Two observations about the 2024 election without any data but still feel true.
- People voted for the economy and lower inflation
- People still can’t vote for a woman
Two observations about the 2024 election without any data but still feel true.
Nilay, at The Verge, nails why Trump is too inept to be President in his endorsement for Kamala Harris.
Trump simply cannot use the tools of democracy to run the country on our behalf. His brain does not work that way, even when it appears to be working. He is too selfish, too stupid, too cognitively impaired, too fucked in the head by social media — too whatever. He just can’t do it. He will make our collective action problems worse because he doesn’t even know what kind of problems they are. There is a reason he loves dictators and that all his biggest ideas involve forcing people to do things at the barrel of a gun: mass deportations, arresting his critics, sending the military into American cities to quell protests. He is unable to imagine a world where people cooperate for any reason other than the threat of violence, and so violence has become an inextricable part of his movement.
Seeing a lot of leaks about WWDC announcements. It makes me sad for the teams that have worked for years on these projects only to have the surprise ruined in the last few days. The older I get the more I enjoy going in without being spoiled.
I received my Nomad Tracking Card today. It was easy to setup. Pull it out of the box, open the Find My app, hold the button on the card, then walk through the pairing process on the phone.
This is a Nomad product so the build quality is exceptional. The card feels really solid and is only as thick as two credit cards. I find it amazing that a battery can fit into a card this thin. Aesthetically, the electronics inscription on the front is subtle but looks great.
The specs say the battery life is 5 months and it is rechargeable using MagSafe or Qi wireless chargers. I’m looking forward to trying it out. For me this tracker is much more useful than AirTags. I have an AirTag for my luggage and one for my car keys but this Nomad tracker is much more useful day to day in my wallet.
At $50 it isn’t cheap but because it is easily rechargeable I think it will be worth it.
I love it when Apple announces accessibility features ahead of WWDC. Eye tracking usability on the iPad looks especially cool.
I’ve been thinking about remote work due to some top-down policy changes made by my employer. These changes along with other headlines have reminded me how much I value working remotely. I have discussed the benefits and challenges of remote work with my wife and colleagues over the past few months. Through these chats I’ve realized that I need to write my thoughts to clarify and detail my opinions about why remote work is important in today’s world.
My thoughts come from 8 years of full-time remote working and reading many books and blog posts on the subject. I feel that I have learned a lot over the years about what works and what doesn’t. The structure of this post lists of the benefits and challenges of remote work and is intended to be a summary. As I publish my thoughts on each item I’ll update this post with links to individual posts.
Individual Benefits
Company Benefits
Challenges
This isn’t a comprehensive list but there are some interesting items to delve into deeper and hopefully explain how remote work fits into the modern workplace.
I watched Dune: Part 2. It exceeded my expectations. The music, sound, cinematography were all outstanding. I’m still letting it settle in. I hope they do a third part.
I took the Apple silicon case off my iPhone 13. It feels like a new phone. So light and thin. Even the screen looks and feels different.
I am still using the MagSafe pop socket because it is slippery but I love not hitting the bottom case edge every time I swipe up.
I recently started accessing a Mac Mini from the Screen Sharing app on macOS. The app was recently updated in macOS Sonoma and it’s great! I’ve been connecting to this Mac from my laptop with the Screen Sharing app in full screen mode and the performance is good over my Wi-Fi connection. There are occasional stutters but most of the time I forget it is a screen share. I like using the Mac Mini at my desk but being able to access it from any Mac in the house is even better!
One trick I’ve found is to turn on the Dynamic Resolution setting in System Settings > Displays on the remote Mac. When the Screen Sharing app is in full screen mode it makes the remote screen fit perfectly on the laptop screen. My only gripe is that the setting isn’t sticky so I have to set it again every time I connect.
A couple of notes - I’ve filed a feedback for this feature request. And I’ve also included a screenshot of where to find this setting as it only appears in the Displays settings when the remote Mac has an active Screen Sharing connection.
I added a tools page to my blog. I was surprised at how long the list is and that I use all of these apps nearly everyday.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
I feel this is an appropriate quote going into the 2024 election year.
Phone drop test - out of an Alaska Airlines plane at 11k feet. abcnews.go.com/US/passen…
The craziest part of this story is the phone was not locked or have a passcode!
I’ve found that when I wear a sleep tracker (Apple Watch) to bed I tend to sleep worse than when I’m not tracking my sleep. The first night is usually fine but the subsequent nights are worse. Perhaps my subconscious has anxiety about the tracking which affects my sleep. I don’t think it is the physical device either. I think it is the act of knowingly tracking sleep that degrades the quality of sleep.
I don’t comment much on day to day news but this weekend was extraordinary. Satya Nadella showed his experience and composure by negotiating what may turn out to be the deal of the decade. With OpenAI’s models and now almost all of their talent Microsoft is better positioned to lead in generative AI than they were three days ago. They acquired a full team of AI leaders and experts for literally nothing. The impact of the dealings this weekend will impact the tech industry for years to come.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is living up to the high expectations. Nintendo is a master of creating amazing gameplay.
The new abilities change the dynamics of the game in a way where it feels familiar yet new. While other game systems focus on graphics, Nintendo focuses on story and gameplay. The game does not have cutting edge graphics but it’s visuals are beautiful and awe inspiring. The sound is immersive and the colors are brilliant.
I am impressed with the game so far and excited for another adventure with Link and Zelda.
This TED talk was not what I was expecting. Instead of a flashy demo of the product we got a foundation and principles for building Ai driven devices. I have a lot of questions but here are my initial thoughts.
Video link: youtu.be/gMsQO5u7-…
The good.
First, I thought this was a typo but Humane references “Ai” instead of “AI”. Is there a difference? Is “Ai” not an acronym forArtificial Intelligence? Maybe this is the name of the product. Ai. And the next version could be Aii. It is probably explained somewhere but I haven’t bothered to look.
Second, I like the idea of technology being transparent. I think society as a whole can benefit with more face to face interaction without a screen in between. I also relate to this especially after recently attending my daughters’ piano recital and recording it on my phone but wanting to also just be present and enjoy the moment .
Third, I agree that AI (Ai?) will transform our lives in ways we can’t imagine right now. I think the demo showcasing the translation into French using his own voice and manner of speaking was impressive and much more personal than a generic assistant like Siri or Google Assistant. This also demonstrated the ability for the technology to be less visible and obtrusive during a human to human interaction.
The demo about personalized recommendations was also interesting in that each user will have their own Ai and it will learn and evolve to make better recommendations for the individual. This reinforces Humane’s Ai principles of security, privacy, and trust.
The bad.
Everything above sounds great. However, when I think of how this will fit into my life I don’t see it. What does this replace? My iPhone? My MacBook? My Apple Watch? Or is this something in addition to those things that replaces some of my “compute” experience when I’m around people?
The demos didn’t demonstrate privacy as commands had to be spoken out loud. That is much less private to speak a sentence out load than to silently type it into a message. And while summarizing emails is helpful for prioritizing - it doesn’t reduce the number of emails I need to reply to in a thoughtful manner.
The end.
I feel the truly revolutionary AI powered device will be on the face with glasses. Glasses with an earpiece can take us so much further along the path to replacing a phone while improving our social interactions securely and privately. Maybe it is my lack of imagination but I just can’t see a place in my life for Humane’s Ai based on what was demoed.
Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words is a curated collection of Steve’s speeches, interviews, and emails. It is a free ebook available in a variety of different formats.
I am excited to read this book and mark it up. It is a great way to understand Steve’s way of working, thinking, and writing.
My Steve Jobs corner
I’m excited about the improvements Apple announced at WWDC today. I’m am especially interested in Passkey and the enrollment workflows it enables.
I recently listened to an episode of ATP where they discussed how Gmail works differently than a regular IMAP email account.
In Gmail, messages are labeled. You can set as many labels as you want on a message and those labels are a way of filtering messages later. This has the advantage over a folder structure where the message can only exist in one folder at a time.
I’ve used Gmail since it was an invite only beta. I used labels a lot to categorize my messages. But when the iPhone came out I started using Mail.app and pretty much stopped using labels. Almost 15 years later, I’ve realized that I don’t miss labeled messages and that I almost never go back to look at old messages in the folders/labels. In fact, I rarely look for messages older than a few months and a quick search in my archive turns anything up almost instantly.
Everyone has their way of organizing and my way is to have three buckets for incoming messages:
For outgoing messages I have:
I don’t use any other folder structure than those. Search is so good these days that I don’t manually dig for messages anymore.
I hope you don’t either.
Update: It is worth noting that I separate my roles with separate email accounts. For instance, my work email is completely separate from my personal email. I’ve found this helps me separate my roles logically instead of funneling everything into a single email account and then dividing it up with folders/labels.
Lately I’ve had a few discussions about mobile applications technologies. There are many options available, native Swift and Kotlin, and multi-platform React.js, Flutter, and Kotlin Multiplatform. Personally, I am adamant about using the tools and languages that are native to the platform. There are tradeoffs with any choice but for me it comes down to caring and the effects this choice has on the culture and team.
What do I mean by caring? Sure, everyone on any team wants to create a quality app. But for me caring goes far beyond passing requirements. For me, coding is a form of art - like writing a story or poem. It has structure and form. It can be beautiful, clean, and elegant. And I’m not talking about GUI – I’m talking about the code! One of the reasons I love writing Ruby code is that it is easier to reach that goal. Caring about how the code looks and is organized may seem over the top but guess what? It matters. Ruby attracted people who had those same values and it created a wonderful community. I’ve found a similar community in iOS and Swift projects - partly because they are all heavy Apple users – but there is a connection in those groups about creating something that isn’t just beautiful on the outside but is elegant, understandable, and maintainable under the covers too.
Continuing with the art analogy, if an artist is creating a poster to frame and hang on the wall what kind of paper and drawing tools would they use? A torn out large lined sheet of notebook paper and a broken pencil?!? No! They would use a heavy feathered card stock with a fountain pen or quality brushes or markers. They care about the medium and the tools because they care to create something that doesn’t simply pass the requirements.
When we choose to use the lowest common denominator languages and tools to save on “resources” then we shouldn’t expect to build a team that cares deeply about the app. We get out what we put in. The app will be fine but not great. And it will never be an insanely great app.
Today marks 10 years since Steve Jobs passed away. When my kids feel unsure of themselves I use the quote below to encourage them to be better and grow beyond their expectations.
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
Apple has a nice remembrance video on their homepage today that also includes this quote.
Update: the video is now posted on YouTube - youtu.be/CeSAjK2CB…
A great talk about distributed teams working asynchronously.
iPad - Your next computer is not a computer - Apple - YouTube
This is a perfect ad. People inside wishing they could be outside. PC users with gizmos and gadgets. And everyone wishing they could be part of that [Apple] world. Perfection.
I invited two teenagers (with their parents) to a WWDC viewing party today. They were pretty excited about some of the cool new features coming this fall. I’m especially excited to see what they can do with Swift Playgrounds to create an app.