How does anyone write anything for online, where you have to assume everyone is going to read everything you write in bad faith? I am so tired of wrapping every sentence in qualifiers and building the context for every statement. This could be 100 words, yet I am at 1500.
“in conclusion, we need a social media platform that lets you sit next to someone on a bench in the park & feed some goddamn birds”
in conclusion, we need a social media platform that lets you sit next to someone on a bench in the park & feed some goddamn birds— Max Kreminski (@maxkreminski) August 18, 2018
Curtis just spent the last two weeks updating his app Slopes to support Dynamic Type. You might have heard of UIFontMetrics, or you might not have. But you probably didn’t sweat the pixels to make sure you top and bottom margins were baseline-height appropriate ;). He’ll share how he went about adapting to various sizes within dynamic type, and tricks to better mimic the behavior of built-in UI classes (like TableViews).
Companies don’t sell objects so much as they sell an idealized lifestyle, an opportunity for consumers to improve themselves by participating in the belief system that a brand evokes. might be understood as the Spotification of retail: Consumers pay by the month to receive a stream of algorithmically chosen goods. a commercial logic that prioritizes access over ownership, breadth over depth of consumption, and instant ease of use over more deliberate exploration as a prerequisite for enjoyment. One of the defining tenets of Spotification is what digital anthropologist Lane DeNicola calls a “shift from commodity ownership to commodified experience.” Paid subscribers to Spotify are not buying a bounded physical or digital item, writes DeNicola, but rather “a predetermined amount of time during which they have access to the entirety of the vast online library of music.” These subscribers are also buying limited-time, on-demand access to black-boxed algorithmic curation systems, which allows platform logic to take precedence over record companies’ conventional A&R concerns in the formation of taste and culture. Engagement with the wider platform and its algorithms replaces engagement with particular artists or songs as consumers seek to further develop their tastes, the better versions of themselves. and the promise of perpetual discovery. Stressed human beings, seeking more free and “personal” time, become the upper management for their own fleet of contractors; in Hochschild’s words, “the most intuitive and emotional of human acts … become work for hire.” This triggers a slippery-slope effect. “To finance these extra services, we work longer hours,” Hochschild explained in an op-ed for the New York Times. “This leaves less time to spend with family, friends and neighbors; we become less likely to call on them for help, and they on us. And, the more we rely on the market, the more hooked we become on its promises.” Yet this newfound flexibility ultimately becomes infiltrated by further anxiety over the vast opportunities that remain to become even “better,” in the pursuit of peak performance.
We procrastinate to protect ourselves. Distractions allow us to delay the moment of truth where we need to show who we really are, what we can really do, where we need to expose ourselves, prove ourselves, and ultimately face the mirror of reality.
“The assumed consensus becomes its own reality - a position others can respond to. It doesn't actually need to accurately describe what's happening, the narrative can just live its entire life in the medium where it was created”
“@vgr The assumed consensus becomes its own reality - a position others can respond to. It doesn't actually need to accurately describe what's happening, the narrative can just live its entire life in the medium where it was created”
when you build an amazing product that helps people be happier doing their jobs every day, you’ll find the customers you need to keep it going. But that’s OK, because crushing anything has never really been a goal. Instead, we’re working hard to give you something really amazing. Something you’ll use every day. Something worth switching to.
Switching off of Google in 2018 is easy because you’ve probably abandoned most of their products anyway, and the ones you’re still using are stagnating.
‘River of News’-Style RSS Reader and Reeder 4 Beta
“Exciting developments on the RSS front” is not a phrase you can use every day; but, today is an apt day to use it. Rob Fahrni announced that he’s working on a new app that aims to deliver RSS updates as a constant stream, like a Twitter app. I like the simplicity of this and, […]
I’d rather spend my time with my family or doing things outside or learning new things than making software every waking moment. Now when I work on things on the side, it’s because I want to.
Last weekend I had a wonderful trip to my friend’s hermitage in remote Vermont. He lives there as a buddhist monk. I had a chance to recharge, walk through the snowy fields and drink tea with him. His official monk name is Brother Phap Man. Every evening of the few days I spent there, he […]
“Our habits tend to fall into local maxima. We choose well compared to similar alternatives, but ignore options that are totally different yet possibly better. Machine learning algorithms avoid local maxima by occasionally testing random permutations, with techniques like simulated annealing.”
“And that is completely at odds with the tech industry's business model. Anyway, that's why I keep pointing to employee-owned grow/distribution companies as the solution to bad ag & food problems, not the tech industry.”
“And that is completely at odds with the tech industry's business model. Anyway, that's why I keep pointing to employee-owned grow/distribution companies as the solution to bad ag & food problems, not the tech industry.”
Apparently MTA (the company running the NYC subway) has a real-time API. My fascination for the subway takes autistic proportions and so obviously I had to analyze some of the data.
