1,010 karma · joined August 7, 2014
> Unless Touch-ID is disabled for something (long sleep, location change, reboot, etc.) It never failed to recognize my finger.
Touch-ID will periodically demand the password. I've always guessed this is done so you don't end up forgetting it. It also demands the password on reboot.
I wonder if the person you are replying to is rebooting a lot.
And one of the features of the Moonlander over the Ergodox EZ is it's thinner. Mechanical keyboards seem to be bulky by default.
https://www.apple.com/ca/macbook-pro-13/specs/
> Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colours and:
>One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
I'm curious what the I/O situation will be. Will it be able to output to two 4k screens or not. The 13-inch cannot, so I'm not holding my breath.
I wrote so many more small scripts for myself. Since I didn't need to consult a syntax manual every, the friction was low.
Email is by far the most broken software experience of my life. I've been thinking that for a while.
Now by broken, I don't mean the software doesn't work as intended. I mean that the software can't let me manage things the way I want.
The alternatives (eg MS Teams) by very much not perfect, but at least get me closer than I can with an email client.
Here are some specific things I find suck:
1. There isn't any that indicates why I'm receiving this email. Sometimes that's not obvious. Could it be I'm BCCed? Or maybe I'm on a mailing list, that's on a mailing list, that's on a mailing list? Or maybe it's both!
1a. If I receive an email due to being BCCed, my email filters won't work at all. 1b. In the case of a mailing list containing a mailing list, I have to manually create separate rules for both the parent and child lists and keep them in sync.
2. Email filters scale poorly. Hence why I end up needing to refactor them twice a year. This analogy is a bit of a stretch but: email filters are like programming where everything must be in a giant switch statement, but you are also allowed if statements and goto for extra control flow. It's not a perfect analogy, it breaks as you look more closely at the details, but I think both result in similar problems cropping up.
3. You are stuck choosing between highly limited server rules that affect all clients, or client only rules that only change things for the current client. I want to be able to look at my email from my desktop client, my phone, or a web browser and see the same thing in all 3 places. So I am stuck with the crippled server rules.
4. Smart folders come close to being able to replace the majority of my email rules, but not quite. The implementations I've played with are all missing something. I do think they'd be an improvement in the cases they are applicable.
5. Emails don't contain any hints at what kind of email they are. I believe they could, via headers, but they don't. An email is an email is an email. Well, every client I've used has special handling for meeting invites. I think this should be expanded. I find in practical use there are a few "types" or "kinds" of emails. Things like a broadcast vs a question vs a meeting invite vs a request for volunteers vs etc. Having a bunch of different types of messages baked in with different defaults for each, would likely remove half the email rules I have.
6. Marked as read and notifications are too simple. But here I at least understand that addressing the issue gets complex very quickly[0]. Maybe being able to snooze an email would help me here, but I've never used a client with snooze. Do these clients with snooze generally let you see the queue of snoozed items and process them early if you'd like to?
7. I can't block people. Creating a rule that auto-deletes emails is not quite the same as blocking.
Besides these technical ones, there are a few cultural ones as well.
1. Email has a culture of BCCing people "to be polite". As mentioned in 1a above, my rules don't work on these emails, so they end up being less polite in practice.
2. Email has a culture of including everyone who might be relevant just in case. Mostly this just drives the signal to noise ratio down. It is end of business hours for me now, and I've received 175 emails so far today. I maybe needed to read 15 of those.
3. Since email rules exist, people will default to blaming the receiver for not having a rule. If I spam @everyone or @here in MS Teams or Slack people blame me for spamming. In email land, I find people will first get mad at the receivers for not liking the spam I am sending them. Bizarre!
4. A portion of the email world takes a hardline stance on email by asynchronous communication. Sometimes you need a synchronous conversation. Sometimes you have something that is urgent. Yes, I'm aware flow exists and can be quite brittle for some people. It is sometimes worth breaking it.
That was quite cathartic to write. Email has been the least pleasant piece of my software life for years now. With work, I just have to deal with it as best as I can (you'll notice most complaints above are work centric). But outside of work I definitely try to minimize my usage.
[0] - Slack's notification flowchart. As complex as it seems, I don't consider this over-engineered. https://d34u8crftukxnk.cloudfront.net/slackpress/prod/sites/...
They could probably argue that their product is adding protection above current standards, and a deactivated vest would merely reduce the rider back to the safety level considered standard.
I dislike a subscription based airbag vest, but I really don't think they'll get sued over that.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/megathread-levi...
I've been playing the game for 5+ years, and the player base has been noticeable toxic to the devs for most of the time. Probably the worst of any games I've played in that time.
I agree with the premise put forth in part one: analogies are better for illustration than for argument.
In parts 2 and 3 they use two examples of bad analogies which I think aren't very good. They are both moral issues. In both cases, the counterargument is that the issue used in the analogue is too morally different from the original issue. But to the people in both examples they used that analogy because they think it they are morally comparable.
Jimmy likely thinks that smoking extra pot is about the same as eating icecream. That's probably why he chose the analogy. I imagine it is similar for the comparison between drug use and pregnancy out of wedlock. The OP's argument relies on everybody thinking everybody has similar moral values to themself.
It would have been better to stick to the ethernet vs road system analogy and used it to demonstrate his points in parts 2 and 3.
A good scripting/automation api would be nice. Being able to make my editor perform certain issue updates makes my life easier.
For a while, it was really hard to go to the theater. Everything interesting was only in 3D. I didn't want to pay more for an experience I liked less than the previous status quo.
I've been listening to the Cortex podcast recently. It is a productivity podcast by CGP Grey (youtuber) and Myke Hurley (runs a podcasting company). There is a big focus on the tech they use and how they make the most of it. There is a large focus their phones and iPads.
They both would probably agree that the garden-path with modern smartphones is a distracting mess. But where they differ is that assuming that means all hope is lost. They are quite advanced users of the systems they use but the basics can be done with only a bit of effort and will make a big impact.
* Go through your apps and purge ones you aren't using anymore.
* Go through the apps you chose to keep and explicitly set the notification settings for them. A lot of distracting apps are distracting because they use notifications to remind you that they exist.
* Remove time-sink apps from your home screen. You'll use them less if opening them takes more effort.
* Use the spots where time-sinks apps used to exist for apps you want to get into the habit of using. You'll have a few days of muscle-memory to exploit to your benefit.
* Take a look at what your calendar and reminder apps can do and start making use of them. They consider these two apps to be the core of the productivity software, and the basic apps will serve people for a long time.
* Look at Screen Time (or the Android equivalent) and see what it can do to further help you. You can set app limits and notification free periods (with exceptions). An interesting metric that is worth periodically checking is Pickups. This tracks what is the first app you switch to after unlocking your phone. It can be handy for identifying troublesome apps.
There is a lot of simple stuff that can make a big difference. That entire list can probably be done in the time it took me to write this. It seems so weird then to see how much of Hacker News is utterly defeatist and doesn't try.
If this did make you curious about the podcast, two episodes I think would make good jumping in points would be:
* #101 Productivity 101: An attempt to cover all the basics for someone just getting into productivity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eSCldom1Yc https://www.relay.fm/cortex/101
* #109 State of the Apps: This is a yearly overview of the apps they are using and what they get from them. They include screenshots of their homescreens in the shownotes which can make some useful inspiration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIiOfhlBB4A https://www.relay.fm/cortex/109
If it is dark mode, it is light text on a dark background. With light mode, it is reasonably dark text on a light background.
Maybe on Firefox it is taking the light-mode backgroud with the dark-mode text.
It really is.
> I'm kind of an anxious person and someone moving that aggressively to block my path sets off my fight or flight very badly.
I really think that is a correct response. In a lot of cases, the sale comes closed to guaranteed once they get you into the conversation. They can lean into things like guilt, social etiquette, the your desire to look nice in order to make you feel like you have to buy in order to leave. That's why they choose sell by interrupting people on the streets instead of via other means.
I'd like to throw in interruptions by people who are completely sober but have something they want to sell. Going to get your coffee and having someone say "hey, let's have a chat really quick" then reply "wow, ignore me like I didn't just talk to you" when you ignore them is irritating as hell. In the pre-covid days people in my office would go to the Starbucks that was a half block further away just to avoid those people. Note: if a homeless person was this aggressive, the police would definitely get involved.
Also while calling it aggression is a bit of a stretch, I noticed the block that surrounds a couple of the busiest transit stations are noticeably less polite. Things like smaller personal space, more tolerance for cutting people off, less "excuse me" or "pardon me". It makes sense in the context, but if you are passing by it could be a hassle that you'll put a bit of effort into avoiding.
* Most layman diet advice is awful. There is scientifically backed advice. I think most people could understand it. It seems to not be common knowledge.
* A lot of people "backseat drive" other people's diets. Since most people carry awful advice, this is extremely unhelpful in practice.
* Some people have a crab bucket mentality towards others losing weight, and almost go out of their way to sabotage.
This book[0] goes through how the metabolic system works, how it is supposed to self regulate, and how it can miss-regulate. It also talks about what it is about our food since the late 1970's that has changed to cause this to happen more frequently.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Hungry-Brain-Outsmarting-Instincts-Ove...
EDIT: I want to add a bit. This book goes through how the metabolic system of humans is supposed to work, and it can get technical at times. It also goes over the specific traits that certain foods have that can be problematic, which gives enough info to make a self-improved diet. It backs up everything it can with specific citations of scientific experiments.
Consider this variation of your Scenario A: You make explicit goals to read 3 relevant books, take a sailing class, and save $10,000 for a boat. You find yourself in mid October having only read 1 book and saved up $2000. You end up not sailing until year 4 even though year 2 was certainly achievable.
A better variation of Scenario A: Breaking the big goal into smaller ones can prevent this type of procrastination. Instead of save $10000 by end of year, make 26 goals to save $385 every payday. Then make a goal to sign up for the sailing classes by June. Then based on that June date, decide to read book 1 by Feb 28, book two by April 30, and book 3 by June 30.
In the second variation, I assert you'd be much less likely to procrastinate to the point that your year end goal becomes unachievable.
Perhaps you assumed in Scenarios A and C would do that. Your post would make more sense that way. But I find most people do not do any breakdown. They'd just set the end of year results as the goal the reach a point where they realize it is impossible to achieve any of it.
I've only been on the interviewer side a few times (roughly 10), but even then I've run into 2 candidates that couldn't code.
If interviewers are screening candidates for certain attributes (regardless of how well those attributes map to being good at the job) you should expect most candidates to lack those attributes. Candidates who have them get hired after a few interviews, candidates who don't have to do many more interviews to find a job (or get discouraged).
A lot of the changeovers in NA seem to be leaning towards keeping DST year round. As a Canadian, the idea is certainly appealing. Currently it gets dark about 45 mins before work ends. Having a bit of sunlight when you leave is nice.
But as pointed out below, sticking with DST is probably worse for highschoolers.