goldtownjac

Teams truly is terrible. The example I always give:

There is absolutely 0 feedback to show a speaker when their mic is actively transmitting. When anyone else in a call speaks, a ring around their avatar lights up to show you who is speaking. When you speak? Nada. Technically, you can open the settings menu and there is a mic level bar there... but it's not in the standard view.

As far as I've seen, Teams is the only chat app that can't get this right. Not only does it increase the rate of people trying to talk while still on mute, it gives you no way of knowing if sounds in your environment are transmitting to the meeting and disrupting everyone else.

Cal's podcast and books are a guilty pleasure of mine. Yes, he has a tendency to oversimplify. Yes, he can be a bit cheesy. But I think that his cheesy and simple presentation style is kind of his secret sauce. If you want a nuanced take on how difficult it is to stay off your phone and social media, there are other places you can get that (Stolen Focus by Johann Hari for example).

I really admire his efforts to formalize his thinking about these topics into systems that readers and listeners can implement step-by-step. His emphasis on capture systems, time-block planning, and multi-scale planning, plus the whole "deep work/deep life" thing he's got going on now, have really changed my life and habits for the better in the past year or so. It may not work for everyone, but it works for me.

Related (and catchy) project:

https://emperorx.bandcamp.com/album/10000-year-earworm-to-di...

I've been running Chimera for a few months now on a all-AMD PC hooked up to my living room TV, and I've been pleased. I had previously set up Windows to launch big picture mode on startup but there was always a delay where I would see the Windows desktop which shattered the whole illusion. Plus, Windows.

Chimera really boots directly into big picture and has worked flawlessly for the use case of playing Steam games. Beyond that, it falls a little flat. I thought that gamepad input for mouse control would be supported in desktop mode but as far as I can tell it's not, at least not out of the box.

There is a nifty phone client you can use to download games from the Epic Store, retro games, etc. to be added to the non-Steam games section in BPM, but I wish you could do it from the desktop. A more or less fully-featured, gamepad-controlled OS would be the holy grail.

wow, this is the first time I've wished that my 2013 3 had the infotainment system

This is exactly what I’ve been looking for on so many levels. +1 user.

I think this headline is a bit sensationalized. Dr. Su's quote in the article says nothing about the undershipping being "to maintain high prices". Retailers are likely just not interested in carrying large amounts of stock in a precarious market.

I know a lot of people who work at APL (but not SWE), love it, and have no plans to leave. Definitely seems like a great option for someone in OP's situation.

b-ok.cc has the .epub available for free (but of course if you have the money you should support Petzold)

That’s definitely frustrating, but what did you expect? You lived in one city and worked in another. The “simple” solution to this is to live and work in the same city.

Really great essay. Anyone who feels similar to OP should read it.

I understand the mathematical argument for using these BNPL services, but I wish that we as a society were not so comfortable with debt that some are willing to incur it on a pair of shoes or a fashionable t-shirt. Personally, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Lots of people in this thread complaining about user hostility and bad UX. I wholeheartedly agree. Twitter does not have your best interests at heart, and this ever-worsening dark pattern shows that very clearly.

Why, then, do you subject yourself to it? I simply can't understand why someone would go through the trouble of using nitter, constantly clearing cookies, or using browser extensions _just to use a service that is hostile to them_. Especially because you and I both know that these workarounds aren't going to work forever, and soon enough you'll be scrambling for another hole in the wall.

Cut the cord. You don't need twitter. You don't need reddit, which has been employing similar patterns recently. The internet exists beyond these walled gardens. Take some time to reflect on your relationship to this technology and the people/ideas whose presence in your life/mind is dependent on it.

It seems like everyone I know has a strong reaction to this news. It’s clear that sunlight is both precious and scarce for the modern office worker. Why do most employers still require butts in seats for almost 100% of the sunlit day in winter?

It makes me really sad to see people fight over a ubiquitous resource like sunlight. It’s neither natural nor healthy to spend all day every day inside, let alone against your will.

This would have been my answer too, before I found this [0] video. If only I had found it during my EE degree, not after…

[0] https://youtu.be/ue3yoeZvt8E

One of my favorite websites. Ran has changed the way I think about a lot of things, especially urban living vs rural homesteading. Well worth reading through the archives, watching the short documentary about him on youtube, or grabbing a copy of his old zine “Civilization Will Eat Itself”.

Once I got over his… interesting… affect, I found this to be a pretty enjoyable watch. Certainly there’s not much technical merit to the ideas, and I definitely wouldn’t want to start a company with him or invest in him as a leader, but it was entertaining and at least a little thought-provoking about the future of media technology. I have a relatively high tolerance for bullshit though, so I can see how this could be unwatchable for many.

So, this is a great example of the ideas discussed in the article. Entertaining, a little woo-woo, preying on optimism, and ultimately, probably entirely inconsequential.

Your book looks interesting, too. I’ll check it out.

I do this to a lesser extent by putting scheduled meetings on my daily work to-do lists. It feels a bit silly sometimes (they’re going to get done whether I want them to or not), but I feel like crossing them off helps with daily momentum.

Thanks for sharing. I think I’ll give this a try.