Rycaut

Rycaut, 8 days ago to random

My current top tbrn stack
#bookstodon

Magazine by @jeffjarvis
The monsters and creatures compendium by Jim Zub/WotC
The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs
Improv for Gamers by Karen Twelves
Stories Are Weapons by @annaleen
A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and @ZachWeinersmith
Tacolicious by Sara Deseran
The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee by James and Caitlin Freeman & Tara Duggan
Infinite City A San Francisco Atlas by Rebecca Solnit

Rycaut, 9 days ago to random

Idea - someone should maintain a list by domain of the actually well known and respected brands in that space. With their ownership details, when incorporated, actual official website(s) especially where in different countries, authorized resellers or their direct shops. For tech firms link to their official code repositories and project discussions etc.

I’m not just talking about tech companies and open source projects I want this for cases like “my son is taking viola and needs a music stand

Rycaut, 12 days ago to random

I told a few folks my writing group about Microsoft Recall (we meet a few times a week virtually to all write - spend a few mins socializing then an hour writing with cameras and mics off).

Every one of them had the reaction of either “time to move to Linux” or at a minimum how do I make sure I don’t have that enabled and agreed it seemed like a boneheaded move by Microsoft. And these are sf/fantasy writers so geeky but not all have tech day jobs.

Rycaut, 12 days ago to random

not random thought - the massive major obvious AI fails make for easy clickbait stories - but I suspect the even more common yet much harder to write about category of AI errors aren't where it makes massive or even silly mistakes but where it makes more subtle mistakes of omission or where it suggests something that's almost right but misses key steps or details - showing an answer that for example was true years ago but isn't fully accurate now

Rycaut, 12 days ago to random

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my father's death (9 years ago) which makes the barrage of marketing emails pitching last minute gifts for Father's Day a bit complicated for me as I scan my messages each morning around this time of year. I'm also a father myself so can't entirely ignore the holiday but especially today and tomorrow the messages hit differently.

A practice I've seen a few (but only a few) companies do is to let people opt out of marketing messages for specific holidays

Rycaut, 13 days ago to random

I think there was just a small earthquake here in San Jose. Did it wake anyone else?

Rycaut, 15 days ago to random

I think nearly all search tools (search engines but also search on most sites) would be infinitely improved if allowed to actually return no results or only a few high quality results. Instead of the current trend of returning lots of low quality results.

Sites could then suggest additions or changes to a search that have more results But suggest these vs showing them by default

This would make search much more useful for finding obscure content or for example mispellings (like misspellings)

Rycaut, 16 days ago to random

Is there any tool (open source or not) that actively creates a way for people to share their configurations both as aides to people who don’t change defaults and as a way to show vs tell people howjch various tools can be customized and made to work better for specific use cases?

Years ago I actually largely stopped configuring stuff my shell or Unix editors because I needed to be able to work on any system or to help someone with their own system without my packages and config files.

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

examples of "I don't think they actual test apps at Google anymore"

YouTube (iOS app) - if you have screen rotation turned off - still rotates a video if you play it and push the full screen - and then there is no way to return to the main navigation (i.e. if you had done a search) just options for their next suggested video

Gmail - I was browsing past the first 50 messages, new message came in, it was displayed on my screen as message 51, then as message 1 when I returned in all messages view

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

Business advice (and yes based on real experiences). Do not send a bill to a non-verified email address. If you do send one - don’t send it from a no-reply address.

Because, inevitably you will send a bill to the wrong person who will be annoyed and will not pay your bill all while the actual customer won’t pay it because you haven’t emailed them at their actual address.

And no most strangers aren’t going to call a phone number of a business they have no relationship with just to fix this

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

Does anyone have a site that lists software by categories (both open and closed source and for all sizes of businesses and personal use) that are from companies and organizations that are run by horrible people

(For example - nothing by anything Oracle now owns would make this list for me)

Think garner quandrant charts for various categories of software but where you can exclude sets of companies (and orgs)

Ideally people can share their exclusion lists and reasoning

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

One (of many) issues in the US. The county I live in here in California (Santa Clara - where San Jose is) has more than 1.8M people.

That’s more than the population of 13 states (its just a bit more than the population of Idaho)

North and South Dakota get four senators representing them. Combined they don’t have as many people as my county.

Santa Clara is just one of many counties in. California

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

Random(ish) idea

Could Apple make an iPad like device that wasn’t a full device with all the features but instead only worked when paired with a second device?

Ie a touchscreen with battery, Bluetooth, a few ports and perhaps storage (and minimal compute to run the screen) that then pairs with a laptop or an iPhone or a VisionPro and works as a display and input device?

(Perhaps with either no camera or only a camera for FaceID and videoconferencing)

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

noting a trend on Facebook (and likely on other social media sites) - a ton of posts to random groups (with serious sounding names but unclear who runs them or why) with rehashed versions of memes from years ago which my friends now seem apt to reshare/post as if they are new(ish) stories. And in many cases they seem to be lightly edited from the original versions and the sources of the original meme are almost always obscured or not cited at all. Often paired with AI generated images

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

Yes non-competes were used with tech workers. But the real issue today is not tech workers.

It is everyone else. It is noncompetes being used to restrain nurses from working at any other medical facility in a city (or further). It is non competes being used for hair dressers and grocery store clerks.

Those uses of noncompetes are being used to weaken workers ability to negotiate for better pay and conditions - if they can’t take a job at a competitor they have a weak negotiation hand

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

Prompted by an unarmed post

The entire population of the US is less than 5% and closer to 4% of the people alive globally today (roughly 8B people globally, 330m in the US)

Even the most popular of books (or films) in any language have rarely crossed 1% (80M) readers/viewers

For individual books Wikipedia excluding books like religious texts or political texts lists only 9 books with individual sales of that scale. More series and frequently updated works however

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

Rycaut, 1 month ago to random

Reminded of the value of just sitting in cafes in areas with lots of others in similar fields and llaces and overbearing their discussions. Right now a really amazing high level catch-up between senior tech managers discussing careers, next roles, past firms and more. Obviously two guys who know each other well and have a high degree of trust - sharing exact salary ranges and other details. And yes probably not intending to talk loud enough to be overheard.

(At Red Rock in Mountain View)

Rycaut, 2 months ago to random

A local coffee shop (actually a coffee cart with extensive outdoor seating) just announced that they will have regular evening hours. So they now close at 1:30pm every day (instead of previously being open until 3pm) and are now open from 5-10pm everyday with a fire pit, boardgames and locally roasted coffee brews.

They first had evening hours for Ramadan (the business is Muslim owned) and I guess it was successful. Awesome to see businesses like this creating evening all ages spaces.

Rycaut, 2 months ago to random

related to my thread earlier today - a simple test of your personal social media - do you see people you follow celebrating holidays (including secular ones like finals for sports leagues) that are not ones that you personally celebrate/follow?

If not you are almost certainly missing diversity (in all dimensions) in who you are following and/or at least in what the algorithm in many cases is showing you

This is also why sharing such celebrations matters

Rycaut, 2 months ago to random

I’m far from an expert but Tesla’s plans to scrap a lower priced vehicle in favor of focusing on robotaxis seems like it has a lot of serious financial risk.

Ie Tesla is already unusual in selling direct to customers not to dealers (so holds inventory directly) but with robotaxis they will have to keep the vehicles on their books, incur the ongoing operating costs and risks (insurance for the real liability) and account for the assets over time (depreciation)

Rycaut, 2 months ago to random

Decades ago I observed that shared perceptions of time might be a good proxy for social networks a yet is rarely used.

That is if right now you are thinking about TED 2024 you are part of one group. Coachella 2024 a different (but overlapping group). Or preparing for upcoming Seders.

Ie how we measure time, what events we pay attention to (even if not attending). What holidays we mark the passage of. - all these serve to define who we are and who we share a lot in common with

Rycaut, 2 months ago to random

So in Seattle for my son’s spring break and it is hard to decide which cafe to try first. Suggestions for which to try near Pioneer Square? (Seems like it may be hard to go wrong)

Rycaut, 2 months ago to random

Thinking about one proxy I use to identify businesses I feel generally good about frequenting - if they retain workers year over year whatever the business - whether a gardener, a coffee shop (including big chains), a school or a big service provider employee retention is a strong signal of a company doing many things well.

• paying workers decently and offering a good work environment are usually requirements for retention (whatever the business)

• long term workers know their regulars

Rycaut, 2 months ago to Seattle

visiting Seattle next week for my son's spring break, we'll be staying downtown, not going to have a car (but the whole family loves walking/taking trains places), we might do a boat tour one day, will definitely take the monorail (yes know it barely goes anywhere), probably the requisite Space Needle, and Pacific Science Center (has a reciprocal arrangement with our local Tech Interactive) what other kid friendly things should we do? (geeky kid/parent friendly things) #seattle #parenting

Rycaut, 2 months ago to random

small example of a bad pattern encoded into a popular app which is, I suspect, not helping anyone.

in Gmail if you "unsubscribe" from an email it then pops up an option to "move to spam" - encoding an assumption that you would only unsubscribe from spam (which eh is almost never true as with true spam I wouldn't trust any link)

Better would be either "archive all earlier emails" or "move to trash" (ideally with option for "all earlier emails" - possibly alerting me if any are starred/labeled