Category: Uncategorized

Distributed-First Is the Future of Work at Spotify

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From Spotify:

The future of how we work has been a popular topic inside the walls of Spotify for a while now. Our leadership team has long championed the idea that digitalization and globalization are massive drivers for a more flexible workplace that better suits both our band and our business.

Add another company to the list. One interesting tidbit is their focus on paying NY/SF salaries no matter where the employee chooses to live. I’m really curious to see what the Covid year does to our industry as well as current tech centers like NY and SF.

Reminders App is All I Need

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From The Brooks Review:

During the week of Thanksgiving 2020 I upended my task management life and moved away from Things (which I have been using for a while) and moved all in with Reminders.app.

Interesting take by Ben on how Reminders hits the mark for him over more-fiddly options like OmniFocus and Things. I’m a big fan of using Things but there are definitely times where the relative simplicity of a native app like Reminders appeals to me.

Apple News+ is Actually Good

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Last fall, I came across a deal where you could get 4 months of Apple News+ for free. I figured I’d give it a shot to see if it was worth the $10/month as I’m a big believer in paying for quality news. Currently, I get most of my news from RSS, the New York […]

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The iPad is Now 11 Years Old

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[edit: I wasn’t paying attention and initially said the iPad was 10 today. Corrected it in a few places. Sorry!]

11 years ago today, Apple announced the iPad at a special keynote. Jobs posed the question of if there was room for a “third device” between a computer and a smartphone. Tablets, and specifically the iPad, was their answer.

Jobs mentioned this 3rd type of device should be better at certain things than both desktops and phones. I think it’s a mixed bag 10+ years in: browsing the web (no), email (no), photos (yes), video (definitely yes), music (maybe), games (maybe), eBooks (yes, but still not as good as the Kindle). I have an iPad Pro and use it as my “personal computer”, but the jury is still out on if it’s truly better than using a computer in most cases.

Still, I’m excited about the improvements in both hardware and software over the next few years as there’s so much untapped potential while Apple attempts the delicate balancing act between ease of use and “computer like” functionality.

Dawn

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Holy hell, we actually made it! After 4 years, the Trump presidency ended in a way that was fairly predictable, even if we didn’t know the specifics of how it’d go down. It’s really heartbreaking to think about what we got ourselves into, but this is what happens when you elect an incompetent conman with […]

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The Sedition Caucus

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The New York Times has compiled a list of the Senators and Representatives who objected to certifying the results of the election.

We should not forget these cowards who insist on objecting to this election. None of them explicitly asked for what happened, but they are complicit in the events at the Capitol because they’re consistently misleading their base with lies & conspiracy theories because they think it’s politically advantageous to keep that group riled up. Senator Romney said it well yesterday – true leadership is telling hard truths.

Barry Loudermilk, my representative, is on the Sedition Caucus list and I look forward to working tirelessly to run him out of office.

Instapaper Season

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With the next 2 weeks off of work, it’s one of my favorite times of the year – the season where I clean out hundreds of unread items in my Instapaper queue. I’ve been using Instapaper since it launched over a decade ago, and it’s been one of my most used apps since. Over the […]

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Unfriending Facebook

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So, I finally deleted my Facebook account. This was something I’ve been batting around for what seems like years, but after about 6 months of having my account deactivated, I pressed the button earlier today and it felt good. So, why did I pull the plug? In my opinion, Facebook is bad for our society […]

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The M1 Macs

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From Daring Fireball:

What you need to understand is that the best aspects of these Macs aren’t benchmarkable. It’s about how nice they are. The cooling system never making any noise doesn’t show up in a benchmark. I suppose you could assign it a decibel value in an anechoic chamber, but silent operation, and a palm rest that remains cool to the touch even under heavy load, aren’t quantities. They’re qualities. They’re just nice.

So far it appears that the new M1 Macs are a performance, efficiency and UX win. They’re an improvement in nearly every way, yet within the same enclosure as before.

The webcams still stink, however.

Overall, this is a great review of the entire experience of using  these new Macs and it has me very excited to upgrade whenever I end up buying a new machine.