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mcritz

1,059 karma · joined June 20, 2010

michaelcritz.com

pixel.science@mastodon.social

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mcritz··on Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai
I don’t want to just “me, too”, but I’ve literally had a career pivot to a role at Amazon Devices because I was able to bootstrap enough knowledge about building devices from Adafruit’s ecosystem and hardware.

Adafruit works tirelessly to build trust with the community. So, if they’re fighting something I just assume they’re doing it for our benefit.

mcritz··on US Federal Reserve says its goal is 'to get wages down' (2022)
Why stop at the Fed? Reduce executive salaries for all banks. For executives at all corporations.

Trickle down compensation, already.

mcritz··on Niagara Launcher
Why does their website have a photo of the iOS App Library feature?
mcritz··on Cloud.gov
Any plans to standardize agencies tech stacks? Is that even a good idea?
mcritz··on NSA Chief: Terrorists Using Leaked Info [video]
It’s a no-win situation for Americans who are forced to pay $10,000,000,000 annually to fund an agency to spy on us and find “terrorists” or $160,000,000,000 annually for wars if they don’t find actual terrorists.

Neither of those expenses has its desired outcomes, nor are they mutually exclusive.

mcritz··on Hackathons are bad for you
When I moved to SF I knew next to nobody. I worked freelance at a coworking place and went to hackathons. Most of my SF friends are from these social environments.

Having peers and friends that you can share your experiences with has some health benefit even if the thing you’re doing is scientifically proven to end your life http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=social+benefits+of+smo....

edit: format

mcritz··on How I Fired Myself
> We all mess up, but only the best ones will deal with it professionally and learn from it.

This. I don't regret my life's many failures. I regret the times I've flamed out, blamed others, or ran away.

Doing things means making mistakes. You can spot a professional by how they deal with mistakes.

mcritz··on An alternative to alert()
I’m not clever enough for Coffeescript.

I wish the examples were written in such a way that if I showed it to coworkers half of them wouldn’t roll their eyes.

mcritz··on How To Design For Android Devices
Typography is pretty awful on Android in general. Both Roboto and Droid Sans are nightmare Frankenfonts.

Font rendering on Android is bulky, blocky, and fails to consider how humans read letterforms. So, even if a designer can convince the team to license a better font, it’ll end up a smeared mess on users’ screens.

The API calls to layout type on Android suck. (iOS sucks slightly less depending on how willing your UI engineer is willing to devote to this most basic foundation of design.)

“U MAD, BRO?”

Yeah. I get paid to be a picky snob about what the user sees and how they feel about the product. It pisses me off to look at Android because its not disappointing, the way Win8 is, but actively anti-design. Why pay to license good fonts? Why make a system for rendering type nicely? Because this stuff is basic user experience. It's like going into a hotel and discovering that the paint is yellowing. That hotel is more likely to have dirty towels, no hot water, smelly sheets, and bed bugs.

mcritz··on Bing.com content is contained within a single table cell
Good catch. I wonder why they chose that approach. They’re smart people and I’m sure there’s a good reason.
mcritz··on #BoycottApple trending on Google plus due to Galaxy Nexus ban
"Patent law is a game of kings."
mcritz··on Govt of India proposes to ban SSH (Or wants you to use 40 bit keys)
Is it even feasible to attempt to block ash? They can block the port, but users can set up sah on any port.

What level of monitoring would be necessary to detect a user's traffic was encrypted?

mcritz··on Sony to Eliminate 10,000 Jobs, 6% of Workforce, Nikkei Says
Remember when Sony made inspirational products that everyone wanted?
mcritz··on Without ads, Android apps could be more than twice as power-efficient
I'm surprised that the ad sevices aren't smarter. Wait until on wifi, cache a bunch of ads, share those ads amongst all the apps that use your service. Is this feasible?
mcritz··on NYT reducing number of free articles available before paywall
I'm not surprised. Even thugh I added scripts to defeat their paywall my viewing habits have changed from around five articles a day to five per month.
mcritz··on NYT reducing number of free articles available before paywall
Exactly! I once wrote NYT feedback asking, “how much would I need to pay for a no-ad version?”

Their response was insulting. Essentially quoting the digital subscription rates without even addressing my question.

mcritz··on Apple’s secret iPhone lock-in feature?
I like iMessage, but it can be confusing. I send a message from my Mac or iPad and replies show up in my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. If I left the sound on for all my devices it becomes caucauphonus.
mcritz··on Built in Boston: Why Great Entrepreneurs Are Choosing MA to Build Their Startups
*institutional knowledge about investment, growth, scaling, etc.

This might always be the case for East Coast startups. You start a business, you need investors that understand your business.

I hypothesize that if you start a tech business in Boston -- and succeed -- you're more likely to move someplace warmer, or cheaper, or back to your home state (or mother country), or to a place that has lots of startups in your field to invest your money because you understand their business. The East Coast has a lot of great talent. The scale of their new talent cultivation is likely unrivaled even by the Bay Area. It's just that Boston isn't home for many of its most successful.

mcritz··on Anonymous plans to take down the 13 root DNS servers that power the Internet?
Let's assume they succeed. They take down the Internet at noon EDT (9AM PDT). What's the worst that could happen?
mcritz··on Want me to download your app? Please do this.
I'm trying to think of someone I know who owns an iOS device, is literate enough to uninstall iTunes, but not literate enough to find the “mail” feature of their browser.
mcritz··on Want me to download your app? Please do this.
This seems like much ado about nothing. Download in iTunes and it automatically shows up in iOS.

Don't use iTunes? Use your browser’s “mail page” command.

mcritz··on Infographic: Who Buys All Those Google Ads? | Visual.ly
The information was interesting, but the representation was pretty bad. If you're going to have a chart with names, numbers and bars of different sizes, please make the bars proportional to the metric. I should see a chart and understand it immediately.
mcritz··on Duck.com (not the search engine you might expect)
Dick move, google.
mcritz··on Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I have forgotten my password.”

If it’s good enough for Bob McFarlane and Alberto Gonzales, it’s good enough for regular Americans, too!

mcritz··on OSX Lion in CSS3
Looks fine on iPhone. Windows don't drag (obviously). http://twitter.com/mike_critz/statuses/161238575835394048 
mcritz··on Ruby on Rails Tutorial, second edition (updated for Rails 3.2)
Hartl's book, site, and screencasts made Ruby on Rails genuinely fun. As a designer without any formal training in development I recommend this book — especially the paid screencast version — to everyone curious about Rails or trying to get into development.

Thank you Mike for making such a great product and for sharing so generously with the community. I know several people that learned rails through your work.

mcritz··on Apple becomes No. 3 PC maker in US with industry-leading 21% growth
* only claim 11% market share

1. Ha! Don’t you wish you had an 11% market share in your industry?

2. Since when did market share affect how well Apple is doing? I imagine they have a silo full of money somewhere where employees can swim in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.

(High-five to all my 90s’ afternoon cartoon fans. I am pondering what you are pondering.)

mcritz··on Apple becomes No. 3 PC maker in US with industry-leading 21% growth
* Simply showing Apple growing it's market share here doesn't necessarily mean HP or Dell shipped fewer units.

Simply, HP & Dell shipped fewer units. Evidence: Gartners’ chart headings. One of which read, “4Q10 Shipments” the other, “4Q11 Shipments”. But I went to art school, maybe a decline in shipments doesn’t mean they sold fewer units?

Looking forward to your thoughts.

mcritz··on GoDaddy support for SOPA aftermath - daily domain transfer impact graph
It'd be helpful to see the year-over-year data. Does GoDaddy usually get a spike of new domains at new years?

Either way, tell everyone you know, “GoDaddy is a terrible business.” elaborate if necessary.

mcritz··on Windows Store Revenue Split
I'm a Mac/iPhone using designer, and super-excited about Win 8. I think you've got it backwards. Windows sells more than Mac OS, iOS, and Android combined.
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