158 karma · joined April 2, 2012
And I really agree with your second point too! Without that in-person transfer of tribal knowledge, it would have taken me ages to learn the ropes well enough to take such a high-pressure high-stakes oncall.
So more specifically, I mean: "not for the purpose of creating or transferring monetary value, and not requiring the expenditure of money to create/send the amount of data necessary to host a simple plaintext/html page"
Personally, I have a simple electrical timer set to turn on a bright sunlight bulb at 6:30am, and I open the curtains during the day.
You're right on the money about camping and how it affects the body, in my experience. Light obviously isn't the only factor in camping feeling good - but I've also been reading lately that light exposure (and possibly direct sun exposure?) during the day is quite good for you.
A quick search for sources led me to this article, which has a nice collection of links to studies for those interested in learning more: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/bedroom-environment/light-an...
The Lost Art of Listening, by Michael P. Nichols
https://www.audible.com/pd/B01M0D1LT5?source_code=ASSOR15002...
So the thinking is less that we're a threat to them now (if they can get here, we certainly are not), but some intelligent beings may look at how we have treated one another over the last few centuries/millennia and decide that they don't want us (or any self-replicating machines we happen to plop out) roaming/colonizing/populating/enslaving/murdering/reeducating the galaxy.
- 2000 Toyota MR2 Spyder. For me, it's the perfect example of explicitly choosing qualities to sacrifice (straight line speed, utility, interstate ride comfort, safety) to maximize the qualities you desire (very affordable, zippy, perfectly balanced, convertible, charming, fun beyond belief in the corners). Doing so allowed them to make a mid engine convertible sports car, using just use the engine from a Corolla, meaning repairs are cheap and rare (once you or the original owner solve the oil-burning issue the engines are known for). There's something so refreshing about design that doesn't try at all to appeal to anyone but the target market, and does everything possible to appeal to them in every way that matters.
- SSH. The moment I first used passwordless ssh to run commands on a game server across the room from me was the moment I truly fell in love with computing.
- Rust. I won't beat a dead horse, but the borrow checker was a real lightbulb moment for me in programming, and finally established an understanding of memory management and strong typing that has served me well even in other languages since.
- Thinkpad x220. The keyboard and the Linux compatibility alone were enough to convince me - the simple determined dependability has grown my love more and more over time.
- Nasal strips. Such a simple but clever little design to solve a host of pretty insidious air intake issues.
- Bass Ukulele. Being able to take a fully functional bass guitar on a plane as a carry-on is a transformative change. Helps too that they're fun as all heck to plunk on.
- Magic: The Gathering, especially the original Ravnica block. The beauty, intricacy, and depth of the design has brought me to tears more than once.
- Team Fortress 2. Same, minus the tears and plus a lot of hootin' and hollerin'.
- Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard. The physical design an instant halt to my wrist pain from typing all day. It being so configurable is a delightful plus.
- DrinkMate/SodaStream. Cheap, plentiful, easy carbonation in the home has helped keep this fella sober for years.
- Fellow gooseneck electric kettle. No frills, no gimmicks, just set the temperature, set the timer when you're ready, and pour.
- Loaded Bhangra longboard. Another example of sacrificing what you don't need (convenience, maneuverability) for what you want (immaculate balance and foot feel for dancing).
- Sony PSP. The degree to which it was ahead of its time still staggers me. I had an entire library of every NES and SNES games, plus a music player, plus an internet browser, all in my pocket in 2006. I still believe that if Sony had embraced instead of fought 3rd party applications, they would have taken over the world.
Honorable mentions: Marimekko backpack, Rotring mechanical pencils, the Shinkansen, the Taiwanese and Japanese traditional train systems, air-inflated blood flow restriction bands, vanilla rotation barbells, and the Kensington Expert Mouse with the ball and the 4 buttons.
Also many, many many many examples of evolved design in nature (birds, rats, succulents) and natural languages. I'm thinking in particular of the tone system of the Taiwanese dialect of Hokkien (there are obviously many others, that's just the one I know), which seems unintuitive to the extreme to an outsider but allows for an incredible density of information and for allowing you to know at any moment in a spoken sentence when a clause ends, without the need for a pause.
1) Someone / some org was slow to notice that this was happening. 2) Bureaucratic muck slowed resolution down. Even once escalated, there would be a lot of red tape to go through to make the necessary changes to how things are ranked. The people noticing the problem most likely aren't the people able to make changes, the changes would need to be tested at scale and their effects evaluated, and the people making the changes would have a lot of deliberating, politicking, explaining, and appeasing to do. Add onto that that everyone is stressed out of their minds, worried about performance reviews, and having to balance changes they want to make against how they and everyone else are evaluated at perf time...
This reminds me fondly of using Vimperator macros and link hints to automate tasks back in 2007. It has always surprised me that the most widely-used UI paradigm lacks a standard way to automate tasks - we all spend so much of our lives clicking links, it seems insane that there isn't more/standard tooling for automating that.
I recently decided to take a solo project and run with it. The technical promise is real, and I'm excited about my vision for it. Unfortunately in this context, I've spent all 10+ years of my career in scientific computing and big tech - so despite having a few friends in the startup world, most of this is really new to me, and I don't actually know anyone who has gone the solopreneur / micro-startup route.
Any and all tips, tricks, pointers, articles, and advice are welcome - I'm really excited to take this risk, but I'm feeling increasingly clueless about how to handle many of the organizational / non-technical aspects of this process.
My bug report on it kicked off an absolute maelstrom of dev activity and investigation. High level engineers showed up in the comments. Lots of immediate followup. The severity was clearly understood and resolving it was clearly prioritized.
I exclusively use Signal now, but the discrepancy between what I see here and what I saw there is pretty disheartening. This kind of bug is not only a massive privacy risk, but it also massively erodes user confidence and trust.
I wonder too if work in this space would reap rewards for vision-impaired accessibility on sites not designed for it. Does anyone know if that's the case?