nmstoker

It didn't seem that obvious a term as you described it here, but a bit of googling gave the background:

It's effectively that the more desirable elements leave, the less desirable parts stay behind and get more concentrated... So the bad employees are the salt in the dead sea

It was coined by this chap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Webster#Career

Aha, that's a great reassurance then! ;-)

Very nice site.

Out of interest, are they automatically classed as light or dark? For instance by some heuristic or algorithm. I saw it's reporting some contrast measures which is handy.

I wonder how feasible it might be to use some colour distance heuristics to find similar themes: then if you find one you mostly like but it's slightly off due to some preference, you can still easily browse that "neighborhood"

Ah, the joys of being a passenger with six others in a 2CV! Cornering was fun as he wheels ground into the wheel arch like something from a gladiator film!

Nice. I know your comment was on the technical points, but it definitely under sells the game!

I hadn't heard, but you're right. And they've clearly taken account of the negative impact a particular group was having on the ecosystem.

From the FAQ on https://hacktoberfest.com/ :

> Do I still submit pull requests to earn swag?

> Pull requests and merge requests will no longer count toward Hacktoberfest rewards. It’s easier than ever to submit low-effort spam PRs to projects, so we’re listening to maintainer feedback and no longer actively incentivizing PRs. That being said, we certainly still encourage you to work on open source and share your work with the world during Hacktoberfest. Our new format focuses on learning and building together while reducing the burden of low-effort contributions on maintainers.

I very nearly didn't check this out because I didn't realise the focus was going to be much more general OS, but it's a great piece, well thought through.

I recall all the chat, maybe twelve to fifteen years back when Asian use of QRs took off, thanks to ready availability of mobiles. There were impassioned arguments that it might be fine in those markets but it would never catch on in the West because it was not appealing to consumers who wouldn't want them all over magazines and menus. I never bought that, as fairly quickly the phones came with built in recognition and it was just a matter of time. We saw at table ordering thanks to COVID and many products added QR for consumers even if the shops hadn't pushed it (in the UK at least)

They barely address the why, skipping over any serious detail with a comment about "designs that weren't practical before"

And there's no discussion whatsoever about whether the negative impact on the mental model necessary for understanding Excel is worth the benefit for the unlocked cases.

I don't see why you can't just represent the cases with the existing structures and deal with that cost in cases that need it, because it keeps a simple mental model. Arrays are one of those things that mess with the simplicity here too - I'm sure there are plenty of hardcore Excel fans who find them trivial and/or essential but they're never intuitive and lead to all sorts of mistakes/delays if your spreadsheet is used by less expert types.

Keeping it simple seems a better direction in general.

Yes, I wish there was more focus on correct pronunciation over emotion. You need a mechanism to control/guide the voice which gets under balance right between not having to specify everything and still letting you fix certain cases (where you know a certain sense of a word is meant)

It's going to run a form of Android so you should be able to install those apps you need

I don't think that's a core part of the minimalism. It's about the overall aims (less interruption etc) and their Minimal OS (based on Android) and the fairly simple launcher.

It has issues but I would rather see reform of patents first. Given the greater pace of developments now, effectively they now represent a proportionately longer period now than in the past. And they are too broad, along with various abuses (especially around novelty)

It strikes me as risky, if the item is in any way delicate or has absorbed water at all. But I'm no ceramics expert!

I genuinely love mine. It's very much as this review says.

I like that it does a specific amount of functionality really well, rather than over reaching and then trying too much yet delivering poorly

The battery life is the single reason I expect to keep using it. Every order smart watch I've had had been okay but usually quite meh, and at some point I've grown tired of the endless inconvenience of charging... So I leave it off for a few days, that gets longer and then I realise I can't be bothered to keep using it. Whereas this one lasts 20 days at least, it's not hostile to me (no pinging endlessly), I get how it works (none of that crazy Google Store confusion about what is a phone app and what is a watch app!) and it has a great ecosystem around it.

YMMV depending on specific needs but generally even on Windows on an average machine with an imperfect setup I've found it exceptionally fast, often well inside the sub-second range, to the point that I do sometimes worry if it really ran.

Sounds like it's worth another look at your settings to make sure they are right.

Would be nice if the site could show people what it did without first handing over camera access - if it's useful enough once I know what it does, I would consider granting it then but not before.

Never heard of GS1 before, let alone GS1 Sunrise but it's presumably behind an annoying and, one would hope, entirely avoidable frustration in Boots in the UK.

They obviously turned on QR code scanning capability on their tills at some point recently(ish) - I can't recall when but I think it was around a year ago. They turned it on, even though their products use 1D barcodes... And now, whenever a consumer item has a QR code too, the till freaks out when it reads the wrong one! They absolutely could ignore the QR code but their dev managers must care so little that this obvious fix is skipped and their continue to annoy customers needlessly.

They were just illustrating their point, I wouldn't take that literally.

Interesting that none of the talk around this has touched on any form of enforcement, even though this is illegal activity in US/EU.

Any fine would be peanuts for them but it might help to refocus the mindset from "oops, misconfiguration" to "test security but do so with care, consent and in line with the law"

This is sad but no great surprise. What does surprise me a little is how far ranging the "we can't make those parts anymore" argument goes. I thought back to those seriously slim Sony Walkman and Aiwa players people would bring back to school from the Far East and even the basic things like the sliding buttons were better than products have nowadays: they would inevitably be tiny, sleek, yet beautifully engineered to still be easy to push/slide, they'd be metal, often powder coated to match the body, would involve super low tolerances, and have a satisfying quality reminiscent of closing/opening the door of a Mercedes! It feels like we can't even do them justice now... Or maybe it's just the economics?! Either way, what an era that was!

Yes, same for me on Firefox mobile and Chrome mobile (both latest versions on Android)

Please don't be detered by the less constructive comments, there are a myriad of approaches one could take and it's impossible to please everyone. Even if it has failings I think it's a great site and I'm grateful. Plus let's not forget it's delightfully free of advertising/ pushy banners to sign-up or pay!

Beautiful work, thank you for sharing it!

In case it's useful, given your last sentence, it runs really well on Chrome on Android (on a Pixel 10) but it's a bit glitchy (although not impossible) on Firefox on Android. The loading indicator on Chrome got stuck briefly whereas the Firefox one was smoother, but that's about the only case there Firefox is better.

My Time 2 was ordered early and still took an age to arrive (well beyond the estimate) but they were good enough to announce updated timing when I queried it and it came a few weeks after.

I must say it's a fantastic piece of kit. Not worrying about charging it for 18 days is great and it gave me a little reminder the morning of the day it was expecting to need a recharge (in the evening) so it was nicely thought through.

In terms of usage, it's just right - all vrry intuitive (although weirdly they didn't seem to list anywhere what each of the buttons did, so you need to explore but that's not difficult and you quickly get the hang of it). I used to find with my Google watches it wasn't clear when you were in Google Play looking at watch apps or for phone apps and the whole mental model was surprisingly frustrating but the Pebble nails it with a much more intuitive way.

This is good, although it left a fairly antipodean tone with a nerdy style when I selected British English. The source was a fairly heavy french accent, with the outcome being quite amusing.

The token limits seem to have kicked in now (my first go was a few hours back and this is just my second attempt)

Looks good. What's with the submit buttons being put on the left on virtual game keyboards, even though Return/Enter usually on the right on typical keyboards. Wordle also does this.

Yes, the importance of asking a question to demonstrate you've invested effort cannot be overstated.

Without knowing what/how they asked, it's difficult but I would be tempted to suspect this was actually a way to say "please stop asking me questions"

I find it bizarre they even feel the need to do this - even generally there's a question about whether advertising really leads to purchases you would not have otherwise made, but with fuel it seems incredibly unlikely someone would be swayed by a fuel ad! If anything drives the purchase it's price and availablity within a convenient distance from your regular routes.

This feels rather naive in taking all the complaints at face value. The truth will be much more nuanced, and ultimately countries should be more welcoming to the genuine whilst far more discerning with the deceitful