chang1

Same! I hadn't touched Linux since 2005-06. I've been trying out Niri and Noctalia. I've been pleasantly surprised how close I'm able to get to match most of what I do on a Mac.

I haven't had this much fun with computers in years. It has certainly helped with my Tahoe grief.

I think shortly we may see "Apple forced me to switch to Linux" because of Tahoe and subsequent releases.

Found a uBlock Origin filter list that seems to work reasonably well:

https://github.com/BevizLaszlo/UBlock-Filters-for-Social-Med...

For channels I care about, I subscribed to the channel's RSS feed.

For instance, there's an RSS feed at https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/videos.

I combined this with the Distraction Free YouTube browser extension that worked really well — no recommendations would display on the home page or on an individual video page.

So I'd only look at the videos that came through my RSS reader, and I'd see no other recommendations on YouTube — in and out. There are trade offs. I'd miss out on content that I'd probably be interested in. I trusted that if there was something interesting enough, a friend would tell me.

The extension broke when YouTube started cracking down on ad blockers. I still get alerted to new videos in my RSS reader. Except now, I get sucked into recommended content sometimes when I watch a video.

I think I just realized in typing this that I need to find another extension like DF YouTube.

Great app... it's had a place on my macOS dock for years. I use it for adding diagrams to my team's internal developer documentation (mostly in a series of Markdown files).

I get annoyed when I ask someone a question (work related or not) and they don't know the answer, they will then proceed to tell a prompt for ChatGPT in a stream of consciousness sort of way.

Then I get even more annoyed when they decide to actually use their own prompt, and then read back to me the answer.

I would much prefer the answer "I don't know".

As a child in the late 80s/early 90s, I remember watching Star Trek TNG as new episodes were coming out, and also watching Reading Rainbow (I loved both shows).

The episode where Reading Rainbow visited the Star Trek TNG set was one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRz_qpgD-0

I had a similar experience with DuckDuckGo several years ago, but the difference was that I got paid as I progressed through the various stages.

I had to submit a short written design proposal and was told to cap it at a few hours and was paid for it. It was accepted and then I spent time implementing a solution. The pay again was capped at a certain amount of hours, but I ended up going past the recommendation because I was actually having fun trying to figure it out.

I submitted the solution and after a while I got a response with basically, "it was a difficult decision, but sorry we're going to pass" and they wouldn't provide additional detail. It's been over 5 years, but I still wonder why they passed.

I can only assume they had a lot of candidates and they may have had other very strong submissions that were better than mine. However, it took a lot out of me emotionally and affected me for quite some time... more than any other interview in my ~20 year career. I feel for the OP.

I am not an Apple Music subscriber and don't stream much music besides SomaFM, so I may not be in the norm.

I always have selected on the sidebar Library -> Songs with View -> Column Browser enabled. And I search only using the "Filter" text input on this view. It's as close to how iTunes used to be in the early days of OS X (sans brushed metal).

What I see on the screen is just mostly dense text except the small thumbnail at the top for whatever is currently playing. There is no other related artwork or graphics loaded. I fear once a re-write of this app happens, this view is gone... replaced with lots of fancy graphics and loads of whitespace padding everywhere.

Reminds me of Jobs quoting Gil Amelio at D5[1]:

Gil was a nice guy, but he had a saying. He said, 'Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction.'

[1] https://youtu.be/wvhW8cp15tk?t=1263

Under $1,000

Kinesis Advantage 360 or ZSA Voyager (split ergonomic keyboards with ortholinear layout).

I ended up buying both. I had chronic wrist pain and weakness for a few years that I thought was caused by an acute injury. Turns out I think it was actually typing. I bought the Advantage 360, and after a few days, my wrist pain disappeared and never came back. When I switch back to a standard keyboard, I can't type for more than an hour before I start feeling discomfort.

I'll second that Day One is a great app... I've used it nearly every day for the past 13 years. I was afraid it would stagnate after it was acquired by Automattic, but it's only gotten better.

Oh nice, it has an RSS feed too!

I'm pretty sure Spectrum corporate culture is incentivized by only one thing: SELL!

I canceled my service after several years due to a negative customer service experience, which I explained was the primary reason I was cancelling. Never was I asked about the incident... only more offers and promotions.

Uh oh, just did a search... well that's too bad.

I guess my point still stands where I'm not buying all my eggs from 1 marketplace.

Generally speaking, convenience is king. I find a lot of like-minded people will easily overlook or not even consider what is happening behind the scenes. There is a tradeoff for low prices/convenience and it's not always obvious.

I cancelled Prime about 6 months ago and I thought it would be difficult, but it's actually been fine.

I shopped at Whole Foods for over a decade and there are staples I thought I couldn't find elsewhere. I discovered through a combination of Trader Joe's, my local grocery store, and Aldi, I found replacements for everything, items I like better, and I save way more money!

As for non-grocery items, I'll often try to buy from the manufacturer directly, even if that means paying a little bit more. If I can't find something directly, I'll check Walmart, Target or other established retailers and usually can find something for a comparable price.

I've also made a slow shift to buying used items. For books, on eBay I can often find them used, in like-new condition for a fraction of the cost at Amazon and with free shipping. It's a gamble and sometimes I get books with highlighted pages or cosmetic damage, but it's rare.

And when Amazon is only the cost effective way to purchase something or I can only find it on Amazon, I'll wait until I can hit $25 for free shipping and wade through Amazon's dark patterns in the checkout process. Turns out, "standard shipping" still ships in 2 days because I'm guessing logistically it's better to just keep inventory flowing with all other Prime purchases. My wife managed PTO orders for teachers at our local school through their non-Prime Amazon account... guess what, every order shipped "early" anyway and received within 2 days. Prime is kind of a scam IMO if fast shipping is the draw (although I never utilized other value-add services like Prime Video or Music).

When someone asks me about Amazon and I mention I don't have Prime, I often get shocked responses. I'm not trying to actively dissuade people from Amazon/Prime if they like it, but I'm hoping it will get people thinking.

Convenience is a hell of a drug.

Busytown: Eye found it is one of my kids' favorite games. It's a lot of fun to play as an adult too. I'll have to checkout the airport one. Thanks for posting!

It probably doesn't cost them much to keep the RSS feed going, and it's a way to keep a subset of people coming back to watch videos that otherwise wouldn't.

For instance, I dislike having to open YouTube to see what's new (or get notified by email) so I end up missing a lot of new videos from a handful of channels I consistently watch. Once I discovered there the RSS feed for videos, I added them to NetNewsWire on the Mac and it's been a much nicer way to see what's new.

So for people like me that would probably never watch new content, the RSS feed offers another way for YouTube to get me back on the site. That being said, I hope they don't kill it.

Had a similar experience and made it to the 2nd stage, and also got paid for both.

I even took the time to learn enough Perl to write the solution. They said it wasn't required but would be a nice touch. It was an interesting project to work on and it was fun coming up with a solution. I thought it fulfilled their requirements pretty well, but also just got a short "no thanks" email.

I was left wondering for a long time what they didn't like about it..

Someone suggested they may use these interview submissions as cheap labor to get ideas to solve internal problems. I thought that was ridiculous until I reread the disclosure I had to sign at the beginning:

[DDG] will be the exclusive owner of all right, title, and interest in and to the work product resulting from the project, including all intellectual property and proprietary rights.

Could have just been boilerplate disclosure stuff, but seems a little weird.

Funny, I just encountered the same experience.

I cancelled Prime after 12 continuous years of subscribing. I placed my first Amazon order a few days ago sans-Prime and was amazed at the blatant dark patterns put in place to get me to sign up again. When I finally got to the checkout page, I had to manually change the shipping for each item from $5.99 standard shipping to free shipping (because I hit the $25 threshold).

A few hours later, I get a solicitation for Amazon Music (not sure if I would have gotten this if I was a Prime subscriber).

Then the next day I got an email saying "Your package is arriving earlier than we previously expected"... the same as Prime 2-day shipping. Maybe it's logistically easier to just ship 2-day instead of holding on to inventory?

I thought cancelling Prime would have been difficult (especially with Prime only discounts at Whole Foods), but finding alternatives to Amazon and Whole Foods has been easy. I guess it's no wonder Amazon tries to push it so hard because it's relatively easy to live without.

I had a similar moment of existential career crisis as OP.

I'm at the 20 year mark as well, in terms of developing software professionally. I've always felt like with new technology, I could grok at a high level how things worked. But LLMs like GPT seem like magic and I went through stages of initial astonishment -> despair realizing the potential impact it would have on the industry -> acceptance.

While I still feel uncertainty and fear about the future, as others have echoed, I'm realizing it's a tool for developers to use. We can either choose to accept it and understand how to work with it, or reject it. The things GPT can generate amazes me, but I'm finding that it's a good starting point or reference to build on... not a final solution. It will generate things that are sometimes completely wrong, and it's your own experience and judgement that has to be used to determine that. GPT cannot do that... at least not yet.

I think back 20 years ago and remember reading through a lot of physical books with occasional web searches landing on experts-exchange or random forums. Then came Stack Overflow and that became in invaluable tool, along with the ubiquity of free tutorials on YouTube and elsewhere. And now we have GPT which I'll ask if I really get stuck on something and it gives me new ideas to try. Perhaps in the near future, GPT is the tool that I'll use first.

I found this podcast episode helpful for me to process what I’ve felt: [Lex Fridman Podcast #376 – Stephen Wolfram: ChatGPT and the Nature of Truth, Reality & Computation][1].

It's an unsettling feeling (in general) to feel like a foundation you've built and live on could potentially be made quickly irrelevant. I'd like to say I have words of wisdom to get rid of that feeling but I don't. What has helped me is to acknowledge these feelings as valid, and then try to get clarity in what direction to move. It's not the foundation itself that's important per se, but it's the skills you've acquired in building the foundation that's more important.

[1] https://lexfridman.com/stephen-wolfram-4/

I bought the Muji fountain pen a few years ago and it's an amazing pen, especially for only $17! I've been looking for a new ink to try, I'll give J. Herbin Perle Noire a shot.

Which converter do you use?

I've discovered that this can be a deflection tactic for some. Usually it happens in a situation where I try my best to explain a part of an app or system. The other person is overwhelmed or confused but doesn't just say that, and instead kicks the can down the road by saying there is a lack of documentation to reference or are in need of diagrams. When I then take the time to add info to a wiki or spend time diagramming concepts with those developers, it seems to not help aid understanding at all. Then I realize I just wasted a lot of time.

That's a good point, I don't actually know. I just assumed yes because they would ask. I also didn't want to complicate the process of releasing the funds – perhaps that was naive.

I believe in this checkout flow, it kicked me over to PayPal where I could specify the shipping address there. PayPal probably relays the address back to the merchant, akin to checking out with Apple Pay where you specify a shipping address via the Wallet app.

About a year ago, I bought clothes online using PayPal for my mother (and shipped to her address). PayPal blocked the transaction and temporarily suspended my account until I could verify a detail. When I logged in to verify, it was asking for the recipient's (my mother's) birth date. I thought it odd that they would ask, and also know, the birth date of someone PayPal has no association with.

I called their support (finding a human to talk to was difficult) to ask for the reason why I would need to give out my mother's birth date. I was asking for other ways I could verify and that I shouldn't be asked to give out someone else's PII. The support person started to become defensive, sarcastically asking "you don't even know your mom's own birthday!?".

I could tell this person saw nothing wrong with the ask and thought I was being intentionally combative. I ended up conceding and giving the information. Since then, I've stopped using PayPal as a payment method.

I always thought this incident strange and have wondered about how their verification method works.

Thanks for the tip. I'll give this a try!

For work, I have to run Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Discord. Of those 3, Slack surprisingly uses the least amount of memory (~700 MB), and Teams uses the most (~1.5 GB). I dusted off an old Intel Mac (literally) and interact with it using Universal Control. It only runs those 3 chat apps + mail. It's turned out to be a great way to offload resource hogs and as an added benefit, it minimizes distractions. I'll occasionally glance at the dock to see if there are any notification badges, whereas on my main Mac, I'd feel compelled to deal with notifications immediately.

When I have to share my screen or focus on a conversation, I'll fire up one of those 3 apps on my main (M1) Mac and quit it when I'm done.

Universal Control still feels rough around the edges, but it has saved me from ditching my Macbook Air and shelling out for an M1 Macbook Pro. Sometimes there are issues with reconnecting to the Intel Mac, but it seems to resolve itself if I wait a bit or turn off/on wifi.

Madden definitely had a hulking, physical presence about him. I had grown up listening to his broadcasts with Pat Summerall and played Madden on various systems. Fast forward about 10+ years and I had moved to San Francisco and frequented The Grove near Yerba Beuna. I am terrible at recognizing celebrities in real life, but I immediately recognized him when he walked in. I had already ordered so I didn't notice if he cut anyone in line... one of the few times I can remember being starstruck.

I picked up USA made waffle iron from C. Palmer Manufacturing. It's super basic and almost 2-3x more expensive than the first few results on Amazon, but it's great! (https://cpalmermfg.com/waffle-irons.html) Hope that helps with your waffle making.

For those that deleted their account, how do you navigate a world where more communities exclusively use Facebook?

I deleted my account almost 10 years ago. I've had no regrets. However, I'm finding lately that more communities have no option but Facebook to communicate with others. I live in a somewhat large metropolitan city in the US but it's nearly impossible to find anything on Craigslist anymore — Facebook Marketplace has displaced it. Even local enthusiast groups or my children's school's parent groups communicate only through Facebook. I feel like a luddite when I ask organizers if there is a email mailing list or suggest to start one. Lately I've had urges to create an account again solely for these sorts of groups, but knowing myself, it's a slippery slope.

The latter already happened[1]. Bayer offloaded most of it's ag business (to BASF) and replaced it with Monsanto. Monsanto has been rebranded "Bayer Crop Science". Although I'm guessing much for the same reason, Monsanto never rebranded any of the dozens of seed companies it acquired over the years (e.g. Dekalb, Seminis, Asgrow, etc.)

The same also goes for Charter → Spectrum.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Sale_to_Bayer