Category: Links and Quotes Page 3 of 25

Shared from elsewhere.

In praise of In Praise of Shadows

On July 12, 2022

In Links and Quotes, Read Watched Tapped

The essay viewed from a desktop monitor.

In Praise of Shadows

What was a batch of random sticks and leaves just a moment ago—click!—is now a complex web of marvelous shadows.
Robin Rendle

I enjoyed the presentation of this essay as much as its message. Opening it up on my desktop with its massive screen, reading the essay was like peering through a fence line. With each little glimpse of the world beyond holding up a post-it note of thought.

One thought. One moment. One quote. One picture.

I strolled through this essay. Stopping to admire the scenery and reading each little note as I passed by. I was struck by just how peaceful it was to enjoy. The web is brightly lit and devoid of shadows. It was nice to remember the shadows and breathe them in.

Pixels to iPhones

By Carl

On July 11, 2022

In Links and Quotes, Observations

🔗 WE SWITCHED FROM ANDROID PIXEL TO IPHONE – B3N.ORG

We’ve exclusively used the Google Nexus (now Pixel) lines for the last 7-years, so this is quite the change. I like the Nexus/Pixel lineup for their predictable security lifecycle (compared to other Android manufacturers), lack of bloatware, and consistent UI.

Since the smart watch ecosystem never managed to produce anything small enough or good enough, my wife has been thinking about an iPhone SE / Apple Watch combo.

I’ve been looking at options and researching how iPhones have come along in the years since we had them and how much it will cost us to make the switch.

I had to reboot the Pixel several times to fix issues every few days. Bluetooth works on the iPhone.

I can’t agree more about Bluetooth. We have owned Nexus/ Pixel phones for the past 8 years. The bluetooth has always been a problem for the Pixel phones. They’ll pair to headphones, but will still play through the phone’s speaker. Or will simply refuse to pair, pretending Bluetooth doesn’t exist, nor does any other device.

Though one major loss I had failed to consider in our impending move to iPhone was the lack of call screening.

So, Google’s Pixel call screener is a massive advantage over anything iPhone has–the virtual assistant with live transcription on Pixel is a feature iPhone lacks. With iPhone, I pretty much have to let unknown callers go to voicemail, and then we’re playing phone tag.

The number of calls I get daily that I never see, or that I can have Google’s Assistant screen for me is superb. I open the phone app sometimes to see 20 voicemails of 5-7 seconds for robo callers who weren’t quick enough to hang up.

Even when a call does get through, I can press a button to have Google answer the call and display the text of what is being said by the caller. At which point I can either have the robot continue to ask questions or answer the call myself.

We will continue to use Google Fi as a carrier. Their pay-for-what-you-use pricing continues to frustrate all of the major carrier sales people we encounter in electronics stores. They stride up to us with huge smiles asking how much we pay for our cell phones.

On average $90/month for about 3GB of data between us. The most we’ve used (since Feb. 2020) is 5.36GB and paid $115.

After using the Pixel’s “a” models which set us back $350-400, the iPhone SE’s $500 price tag is bearable. While the prices on the iPhone 13 line starting at $700 is hard to swallow.

I don’t care about 5g. We don’t have a plan with it and I don’t see the need. It frustrates me in 2022 I need to give up my beloved USB-C port for a proprietary lightening connector again. I lose my headphone jack (yes, I still enjoy wired headphones) and I gain wireless charging.

But none of that excites me. It feels like more money for less phone. Though the iPhone does appear to have caught up too and surpassed the Pixel’s photo processing.

We are still debating the right time to buy new phones. It’s not like they ever go on any meaningful sale. Maybe we swap carriers again and take advantage of them. We’ve made the round from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint (RIP), and T-Mobile. We live in a major metro area so the reception on every carrier is nearly identical. There’s noticeable drop when you get into the rural areas of the country off Verizon’s network, but that’s not worth paying for those rare times.

The cost of swapping the ubiquitous USB-C cords all over the house (and cars) for Lightening doesn’t excite me. Wireless charging seems neat but we’ve never had that either. So more new hardware to support it. It’s an expensive purchase that begets more purchases. And I refuse to use the glass computer without a case. I don’t understand those of you running around with naked phones. And AppleCare… Is it worth it? I haven’t even looked at how expensive that’s gotten. There’s a certain joy (and privilege) to being able to walk into a Best Buy and replace your phone for $400 if something happens to it.

Murderbot through new eyes

By Carl

On July 2, 2022

In Books, Links and Quotes

Murderbot: An Autistic-Coded Robot Done Right

…it feels deeply meaningful to me that Murderbot shows characters who can’t communicate with words and still treats them as people. When Murderbot hops on a bot-driven transport, it can’t talk to it with words, but it can watch movies with it. In real life, a non-autistic person may have an autistic loved one who they can’t communicate with verbally, but they can read the same books or watch the same movies and bond through them.

What the message of the story comes down to (in addition to the classic sci-fi “capitalism sucks” message that I love so very much) is “Machine intelligences are not human, they will never be human, they will always be different, but they’re still people and they’re still worthy of respect.”

I read and enjoyed the Murderbot series. I read it through my own eyes and lens on the world. It’s refreshing to see the story through the eyes of someone who connects more with Murderbot than the Preservation humans.

It makes me wonder what other media and arts contain different stories and lessons when viewed through other eyes. What am I missing because I see the world through my eyes? What do I read as a different character from “normal” and others see as reflections of themselves?

An Apple A Day

By Carl

On June 28, 2022

In Links and Quotes

In other words, it’s not merely a policy that Apple will keep your health data — all of it — private on iCloud. If you’re using two-factor authentication for your iCloud account — and you most definitely should be — it’s mathematically secure via end-to-end encryption. Apple not only won’t hand it over in the face of a demand from law enforcement in a state where abortion has been criminalized, they can’t.
You can check which apps have access to what Health data in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices.
Daring Fireball: Period-Tracking Apps and Data Privacy in Post-Roe America

My wife has been talking about getting an iPhone SE to have an Apple Watch since no Android watch has ever been worth the price tag nor experience.

While Apple is not a panacea of privacy as Gruber points out, now feels like ~~too late~~ the time to double down self-hosted solutions and on-device privacy measures.

Work Culture is expectations

By Carl

On May 6, 2022

In Introspection, Links and Quotes

In the most recent Culture Study, Anne Helen Petersen shares a talk she gave called The Librarians Are Not Okay. This talk sums up where we are as working adults. None of this is new and none of it has started with the pandemic. But it’s been exacerbated by it. It’s twisted the dials up to 11 as the machine that eats up people and spits out shareholder value continues to consume.

While this piece is focused on lLbrarians and by extension people who do care and passion work, it can be applied to anyone working today.

The librarians are not okay. The nurses are not okay. The teachers are not okay. The journalists are not okay, the clergy are not okay, the social workers are not okay. And we can’t start the long-term work of recovering from the burnout and demoralization of the last year until we acknowledgment as much.
The Librarians Are Not Okay

Though women, who are paid less because the of the circular logic of feminizing low-paid work to justify its low pay have to reckon with not being valued professionally while also performing the majority of the care work in their own lives and families.

The same is true, of course, for care workers, for educators, for nurses, and for so many people working in the non-profit sphere, and it’s such a convoluted logic that keeps it in place: the work is feminized, so it’s low-paid; the work is low-paid, so it’s feminized.

The part I’ve seen in my professional life most is picking up the work of more and more people. When I worked as a government contractor this was rampant through the government itself as positions would be cut and fewer people were left to do the important work.

The same thing happened in the IT space. Contractors are a staffed by companies bidding the lowest amount to get the same work done. So it’s going to lead a race to the bottom of pay and benefits and stability.

I talk about systemic problems with burnout, and exploitation, and overloaded jobs, I heard from a lot of librarians — people who really have absorbed responsibilities that were previously the work of three FTEs, if not more, and how they’re expected to just….have a better attitude about it?

I worked in one position for a little over three years. In that time, I was employed by no fewer than five separate companies. The final three were because they were generating shareholder value and would spin off, buy up, and generally screw every employee by saying “we can’t offer raises or reviews because we’re a new company” every single year.

Guardrails can be though of a “Work Culture.” That thing your company may be touting as the reason to return to the office amidst a pandemic.

Guardrails are things like: we don’t email when we’re off, and if you do send an email when you’re off, you’ll actually be taken aside to talk about why that’s not part of our culture here. Guardrails are: even if you, yourself, work really well at 11 pm at night, any communication you craft at that hour should be delay-sent to correspond with the start of others’ workday, so they don’t feel the need to be responding to work at that hour as well.
Guardrails are being very clear about levels of urgency: an email is not a five-alarm fire, and you shouldn’t train yourself to react as if it was, because that sort of vigilance is not sustainable.

This is the work culture that matters. How is time off treated? Is it something to be approved or acknowledged? When you’re off, are you really off or just working from a more fun location.

Culture can be devious. It may not be stated in the orientation or the handbook but as an expectation. Are you expected to be available all the time? Are you expected to be on call even if you’re not compensate for it or its stated as part of your job description?

Understanding the culture of where you work is looking at the unwritten expectations on your time, attention and life.