Dave Winer on GitHub:
GitHub is what we want it to be, quiet, out of the way, taken for granted, there when we need it, a constant and dependable option.
Exactly how I feel. It’s not the end of the world if Microsoft buys GitHub, but it’ll stop being the stoic neutral observer we’ve enjoyed.
snippetsDave Winer on GitHub:
GitHub is what we want it to be, quiet, out of the way, taken for granted, there when we need it, a constant and dependable option.
Exactly how I feel. It’s not the end of the world if Microsoft buys GitHub, but it’ll stop being the stoic neutral observer we’ve enjoyed.
snippetsSpoiler free. This movie has grown on me since watching it with my office friends last night. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a solid Star Wars story — which is exactly what it says in the title.
I should preface any Star Wars comment with a borrowed stance from John Siracusa on the topic:
I prefer to live in an universe where there’s a Star Wars movie every year, rather than the alternative of just having the three original movies exist.
Even with this lowered bar, I haven’t been an instant fan of the new ones. I did enjoy Rogue One a lot, even with its weird plot moments.
If Rogue One had some big ups and downs, Solo is flatter. Which isn’t a bad thing. While I did laugh out loud in Rogue One a lot, I mostly smiled throughout Solo. Yet the movie felt more consistent.
All the characters that we know from the original trilogy — including the Millennium Falcon — were familiar and recognizable. Naturally different enough since they’re younger, but similar without being an imitation of the original performance.
Just after leaving the theater, I wondered if this was a movie for average Star Wars fans, but after playing it back in my mind it’s quite the opposite. There’s so many references to the expanded universe that I didn’t recognize most. Even some references to the original movies flew over my head.
I had fun during the movie and thinking about how it expands the Star Wars universe in my head-cannon afterwards. And that’s good enough for me.
ReviewNeil Katz, global head of content and engagement at The Weather Channel:
We went along for the ride every single step of the way. But we noticed, over the course of two years, that we were being paid in all types of currencies — followers, shares, views — that did not feel like money.
Just like casinos, Facebook prints its own money — and the house never loses.
snippetsNeil Katz, global head of content and engagement at The Weather Channel:
We went along for the ride every single step of the way. But we noticed, over the course of two years, that we were being paid in all types of currencies — followers, shares, views — that did not feel like money.
Just like casinos, Facebook prints its own money — and the house never loses.
snippetsMy favorite podcast player has a big 3.0 released today. It has a bunch of new stuff, but three features stand out for me:
Castro is free with a $9 per year subscription for advanced features. Totally worth it for my podcast use.
snippetsMy favorite podcast player has a big 3.0 released today. It has a bunch of new stuff, but three features stand out for me:
Castro is free with a $9 per year subscription for advanced features. Totally worth it for my podcast use.
snippetsStalin in 1934:
You, Mr Wells, evidently start out with the assumption that all men are good. I, however, do not forget that there are many wicked men. I do not believe in the goodness of the bourgeoisie.
Amazing interview/conversation. Tomorrow’s fake election in Venezuela is playing with my feelings, but I’d never heard Stalin’s voice in my head and glimpsed at his persona as clearly as in this article.
snippetsStalin in 1934:
You, Mr Wells, evidently start out with the assumption that all men are good. I, however, do not forget that there are many wicked men. I do not believe in the goodness of the bourgeoisie.
Amazing interview/conversation. Tomorrow’s fake election in Venezuela is playing with my feelings, but I’d never heard Stalin’s voice in my head and glimpsed at his persona as clearly as in this article.
snippetsYouTube Music is the new(est) Google music service. Email encryption might be broken. Google Duplex is cool vaporware, but they kinda implied it was a product. WhatsApp updated groups features still doesn’t let you mute unless mentioned. A rumored lower cost Microsoft tablet is coming, that only took 10 years.
tidbitsAs always, Michael Tsai summary is the best quick overview of Twitter’s idiotic plans.
I’ll let others cleverly debate why Twitter is going down this path — my take is that its management no longer uses the service — but the writing is on the wall: 3rd party Twitter clients are going away, and I’m probably going with it.
Instagram is my best evidence to support this warning. The introduction of the algorithmic feed mostly coincides with my decrease in use. Since Instagram never exposed an API, there’s no InstaBot, but I’d like to think that a paid app that still used the regular chronological feed would have kept me more engaged in the service.
Other than complaining, what I’m going to do? Post more on my blog. Still debating if I’m moving to micro.blog or staying with blot.im, and if I’ll use roberto.mateu.me or keep old faithful 5typos.net as the domain.
But I like to think we’re at the start of a pendulum swing. While overall trend is for centralized platforms, we can make the case of standards. Not everyone needs to host their own blog, but there’s no reason that a ”micro post” on WordPress.com, another from Micro.blog and any other platform can’t appear on the same feed easily.
snippetsMacSparky reviews the Moment Lenses:
Moment makes some really nice third-party glass to give you more options when you take photos with your iPhone. They have an assortment of lenses ranging from zoom to macro, and they all use a clever screw-on mechanism that lets you attach your lenses onto a special iPhone case made by Moment with mounting points. I have really come to enjoy these lenses and want to share some of the details.
And just like that, I jump from deciding between a Fujifilm X70 or X100T to which Moment case to get. Damn you Macsparky.
snippetsFrom Webbly blog:
That’s why we’re incredibly proud to announce that we’ve entered an agreement to be acquired by Square. Together, we will support you to build professional websites and powerful commerce experiences — whether online or in real life.
This makes a lot of sense. Square is a payment system that’s used mostly offline. If it becomes the default payment processor for Webbly sites, that’s a lot of volume.
From CNBC:
The merger is expected to close in the second quarter of 2018, and Weebly employees will get Square stock that vests over the next four years.
Curious how excited Weebly employees are with this — Square is cool, but doesn’t seem like a sure bet to me.
snippetsElon Musk Tesla Productivity Tips
Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.
I’m starting to be in a position where this behavior can me encouraged — even though more often than not I’m behind calling for the meeting. But leaving or dropping off the call is still better than partly listening while you do other work on your laptop.
snippetsMatt Birchler on Link Blogging:
I personally love the third option. Link to someone else, provide a relatively short block quote of what idea set me off, and then take on the topic from there.
Feel exactly the same. What holds me back is that I’m usually doubtful that a person visiting my blog hasn’t seen the link already. Still, even if that’s the case, my blurb will be unique — and since I’m a borderline millennial — that should be enough.
snippetsAfter almost 4 years, we left Miami last December. In the end it was a quick decision — which we took back and forth for almost a year.
We arrived in Miami just after getting married and now leave a family of 4. Both Roberto Andrés and Bettina Maria were born at Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove — a few miles from our apartment.
Miami for us was an acquired taste. It’s known for it’s party scene and latin influence — two things that aren’t necessarily attractive in a new city when a) you’re already latin, and b) not crazy about $40 drinks at 3AM.
Still, you need to be spoiled to complain about a city in which a 20min drive takes you to a sandy beach.
A few of my favorite plans:
A friend’s dad always says: the best thing about Miami, is how close it’s to the US, which is hilariously accurate. The culture ss a soft landing if you come from Latin America, but it’s consistently among the top 10 most expensive cities in the US. The end result for me was a great experience to look back to, but difficult to make work when you look ahead 5 - 10 years with an open spreadsheet. This in the end, was a big factor in our decision to move.
Where did we go? After a month-long visit to Caracas, we arrived in Costa Rica the first week of January. A few notes on our new pura vida lifestyle soon.
PersonalI’m struggling deciding how and where to microblog. Which is kind of stupid since I’d already setup everything on blot last year. But micro.blog makes everything so simple and easy to post (specially photos), that it’s difficult to switch back.
Naming also has me confused. Having the microblog at roberto.mateu.me sounds logical, but I just enjoy the 5typos.net domain for some reason.
There’s two advantages micro.blog has over my regular blog:
The ease of posting is relative but real. I can achieve everything the native client offers with different apps and workflows — but then again, micro.blog just does it with the app. And the cross posting is extremely well thought out.
The community part is more complicated. A blogpost is mostly lost in the void of RSS readers and occasional visitors to the site. But there’s no real equivalent of a community. Also, is it really the community? Or is it the sensation of being read a reply in micro.blog gives you? versus the absolute silence of the stand alone blog.
Anyways, posting on the blog has stopped because a leaving Miami draft I’ve had since January. Pushing that one out tomorrow one way or another.
PersonalI’m grateful for many, many things. On a journaling good day I always finish with a short line for something that I’m grateful for — and it can be as small and stupid as imaginable: ice cubes. This does help keep in perspective how lucky I am, and also is a powerful mind trick at the end of a bad day.
However, I’m really finding my daily maxims exercise useful and I had no gratefulness reminders in that ritual. These two are the winners:
- Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.
- Sanchita Pandey
- Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Thank you for reading.
Personal journalingApple has made many great laptops, but the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012–2015) is the epitome of usefulness, elegance, practicality, and power for an overall package that still hasn’t been (and may never be) surpassed.
Wish I’d written this. An open love letter to a great machine. I still think that an used 13in MacBook Pro is the best value for a laptop nowadays.
snippets
Love hearing the context for famous photos like this one.
snippetsBeing privileged makes it easy to think that taking a risk is difficult. It’s scary because the inertia of the status quo makes too many scenarios look suboptimal. Life could continue to be as it is, and you’d be ok — but any less than this, would be bad.
This is as stupid as complaining that you have to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. What may sound as an uncool plan would literally be considered heaven for most people that lived in the last thousand years — and sadly, even most still alive today.
So we’re taking a risk. For most people — and hopefully us in hindsight — it will look childish to worry about. But it felt difficult and counterintuitive, and at the same time like the right thing. Will report from the other side.
PersonalA month ago we welcomed the newest member of our family. Bettina Maria was born at 11:35AM on Sept 12th in Miami.
That was roughly:
In contrast to Robie’s minutely planned arrival and its choreographed fanfare, Bettina’s arrival was an excellent (and at times literal) example of Bruce Lee’s:
Be like water making its way through cracks.
Ana was brave, practical and unapologetically sentimental. My wife is the most amazing mom, and her only worry was being separated from Robie and myself — since children weren’t allowed in the hospital shelter.
Being a grownup sometimes sucks, and we had to agree that she would take care of herself and Bettina with her mom in the hospital, in case the baby decided to arrive early.
Meanwhile, Robie, my parents and myself stayed at home to ride out the storm. Luckily we have great neighbors, which meant that Robie basically thought we went indoor camping with them. He also loved going up and down the stairs — again… 27 floors.
But being a grownup sometimes rocks, and a month ago I got to pickup this plump and healthy half mini-me. Holding her, I felt objectivity evaporate as I’m now convinced she’s the most beautiful and intelligent newborn since Robie. It’s an amazing feeling — which gets even more surreal with forthcoming lack of sleep.
So the new adventure begins. My best analogy for parenthood the first year with Robie was that it reminded me of platformer games: as soon as we had mastered something (sleep time, eating, etc) and felt comfortable, Robie would bring up a challenging new level.
My working analogy with Bettina (and she’s going to hate this), is that it’s like rewatching a horror film. You know what’s coming, so overall you are more relaxed — but it still can be scary at times.
Regardless of horror movie or Nintendo game, we couldn’t be more grateful to be healthy and together. In this crazy thing some call the human experience, all other things are accessories.
PersonalThe finished film, what’s shown is the thing. For me, it’s the process of making it. If I can sort of convince myself when I put my head on my pillow that I’ve made that film better that day, I feel a little bit better, and I go to sleep a little bit faster.
Really enjoyed this quote. It’s a really good interview regarding his new Vietnam War documentary. Recommended.
snippetsI put together 5 of my favorite quotes and highlights from my notes. Original plan was to write them down everyday as I woke up, but Robie ended up always taking my notebook — and either way I memorized them after a couple of days.
This is the price I am willing to pay for retaining my composure.
~ Epictetus
Difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
~ Isaac Asimov
I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.
~ Cicero
Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.
~ Richard Hamming
Trade expectations for appreciation.
~ Tony Robbins
I’ve found some interesting calming effects in taking a pause throughout the day and repeating these. Not being religious, it seems to scratch a similar itch in resetting my mind.
LifehacksOver the past few years a general nostalgia for the 1980s has infiltrated music, film, and television.
Great video. But the playlist is a soundtrack worth saving.
snippetsEnjoyed this video from Basecamp’s Jason Fried. Lots of interesting concepts that are useful regardless of what tool you use.
If you want answers from people, you have to ask questions and if a system asks a question, it’s a process. If a persons does, it’s nagging.
This comment left me thinking.
collaboration snippetsMissed two Apps that I use every day on the Mac:
Much more powerful than the LaunchBar clipboard tool. Still not crazy about its implementation of combining clipboards — but the other features outweigh this.
Works great on iOS also. I’ve had very few issues with sites loading incorrectly, and I trust their blocking rules.
snippetsThe Google memo bothers me. It’s a smart-sounding piece of contrarian opinion that cherry picks facts to drive a point. It misappropriates real problems and assigns convenient explanations.
I don’t think it’s worth debunking, because it’s not even posing a question. The writer clearly assumes that he knows better than us. He’s mansplaining in the most ironic way: to other men and incorrectly.
First, my beliefs: women are equal to men in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. You can generalize on the differences between men and women — it’s not fair, but it’s efficient. You shouldn’t be reductionist based on these generalizations — that’s unfair, and inefficient.
Second, my opinion: working on tech for women is not easy. The same situation where a male PM can get kudos from his team will result in shaken heads with a female PM — bossy vs. leader, bitchy vs. detailed, flirty vs friendly. Add the current vicious cycle of mostly male teams and it’s not easy to imagine what an unfriendly environment it can be.
I’ve worked with great female developers. I’ve worked with mediocre male developers. Anecdote is not evidence, so I shouldn’t say all female devs are great — but saying the opposite is just as incorrect.
OpinioniPhone, iPhone Plus, iPhone Pro
This sounds right to me.
snippetsShopify beats estimates as revenue jumps 75%
In fact, its 56 per cent growth in North America in the quarter was far surpassed by its pace of expansion in Asia, South America and Africa.
This is interesting. While Amazon continues to become a 500 pound Gorilla in the US, its international expansion has been slower — and mostly limited to developed countries.
I believe that Amazon’s superpower is overcoming complexities of logistics at scale. However, when you move from large markets into smaller ones, you face restrictions that don’t scale at all.
Say you figure out logistics in Mexico, whatever expertise you acquired will do very little in figuring out Guatemala. You can repeat the example throughout South America — and I’m willing to bet in Asia and Africa too.
Shopping has morphed since the beginning of the web. Although most players are currently experimenting with mixed models, a simplified look at their strengths could look something like:
| Experience | Platform | Sellers | Logistics | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Centralized | Centralized | Centralized | Centralized | Walmart |
| Centralized | Centralized | Distributed | Distributed | ebay.com |
| Centralized | Centralized | Mixed | Centralized | Amazon.com |
| Distributed | Centralized | Distributed | Distributed | Shopify.com |
| Distributed | Distributed | Distributed | Centralized | Postmates.com |
I’m very curious about the edge cases where Shopify and Postmates exists. While scale is more difficult to achieve, there’s a lot of flexibility that allows for more niche segments to crop up. Still, within large markets, the advantage doesn’t last long. As soon as product X had enough demand, the centralized infrastructure takes over with its lower costs.
But when the large market is actually a combination of smaller markets, there should be a lot more space for middle of the road logistics scale. Especially when there’s variations of tastes that don’t benefit exactly the same products in each of the markets.
Still need to work through this, but I believe (and hope) Amazon.com will not be the only online store in the future.
Ideas WorkWhen shaving with a safety razor and brush, you usually fall down a rabbit hole of shaving creams and soaps. Last December I started to anxiously calculate when I should replace my favorite shaving cream — or maybe trying a new one? That’s when my frugal resolution for 2017 started.
Almost 8 months later, I still haven’t bought a new shaving cream or soap. Half-used and completely new ones keep appearing.
I miss having a new shaving thingy, but it feels great to finish up existing ones.
LifehackWhen dealing with large datasets1 remember to tell yourself the story of the resulting chart.
Most of us usually create charts with some sort of agenda. We kinda know what we want to show, and therefore aren’t surprised with the chart if it fits our expectations.
The problem is that good data organized incorrectly can still look right. The most painless way I’ve found to try to catch these issues is taking a step back and telling a story of what the data is showing without thinking about your slide title. Just really read the data calmly, and you will likely catch a surprise or two.
Thankfully I’ve avoided a few charts with volume numbers until December 2017 (US vs world date formate), 1000x sales numbers (coma vs period thousand’s separator), and my favorite: 70 weeks per year (careful when how you use the DATE() formula).
Anything that requires you to scroll down I’ll consider large. If all the data is viewable, it’s easier to keep a mental model of it.↩︎
There’s a moment at the end of a swim lap that you have to decide between stretching out and riding out your inertia — or doing one last stroke to reach the wall.
Of course there are different personalities: some prefer to hit the wall at full force, others do a final all out push just before the wall to glide into the finish.
A similar dynamic can also happen on projects. Some push their teams until a few hours (minutes?) before the deadline. I usually end up with a hard week and working weekend on the final stretch, but on the final days I let the team inertia set the pace.
Productivity DevelopmentMichael Tsai:
Instead, we’ve seen subscriptions combined with price increases, customers balking, and insinuations that people just don’t want to pay for anything anymore. With more than one variable changing at once, I don’t think we can conclude that people hate subscriptions.
This ring true. It’s not as simple as saying I don’t like subscriptions.
snippetsDave Winer:
Think about Medium this way. It’s a big public legal pad. In a perfect world, no one owns the pad. When you want to write something you tear off a sheet, write, when you’re done you tack it up to a global bulletin board where everyone can see it. […] Ghost is not such a place, and neither is WordPress.
There has to be space for a pinboard.in for blogging/writing. A one-person operation that can renders pretty static html and can survive with respectful display ads or non paid accounts.
snippetsChief among the issues is that the redesign imagines Skype as a youth-oriented social media app along the lines of Instagram or Snapchat, rather than a staid business communications tool.
I wanted to give the new version a chance… and I hate it so much. An I told you so is in order.
snippets[…] I’ve basically figured out all the traps to the point where I’ve actually written a program which for the past 6 months has been just doing the whole thing for me. So what used to take the last guy like a month, now takes maybe 10 minutes to clean the spreadsheet and run it through the program.
Although a particular case, this sort of question will become more common with AI, machine learning, and other deep learning applications.
But as Battlestar Galactica thought us, all of this has happened before and will happen again — From Planet Money episode 606: Spreadsheets!:
And what happened was this accountant, he got a rush job from one of his clients. It was the kind of thing that in the old paper universe would’ve taken a couple days. This guy has this new electronic spreadsheet. So he plugs in the numbers, does the work in just a couple hours. Then, what he does - he just waits, let’s the thing sit on his desk for, like, two days, FedExs it back to the client. And the client was like, wow, you did it so fast.
There’s space for a lot of debate on ethical questions like this. But there’s opportunities created when industries
snippetsIt’s summer in Miami in summer.
My son Robie1 is 19 months old — and a functioning mini-person. This doesn’t stop amusing me yet. My wife Ana is 6 months pregnant with Bettina, due in September.
At work we’re less than 3 weeks out from having my latest PM project be feature complete. Private beta ETA is August 1st… it’s going to be tight.
I’m trying to grow my Javascript non-skills with a few bookmarklets for Ulysses, Amazon and Trello. More failures and successes, which still is a net-positive results.
We’re seriously considering moving with Aeropost.com to San José, Costa Rica for a year or two. Back and forward with this. It makes rational sense, but we actually like Miami now.
This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one, too.
Or Beto, as he calls himself.↩︎
For all of its talk about prioritizing “discovery” and “knowing your tastes” […], what Spotify feeds to Browse and pushes to Discover is influenced largely by whether an artist already has a massive marketing campaign and corporate push behind them.
I’ve been using Google Play Music — instead of Spotify — for the last few weeks1, and I’m amazed with how much I enjoy the playlists.
Initially I thought it was a bit of placebo effect, but I’m now sure there’s some magic — or less influential marketing campaign — workings with Google Music Play’s playlists.
Seriously considering switching over from Spotify. Plus, the YouTube Red value of not showing commercials is great.
Taking advantage if the YouTube Red trial.↩︎
[…] I realized that the parenting things I do for him are also for myself. And that’s an idea worth sharing.
I’ve re-read this blogpost a few times today. It has made question a few things and start doing others differently. Can’t think of a higher praise for something you read.
snippetsThis week we’re releasing the Day One Premium subscription service. It includes the ability to create more than ten journals and access all future premium features.
Not crazy about adding yet-another-subscription-service to my budget. But this is the new model for software companies, and I’m happy my favorite apps can find a way to exist1.
1Password being another example.↩︎
On the iPhone’s 10th birthday, former Apple executives Scott Forstall, Tony Fadell and Greg Christie recount the arduous process of turning Steve Jobs’s vision into one of the best-selling products ever made.
A cool new software keyboard development story from Forstall to add to the folklore. The rest I’ve read before, but still fun to see each of them telling the stories.
snippets
5typos.net