I remember alternately loving and hating HotWired. So clever and futuristic… yet it pushed the state-of-the-art to the point that it sometimes barely worked, even on reasonably decent hardware.
https://www.wired.com/story/we-were-wrong-oral-history-hotwired/
Apparently US regulators are considering what to do about WiFi phone callson planes. Their rationale is that many passengers think that people making phone calls is annoying.
But is that the real reason? If airlines were worried about passenger comfort would they allow the seat-back satellite phones? Is the difference here, perhaps, that they can charge a lot for calls? (Kind of another net neutrality debate, but at 37 000′.)
Similarly, if customer comfort was a priority, surely we?d get more leg space. And better air. And fewer jerks that sit in front of you and recline the seat immediately after take-off.
I’ve seen people claiming that macOS High Sierra and its new file system, APFS, makes copying files lightning fast. This is not true. Here’s why.
In short: most of the time spent copying files is the physical copying of bits from one place to another. Unless you can avoid doing that, you’re, at best, going to be a few percent faster.
The longer version relies on the slightly hidden caveat: “unless you can avoid doing that.”
“Make Something Wonderful,” a collection of Steve Jobs writing and photos is… well, it’s a good thing that I write these notes for myself. You’ll already know if you’re interested.
I’m not sure there’s much new and undiscovered here, but it’s nicely collated and fascinating reading.
One highlight is the script from his Stanford commencement speech. But what I enjoyed most were the notes. The speech was almost perfect, but the notes allow you to see the process that led there. The common perception of the lone genius having a eureka moment is a lie. Jobs worked and practiced and iterated and sought feedback. Much of his work he attempted to make everything look simple and obvious, but the reality is that ‘effortless’ takes a lot of hard preparatory work. Some might argue that this detracts from his achievements, but I’d say that the exact opposite is true.
How do you interview people for developer and technical jobs? This is an enduring question, and one with many angry factions.
It’s too big a subject to tackle in its entirety and I have no intention of trying. Instead, I want to talk about one aspect: should you ask Computer Science questions or not?
In one corner are the people who argue that you never need to implement a linked list or write Quick Sort in real life, so asking you to do that in an interview is unreasonable and excludes good candidates. They argue that there are more important things to consider, such as the use of applications frameworks or design or working with other people.
There are many ways that recruitment is broken for both candidates and potential employers, but this time I want to focus on one aspect that I experienced recently as a candidate: how companies and recruiters don’t treat prospective hires with respect. I’ve changed jobs a few times over the years and some of the ways that I’ve been (mis)treated in the last year surprised even me.
Let’s start with something that I’m sure we’ve all experienced: not getting a response back from an initial application.
I wasn’t sure that I wanted a “big” iPhone as I was perfectly happy with the 4” form-factor. But if I was going to get a new phone and the new ones are bigger, I reasoned, I may as well go really big and go for a 6s Plus. On paper it made perfect sense.
Then I played with one in an Apple Store and I laughed. In practice it was comically big. I really didn’t want a phone I could only realistically use with two hands.
I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking. In about 2005 I bought an iSight, Apple’s relatively short-lived external webcam. It was a beautiful device. Sleek, easy to use and functional.
At least, I think it was functional.
For a device that cost me well over £100 I didn’t really think it through. No one else I knew at the time had a Mac with iChat. Or a webcam.
Before I finally gave in and sold it on eBay I did use it a few times with my then girlfriend (now wife). And it was really nice; like the future. Having grown up with old, slow computers the idea of playing video on them is still slightly magical to me. To have a computer simultaneously record, compress, transmit, receive, decode and display high resolution videos still strikes me as pretty amazing.
The flood of new so-called smart watches continues. Some people seem to love theirs, others remain to be convinced.
Count me in with the unconvinced, though only because the current ones seem to be poorly conceived.
Portability is critical to modern device usefulness, and there are only two classes that matter anymore: always with you, and not… Smartphones dominate always with you.
I think this gets to the heart of why the current range of devices — both those for sale and also those just announced at CES — just are not very compelling.
This is really starting to bug me. Nearly a week after Facebook’s IPO and the papers are still saying that it was a failure. It wasn’t, or at least, whether or not is was depends on who you are. And I suspect you prefer the winner to the so-called losers.
Let’s start with the basics. What is an IPO? It’s simple: a company sells a part of itself in exchange for cash. In the physical world, that’s the same as me making something and selling it to you. For the sake of this example, let’s say that I sell it to you for £1.