doctorRetro

Seconded. I hate these kind of vague announcements. Best I can tell is it's Drive plus... something? Hard to get excited when you don't know what it is.

I don't disagree. Not at all. Rituals are very important for society, even the small ones we don't even notice we're performing. Every Friday a number of my coworkers and I go out to a particular burger place for lunch. We catch up on the week past, talk about the weekend ahead. It's a milestone indicating that we're one step closer, almost to the very edge, of the weekend. That's a ritual and it's an important one.

But, I think some of the examples cited by this article - and presumably by this design team - are rather silly. Do we need a ritual for how to cope with getting a parking ticket? The death of a laptop? And... frankly, I'm not even sure what they're trying to say with "How can I keep a smart car from exacerbating my loneliness and narcissism?"

I'm not one of these people who likes to blame the mythical incarnate persona of "them millenials / Gen X / Gen Y / hipsters..." etc. But, if I may beg your indulgence here for a moment, this is some real millennial (or whatever straw man you chose) shit, right there!

Rituals, and the social exchanges that come with them are important. I completely agree. But what this design lab is touting sounds like answers to questions no one asked.

Edit: Forgot to mention, while I'm none of the religions cited further below in the article, I do think the idea of their pop up worship centres is interesting. Far more interesting than the dead-laptop-ritual idea. I'd have started the article there, if it was me writing it.

Please, please tell me no one gets paid to do this. Please.

Speaking for myself, I'm due to upgrade my phone - my contract is up, I have no balance owed - but I just don't see a need to. My phone is two and a half years old and it's hanging in there. It still calls, texts, browses and reads just fine. And the typically weakest link of all, the battery, is still holding a decent charge. I don't see any advantage to replacing it right now. I lost the comment, but someone else posted that they're at "peak phone" and I'm inclined to agree.

Edit: -redundancy

Moved to Feedly from Google Reader (I miss Google Reader). But likewise, I get more value from that than social media. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the instant gratification of someone-liked-and-shared-my-post just as much as the next person, but if I'm going to learn anything over the course of the day, it's more likely to be in my Feedly time than Facebook time.

Crypto currencies are still akin to magic for me and I'm not a hardware engineer by any means, so this is probably a stupid question, but: why doesn't someone create a processing card specifically for mining? Not a GPU but something stripped down to the necessities and running flat out all for the sake of mining.

Granted, a big part of that answer is that it's a limited market when weighed next to the costs of design, prototyping, tooling, production, etc.

I spent nine and a half years with my own office (right out of school, too; I was quite lucky to have that) and while it wasn't much, it was mine. I then moved to a much better position with a more open concept. Not ultra-trendy-start-up open, but still with nine people in one room. The effect on my ability to concentrate has been very noticeable. If there is more than one conversation going on in the room, I need to get up and leave until it's over; I can't accomplish anything. I wouldn't go back to my previous position for anything, but I do miss my office.

Oh good, I'm not the only one who gets really bothered by this! I hate seeing these kinds of errors. It happens to everyone, I understand that. But when you're an internationally read journal, you should really be holding yourself to a higher standard than, say, the twice-a-week village newspaper or your aunt's emails.

"Her blueprint for survival also depends upon working internet"

I see a potential point of failure.

Canadian here: I couldn't name one. I'm not a Trudeau hater (or fanboy, for that matter), but this is definitely all hollow lip service.

Edit: I'm also not really sure what he means by "get it".

"I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that's Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,' Henry told NBC News."

Really? Because the only thing I see no doubt of is someone who has reached a conclusion based upon scant evidence, attempting to prime an audience to accept that same conclusion as fact without independent thought or verification.