redsparrow

If you haven't read the article yet you can test yourself. (I've copied and pasted the questions in random order. I don't know how they were presented to the original participants.)

"If you had to guess, what percentage of American adults..."

  * Are left-handed
  * Have at least a high school degree
  * Are Hispanic
  * Are Catholic
  * Have an advanced degree
  * Have a household income over $500,000
  * Are vegan or vegetarian
  * Are first-generation immigrants
  * Have a passport
  * Have a household income over $100,000
  * Live in Texas
  * Are fully vaccinated against COVID-19
  * Live in New York City
  * Own a smartphone
  * Are Jewish
  * Are Muslim
  * Have flown on a plane
  * Are a military veteran
  * Own a gun
  * Are Asian
  * Have a driver's license
  * Own a house
  * Are Native American
  * Have a household income over $1 million
  * Are married
  * Own a car
  * Are members of a union
  * Are atheists
  * Have at least one child
  * Have a household income over $50,000
  * Are Democrats
  * Are transgender
  * Are gay or lesbian
  * Are obese
  * Are Black
  * Are bisexual
  * Have a pet
  * Have read a book in the past year
  * Are white
  * Live in California
  * Voted in the 2020 election
  * Are Republicans
  * Have a household income over $25,000
  * Are Christian
  * Have at least a college degree

My team is using Kaitai in production at work to decode proprietary messages from a partner. The web IDE makes writing and debugging the format files pretty easy and I would strongly recommend using it.

Overall I'm very happy with Kaitai. I've found it to be effective and enjoyable to use.

Well, this is a cynical answer, but I think in this case: make money. Making things easier is one way to use technology to make money. Having a significant market share and making it difficult for others to enter the market is another way to use technology to make money.

There was (probably) a point in history where AirBnB existed to make things easier. Now I'm pretty sure it's just there to make money.

Interesting, thanks for the detailed response. It's fun to listen to Doctorow talk trash but a lot of details get lost in the process.

It will be interesting to see what Uber can do with the position they're in.

In the linked transcript Doctorow suggests that Uber's profits come from selling off divisions. "I’m finally curing my starvation by eating my own arms" is the rather colourful metaphor he uses. Does that line up with the 2021Q3 profit you mention, or maybe he's talking about something that happened earlier?

This is an interesting observation. I hadn't noticed this dynamic before; thanks for sharing.

The current differences in attitudes between mobile and non-mobile apps is pretty interesting.

If you visit Reddit or Twitter from a browser that's running on a mobile OS then they make it extremely clear that they would prefer that you use a dedicated app. When visiting from a non-mobile OS not only do you not see such messages, but a dedicated app doesn't even exist.

In one place the browser is good enough to be the only option, in the other it's so inferior that they will bully and harass you until you stop using it.

SIMs don't have to be removable; there are re-programmable versions called eSIMs. I assume cars are more likely to use these.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM

This is similar to what I've seen in Germany. Probation is six months long and during this time either party can terminate with two weeks notice without any cause. This is a time for both the employer and employee to be evaluating each other for a good fit.

> Google's weapon of monopoly.

This reminds me of Spolsky's blog post about Fire and Motion. [0] He gives the example of Microsoft creating an endless stream of new technologies which kept their competition busy (eg: ODBC, RDO, DAO, ADO, OLEDB, ADO.NET, ...). Get the competition to spend their resources keeping up rather than competing.

0: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

It's also rare to see maps where south is at the top, but that's also an arbitrary decision. North isn't "up" any more than south is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-up_map_orientation

I don't know why but "your CAB archive is a folder" really took me back. It's nice to read something that makes me nostalgic for a time when Windows was a big part of my life. I don't know that I ever loved Windows, but we were intimate.

Hello. Something to consider is that for some people big, or even medium-sized, projects and goals aren't a great fit. Some people are wired to constantly be dabbling and exploring. If you're failing to meet the goals that you're setting for yourself and then beating yourself up about it then it's worth considering a different approach.

Of course this can be easier to do in your personal life than in your work life; often at work someone else is setting the goals...

On the other hand, maybe I'm reading way too much into a couple sentences from a stranger on the internet and this doesn't apply to you...

There is a popular book that talks about accepting and embracing life as a dabbler and explorer called Refuse to Choose. (Personally I wouldn't buy it because then I would just feel bad about not reading it, but my wife told me about some ideas in it and it seems reasonable...)

I use pass for exporting secrets to environment variables. I have a multi-line password called "envvars" that contains a script like this:

  #!/usr/bin/fish

  set -x PASSWORD hunter2
  set -x PASSWORD_STG hunter3

  set -x LUGGAGE_KEY 12345

  set -x TOKEN (curl "https://api.example.com/oauth/token" \
    --data-urlencode "username=$USERNAME" \
    --data-urlencode "password=$PASSWORD" | jq --raw-output .access_token)

  set -x TOKEN_STG (curl "https://api-stg.example.com/oauth/token" \
    --data-urlencode "username=$USERNAME_STG" \
    --data-urlencode "password=$PASSWORD_STG" | jq --raw-output .access_token)

When I want to set the environment variables I run `pass show envvars | source` and it sets the environment variables for the current shell. It's an easy way to keep the secrets out of my shell history and plaintext files.

If you haven't seen it, this is a remastered version and much better than the ones I remember watching ~20 years ago.

This is a really excellent video. There is part where he has recordings of a clarinet and a guitar both playing the same note and slowly applies an filter to cut out the harmonics and the two distinct sounds converge. There is so much more to see in the video though and I highly recommend it.

I work at a company called Vimcar which I like to describe as "like Emacscar but better." ;)

It seems common for people to assume that privacy is about hiding something. Most people close the door when they're using a toilet in a public place. Is it because they have something to hide? Or is it that they want some privacy?

Privacy can be about hiding things, but it's also about space and boundaries. I want to have some control over who gets to know me, and how intimately.

I found it informative and enjoyable to read. I'm glad it had the details that it did and would have gotten less out of it if those details had been omitted.

Of course it's fine to value succinctness, but it sounds like your saying the author did something wrong or that he owes you something. Maybe "I found there were too many details and would have preferred it was much more succinct; for example..." would have been a better tone than "can we please try to be succinct"?

I have been wearing Uniqlo t-shirts most days for the last few years. The codes change regularly on those. I have a few from a version where the bottom hem is always curling up on itself. The rest of them just hang straight and flat...

I also have some Uniqlo underwear that changed code where the old ones fit well and the new ones didn't.

I'm still a happy customer, but it does mean that I have to be a little cautious about buying 5 more of something just because my previous experience with it was good.

For anyone else wondering like I was... The T14 will be the replacement for the T490 and T495. Likewise there will be a T14s to replace the T490s and T495s and a T15 to replace the T590. They will no longer distinguish between Intel and AMD in the model name.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-T14s-T15-w...

The Twelfth Apostle Church in Berlin has some windows made out of gin bottles. After the second world war the church needed to replace some windows. The Gilka liquor factory nearby donated gin bottles.

Exterior Photo: https://media04.berliner-woche.de/article/2018/01/30/8/8798_...

Interior: https://media04.berliner-woche.de/article/2018/01/30/6/8786_...

Article (in German): https://www.berliner-woche.de/schoeneberg/c-kultur/alfred-ko...

Shameless plug: A guy on my team wrote a Node.js library for validating messages against an AsyncAPI spec.

https://github.com/WaleedAshraf/asyncapi-validator

I like the Hackaday blog: https://hackaday.com/blog/

If you want shrinking tabs then you can get them in Firefox by putting this in a userChrome.css file:

  .tabbrowser-tab {
    min-width: initial !important;
  }
  .tab-content {
    overflow: hidden !important;
  }

You can find details here on where to find/put a userChrome.css file: https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html

> I decided to look everything up and document it here.

You can be a hero, too! I find this inspiring. It's nice to see such an accessible and pragmatic way of making a contribution to the community. My very first thought on seeing that was "I could do that!"

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing. Here is another Javascript library that supports converting to/from HSL and a bunch of other representations:

https://github.com/Qix-/color-convert

I grew up in Canada in the 80s. Moving to Germany a few years ago I discovered Conrad. It's like stepping into another dimension where the RadioShack from my youth is alive and well...

> disclosed in April 2019 that it was nearing the end of negotiations with the FTC and expected a fine of between $3bn and $5bn.

That's a quote from the article in The Guardian [0].

Negotiations? They were negotiating their own fine? That sounds so absurd. Surely someone can reply telling me it's normal, but can anyone make an argument for why it makes sense?

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/facebook-...

I stuck to continental trips. I wasn't very good at landing so just drove instead. I had fun plotting the trips and coming back later to fine-tune my direction and finally arrive (never having left the ground...) I don't remember which version it was, but apparently it was one that was flat and without much water.

This echos some career advice from Dilbert creator Scott Adams. "Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things." He also goes on to say that "at least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal." The idea being that this should make it easier to leverage your other skill(s) in a work environment.

https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car...