dend

Ego depletion as a concept has been challenging to prove, if at all: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0056...

I agree that often certain hobbies require a push to get started. That initial barrier is what I found the hardest to overcome, but once you start going - it becomes easier and easier. Similar to how one can attempt to overcome moments of procrastination - you need to get started and push through initial discomfort.

Does it offer compression, post-recording resizing and multi-format exports?

You might want to try ScreenToGif (https://www.screentogif.com/) for Windows and Kap (https://getkap.co/) for macOS.

If the software is worth it, absolutely - I would pay $500 and use it for years to come. Up until a couple of years ago, that was the model used by Adobe for their Creative Suite. Tools like Vegas Pro are in the same boat - it's expensive for a one-time fee, but I view it as an investment in my craft (if I really need the tool).

My hypothesis (and I have no data to back this up) is that most users leverage the same functionality over and over despite the updates and new features. As a hobbyist user of photo-editing software (and Photoshop in the past), I can't recall a single update to the stack in the past five years that was groundbreaking in my day-to-day usage of the tool. That's not to say this won't be the case in the future, but when it is, I will happily pay a premium for the next version.

There is, of course, the argument that subscriptions lower the bar of entry - a student can't afford $600 per tool, but they can much easier bear the $29.99/mo. My argument is less about "no subscriptions, ever" but more about "give me an option to give you money upfront and forget about updates until 5 years later."

I think this can be taken on a case-by-case basis. With software, where I am looking is a place where I can buy a "snapshot" - the current release that time and effort was invested in, that I can compensate for. That's it. I am not asking for constant updates, as I would be perfectly content with the release I bought. That is, until it can't work for my needs, and I need to buy another version.

But I do understand your point and I agree - it's not a cheap effort.

OP here. Au contraire - I am happy to pay a bit extra for software that does its job and gets out of the way. With hardware, one could argue that can be made a part of the price for the device - if I buy a "premium" component, I prefer to have a clean user experience that does not create a hole in my network to manage RGB lights.

OP here. Sadly a true story with a "shall not be named" software for optical media management. I just want a Win32 binary that does it's job. Instead, I had to wait 45 seconds every launch until the server "spins up" from working in the background.

OP here. You have an explicit option to opt out, no gimmicks.

OP here. I should've clarified in the article. "Developers" is not meant to single out engineers. It's the collective "people who build, promote, and maintain the software"

Thank you for the comment - really appreciate the feedback!

Author of the blog post here, folks! Happy to discuss the project or answer any questions.

Really cool! I've recently got really fed up with the default software and wrote my own library for .NET to manage the device[1].

For anyone curious, I've also documented how to reverse-engineer the USB protocol[2], so you can write your own libraries and pretty much set any buttons to anything (with much more OS control granularity).

[1]: https://deck.surf

[2]: https://den.dev/blog/reverse-engineering-stream-deck/

Probably worth the effort. A while ago I was exploring the Nest APIs (https://github.com/dend/foggycam) - should probably get back to that and see how I can automate some of the Nest capture ideas.

Have a blocklist in your HOSTS file. That way, even if you go to those sites from your browser, you are not able to access them.

My assumption here is that this decision is one where someone had an A/B test that showed people are more likely to click on an ad when the content is structured the way it’s shown.

Which comes at the cost of a good user experience, where the feature PM didn’t truly ask: “does this deliver any value to the people using the search?”

Always trying to remember the wonderful excerpt[0] from Ken Kocienda’s “Creative Selection” on A/B tests - just because the data shows the outcomes are more significant does not make that a better experience.

[0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/kocienda/status/11134509457051770...

[Author of blog post here] Depends on what causes friction in your life, so YMMV. To me, if I have a bad network at home, and I constantly have to fiddle with a router and reboot it whenever the ISP deploys some changes, that's time I can spend on other things.

[Author of blog post here] Appreciate your concerns, thank you :)

[Author of blog post here] Bingo - this is a reflection on my own process. It's not a recipe for others to follow as much as it is food for thought and maybe a push to figure out what works for you.

[Author of blog post here] To me those are different things. TODOs on a daily basis can contain mundane tasks - e.g. "Send a Christmas card to cousin Terry" doesn't strike me as something I need to keep a record of. For things that I've accomplished, e.g. launched a new site, reached some milestone, I can just keep it on a separate page/note.

[Author of blog post here] Good feedback - thank you! Probably would be easier to include them as reference to the end of the post for those that want to dig into it.

[Author of blog post here] I'd say it probably varies and depends on a lot of factors - sometimes I have issues with the Play One connecting over AirPlay, but overall it _significantly_ reduces friction compared to all other audio systems I've used.

[Author of blog post here] Totally fair observation - the article I put together naively skips through some of the most complicated aspects of life. Someone that has kids, a different commute, a job that requires different effort, health-related concerns, etc. may not have an easy time at all with the approach of "simplifying" things around them. The post itself is not meant to be some sort of a universal, "you should do this and your life will be peachy" advice, but rather a reflection on what worked best for me personally, that will hopefully get people thinking about what works for them in their own stages of life.

[Author of blog post here] YMMV may vary - what works for me and saves me time is not necessarily something that will work for others, so very much spot on observation about this being a reflection on a personal approach that helped me. It's by no means a universal mantra.

[Author of blog post here] This is what I am alluding to with the post - the goal is less so about "remove stuff that doesn't spark joy" rather than to focus on things that empower one to get their job done. If it's a desk with 1,000 papers spread all around it - so be it, if it works for you. As long as you can focus and minimize wasteful time spending, that means it's working.

Point taken - we always definitely have room to improve. There are two avenues you can submit feedback: https://aka.ms/sitefeedback, for anything that is related to site functionality, and the footer of each article, where we integrate GitHub feedback, where we enable GitHub issues.

If, for some reason, the article you are looking at has issues but no feedback affordance, use our site feedback channel or DM me on Twitter (@DennisCode) - would be happy to route the feedback and make sure we address it.

We triage those items fairly regularly.

docs.microsoft.com PM here. Thanks for the feedback - I am routing this to the content team so that we can see what we can do to improve this situation.

What particular aspect of it is broken? Genuinely asking the question, because I want to make sure we address major issues in the customer experience that you have.

I was referring to Bing and Google - not because I am trying to omit anything, but rather because these are the two I use the most on the day-to-day.

docs.microsoft.com PM here - thanks for the feedback! It takes some time to update all our search results across the two major search engines. Given that some pages have less traction than others, the more obscure content sometimes still is indexed as if it's coming from MSDN.

We have moved most of the library to docs, with redirects in place, so hopefully you won't get too many 404s. If you do - feel free to report them here: https://aka.ms/sitefeedback, and we'll address them.

Not quite true - smartphone market penetration is quite large, so it is possible to reliably offer a universal app (see: MS Authenticator, Google Authenticator, Authy) for code auth. Now, sure, you can argue that SMS should be kept as an _option_ but it should never be the only one.