment): Even so, I'm not sure it's disingenuous to call products adtech which are provided by a company whose main business is advertising, and which are often configured to contribute to the advertising business, even if it's possible to use them for purposes other than advertising. At that point, maybe it's just adtech that's being repurposed.

I didn't downvote you, but from the article:

> The group said this could be used to "infer sensitive facts about [users'] health condition and life situation" and be resold to target ads. "These citizens have no clear way to prevent this leakage, understand where their data is sent, or to correct or delete the data," it said.

The second quoted sentence in particular, if true, would seem to be in violation of GDPR, more specifically several sections/articles within Chapter 3.

For what it's worth, I don't think Spotify is asking the European commission to impose regulations, but rather asking them to enforce the regulations they already have.

My read from the linked timeline is that Apple didn't block Spotify from the Apple Watch, but rather wouldn't provide the API necessary to Spotify for offline-mode.

I inferred this from the vague wording in the earlier points and the clarifications in the later points.

> When Apple launches their new Apple Watch, they dismiss our proposals and won’t work with us to develop an app for it.

Notice, they didn't say they were blocked. Also why would building an app for the watch necessitate a proposal to Apple that requires Apple to work with them directly? Wouldn't you instead build your app and submit it for approval? This is probably because the Apple Watch SDK didn't provide all the functionality Spotify wanted, and so Spotify was trying to get Apple to add new functionality to the SDK.

> We submit a new proposal for a streaming app directly on the Apple Watch. Apple declines

> With WatchOS 4, Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch

Again, doesn't say they were blocked, just that proposals were rejected and the provided functionality made it difficult/impossible to do what they wanted.

> With Watch OS 5, Apple allowed the Spotify team to start developing offline functionality

Was this the functionality Spotify was proposing for Apple to make possible all along? In other words, was this the missing part of the SDK that Spotify had kept proposing to Apple and having rejected (not the app itself, which they didn't want to build without this functionality)?

EDIT: I'm also not saying they didn't build the app and submit it and have it rejected. They just never actually say that in the timeline.

> They aren't, as far as I know, drastically undercutting the prices of their services to levels that aren't sustainable for other companies to compete.

The linked Spotify page says exactly the opposite.

> Because Apple Music doesn’t have to pay the 30% IAP charge, they are able to hugely undercut us and charge €9.99. To our fans, this just looked like we were ripping you off

Genomenon | Senior Software Developer | Ann Arbor, MI | On-site

We're building a database of genomic information, called Mastermind, that facilitates data curation and genome interpretation for diagnosis and treatment on the clinical side, as well as for targeted drug discovery in phramacogenomics.

Ideally, someone with full-stack experience would provide the most flexibility in terms of responsibility, as we're an early-stage (funded) startup. We've generated a very large database of genomic information which many are already finding valuable, and we are growing and have customers, but we have lofty ambitions and a large vision for what we can accomplish.

Experience with Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Go is helpful.

https://www.genomenon.com

Reach out to me at schwartz@genomenon.com.

Because you're paying for it with your money. They can afford to take a hit (and can afford the insurance for such losses) because of the fees they charge you directly, and the money they make utilizing your principle for other purposes while it's there.

I'm wondering if it's something really simple, like comparing the unique number of callers versus the total number who have accepted the call.

Imagine a method for group calling that returns whether or not the call should be considered active or not by seeing if the number of callers is equal to the number who have accepted the call. But now imagine the method that tallies up the number of callers does a unique count by phone number, while the method that tallies how many people have accepted the call does not.

Since adding your own number is adding a caller who has already accepted a call, you end up with unique_callers (2, you and them) == total_accepted (2, you and you).

This could be tested by adding a third person to a group call twice (if iOS will let you do that) instead of adding yourself to the call.

Furthermore, if the interface on the recipient's phone only looks at whether or not they've accepted the call, that would explain why the call doesn't auto-accept on their end and go into the call before they've accepted or rejected the call.

Genomenon | Senior Software Developer | Ann Arbor, MI | On-site

We're building a database of genomic information, called Mastermind, that facilitates data curation and genome interpretation for diagnosis and treatment on the clinical side, as well as for targeted drug discovery in phramacogenomics.

Ideally, someone with full-stack experience would provide the most flexibility in terms of responsibility, as we're an early-stage (funded) startup. We've generated a very large database of genomic information which many are already finding valuable, and we are growing and have customers, but we have lofty ambitions and a large vision for what we can accomplish.

Experience with Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Go is helpful.

https://www.genomenon.com

Reach out to me at schwartz@genomenon.com.

It may just be the difference between how many people a video is relevant to and how deeply it impacts them. Things like tech, history, physics, and DIY channels each have fewer people who connect with the content than something like how to decorate nails.

One explanation could be the amount of investment one has to make to fully appreciate, and thus get value from, these different topics. For example, appreciating a "just for laugh" video generally takes less effort and specific experience than appreciating a technical video. This is related I think to the Law of Triviality [1].

At the end of the day though, I think there's somewhat of an inverse relationship between how many people you can impact with a given message (or video) and how deeply you can impact them. To impact someone more deeply requires deeper insight and shared context gained through experience on the viewer's part to interpret and appreciate the video, which necessarily narrows the target audience.

The system that disproportionately incentivizes the less deep content is probably the fact that the incentives are built around numbers of views, which doesn't discriminate between deep versus cursory impact on the viewer. If overall value of a video were calculated as number of people impacted multiplied by the depth of the impact, there would be more incentives to create impactful videos. However, most incentives currently reward only the number of people impacted irrespective of the depth of impact, and so it's much easier to produce videos that impact a lot of people with little depth.

Of course, this trivializes how difficult it is to actually build a large audience, which is difficult to begin with. Personally, I think they all have their place. Sometimes I want something stimulating to watch, sometimes I want something brainless.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Genomenon | Senior Software Developer | Ann Arbor, MI | On-site

We're building a database of genomic information, called Mastermind, that facilitates data curation and genome interpretation for diagnosis and treatment on the clinical side, as well as for targeted drug discovery in phramacogenomics.

Ideally, someone with full-stack experience would provide the most flexibility in terms of responsibility, as we're an early-stage (funded) startup. We've generated a very large database of genomic information which many are already finding valuable, and we are growing and have customers, but we have lofty ambitions and a large vision for what we can accomplish.

Experience with Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Go is helpful.

https://www.genomenon.com

Reach out to me at schwartz@genomenon.com.

There are many ways to make HTML tables responsive:

https://css-tricks.com/responsive-data-tables/

A library I built called Dynatable doesn't do that! It uses semantic, standard table elements for all serializing and rendering of tabular data.

We've since rewritten Dynatable to use vanilla JS and are in the process of renaming it to simply Dynatable instead of jQuery Dynatable.

https://github.com/alfajango/jquery-dynatable

https://www.dynatable.com/

I've been telling people this for years. Automated tests are a good way to ensure that updates and iterations don't break existing expectations. But expectations come from users, so if you don't have users, you don't have expectations, you only have guesses. You're usually better off getting your guesses out in front of users so you can establish expectations, and then build your automated tests around that.

I say "usually" of course, because there are certain things that constitute expectations that precede users, such as apps that handle sensitive information. Expecting that the app handles sensitive information appropriately before users confirm that they want their sensitive information handled appropriately would properly not be considered a guess.