tammer

How do folks find out about music/art/local events without Facebook? My account would be in the garbage otherwise.

While this could be seen as off topic, I don’t think it is: I strongly recommend purchasing that bike light from your local bike shop. If you have a local bike shop, it is likely struggling. But it is also likely that the lights they have on offer there are specifically selected for their utility, particularly their utility in your locale. Perhaps it will be a few dollars more than Amazon, but you will reap the benefit.

I work in IT in a large institution. Recently we started requiring 2-factor auth to get into payroll. The number of people who tell us “I don’t use apps on my phone” and require a hardware token is shockingly high.

For every tech savvy hacker news minimalist there are 5+ people who find technology easiest to work with when a device does one thing and one thing only.

There is clearly a mass market for preconfigured plug-&-play versions of this. Reminds me of the little bits they used to (probably still do) sell to go between landline phones & the jack to screen telemarketers.

I would love to do this. However the warnings signs have blared into a real crisis: Google Docs has a stranglehold on “work”, in the broadest sense of the term, the way Microsoft Office once did. Until documents are decoupled from corporate lock-in on a mass scale, I’m personally stuck & likely many others are.

Take it from a political organizer (who has a day job in tech): there is in fact a large opportunity for tech to play a role in affecting voter & civic engagement. But knowing what those opportunities are isn’t going to come from a tech vacuum. It will come from working closely with organizers and recognizing their pain points, vs. treating voters like customers & assuming there is a universal solution.

I actually think in today’s absurdist nostalgia-driven culture this would sell significantly if it were a real, perhaps kickstarter-funded product.

I've recently been thinking that Reddit holds a lot of potential that has yet to be tapped or expired. The recent pivots post CEO change (mobile app, redesign, crackdown on garbage) speak to a future where currently fractured private communities such as those on Discourse or Slack can find a more publicly accessible presence. Facebook Groups, while immensely popular, currently falls into the same opt-in, zero-discoverability category.

The timing couldn't be better with the hollowing-out of Tumblr.

There is a missing piece of complexity here and other comments regarding "asshole" behavior.

The story recounted here is a concise demonstration of some aspects of leadership — decisiveness, fairness of discussion, and as mentioned the confidence to steer a large company.

But in these stories the means by which those aspects are demonstrated are colored by toxic masculinity. The rage with which Steve is attributed, the combative or abusive belittling he was known for & demonstrated here is the the very same toxic interpersonal dominance normalized by mass culture as essential male behavior.

There are emotionally supportive ways of doing exactly what Steve did. Perhaps his success could have been even greater had he executed what seems to have been an innate wellspring of leadership ability with a supportive disposition.

This is excellent and far more efficient than other tools I've tried.

My day job is at a massive institution. We recently went all-in on O365. The odds of us ever leaving this platform are slim-to-none. Microsoft has really hit a powerful long-term business model.

The key is tying these services to discounts on Windows licensing. We're buying them anyway so no matter what Google offers us they can't beat the cost savings Microsoft can provide. Same with AWS vs Azure — we can use our volume licensing in the cloud with Azure where with other providers we'd have to pay through the nose.

Until Windows is threatened, this will be the status quo. And I think that disruption will take quite a while.

Let's not forget that Facebook's network is actually a virtual one. The real social graph is independent of any virtualization provider.

Which is why all it will take is a compelling competitor to start the great migration. This is sort of the corollary to the network effect — as soon as there is a better alternative that people really move to, a vast amount of people will move spontaneously.

Imagine if Instagram started right now. Do you think they would accept any offer to be bought by Facebook?

The blockchain is a potential solution. But deep down I have high expectations for IPFS — I think a workable, usable alternative for Facebook there could be the beginning of a real movement towards a decentralized Internet.

Also, for anyone in this space: the Facebook killer app is Events. I can share photos & statuses in myriad ways, but I truly only have one way to access a complete events calendar for my city, organizations & social groups.

The issue is the constant need for new features. Much more cost effective to add a tab vs. modify code.

I think something lost in this conversation is how spreadsheets are largely a part of general primary school curriculum. Generally people have a feeling of confidence around them that is lost with other tools. Particularly "easy database" applications that attempt to replace spreadsheets.

Anyone compared this to Azure AD?

Facebook is extremely valuable to an enormous number of people. The only thing that will end it is a non-profit competitor a la Wikipedia.

This isn't my idea, & I expect to see one of these emerge and take over in the next 1-3 years.

My experience has been that confirmation bias is very strong with EO's. What else is in the solution you're using? Its very easy to convince oneself that the EO is the active ingredient when there's so much misinformation on the 'net.

One of my hobbies is herbalism & over a long period of time I've begun to recognize all of the purported benefits of EO's come from other ingredients in whatever is being produced.

That doesn't mean that various herbs don't have active properties however. I've moved on to recognize how useful infused oils can be. (Note: these are of course easy to make yourself, not as easy to produce en mass & keep fresh for regular sale, and don't cost much depending on the oil.)

macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, embedded systems on AirPorts & AirPods, and more in the oven I’m sure.

Apple is “allowed” to do whatever they choose but their decisions are likely constrained by the reality of organizing so many complex products.

Not necessarily the wrong strategy or even a bad strategy. If there are enough people out there willing to pay in money and effort to switch ecosystems, there is space in the market for a smartphone with more simplicity and attention to detail.

If not, which I think is most likely, this is just what we’re stuck with.

I agree here but to be fair that was a time when as a company Apple produced one single operating system. That type of attention to detail comes with such singular focus.

If you’re an Apple VP right now, your concerns are about branching into new industries like driverless cars or heads-up displays. A graphical bug on one OS isn’t going to perturb you.

A lot of the flack going Apple’s way should be directed at the lack of innovation in the rest of the industry. If Apple felt their smartphone dominance was actually threatened, you can be sure the focus would be put there.

This is the price of the success Apple fans like myself were hoping for through the OS X era.

The key is understanding your own long term and legacy goals. Then you can estimate whether your current productivity will get you there.

If you aren’t clear on what it is you want, you’ll always be caught feeling unsure if you’re doing enough.

Where Facebook overlaps with the real world it is quite a strong service. What limits them from extending further is that their revenue is dependent on competing with time spent offline.

All these comments about hardware buttons will in a few years inspire the same chuckles reading comments about how hardware keyboards are absolutely essential for cellphones from 2007.

I think these lessons are so profound that they actually extend beyond technology to most business or social concepts.

Western society's concept of justice is largely focused on punitive retribution. A transformation to restorative action is needed here.

This assumes everybody's in the same office. Slack has tremendously improved my team's communication as we're spread across many university buildings.

Since I'm seeing confusion about how this has occurred in various comments: this is actually not a failure of the executive branch/presidential administration. The American system is defined by a system of "checks and balances" — meaning that the legislature has full power to veto appointees to these departments and even impeach the president. What we're witnessing is a critical vulnerability in this system — when two branches of American government no longer work in the interest of the country, the only remaining check is public elections. These are slow to occur and can be manipulated in plethora ways.

So the issue here is a legislature that has coordinated against the interests of the country and its people for the betterment of themselves and the few who fund them. Keep that in mind, and direct anger and action there.

Not sure if you live in the US but my experience with the US healthcare system (I work adjacent to one of the top US research hospitals) is that there is a critical problem of patient identification between institutions. Because we have no national ID system, patient data is coded for individual institutions (with some limited exceptions). So, transporting your medical data between institutions is a headache that can result in lost information. Further, access to this information for your own knowledge, research or simple interest is quite limited if you don't have a healthcare provider using one of these established secure platforms Apple Health can pull from.

I think this is absolutely correct which is why I believe the days where we can count macOS on having the ability to execute non-sandboxed applications are numbered. I think in hindsight apps that have already made the transition to the App Store (or were designed for it) will be at a tremendous advantage over the ones that either aren't adopting that model or have left it.

Google has an even greater advantage than Apple here because they became fully invested in sandboxing much earlier (the browser).

Specifically I went through a rapid phase of personal development at the People's Action weeklong immersion training[1] (and am pursing becoming a trainer myself). Although of course this is non-tech related & there are likely other resources for this type of curriculum. Certainly worth seeking out.

[1]: https://peoplesaction.org/institute/

Leadership training. I always thought "leadership" was a nebulous concept that you achieved solely through experience. I later learned that there is an entire curriculum of exercises and reflections one can do to improve their desire and ability to step up.