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Conversely, I was surprised to learn that the temperature sensor introduced on the Pixel 8 Pro in 2023 was only removed this year. No one knew why it was there in the first place.

There was a "Job Spotter" app in the late 2010s where you would take pictures of help wanted signs and get paid small amounts, a weird bridge between online job boards and physical signs. I made $50 in five months, then the pandemic killed it. During our lunch hour, my coworkers and I would race to each storefront to see who could get their submission first.

https://theamericangenius.com/app-pays-snapping-pics-help-wa...

Yes, if you go to a junior college or night school, you will discover what an actual busy schedule looks like and it's not sports clubs and volunteer activities taken for the sole purpose of inflating your college admissions letter.

Some of those students have 40 hour jobs, some night shift, that they can't skip or else they don't have a home or school anymore. Others have kids that can't be neglected.

People called them "weeder" classes in my university.

But it's better earlier rather than later. The consequences aren't severe and you can change majors, lessen your course load, or stop those volunteer opportunities. That's part of learning how to be an adult.

I knew a few people my freshmen year that were put on academic probation. They turned out all right after making some drastic changes. Others simply disappeared during the break.

> The idea is to make the device easy to carry around the home with one hand.

So their target audience has a large enough home that they need a completely separate device since they have areas that aren't covered either by smart speakers or their phone. But the device has little functionality outside the home, because it requires talking to it which usually cannot be done in public. How large is this group of wealthy shut-ins?

The previous "smart pins" made more sense. The first thing I would want to do with this new device would be to put a chain around it and hang it around my neck, but it seems specifically designed to not do that.

But you will have a much better idea what to buy, when you have first-hand experience with the weather and are surrounded by locals who are adequately prepared.

I tried layering when I traveled somewhere cold, where the high was just above freezing. I felt foolish whenever I went indoors and had to peel off three or four layers in order to feel comfortable.

The next time I went, I brought a proper winter jacket. When I was indoors, I took off my jacket. It was simpler and more comfortable, both outdoors and indoors. You cannot replicate a winter jacket with a rain shell and a bunch of layers.

The Bay Area has a lot of microclimates but none of them are really cold nor hot or humid.

Also, old homes don't have the outlets for heat pumps. If you're lucky, it's just a breaker, wire, and outlet. If you're unlucky, it requires an electrical panel upgrade or worse.

Most modern open-world games have waypoint indicators and on-screen minimaps, if not teleportation, because memorizing and navigating and traversing through the video game map is not particularly fun.

There weren't a lot of taxis outside of major cities. I think widespread GPS allows ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft to exist in suburbs and other places where taxis weren't a thing before, because it dramatically lowers the bar.

It doesn't really matter how much you spend if the leadership is incompetent.

Except the one at Costco, which will still be $1.50 somehow.

And if you know the new owners will screw up your ice cream brand, you can wait a decade and do it all over again, leveraging your new wealth, knowledge, and connections to make it easier.

Well this was 15 years ago, all companies were trying to jump on the social media bandwagon (Google Plus launched in 2011), and both companies and users had to re-learn what privacy meant.

It's a portable device that can't be used outside the house or near other people?

A lot of tech is overfit to the product manager role in tech companies. One of the side effects of living in a bubble.

My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.

I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.

I found this doozy from someone trying to test out the feature:

> After looking over Google’s advice, my key takeaway was that thieves are in much better shape than me, and run both longer and faster than this nerdy writer has in more than two decades.

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-theft-detection-loc...

Personally, the main situation I'm concerned about is on a bus or train, where someone grabs your phone right and exits right before the door closes. But I already avoid spending a lot of time on the street with my head buried in my phone.

As a visitor, it's probably impossible to know the real cost of living is in different areas, because you're not employed locally, paid local wages, or paying rent and utilities. You are a foreigner with foreign money staying in hotels.

Ergo users are never going to be happy.

I'd complain about the lack of thumb keys, and then the flatness, and suddenly we're talking about a completely different keyboard.

Does a Mac even recognize the screenshot button?

I take lots of screenshots and videos and add them to PRs, which clearly communicate what has changed.

Probably because you need separation from the culture to fully evaluate and appreciate it. If they interviewed someone from Japan, that person would probably complain about how un-livable Japan has become. Like the subway trains are always full and they have to wait five minutes for the next one.

Google specifically has a track record. You could have made the same argument about social media (Google+) a decade ago.

The pricing was 30% more the last few times I used them.

Higher hoods are worse, not better, for pedestrians.

At least in my area, Waymos are always more expensive than Ubers.

If you did exercise 1 hour a day for 6 days a week, you'd probably be well above the average exercise time for normal adults.

This is written in 2019 but it may as well be from 2026 (data centers).

If we were in a total war, we'd convert every car, glass, microchip, and aircraft factory to a weapons factory, as well as a draft. But the US is convinced it can fight overseas wars without disturbing the civilian manufacturing industry, as it has for decades.

I was killing a lot of LEDs in recessed cans. I replaced them with integrated retrofits, which aren't designed around a bulb shape that fries its own electronics, and aren't made as cheaply as possible.

Here's a nice dim-to-warm recessed: https://www.homedepot.com/p/HALO-RL56-Series-5-6-in-Recessed...

Usually the only people who have the free time to go to these meetings are retirees, it's not matching the demographics of the neighborhood.