cweiss

RE: Lack of haptic feedback - There's an app for that - https://www.haptictouchbar.com/ It's not great (that the feedback is in the touchpad and not the touchbar is disconcerting), but it's better than no feedback.

Agreed - As someone who got rid of cable and even ditched the OTA antenna (in the US), I couldn't watch any live coverage.

Since the news broadcasts (which are plentiful for cord-cutters) left the actual event-centric coverage to the NBC streams, most of the coverage I saw was of non-event specific news, primarily negative.

Attend a local Maker Faire - There's such a broad amount of creative energy covering every interest, I'd think it sure to spark/fuel any passions. I'm a bit of an introvert myself, but I can't help but talk to folks there about what they're doing and what challenges/triumphs they've faced.

Knowing who to talk to about a given issue (for a large company). Since you say "new career", I assume you're starting a new job somewhere. I work for a fairly large organization that's heavily silo'd with regards to responsibilities. When something goes wrong, I often have to work with 4 or 5 departments, each of which has some folks who are helpful and folks who are 'blockers'. Figuring out who the right folks to talk to for a given issue can make the difference between solving something in minutes or hours (days). Likewise, making sure folks know my responsibilities and when to bug (or, more importantly, not bug) me.

Know your domain tools and always be looking for new (to you) ones. If you're new and in the linux sysadmin domain, you'll be doing a lot of "oh wow, I didn't know about XYZ". Find the old stuff that's been around forever (and likely installed everywhere) before jumping on the new hotness that'll require big changes to your systems to install. I like HN for some of this. Read the comments for the 'vim/tmux/bash/cron/git guide' entries that get reposted every few weeks. I guarantee somewhere in the comments, you'll find something you didn't know that'll help.

Scripting tedious tasks is huge. Learning the bits of shell/perl/python/ruby/whatever that interact with the tasks you do day-to-day can be very beneficial. Automate all the things.

If it's something to read - it goes to Pocket. If it's something to do, it goes to ToDoist. Sadly, both are overflowing with things to read and do that I'll likely never get around to.

brew install no-more-secrets

Works.

Is that true when you factor in utilities? IE - Where does all the water come from? At least in the burbs, you can set up your own well.

An ID/Medical/Etc card scanning/viewing mobile app. Something that will nicely scan my wallet cards and allow me to easily bring the scans up and (if needed) email/print/photocopy the images of them on demand.

Bonus points for:

- Search capabilities (requires OCR, or at least manual tagging)

- Geolocation (if I'm at a doctor's office, bring my medical card to the front).

- Security - Encrypt the images in memory and require a PIN to unlock.

- Bright mode for barcode scanning/photocopying (which overlaps with other apps like Passbook, Wallet, etc, but they don't support non-shopping cards).

Arguments for/against the process aside, I could see this as a result of evolution. Tribes who's members remained social while sick would be more likely to spread disease and self-destruct?

And yet, have you seen the 4k content out there? Breaking Bad was awesome, but is that really better in 4k than, say BSG or Planet Earth? I bought a 4k TV to use as a monitor several months back and started researching content - Most of it is eyebrow-raising, to say the least. I remember when 720/1080 were first introduced, there was an expected dearth of content, but at least what was out there was worth high-def (flyovers of tourist destinations, PBS nature documentaries, etc). For example - Here's some of Netflix's offerings in 4k:

  Series:
  House of Cards
  Marco Polo
  Breaking Bad
  The Blacklist

  Movies and Documentaries
  Smurfs 2
  Philadelphia
  Jerry Macguire
  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  Oceans (documentary)
  Forests (documentary)
  Flowers (documentary)

Edit:formatting

>My point in general was I think the Silicon Valley elders of old, Grove, Moore, Packards (I know multiple individuals who benefitted from the Packard Children's fund w/ pre-mes. (sp?), etc. were much more community and outward focused than that which we see today.

That is a fascinating observation. I was alive and in the biz back then, but I've burned an awful lot of brain cells between then and now and don't have a particularly objectiv eview of things.

Why do you think folks then were outward focused? Was there less competition so more focus on "doing something really cool", or leftover 60's 'free love' culture, or less shitty traffic in Silicon Valley, or...?

They'd also be uninvited from future Apple events. These aren't generally open to the public.

Yes, but is there any data about the ambient pressure inside a building VS outside? There's a whole lot of horsepower dedicated to HVAC units, do they really hit a zero equilibrium?

There's plenty of use cases for low-storage iPhones. Think enterprise customers, mobile point-of-sale devices, field researchers, reporters.

Something my team started recently that we rather like is to put together a Kanban-style board (Trello would be perfect for this - we used Taiga as the tool had to be in-house) with cards like "How do I do build X?" and "How do I troubleshoot Y" that have links to our Wiki pages that cover the relevant topics.

New team members go through the board moving cards from "New" to "Done" as they research/answer the questions. In theory, once they're done, they should know all the major information needed to do their jobs. This is a win in both directions as it also forces us to write high-quality documentation. If the person gets stuck, they generally have a good idea who to bug (the most recent author of the page) for clarification.

For a first employee in that particular space, it would be a valuable exercise for them to start building that deck and the associated documentation. It might make the "time to first code contribution" take a little longer, but should pay dividends in reducing mistakes.

Others have chimed in on the ease of bulb installation VS ease of switch installation. One other point is that the most you can get from a remote switch-only installation is variance in brightness, no RGB control.

I assume that floatation tanks are not particularly conducive to folks with obstructive sleep disorders (where typically, when extremely relaxed, air pathways collapse enough to restrict breathing - usually exacerbated by sleeping on one's back)? I would think a CPAP would be too loud and provide a heavy distraction from the goal of total isolation.

Per the parent though, (at least for NHL) if the game is on national TV, it's blacked out on NHL Gamecenter. Fortunately, NHL isn't all that popular, so there's only a few games on national networks each week (of the dozens of games that are broadcast locally). No idea if it's the same with other leagues.

FWIW - The 20th edition Blu Ray release has some great documentary materials talking about the cast attending computer meetups in character to get context. Also some bits with the costume designer talking about creating the the 'look' of the hackers.

The problem is, if Blizzard knows of an infringement and fails to attempt enforcement, anyone can come along and legally claim "Hey, they didn't hassle this (small time) guy, so they have no right to hassle us". So the well-meaning hacker guy with a cool prototype opens the door for Zynga to come in and make StarCraftVille, which I'm fairly sure would be not so well received.

It's all about use cases. I have many tablets that I use for a variety of purposes. They all fit a certain need.

I have one in the garage that I use as a Sonos (whole-house music system) controller and to occasionally look up shop-related queries (IE - "what is the torque spec on the axle bolt for my bike?").

I have one next to the couch that is also a Sonos controller and I use for weather and "2nd screen" duties. IE - "Why does Con Air's cinematography style look so much like Michael Bay movies?"

I've got one in the home office I use for hacking, many other gadgets I use have tablet-based interfaces.

I have a retina iPad on the nightstand for reading, checking the news/weather/sports/social networks and to control my house lights - part of my bedtime routine.

My most compelling use though is for when I need a light computer for travel. Two years ago, I went to Hawaii for a week on two carry-on bags (including big camera and diving gear). I had my iPad with me and, while there, work had a serious server outage. I was able to SSH into the server, initiate repairs, and get everything fixed while sitting on the balcony in the sun. I did not carry (and could not have fit) any normal sized laptop in the carry on. I also used to it check out various tourist destinations and find places to eat while I was there (which I could have done on a smartphone, true).

I'm an extreme geek, I have embraced the culture of technology, my house is filled with many gadgets that have served me well and others that have served only to drain my bank account. I have no hesitations about buying something if I have even the slightest inkling that it would improve my life/workflow.

In the above, all but the iPads were cheap Android tablets that I dont think I paid more than $200usd for (none of those needs required a whole lot of horsepower).

To speak to your specific interest, tablets are awesome for casual web navigation and almost awesome for note-taking. I have yet to duplicate the ease and awesomeness of a pen on paper for note-taking with any tablet app/stylus combo. Many tablet note-taking apps have great features, but the actual 'feel' of a quality ballpoint pen on wood pulp has yet to be duplicated - for me, I've spent far too much time being 'constrained' by computers to be able to think as freely as I can with a pen and paper. Switching will almost certainly be a painful adjustment. That said, if 'computers' are your native medium, then note taking on a tablet can be a powerful thing.

For example, Microsoft OneNote is an amazingly awesome note-taking app for computer-savvy folks. They really nailed the balance between digital data entry and analog notation while presenting it in a fairly intuitive interface. I've only ever used it on PC, I'd love to see as brilliant an implementation on a tablet. Not sure it's possible without a mouse-'mindset' interface.

Though really, as long as you don't need big horsepower and aren't on an extremely constrained budget, it's not too hard to get your feet wet in the tablet world cheap. I just saw a not-horrible import Android tablet for <$40 on a sale site.

Does this work with Plex for XBox One? If so, can you do a party chat while it's running? That'd be the awesome hacky answer to 360's great Netflix Party Mode.

Or two-stage AA missiles with large "get it up in the air and fast ASAP" 1st stages and smaller "aim at the baddy" 2nd stages?

And not on network TV. PQ is not nearly as good as regular TV, you can't easily time-shift or pause (spoiled by TiVo).

I've always started my NHL season trying NHL Gamecenter and always ended up canceling it within a few weeks and paying through the nose for Center Ice (which comes out to ~$90/mo with pre-requisite cable).

Also, 'reality tv' is ridiculously cheap to produce compared to normal broadcast fare. Minimal crew, minimal writing, low (if any) 'actor' compensation. Usually shot in cheap locations.

Ditto - Hockey season for me. As a TiVo user from day one, it's been interesting to see over the years the progress (and lack therof) being made in the provisioning process - especially for non-cable-company-owned hardware.

Back in the early days, it'd almost always take at least one in-person visit to activate the cable card - Frequently two. Nowadays, I can get it done in 3 or less phone calls.

Did I mention I hate cable?

I've got Philips Hue lighting in my house, so I use it frequently for that: "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights". It's particularly helpful because I have the voice remote in the bedroom, so I can do an "Alexa, turn off all the lights" before crashing and know that things are off. Home automation for me is the holy grail - If I could link Echo to something like Vera/MiCasaVerde or other full-home-control system (shouldn't be difficult, they have decent web APIs), the whole "Alexa, Time to watch Silicon Valley"-dim-the-lights-turn-on-the-tv-start-playing-my-show thing becomes a pretty easy reality.

I use the grocery function often and have IFTT linked to add stuff to ToDoist (agreed, the mobile app is horrible - who knew Amazon would make such a miserable shopping list app).

Lastly, living in the PNW, I do get a lot of mileage out of "Will it rain tomorrow?"

Granted, nothing I couldn't do with an iPhone/Android, but Echo's cheaper than a dedicated mobile device.

The issues with an external battery are: Phones tend to die when you're using them. This means you're either constantly plugging/unplugging, or you have a cable hanging out of your pocket all the time. My LG G3 can easily drawn than a smaller battery can supply, so it'll still go dead. A big enough battery is a large, heavy thing. It will monopolize a pocket or small purse.

From a strictly emotional standpoint, the idea that I must carry a separate battery if I plan to be away from a charger all day is just stupid.

Buy used?

I'm pretty sure delivery vehicles have been involved in injury accidents since the horse-drawn carriage days.