jonpurdy

I'm just a casual observer, but Japan had a "lost decade" post-bubble where average inflation and growth rates averaged 0%, but this has extended to a "lost two decades" now.

(Side note: Japan's cost of living has also not increased with the rest of the world, which is why it's much more affordable to travel there these days than it was before.)

One thing I don't understand (due to my own lack of knowledge) is related to real estate. Japan has been excellent by supplying enough medium and high density housing to keep housing prices relatively low and ensure individuals and families have access to that basic need. Presumably partially because of this (also because people generally don't want used houses), housing there isn't really considered an investment because the house is amortized over a 20-40 year period and demolished at the end of it. For those who know, how does this affect inflation and growth rates? (And feel free to correct anything I'm incorrect about.)

This looks... awesome, from a first glance. Takes up more screen real estate for sure, but it seems like a cool way to inject a bit of fun into remote work.

I can imagine some people would totally not be into this, but I'm not one of them.

Parent here. I suppose my beliefs are more nuanced than what I specified in my post.

> You should use the UI elements that make sense. It doesn't make sense for Maya or Blender or Photoshop to constrain themselves to whatever Microsoft picked out for them to use.

The nuance in my beliefs is that if UI elements aren't available for the function, then apps should absolutely build custom UI. I agree with you there.

It's when you have a basic app that can entirely use native controls and chooses to forego them to do everything custom that I have a problem with.

For my particular example, we were building a cryptocurrency wallet for a new blockchain. It was simple enough to use entirely native controls but definitely didn't need a custom UI.

As a Technical PM, I fought against a former boss when they wanted to forego native controls because they wanted their app to be branded, because without a custom look they felt that their app would not be unique and memorable.

If an app can't survive on its usefulness alone, it probably shouldn't exist.

As a user, if an app doesn't have a native UI, I disregard it unless I need it for a specific and mandatory use.

From what I remember reading when Wehe came out, ISPs in Spain and Portugal (and Brazil?) were already providing data capped plans with options to uncap particular services for a small fee. So you'd get an (example) 100GB plan and pay $1-2/mo for each service you want excluded from the cap (Netflix, or whatever).

IANAL but I'm sure this was/is legal in those jurisdictions, which indicates a total disregard for net neutrality there.

I agree that building and demoing something small is key. The larger and more complex a project will be, the harder it is to estimate.

I’ve been trying to distill this into a framework that is accessible to both development and business folks [0]. I've used it a few times and it has resulted in a few projects getting cancelled due to a massive difference in initially expected cost and post-analysis expected cost.

0 - It's basically just Scrum oriented towards providing upfront estimates. https://jonpurdy.com/pm-framework/how-to-quickly-plan-and-es...

This is a great example of why I still prefer torrenting films and TV shows as opposed to using my wife’s Netflix sub: the pirated media is better!

Netflix and Hulu and competing with easier to use and more flexible pirated media, whether they like it or not. The consistency and flexibility of the VLC interface (or whatever media player you choose) is vastly better than whatever features a Netflix PM is trying to push to juice their metrics.

(I won’t even get into unskippable screens on Blu-Ray discs which are removed on the pirate version.)

I used the MenuMeters forks up until a few months ago when I purchased iStatMenus. Love it and well worth the money, especially since I can used the unified view (so my widgets don't get moved around arbitrarily by menu bar reorganization).

Another data point. Tried to get a discount in our Inner Sunset 1BR that we paid $3250 for. Other units in the same building listed for the past few months for $2700 with 2 months free (effectively $2250).

Denied a decrease (citing CA Fair Housing and not giving anyone a decrease) so we paid 1 months rent to break the lease. Now living in a 2BR by the beach for the same price as before with 50% more space, W/D, garage.

Old apartment went from ~10 vacant 1BR to ~25 vacant 1BR listings during the past couple of months during our negotiation and move.

I, too, vastly prefer purchasing outside of the App Store to the point where I’ll often not bother if I don’t absolutely need the app.

Too many times I’ve tried to run App Store apps and been bothered with my Apple ID. I prefer the decentralization and not relying so much on Apple’s cloud services.

Trivial to pull up old license info from 1Password or email if necessary.

I wrote an article a few months back about this(1) and post when it's directly relevant. Main takeaways: audio is more important than video; get that correct first.

Easiest thing is using a cheap headset microphone. Advanced noice cancellation algorithms with a great microphone placed far away can't complete with the physics of having a mic close to your month.

Since publishing, I also found Webcam Settings, an app for Mac that lets you adjust specific settings on UVC webcams. I use it to correct the horrible auto white balance on my C920 (naturally looks way too blue).

I just wish Apple would make a new version of their iSight camera. Something with a similar physical shape with a cropped DSLR sensor and a fast lens. Basically, same quality as a mirrorless with a fixed f/2 lens but in a single small package.

1 - https://jonpurdy.com/2020/03/how-to-improve-your-zoomskype-t...

Used to shoot sports back in uni, circa 2008 (Just amazing how much things have changed since then).

IIRC, the pro lenses (white Canons) focused faster as a result of them letting more light in, as well as having faster motors (USM), though mid-range lenses had these as well.

Around that time, the body also made a big difference since the 1D-series had ~45 AF points, and the lower and mid-range bodes had 9-20 AF points. Not sure if this is still relevant but I think even low end bodies have a ton of AF points these days.

Canadian living in USA. My brain is regularly fried by healthcare here, it ends up being a simple high level equation.

My out of pocket max per year is around $6000 USD, and my salary is double what I was (under)paid in Toronto, and taxes are a bit lower here (CA).

So the take home pay is mid-5-figures more, and worst-case scenario healthcare is mid-4-figures, so it balances out very favourably for my situation (anyone in tech with a full-time job, basically).

(Of course, those who aren't well-paid in tech have a much worse situation and I can't imagine how difficult that must be.)

I'm the GP, and I also switched to iCloud Drive. But thanks to a comment above I've moved my _sync folder back to Dropbox and use Maestral as my Mac Dropbox client and it's been working great for the past 18 hours or so.

I switched _sync back because Alfred and other apps warned that using iCloud Drive for sync doesn't work great because it doesn't always update properly, and I've found that to be the case.

This has been ongoing for me for... I don't even know how long. At least Mojave, maybe earlier.

Thank you! The reason I ditched Dropbox was because of the bloated Mac client. Maestral looks like it might bring back the 2010-esque Dropbox client feeling (fast and efficient).

I mentioned above that I switched away; iCloud Drive is pretty mediocre since syncing sometimes doesn’t happen instantly and there’s no way to force-sync. I’ll probably move my Mac synced preferences back to Dropbox if this works well. Though I’m also worried about them deprecating their APIs since that seems to be a popular move these days.

I don't meant to take away from the article, but it makes me sad to see such awesome people building and writing about really cool bespoke solutions. It's obvious that Arun knows their stuff and is able to communicate it clearly.

The sad thing is that Dropbox Product has so heavily dropped the ball that users like myself (from back in 2009) have switched away in droves over the past few years.

I understand that Dropbox core functionality wouldn't have been enough to multiply the valuation of the company to what investors expected. But it would have been nice to not jam collaboration features into the product and mess up the simple, platform-native UI with it's current abomination. I'd pay $10/mo forever if I could get the 2010-esque Dropbox Mac client and sync service back since it's way better than anything else (especially iCloud).

I would assume that there usually isn't an immediate economic benefit of doing so. Fortunately, we live in a society that is much more inclusive than it used to be. As Tim Cook said, "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI".

Aside from the monetary benefits (or lack thereof), if one product focuses on accessibility and another doesn't, the small subset of users who need those features may encourage or force a larger number of users to use the more accessible product. So long-term, I think there is a benefit, even aside from helping make society more inclusive.

I’m one of them. Bought a used 2015 13” back in 2017 just to get the old keyboard back. Sold it a few months ago for the 2020 13”.

I read the beta and the final copy. Great to see it evolve based on real feedback from hiring managers and job seekers.

I used the advice to spruce up my resume a bit and tailor it to specific employers. But more importantly, it helped me know when I was “done”. I had spent a lot of time making small optimizations without knowing how effective they were. After reading the book, I knew when to stop.

Highly recommended!

The only squeak I hear is if I sit down or get up from the chair and put the weight of my hands on the seat. No squeaking when just sitting in it, even when adjusting tension and recline.

I was in the market for a desk and chair recently. Long story short: sitting at a floor table and on the couch all day was causing issues with my back and hamstrings.

I did look into the AltWork setup mentioned. At $7000 (or $4500 for manual option), it's quite expensive but not that bad if amortized over a 20 year period of working 8 hours a day. Investment in long-term health is worth it if the product works as it should and lasts the expected amount of time.

Aside from my wife not wanting it in our apartment (I understand), there isn't enough evidence that zero gravity workstations improve health versus just a good ergonomic chair (ie. an adjustable chair that fits your body) and desk (adjustable and gets low enough to support 90° elbow angle without hitting your legs). In all cases, one needs to take breaks to stretch and move around, not to mention daily exercise.

Went with a HM Embody (armless) chair and IKEA Skarsta hand crank desk instead; zero regrets and I wish I got them earlier (especially the Embody)!

I wrote an article with some overlap with Ben's article about this back in March[1], so I've been experimenting with trying to get better audio and video outside of Zoom and other apps.

They tend to optimize for the lowest common denominator. Despite having a nice headworn mic and earbuds, great webcam and good lighting setup, Zoom and other apps tend to optimize for using as little bandwidth as possible so my audio doesn't sound nearly as good as it could.

Ben makes some good points that I didn't mention or consider myself: - I wasn't aware of Zoom's "use original audio" feature so I'll need to give that a try. - Dedicated monitor is great; having a presentation monitor allows you to keep your shared screen clean but still have notes and other stuff available. - Open back headphones to hear your own voice: good idea if you have a dedicated space to yourself, but not if you share the space with anyone else

The biggest problem with this is other people: you won't get any benefits from others if they have a bad setup. So it requires everyone to have a reasonable setup (even just a headset makes a huge difference).

[1] https://jonpurdy.com/2020/03/how-to-improve-your-zoomskype-t...

> You send an email to a prospect, that person quickly follows up saying they are not interested, but 3 months later, they reopen that same email, you get a live read notification, you instantly take your phone and follow up. You win.

This is awful and precisely the reason I set my mail clients to not open remote content by default since I started using email decades ago.

If this exact situation occurred to me as a prospect, I would likely never deal with that company again.

There is some middle ground between the "just turn it off" folks and the article.

For me, by default I deny notifications to apps. Only communications (like WhatsApp/Signal/iMessages/email client) and stuff that NEEDS to notify me (like UptimeRobot). For email, I only get notifications when emails hit a certain filter. For WhatsApp, I mute all the groups.

Email is a pain to deal with and unwanted email saps attention and time from one's day. One of the reasons I use individual email aliasing for every company[1] is because I wanted to avoid wasting cumulative hours or days over my lifetime managing unwanted emails.

Lots of companies (big and small) don't unsubscribe me properly and I end up getting emails a year or two later. It's nice to have the nuclear options of deleting the alias if needed.

So yes, it's relatively minor compared to internet infrastructure products and tooling that Cloudflare is responsible for, but it's still an issue that erodes trust in a company.

[1] Detailed here: https://jonpurdy.com/2020/06/using-email-aliasing-to-detect-...

An interesting dichotomy between big cities vs small towns has come up and being discussed the replies to this. Interesting that it is a very North America-centric perspective.

Go to South Korea or Japan and you'll find rural villages that are more densely packed than cities of 100,000+ in USA and Canada. This density allows for shops and convenience stores to be easily accessible and walkable in every neighbourhood, which nudges towards social interaction. Rather than sprawling everywhere, neighbourhoods are built with the same density as elsewhere (with small apartments, large apartment towers, and/or multifamily housing).

On the other end, megacities like Seoul and Tokyo are really just cities of many neighbourhoods with similar density to the rural towns, with a few areas that are more densely built and populated than others (typically centered around geographical or transportation features). Most neighbourhoods in Seoul or Tokyo feel the exact same as any neighbourhoods in "second tier" cities. (In fact, many "suburbs" of Seoul are more densely packed than Seoul itself due to legacy building heights!) But the smaller towns just don't have subway access to megacity-only amenities.

I suspect that a lot of folks who enjoy North American big city living would do just as well in a smaller East Asian town (aside from cultural and language difficulties).

Anecdotal of course, but a couple of jobs ago I did on-call rotations for a week on every few weeks. I got paid some additional money and time off, but the psychological impact was too great for me and it just wasn't worth it.

Bill Atkinson’s PhotoCard has been around on iOS since 2010. $1 to get a 4x6 print mailed anywhere in USA or Canada.

Yes, the Bill Atkinson from the original Macintosh team. He’s also been a photographer for decades and presumably used his printing knowledge to get the meatspace logistics set up.

It was already a dire situation running a Mac with eGPU or a Hackintosh even before the RTX 30-series announcement, and much more dire after that.

The likeliness of Apple allowing NVIDIA to produce Mac drivers again is close to zero. It’d be nice for AMD to be able to compete with GPUs again.