Nathanael_M

It was in my buddy’s shed. If it is a tale of wisdom you seek, turn back now.

Ahhh, a buddy and I were making a forge for knife making. I can’t defend my choices.

Maybe 5 years ago I was hanging out with a buddy and we took an angle grinder to an empty propane tank. When we were finished, we smelled uniquely awful. It turns out that added to propane is a tiny amount of the odourant Ethyl Mercaptan. Now when you’re using propane you get just enough of a whiff of it to remind you that you’re using propane, but if you get a smell of the inside of an empty propane tank? Well, something about the liquid propane residue that remains, some miracle of science and chemistry, creates a density of Ethyl Mercaptan that is shocking. Room-fillingly shocking. Clothes throwing away shocking. Many showers worth of shocking.

A couple years ago I had my first “truffle” experience with some truffle cheese and was like cutting back into that propane tank. Not the same in scale, but certainly in type. Tremendously similar smells. Since then I’ve been sad and thought I just managed to ruin truffles for myself. This article has given me hope.

In a couple decades people are going to have to radically consider where they find personal value and identity.

It has 87 points and it’s 18 hours old, it dropped off because it didn’t generate interest.

Also, a bit of advice, finding conspiracy everywhere, weakens your arguments for potentially true conspiracy theories. It could be that your thoughts presented in this comment are completely accurate. However, then accusing the staff of HackerNews of sabotaging and covering up this small, barely-news story makes you look like you see boogeymen everywhere. It removes credence from your more important thoughts.

Gonna take another opportunity moment to recommend the single most impactful secular book I've ever read: Deep Work by Cal Newport

I don't know if I have ADHD or just poisoned my boredom tolerance with years of passive stimulation, but this book genuinely changed my life, my ability to focus, and my mental frameworks around work ethic, focus, time management, and productivity.

Ooh, I'll give it a shot!

Burger King: https://jkrglobal.com/case-studies/burger-king/ Simple, but fun. Retro, instead of over modern. Better than the logo is all the supporting fonts and imagery. Super aesthetic.

InstaCart: https://www.wolffolins.com/case-study/instacart Pretty recent, tech company, not a beloved brand at the time of rebrand, but wow it's a great rebrand. Way more character, way more fun.

Leibniz: https://auge-design.com/work/leibniz-design-relaunch/ Subtle changes, embraces the character, modernizes the packaging, makes a consistent design system. Maybe not what you're looking for, but still a cool example of new design done well and embraced.

New York State Parks: https://id29.com/our-work/new-york-state-parks Clean and happy.

CNET: https://www.wearecollins.com/work/cnet/ Big name, awesome rebrand. Tons of character, no one misses the old logo or vibe.

Midi: https://www.pentagram.com/work/midi/story Really interesting supporting logos and graphics. Maybe a little too heavily minimalist, but man that's a cool idea to have a dynamic icon for your logo!

Mojang: https://www.boldscandinavia.com/work/mojang-studios/ Tons of fun, reflective of blocks and pixels.

DK: https://www.pentagram.com/work/dk Good example of modernization without losing character.

These are some bigger names, but honestly the really interesting stuff is inside smaller companies who don't have to worry so much about legacy. There's some beautiful, character filled work out there.

You worked at Pentagram! That was kind of my dream employer for a few years. I'd be super interested to know your role if you can talk about it.

I think there are valid points against it to make. Interest, uniqueness, memorability all suffer with this new logo. They're throwing away an established brand with a lot of associations for people, but obviously they considered that and deemed it worth it. I think one of the worst things about is that it's already aesthetically dated, and, because it has nothing really unique or interesting or stylistic about it, it won't age well.

But it's not worth a crusade over. I find it interesting how emotionally attached people (myself included) are to brands, sometimes. A bad rebrand (or even a clever, but sufficiently different rebrand) can feel a bit like cutting down a big old tree in your yard. Why are you getting rid of something so old and beautiful? There are some good reasons, but it still hurts.

Oh this is very cool. I was thinking about game engines in this context, but couldn’t wrap my head around combining the OS and the engine. Browsers seemed much more accessible, but this project is kind if blowing my mind.

People ultimately need to be able to have choice. Their OS in their environment on their tech stack. I’m not sure how that happens, but open source operating system on an open source game engine seems like the right start.

Now we just need an open source headset…

That’s very exciting, I think. Problems that can be solved by people outside of the ecosystem are exciting. I think as long as VR can be taken full advantage for display management, we can make due until more niche applications of the input systems can be developed.

Especially because the average homeowner can’t afford 10-1000 plants per square foot of flooring.

If you have helpful data, please share. I was just skimming as you kindly pointed out and would love some concrete numbers other than holistic senses of the goodwill of houseplants, $150 houseplants or others.

Actually, the only other study I’ve seen says that houseplants are of zero benefit in regards to VOC purification, but I doubt a startup would invest this much into fraud.

I’ve been thinking about this lately (as are many people, I’d imagine, with all the Metaverse hoopla) and I think the adoption line for VR is text resolution. Once a headset is in play that can match out of headset text resolution, rapid adoption, tooling, etc. will follow.

Something I’ve been thinking about is tooling, though. Like if I had a browser and file storage in an environment with infinitely scalable windows/resolution I could do a lot of my work.

It’s hard to wrap my head around. Like an OS running in an OS. The answer can’t be just a horrific amount of manual labor porting a bunch of open source utilities over to some new VR based OS, right? I need to be able to connect my headset to my computer and use my existing tools in a VR environment. It’s almost like emulation. Unless Microsoft and Apple make VR compatible OS’s?

Step 1: Headset tech that doesn’t require horrific vendor lock-in (looking at you, metabook)

Step 2: Highly interactive, scalable browser (too many apps are Electron for it to be anything else)

I think with those two things I could migrate a lot of my work. Then you’d need to start fleshing it out. Creating your own little space, figuring out the tech to use your other tools in VR, creating VR focused Linux distro’s, self-hosting instances of your little corner of this new universe, giant statues of Neal Stephenson reciting passages from Snow Crash like scripture…

This is what scares me. I predict that instead of developers salaries going down, there will instead be fewer low-hanging jobs for developers to pluck. We have an increasing workforce of web-stack developers (front-end JS, back-end JS, full-stack JS) that, as far as I can tell, do a LOT of the same stuff in the same language (JS) over and over again. I don't know when, but I am very confident that that skillset will be replaced by AI Software 2.0 in the relatively near future. That will lead to a massive reduction of jobs and a massive influx of SaaS type web-stack software. Obviously that means an increase in demand for AI developers (but only until that cycle repeats on them) and "prompt engineers" and project managers.

I've put time into learning a skillset that I genuinely think will be unnecessary in the near future and the solution is to prepare for a skillset that has almost zero fiscal value in the short term. That's a tiring thought, haha.

I could totally be wrong, but that's a future that I think is highly likely and people who think they can't be replaced are kidding themselves. I need to learn lower level programming ASAP.

You produced your own snake plant hybrid... That's got to be one of the most fascinating conversation starters I've ever heard. Do you think there's any merit in this concept of air cleaning super plants?

This is not the solarpunk future of my dreams. I self-host my plants. My plants are on-prem bare-dirt.

I would love to see some numbers and comparisons. As I said in a reply below, I suspect this is functionally ineffectual and that 30x the air cleaning of a regular plant is like saying 30x the intelligence of a regular plant.

I suspect this is functioning as a shiny, attractive prototype to fund further research to develop a 300x or 3000x plant or something in that neighbourhood. No judgment from me for that, prototype funding a bigger plan is a cool business model. I'd just love to get some absolute data.

EDIT: Reading a little bit about the NASA plant study[0] that I saw in the comments below. It says that it determined that you'd need 10-1000 plants per square meter (I don't understand this measurement? Wouldn't it be cubic meter?) to get the equivalent of outdoor-indoor air exchange. That's a really wide range, but does this mean you'd need 0.33...-33.33... of these neoplants to have the same impact? That's a lot of plants, but another 10x or 100x and you're actually getting somewhere in the range of reasonable. Counterpoint, I don't know what I'm talking about.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study

I would assume functionality. To me this reads as a funding round to kickstart further development. I want some numbers, because my initial assumption is that 30x a regular plant is still essentially zero overall impact. The longterm goal would be to breed a plant that has 300x or 3000x effectiveness. I don't see anything wrong with this, by the way. Prototypes funding future success is an effective business model. I just suspect that this prototype doesn't really do anything other than present exciting possibilities for the future in a really nice package.

CAaaS+P is the business model of the future.

The negativity in these comments is shocking and smug. However you feel about Apple and specific design decisions, Jony Ive is inarguably an exceptionally talented, successful, and influential designer that pushed entire industries out of chintzy, eye-sore, fast-fashion territory. High quality materials and (largely) enjoyable user experiences. Every human values that. The reason companies prioritize that is because of Jony Ive and Steve Jobs, like it or not.

I think as human working/living conditions get bleaker and cost of living in population centres gets higher, having an option work from a beautiful environment of your own choosing and present an identity of your own design will become more appealing. It costs a lot of money, yeah, but escapism for a month's rent seems like it could be worth it.

I don't think the experience is immersive enough or high enough resolution yet, but it will progress. When we reach the point where the limitations on legibility are the same as those limitations outside of VR then I'm sold. A perfect work environment with all the screen real estate I need, perfectly adaptable, hideable, summonable, etc? All while in whichever environment I can create/purchase? How is that not appealing?

I have friends that live on the other side of the world. Being able to each throw on a headset and work in the same environment with our ideal setups whenever we want to is tremendously exciting to me.

The biggest issue I have and the #1 reason that people aren't getting excited about this is Meta. It's the dystopian, regulated, centralized nightmare of a curated and supervised gateway to the workplace. It's the lack of freedom to own your own space, work, and visage. If I can't host my own place in the "metaverse" or craft my own representation or secure my own data, then I can't see myself entrusting a good percentage of my life to it.

Rambling thoughts, probably reading too much Neal Stephenson.

I think the question being asked was "If money were no object, what is the best cancer detection method?", as opposed to stating that money wasn't an object.

Very interesting comment, nonetheless.

Check out Eleventy[0]. It’s my static site generator of choice. It’s pretty simple to pick up, high HIGH use case ceiling, and delightfully quick. Works with a bunch of different templating languages, too.

[0] https://www.11ty.dev/

I think it’s a startupified abstraction for pain tolerance. If you have the pain tolerance to push through tedium and failure and work, that will check the boxes required to be considered “gritty”.

"The definition of successful SAP migration is one where the company remains solvent."

The company I work for maintains and has built some custom ERP solutions. While we've never dealt with SAP directly, almost universally the mindset of the IT departments at these businesses is that they are the last defence against the dark forces of SAP.

ERP migration is a terrifying thing and they seem to fall into the same pattern every time. Company has their way (workflows, processes, strategies, philosophies) of doing things. New ERP consultant promises the tool will adapt. Company spends $50M with consultant and product trying to make the tool adapt. Pain loop of "Well, it can't really do X like we said, but we can make it do Y which is close!". Company either a) bends to the opinionated process of New ERP, b) cuts their losses and runs, c) spends years and millions more trying to fight the opinionated process and then cuts their losses and runs, and/or d) goes bankrupt.

It seems to me that the only way to do this right is to spend as much time as it takes nailing down your processes and workflows, being honest with your company about what you need to change, what you want to change, and what can functionally change. Then use the broadest technology possible and create a custom solution. I feel like there's room for a broad business logic framework/library.

This is my favourite Sudbury landmark. It’s grander than the big nickel. It’s visible from any point of the city. Even though it’s not in use any more I’ll be very sad to see it go.

James Keelaghan will take priority over U2. Ever time I step into my 2014 Hyundai Elantra I am greeted with Canadian folk music. Definitely a step up.

This is exactly the content I want to see here. I love it. It's so over the top and min-maxed. This is optimized beyond efficiency and I whole-heartedly approve.

I started with Stronglifts! It’s the program that finally gave me a degree of health and made lifting enjoyable/satisfying. Eventually went to something a little less leg heavy (although squats will always be my favourite exercise) with a better system for breaking plateau’s and more accessories, but Stronglifts was what finally made the gym fun.

Who else would be paying for it…? Genuinely, if a government entity has costs (even costs incurred by their own foolishness), who else should pay for it? Are you suggesting the councillors/admin staff should pay for it out of pocket? What other entity works like that?