Sings: Where have all the pastebins gone, long time passing…
Link: Shape Up: Principles of Shaping
Pretty good read so far, but I’m just getting started.
Over-specifying the design also leads to estimation errors. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the more specific the work is, the harder it can be to estimate. That’s because making the interface just so can require solving hidden complexities and implementation details that weren’t visible in the mockup. When the scope isn’t variable, the team can’t reconsider a design decision that is turning out to cost more than it’s worth.
Ugh. MOBI looks pretty awful compared to EPUB as far as ease of getting into it from a programming standpoint.
MobiPocket Creator is a tool used to build MobiPocket MOBI eBooks. It is only available for the Microsoft Windows.
Link: Leverage? No thank you.
Some refreshing thinking. I bet Basecamp is quite a remarkable place to work in many ways.
Jason Fried: The suggestion is that if we tell people exactly what we pay for a specific position, and they would have accepted less, but we’re now on the hook to pay them more than we “needed” to, then they have a leg up on us rather than us on them. … I find this line of thinking abhorrent.
Link: Apple Sans Ive by Matthew Panzarino
“Many of Apple’s critics are purely nostalgic,” Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies puts it. “Wanting Apple to go back to the days when some of the designs were more bold, iconic, possibly polarizing, but in that time Apple was selling tens of millions of products not hundreds of millions of products. This is a crucially important point that many in the public sphere miss.”
Very good point. Sadly the article he’s quoting from is behind a paywall. Luckily his article is worth a read entirely on its own.
Link: Zoom out
To get around this terrible imposition on their users, Zoom installed a webserver on their computers without telling them. A webserver that remains present and running, even when the Zoom app is not running. Even if you uninstall the Zoom app.
Ugh. I always had a bad feeling about Zoom.
Link: Gruber on Trump Twitter Blocking news
I can’t see why he even bothers blocking people. But I like to think he’s actually sitting there, wasting time each day poking buttons in the Twitter app, angrily blocking people.
LOL.
Link: No Algorithms
I’m not going to do either. Why? These kinds of algorithms optimize for engagement, and the quickest path to engagement is via the drugs outrage and anger — which require, and generate, bigger and bigger hits.
Glad some people still have principles. I’m really going to have to try NewNewsWire again when it adds support for Feedly.
Link: It’s Time for Sweden to Admit Explosions Are a National Emergency
Sweden has experienced a sharp rise in explosions in recent years, predominantly related to conflicts between warring criminal gangs. The use of explosives in the Nordic country is now at a level that is unique in the world for a state not at war, according to police.
What the fuck is happening in Sweden?
Link: Cheesegraters and crystals
One last thing, which I’m sure delights the metallurgists at Apple. Aluminum has an fcc structure, so the geometry of the grill mimics—in part, at least—the atomic arrangement of the material from which it’s made.
Interesting read about how the new Mac Pro grill is truly “based on a naturally occurring phenomenon in molecular crystal structures.”
Link: The missing ☑️: SwiftWebUI
Beginning of the month Apple announced SwiftUI at the WWDC 2019. A single “cross platform”, “declarative” framework used to build tvOS, macOS, watchOS and iOS UIs. SwiftWebUI is bringing that to the Web
Predictable, but also pretty cool. :-)
Link: China Forcing Tourists to Install Text-Stealing Malware at Border
The Android malware, which is installed by a border guard when they physically seize the phone, also scans the tourist or traveller’s device for a specific set of files, according to multiple expert analyses of the software.
Yikes.
Link: Scrutiny is the prize of success
DHH: Davidson’s point about the ethical trajectory of a company is spot on. But it goes even further than the single company. There’s an ethical trajectory of a whole ecosystem, and the one in Silicon Valley is in need of some serious recalibration. Springing to the defense of appalling privacy abuses with excuses like “well, everyone else does it” only reveals just how dire the need is for that recalibration.
Worth a read. Worth some thought.
I don’t have a Touch Bar but this looks really cool: Pock
Yum yum.
Link: Google Maps detour drops dozens of Colorado vehicles into deep mud
Google Maps promptly showed a detour onto a dirt road near the airport, and many drivers dutifully followed the detour. One problem — recent rains had turned the road into a nearly impassable mud puddle.
LOL. Though I do feel bad for these people.
Link: Jony Ive Is Leaving Apple
Gruber: I don’t worry that Apple is in trouble because Jony Ive is leaving; I worry that Apple is in trouble because he’s not being replaced.
Link: On scripting runtimes and macOS
Considering how integral these runtimes are to my own daily use of my Mac, this is a real annoyance. I’m fully capable of installing them myself, but I still find the decision baffling.
Agree. Seems like an unusual choice. Although if it’s a one-click prompted installer the first time you try and run one of those binaries that wouldn’t be so terrible.
Link: Catalyst vs SwiftUI: Which is better for building a new Mac/iPad app?
Unfortunately the thing SwiftUI does share with Swift 1.0 is that it’s very much a beta technology that is in no way ready for extensive use. … The bigger problem though are the tools and documentation. Compiler errors are useless to the point that it would almost be better that they weren’t shown.
Looks like we might still have a ways to go.
Link: Olympus USB RAW Data Edit
How has this not always been a thing? Makes so much sense. The chips inside our cameras are heavily optimized for these tasks, not our PCs.
Robin Wong: USB RAW Data Edit is activated by connecting the camera to the PC/Laptop via USB cable, and the Truepic VIII Engine in the camera will be utilized to boost the Raw files processing while running Olympus Workspace on the PC/Laptop.
Link: The Popularity of the 4.7″ iPhone
David Smith: People really, really like the 4.7″ iPhone.
Indeed. I’m not really looking forward to getting a larger phone. Hoping Apple might do something different this year with sizing, but I’m not holding my breath.
Link: The Day the Duplicates Died
What a great name for a blog post. LOL. And what nice typography (Chaparral Pro).
Joe Cieplinski: But then, a few moments later, something wonderful happened. All the duplicate tracks disappeared in an instant. It was if Music caught itself making the same old mistake, and then corrected itself.
Link: Raspberry Pi 4 on sale from $35
Highlights:
- A 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU (~3× performance)
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Dual monitor support, at resolutions up to 4K
- 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video
- 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM
- radically overhauled operating system, based on the forthcoming Debian 10 Buster
Looks pretty amazing. They are also selling a Desktop Kit now which is evidently everything you need but the monitor for $120.
Going thru a bunch of old CDs/DVDs to see if there might be anything useful on them… man these things are so slow… spinning platters, meh. Won’t miss ya. #decluttering
Link: The Swarm Strategy (How to Learn about Anything)
Ryan Holiday: So there you have it: the swarm strategy. It’s simple. Find a topic it. Forget the rabbit hole and instead win by utterly overwhelming force. And then of course, it’s time for the final and most important step: moving on. After devouring one subject completely, be sure to find another.