A relative once bought a very expensive camera.

However, she found the number of new features confusing. So she simply used all the default settings. Her photos turned out the same as her old camera.

This happens a lot in communities too.

When you move from an inexpensive to a premium platform, you have a lot of new features and settings to fiddle with. Many (perhaps most?) organisations are nervous about making tweaks and simply use the default settings. Unsurprisingly, they don’t see the results they were expecting.

Some things to consider here:

First, don’t confuse a default setting with the best practice. The default settings aren’t the combined wisdom of the platform’s many years of experience (trust me, I checked). They’re no better than the default settings on a camera or the default ringtone on your phone. They’re simply settings that you’re expected to change to suit your needs.

Second, there isn’t much point upgrading to a new platform if you’re not going to invest time and money learning how to use it properly. You need to set aside time in your calendar to learn how to do this. This is time-intensive but it’s the entire point. When you move to a new platform the slight change in how members can talk to one another pales in comparison with the extra new features you’re paying for.

Third, take the courses offered by the vendor, have a staging site where you can fiddle with the settings, talk to others using the same platform. Take what’s likely to be a big weakness and turn it into your biggest strength.

In recent months, more and more web sites greet me with super annoying pop-ups and request my consent to their use of cookies. Some even give me the option to control for which purposes cookies are used. Of course, web site owners don’t do this for fun but because of laws such as the GDPR that have come into effect in recent years. While I think that the GDPR is a good thing overall, I am particularly unhappy about this side effect.

It’s nice that one can in theory control for which purposes cookies are used. But honestly, did you ever have a closer look and actually change the ‘maximum’ settings? No? I thought so.

I suppose that most people will only see the dialog once. Not me, however, as I have configured my browser to delete all cookies when I exit. So next time I come back to the page, the ritual repeats. One the one hand this is super annoying, but on the other hand it shows that the web site does not remember me after I have closed the browser. So I’m trying to recondition myself not to be bothered by the pop-ups but rather to see it as a positive sign that the website does not link me to a previous visit and does not have a personal profile of me. That is, unless, it uses other means to track my behavior which is not yet regulated. Always the optimist.

We’ve been working on the next version of TidyBlocks, which means I’ve been programming again after a hiatus of several months. I enjoy it, much as I imagine my mother enjoyed knitting, but the older I get, the more frustrated I am by our tools. For example, the Program class has a Map called waiting from sets of strings to runnable pipelines, each of which can depend on zero or more other pipelines. As a pipeline runs, it can call Program.notify(label) to say, “Tell anything that depends on label that the result it needs to run is now available.” Once all of a pipeline’s dependencies are ready, it is removed from waiting and added to the runnable queue (called queue). The code looks like this:

/**
 * Notify the manager that a named pipeline has finished running.
 * This enqueues pipeline functions to run if their dependencies are satisfied.
 * @param {string} label Name of the result that was just produced.
 */
notify (label) {
  util.check(label && (typeof label === 'string'),
             `Cannot notify with empty label`)
  util.check(this.env instanceof Env,
             `Program must have non-null environment when notifying`)
  const toRemove = []
  this.waiting.forEach((dependencies, pipeline) => {
    dependencies.delete(label)
    if (dependencies.size === 0) {
      this.queue.push(pipeline)
      toRemove.push(pipeline)
    }
  })
  toRemove.forEach(pipeline => this.waiting.delete(pipeline))
}

But why does this method build a list called toRemove while it’s checking dependencies, then go back and remove the pipelines in that list from waiting? Why doesn’t it just called this.waiting.delete(pipeline) inside the first forEach? The reason is that it’s not safe to remove items from a Map while iterating over it: doing so can result in items being missed or in the wrong item being removed.

That’s not what annoys me, though. What annoys me is that I don’t have any better way to explain why two forEaches are needed than a sentence or two of plain text. Modeling notations like UML can show what I’m doing (sort of), and with enough work I could write something in a rigorous specification language like TLA+ that would allow the computer to warn me if I did try to delete items inside the main forEach, but neither of those is the “why” that the next human being needs.

All of which has me thinking about dplyr pipelines and about whether every verb should have an optional inOrderTo parameter so that I can write pipelines like this:

infant_hiv %>%
  filter(estimate != 0.95,
         inOrderTo="Get rid of markers used by field workers to indicate unreliable data") %>%
  filter((0.5 <= low) & (high <= 0.7),
         inOrderTo="Select estimates in the 50-70% range") %>%
  group_by(year,
           inOrderTo="Look at annual averages in this band") %>%
  summarize(ave_range = mean(high - low),
            inOrderTo="Look at how the actual range in this band changes over time")

I know I can do this with comments, but this would encourage authors to explain specific steps more precisely. The next step would be to come up with a (restricted, checkable) vocabulary like that used in Gherkin…

…or something equally nebulous. I’m not a data scientist, so I don’t know exactly what would be most useful in practice, but as I help a colleague figure out why Booleans are showing up as strings, what I do know is that there has to be a better way.

Back in 2017, my colleague, Sarah Hawk, left her role managing the FeverBee community to take up an incredible new opportunity at Discourse.

I didn’t hire a replacement. For the past three years, the community has been left to manage itself. I’ve dipped in occasionally to respond to discussions, remove spam, make a few tweaks, but that’s about it.

This means the community has unintentionally served as a fascinating natural experiment for what happens when you don’t replace (or don’t hire) a full-time community manager.

If you’re looking to make a case about the importance of a full-time community manager, this data should help.

Increase In The Number of Visitors

(click here for full image)

Let’s start with the number of visitors. Things didn’t really change much at first. In fact, the number of visitors continued to increase significantly for the following year. The reason for this is simple; the community was still attracting growing levels of search traffic.

Increase In Search Traffic

As you can see below, the number of visitors is entirely driven by organic search traffic.

(click here for full image)

My best guess is the community was still considered ‘fresh’ by Google and the rising increase in discussions kept ranking highly in search engines.

It’s only been in the past year that traffic has really begun to decline – largely the result of formerly popular topics no longer ranking highly in search engines.

Key Takeaway: Even without a community manager you will keep attracting similar (or increased) levels of search traffic for a year or two.

Rapid Decline Pageviews

This is where we can see a more immediate impact of losing the community manager.

(click here for full image)

The number of pageviews (which is a fairly good indicator of how engaging people are finding the community) almost immediately dived. We might have been attracting most people, but they were finding the community a lot less engaging.

My guess is the failure to populate the community with fresh, interesting discussions, ensure previous discussions received a response, and do the day to day welcoming work is reflected in an instant decline.

Rapid Decline Engagement Metrics

You can see the same immediate impact in broader engagement metrics too. The number of pages (discussions) members viewed per visit plummeted and the average session duration also fell immediately.

(click here for full image)

While the number had fallen a little before the community manager left, this is probably the result of Sarah Hawk working just 2 days a week for FeverBee just prior to her departure.

Interestingly, unlike total page views, engagement metrics seem to ‘bottom out’ at around 2 to 2.5 pages per session and average session duration of about 1:30 to 2:00 minutes. This was primarily new visitors browsing around after most of the regulars had departed.

This might be an interesting benchmark for community professionals (i.e. anything above this line is attributable to the work of a community manager).

Key Takeaway: The moment a community manager leaves you can probably expect an immediate decline in engagement. This will level out at ‘rock bottom’ within about a year.

Community Activity

As expected, when a community manager leaves you see an immediate collapse in the level of participation in the community.

(click here for full image)

Some of this is simply the absence of Hawk’s contributions. She was making 80+ posts per month. The majority is members participating less. When she wasn’t there to proactively drive the community, the level of participation quickly declined.

Key takeaway: If a community manager leaves, you need to find a replacement quickly or you lose all the value the community has created.

Daily Active Users / Monthly Active Users (stickiness)

Once Hawk had left, the community also became a lot less ‘sticky’.

(click here for full image)

While the data itself is highly variable from month to month, the trend-line broadly shows a clear decline in stickiness until (again) a baseline is reached.

Members who did visit (i.e. regulars), were suddenly visiting a lot less frequently. 20% is often considered the standard to aim for here. And the FeverBee community was within touching distance of that before Hawk left.

Conclusions

Could these results be more conclusive?

Communities can’t run themselves. Large communities might fare slightly better than smaller communities like ours, but you still need someone at the helm.

Not replacing the community manager immediately reversed the direction of the community from one which was increasing in activity and engagement to one that went into a tailspin decline.

Note: You might notice several of these metrics were in decline just prior to the community manager’s departure. I’d attribute this to a) Sarah Hawk leaving half-way through the month of July and b) she only worked 2 days a week just prior to her departure.

If you want a community to thrive and reach a critical mass of activity, you need a full-time community manager to make that work. You can’t wait for a community to be successful and then hire one. And if your community manager leaves, you better find a replacement quickly.

Telus announced that Optiv TV customers in B.C. and Alberta with four or more theme packs can choose Amazon Prime as a benefit in their package.

“Customers will enjoy the best in shopping and entertainment from Amazon, including direct access to the Prime Video app to watch thousands of popular movies, TV shows, and award-winning Amazon Originals like Fleabag and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the carrier noted in a press release.

A Prime membership regularly costs $7.99 CAD per month. Telus notes that Optik TV customers who add Amazon Prime to their TV package will also have unlimited access to ad-free listening through Amazon Prime Music, along with hundreds of books with Prime Reading.

Further, customers will also get free in-game loot and games with Twitch Prime and free unlimited photo storage with Amazon Photos.

Customers can access the app by navigating to the Optik TV app home page or by turning to channel 424.

Source: Telus

The post Telus offering Amazon Prime as a benefit to customers with select Optik TV plans appeared first on MobileSyrup.

After George Floyd was killed by police officer Derek Chauvin and video of the murder was shared widely, a wave of protests began in Minneapolis, where the incident occurred, as well as in most other metropolitan areas in the U.S. and many smaller cities and towns. The violent police response to these events has generated footage of their tear gassing, pepper spraying, brutalizing, and beating American civilians with batons, much of which has circulated online and reinforced the protests’ urgency.

On June 8, U.S. House and Senate Democrats responded to this popular uprising. Wearing kente cloth draped around their necks and flanked by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer walked to Emancipation Hall in the Capitol and kneeled for eight minutes and 46 seconds to honor Floyd, mimicking a common protest action. Images and videos of this event, which was staged to coordinate with the introduction of a police-reform bill, also proliferated across social media and news sites, but to a very different effect.

When protesters kneel, it evokes solidarity, making the visual point that all these people, together, are collectively doing something. They are united in action and idea. They are a bloc. But the kneeling elected officials did not evoke feelings of collectivity but instead, as Doreen St. Félix wrote, “embarrassment.” They are not part of a bloc or a mass. They are not in the same structural position as the protesters rising against injustice; they are emanations of the state apparatus that perpetuates it. Much like the police who have sought to kneel with protesters, the politicians’ gesture is a show not of solidarity but of power — that they can appropriate protests for publicity stunts without refusing, let alone altering, their structural relation to racist oppression. A sitting member of Congress kneeling is closer to replicating Derek Chauvin than Colin Kaepernick.

Why would the Democrats choose such a strange stunt to pair with their bill proposal? Why didn’t they recognize how out of step this was with the original use and intent of the imagery that they were replicating? An explanation can be found in the concept of “saturation,” explored in a new collection of essays, Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value, edited by C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp. The concept helps explain how institutions of power can become more accommodating to racial critique and racialized peoples without fundamentally transforming into anti-racist bodies.

Images like the politicians’ publicity stunt are schematics of institutional power; they make “saturation” visible. Saturation describes both how institutions can foreground race as a substitute for more substantive change and how individuals can have their racialization foregrounded by those institutions. It speaks to both what systems of racialization do to people and how institutions sustain those systems. Saturation points to the psychic load racialized people have to take on to make a place for themselves within saturated institutions built through legacies of discrimination.

In Snorton and Yapp’s introductory essay, they define saturation by way of Isaac Newton’s optics theory, “in terms of the intensity of a color, expressed as the degree to which it differs from white.” For Snorton and Yapp, this definition parallels “an understanding of race as peripheral to whiteness in Western thought.” This means that saturation can be understood as a measure of intensity and as a way of thinking about proximity to whiteness and the social conditions that it creates. Rather than diagnose racism in binary terms — with something simply being racist or not — it can be thought in terms of saturation levels. For example, artist Candice Lin’s “The Land of Milk and Blood,” an essay included in the collection, does not simply identify the production of colonial and imperialist goods like sugar, opium, and silver as part of a racist assemblage but instead identifies them with the history of dyes and porcelain, showing how those artists’ materials are saturated with the culture of extraction that surrounds them. In this sense, we are talking about an entire system of racialization that extends into the very materials of life, and not simply individual actions or even an implicit ideology.

The capacity for saturation exists at every instance when a racialized person interacts with an institution, and it happens on both sides of that encounter. “Racialized subjects,” Snorton and Yapp argue, are often saturated with the demands from institutions to “represent their minority position” and thereby “become oversaturated by navigating and existing within the institutions [they] invest in and then critique.” To be oversaturated as a person, in their terms, is to be both bogged down and pulled apart by the demands of institutions that want individuals to be emblematic of their racial identity. At the same time, an institution can also become more saturated in the sense that increases in nonwhite representation within them may still leave structural problems fundamentally untouched.

Thinking in terms of saturation rather than overfamiliar heuristics of a whiteness-centering fragility or a sociological analysis removes us slightly from the now familiar (and institutionally embraced) language of diversity that rarely thinks about the mental health of so-called diverse people, whether they are actually included in significant decisions, and whether an institution can retain those perspectives without psychically draining them. It allows us to think both about what happens to people when they interact with larger structures, and it gives us language for how institutions fail to shift in longitudinal ways. Put slightly comically by the editors, in the context of art museums: “Is the answer more Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospectives to remedy the history of exclusion?”

In other words, saturation offers an analysis beyond simply saying “race impacts everything” or “everything is political.” It gives us more precise language for talking about the flexibility of the systems we live within and how they can become more accommodating without changing. A person who becomes wholly saturated by demands on their person can keep going until they collapse; an institution might do the same. The problem is that it takes a whole lot more weight to collapse an institution, and that’s why they can hold onto unchanging power in a way individuals cannot.

Structurally, the American political system has no saturation limit. It can become infinitely accommodating of diversity and yet never remove the power of institutional whiteness to demand racialized peoples prove their humanity. As the kneeling-in-kente-cloth example suggests, the Democratic party can become wholly saturated with racial consciousness and gesture toward racial equity in images and actions yet fundamentally reproduce many of the same problems they’re protesting.

To take another example, from a few days before the members of Congress kneeled, Senator Rand Paul proposed an amendment that stalled the passage of a bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime. All three current Black senators spoke against the amendment, including Cory Booker, who noted that the bill had overwhelming bipartisan support and served to repair Congress’s lack of action in the past. But he concluded his speech with remarks that suggested he was saturated — overburdened with the racialized demand that he convince the overwhelmingly white Senate of not only the necessity of anti-lynching legislation but of recognizing his own humanity: “I’ve had to explain to grown men this week that there is still hope in America, that we can make change in America, that we can grow and heal in America, that we can make this a more perfect union,” he said, and then later, “I object to this amendment. I object. I object. I object. I object on substance. I object on the law. For my heart, spirit, and every fiber of my being. I object for my ancestors.”

Booker, as a Black politician, is obliged to perform hope for America’s future even as its legacy of racialization and oppression is being brought to bear on him. He has to recognize that he’s being fundamentally devalued by the institution he has invested in (which, indeed, has a long legacy of such devaluing as part of its role in maintaining racial hierarchy). His rhetorical negotiation of the tension between his power as a Senator and his power as a Black man marks his saturation point. He has to stand up and defend a racial justice bill with the entire force of his history as a Black man against the bureaucratic “neutrality” of a procedural argument. It clearly pains him to do so, and the institution eats that pain without any regard for him as a person or his well-being. And the next time it comes up for a vote, he’ll have to do it again.

While the essays in Yapp and Snorton’s edited collection mostly focus on institutions like museums and markets, the two polarities of saturation apply just as well to conventional politics (as I have used it above) and online platforms, where we might say that a kind of “media saturation” occurs. I don’t mean this in a media-effects sense, in which a person is overwhelmed by social media or cable news, aimlessly doomscrolling. Rather, media “saturation,” in Snorton and Yapp’s sense, could be useful for understanding how racialized content and perspectives work their way through social media and sometimes determine the shape and content of conversation there.

Consider the example of #BlackoutTuesday: This was a protest staged primarily on Instagram as a way of drawing attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. The action was simple: instead of your normal Instagram content, you post a black square. To many of the mostly well-meaning participants, it may have seemed like a low-stakes way to promote solidarity with what they saw as an important cause. But if this New York Times roundtable can be taken as representative, the reaction among Black Americans was to see the black square as pushing out other useful information about protests or voting while allowing white people with little investment in the movement to post and move on. It also allowed brands to posture their solidarity without backing it up with action. As Jasmine Howard put it in the roundtable: “So much wrong and you all think one black square makes you Malcolm X.”

Instagram can be said to have been saturated by images of the black square — revealing how much race could be foregrounded while still ultimately being sidelined. Like the American political system, it demonstrated a capacity to absorb these gestures seemingly infinitely, with business starting up as usual again the next day. The moment of racial recognition, of representation of a political movement, was taken up by the technological platform and then treated as any other piece of content or meme by the white power-holders on the platform. It is another kind of content, another Basquiat exhibition at the museum. It comes and goes without transforming the racialized structure of the space, allowing the white-aligned institution to pat itself on the back for accomplishing a modicum of diversity.

At the same time, the particular psychic stress that the roundtable discussants work through in the New York Times piece shows how saturation works on people. Much of the critique of the black square emerges from the recognition that it, alone, means very little. As Howard notes in the discussion, the black-square posts were attended by her white friends’ increased demands for attention and approval. As the platform was saturated with black squares, certain people deemed to be “representative” are saturated with racialization, required to bear witness to others’ “good work.”

For Snorton and Yapp, the concept of saturation is a way of wrangling with power and capitalism. It “provides a rubric to ask different questions and to push us to demand more from the ways that institutions function and how race has come to be imagined and understood.” Reading the collection during the current moment, in the context of the examples above, I am struck by how it can function as much like a crowbar as a rubric. After all, the relationship between Congressional stunts and Booker’s feeling compelled to evoke his own humanity is complicated. He is both complicit in a system of power and domination and a Black man in America. Likewise, Instagram is a visual ecology that supports (and is supported by) both empty gestures and footage of protests and advocacy at the same time. “Saturation” gives us a way of talking about when change does or does not happen, and why some people particularly are expected to bear the psychic burdens of that. While it doesn’t provide tactical pathways or specific methods to get out of our current position, the concept of saturation does give us a new way of thinking about systemic pressure points. And, maybe, new ways of applying pressure.

Since I began writing this piece a month ago, we went from a media ecology where protests were everywhere to one in which they are barely shown. They’re still happening, of course. People are in the streets in masses. They’re pulling down statues. They’re making their voices heard in their local communities. And yet news channels and feeds slowed that visual information down to the smallest trickle. We have gone from mass media panic about uprisings in Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protests to short, staccato segments presented in the context of governmental response. In the past two weeks, many of those segments have focused on the use of federal agencies to abduct protesters off the streets in Portland and, presumably, other cities.

As social media fervor accelerated around this practice, Trump doubled down and claimed it as a positive federal program for getting unruly cities back under the control of law and order. This explicitly authoritarian act was covered uncritically by established media organizations; pundits debated the moral and legal dimensions of these actions while the President’s comments and speeches were consistently aired.

It seems clear that media outlets felt some kind of pressure to downplay the nationwide protests and their calls for action. Saturation can help us frame this: These media institutions can absorb Black Lives Matter messages, calls for police abolition, and radical movements in the streets only up to a point. They hit their saturation point, the absorption limit for these ideas, and then they stopped. To continue would threaten the white-aligned power core of their message and economic position.

But these institutions were also clearly hungry for a way to both-sides the issue, and they have shown themselves willing to make brute authoritarianism a “side” to be debated, and to profit from the “engagement” that leads to. While there might be a tipping point for media saturation, or for saturation in general, I don’t have a sense of what it might be if institutions can always re-up their structural alignment with whiteness. This choice to turn away from positive coverage of the protests and reorient toward the authoritarian interventions is worrying because it shows the extreme investment that the liberal order has in maintaining the racialized power structures currently in place.

But I want to use the concept of saturation to read hope here. If these media entities could absorb and digest protest infinitely, then they would be continuing to monetize them. It required the weight of the U.S. executive branch to sway them back into a moneymaking-through-debate logic, and that swing of power is more significant than it might seem at first glance. The fact that media organizations have to pretend that the only thing worth covering about protests are their brutal suppression suggests that the ideas represented in those protests truly have revolutionary potential — that our institutions could be threatened or overturned via the media landscape. The past couple months could, in part, be a template for thinking oversaturation as a political strategy.

The cost of saturation for racialized people is high, and that cost is paid during encounters with institutions bound up in whiteness and power. Snorton and Yapp open a door to a political escape hatch, though, by suggesting we might be able to short-circuit those very institutions if we can remove their methods for managing how saturated they are. That obviously requires the dismantling of the parasitic relationship that news, their ratings, and their profits have with our political structures.

I think of the demonstrations at the CNN Center in Atlanta. The things that were happening in the screens, in all the screens, were happening right outside the headquarters of the mechanism that produces the content on those screens. The media apparatus could not ignore the groundswell of Black and brown power that existed right outside its door, and it had no choice but to look on and broadcast that clashing moment. While moments of saturation are happening constantly, moments like that may offer us a path toward a future where they can be deployed strategically.

From sfgate via Dianna:

San Francisco is defined by its hills.

But which is the steepest?

It’s not Lombard Street. While the famous winding block between Hyde and Leavenworth, with its tight turns and postcard views, has become the celebrity of San Francisco streets, its incline even before the eight switchbacks were built in 1923 was a relatively paltry 27%. It may be the crookedest and most famous block in the city, but it’s certainly not the steepest. …

YouTuber and San Francisco native Joey Yee wanted to find out, and climbed the city’s actual steepest streets in a video posted on YouTube:

So, what is he grade of Vancouver’s steepest street?

My wife is a photographer. Quite a good one, in fact. One sure way to annoy her is to ask what kind of camera she uses after admiring one of her photos.. It’s her eye, not the camera, that recognizes the perfect shot. The tool may well be the least important element in the mix.

My own photography has gotten better courtesy of time spent in apprentice mode by her side. Photography is also an example of a knowledge work capability that can shed light on performance improvement in a knowledge context. The primary performance metric is whether you can capture the image you envision. Secondary metrics might include meeting time, budget, and other constraints on the image. In some settings, you may also need to be able to articulate the logic for why the image you eventually capture meets the criteria set.

If your goal, for example, is to capture a simple selfie to demonstrate that you were there at Mt. Rushmore, anything with both you and the mountain in frame and in focus will suffice. As you goals evolve, you also acquire new concepts and vocabulary; composition, depth of field, light conditions, focal length. exposure.

Meeting those goals may lead you to exploring and adopting new tools. A better camera might well enable you to capture images that weren’t possible with starter tools. But the functions and features of more sophisticated tools might just as well not exist if you don’t have the corresponding concepts to work with.

These concepts and the tools all need to be in service to creating the images you imagine. You don’t learn them in theory or in isolation. You learn them by doing the work and getting feedback. Over time, you also learn to give yourself better feedback.

Ira Glass has an excellent series of short videos on storytelling that fit here and fit knowledge work in general. The whole series is worth your time and attention–Ira Glass on Storytelling – This American Life. The nut graf, however, is something to keep close at hand as you work at your craft:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

There is craft behind all knowledge work. You get better at craft work by being intentional about getting better. And by accepting that craft lies in the mix of tools, techniques, practices, mentors, and peers. It’s a mistake to remain wed to the first tool you pick up, It’s equally a mistake to confuse changing tools with improving your craft.

The post Learning to See-Improving Knowledge Work Capabilities appeared first on McGee's Musings.

Although a cheap drip coffee maker can fulfill your basic need for a big, hot pot of coffee first thing in the morning, only a great machine will ensure that your pot consistently tastes delicious.

To start the day off on the right foot—or with the right cup—we recommend the OXO Brew 9-Cup Coffee Maker It’s fast, convenient, and easy to use, with a well-insulated carafe. Most important, it makes good coffee.

Apple has posted Q3 2020 revenue of $59.7 billion (roughly $80.1 billion CAD), which is an 11 percent year-over-year increase, beating analyst expectations.

The tech giant continued to see growth in its services revenue, as it reached $13.1 billion USD (roughly $17.7 billion CAD), compared to the $11.4 billion USD (roughly (roughly $15.3 billion CAD) reported in the same quarter a year ago.

The company’s services category includes the App Store, iCloud and Apple Music, as well as more recently launched platforms like Apple Arcade and Apple TV+.

iPhone revenue increased to $26.4 billion USD (about $35 billion CAD) compared to $25.9 billion USD (roughly $34 billion CAD) a year ago.

Mac revenue increased to $7 billion USD (about $9.3 billion CAD) from the $5.8 billion USD (about $7.7 billion CAD) reported a year ago. Apple also saw increases in its iPad and wearables revenue as well.

The tech giant’s most recently released iPhone is the entry-level iPhone SE (2020). Apple also released a new MacBook Air (2020) and the iPad Pro (2020).

“Apple’s record June quarter was driven by double-digit growth in both Products and Services and growth in each of our geographic segments,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in the earnings release.

“In uncertain times, this performance is a testament to the important role our products play in our customers’ lives and to Apple’s relentless innovation. This is a challenging moment for our communities, and, from Apple’s new $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative to a new commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030, we’re living the principle that what we make and do should create opportunity and leave the world better than we found it.”

Recent rumours have indicated that the tech giant’s upcoming 2020 iPhone may be delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Apple

The post Apple reports $59.7 billion revenue in Q3 2020, strong iPhone revenue appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Every two years, Vancouver has been blessed with the sculpture Biennale – a celebration of art in public space.  And Price Tags has been documenting the Biennale since 2006, when we were still producing a magazine-style documentation of urbanism in the city.

Credit goes primarily to entrepreneur and philanthropist Barrie Mowatt, who has a long and accomplished history supporting the visual arts in this city, beginning with the establishment of the Buschlen Mowatt fine art gallery in 1979, and then the Biennale in 1998.  The latter would just be a good idea or a one-off without Mowatt’s ability to deal with the astounding logistics required to organize an international exhibition of this quality – especially one that takes place in some of our most prized public spaces, the waterfront parks of Vancouver, cautiously protected by layers of discretionary approvals.

But Mowatt has been aiming to do something more than just plop down big chunks of art on goose-strewn grass (or more politely, “transforming the urban landscape into an Open Air Museum.”)  He has expanded the scope of the exhibition to transform some of our leftover urban spaces into true gathering places for community – most notably “A-Mazing Laughter” (right) at English Bay.  The art truly does change how people see and use our public spaces.

He has also found a way to unite scattered pieces into something cohesive (that ‘outdoor museum’) by sponsoring the ‘Bikennale’ – so that numerous pieces can be viewed, appreciated and comprehended in a day.  With the pandemic making a single crowded event impossible, he has adapted the Bikennale (and Walkennale) into a month-long sequence of experiences – “SIX SUNDAYS THIS SUMMER” – that take cyclists not only along a route that connects the art but also brings in past pieces, the history of particular neighbourhoods and anecdotes about us as a people.

If you like to cycle or walk, sign up for the 2020 BIKEnnale/WALKennale Six Sundays (July 26 through August 30), check out www.vbbike.ca to learn more – a great chance to get outdoors (with appropriate physical distancing) and explore the history, architecture, and culture of a neighbourhood or two.

Apple has just published its financial results for Q3 2020. The company posted revenue of $59.7 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook said:

“Apple’s record June quarter was driven by double-digit growth in both Products and Services and growth in each of our geographic segments,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “In uncertain times, this performance is a testament to the important role our products play in our customers’ lives and to Apple’s relentless innovation. This is a challenging moment for our communities, and, from Apple’s new $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative to a new commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030, we’re living the principle that what we make and do should create opportunity and leave the world better than we found it.”

Estimates and Expectations for Q3 2020 and the Year-Ago Quarter (Q3 2019)

Due to the uncertainty caused by the global pandemic, Apple did not provide financial guidance for Q3 2020 during its last earnings call.

Going into today’s call, Yahoo Finance said that:

Much of the earnings focus, however, will be on whether Cook and company will provide guidance for fiscal Q4, which could offer a hint about any potential delays to the launch of the firm’s upcoming iPhone 12.

Despite the lack of guidance, Yahoo Finance says that Bloomberg’s research shows that analysts expect the following results:

Revenue: $52.2 billion expected versus $53.8 billion in Q3 2019.

Earnings per share: $2.06 expected versus $2.18 in Q3 2019.

Graphical Visualization

After the break, we’ve compiled a graphical visualization of Apple’s Q3 2020 financial results.

Apple Q3 2020 on Twitter

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Apple has confirmed that it expects this year’s new iPhone models to arrive slightly later than usual.

“Last year we started selling new iPhones in late September; this year we expect supply to be available a few weeks later,” said Apple CFO Luca Maestri in a July 30th call following the release of the company’s Q3 2020 earnings report.

Maestri did not provide a specific reason for the delay. However, this confirms a Wall Street Journal report from April stating that production on the new iPhones would be pushed by about a month due to COVID-19 related supply chain disruptions. Qualcomm also alluded to an iPhone delay this week when it announced that a major 2020 5G flagship phone had been pushed back.

Further, financial services and investment firm Wedbush recently predicted that the new iPhones will indeed release in October. That said, Wedbush still expects Apple to hold a keynote in September to formally unveil the upcoming phones.

Overall, Apple is rumoured to be working on several 2020 iPhones, including 5.4-inch and 5.1-inch iPhone 12 models, as well as a Pro version with 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch options. In terms of features, the phones are reported to sport a squared-off design similar to recent iPad Pro models, 5G connectivity and a new, faster 5nm A-series processor.

Via: The Verge

The post Apple says it expects this year’s new iPhones to launch ‘a few weeks later’ than usual appeared first on MobileSyrup.

For over a year now, Mozilla has been working on a complete redesign of its Firefox browser on Android. Dubbed ‘Fenix,’ the rework brings both significant visual changes and an under-the-hood overhaul that, at least in my testing, makes Firefox feel snappier than ever on Android.

However, after lengthy testing, Mozilla has brought its new Firefox to the stable channel with a version jump from 68 to 79. Unfortunately, this update feels too soon in many ways.

Let’s start with the good: the new design. Firefox 79 brings several things that people on the Beta and Nightly channels — and before that, the Preview channel — have enjoyed for months. That includes a bottom URL bar, which is much easier to reach on large displays. There’s a new icon that shows up in the URL bar for reader mode now as well. Firefox 79 ushers in Mozilla’s Enhanced Tracking Protection and sets it to ‘Strict’ by default. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The bad, however, has proved a sticking point for several users. First and foremost is extension support. Because of the under-the-hood changes, Mozilla prioritized bringing its recommended add-ons to the new mobile Firefox first. It appears the company is off to a slow start, with only the following few extensions available:

• uBlock Origin
• Dark Reader
• HTTPS Everywhere
• Privacy Badger
• NoScript Security Suite
• Decentraleyes
• Search by Image
• YouTube High Definition
• Privacy Possum

A quick look at the Firefox Reddit reveals several upset users criticizing Mozilla for pushing out the update without full extension support. For once, I find myself inclined to agree, even though the few extensions I use are (mostly) available on Fenix. For such an integral part of the Firefox mobile experience, I think Mozilla should have waited to push this until it had far more extensions available.

There are several other changes users have also complained about. For example, the new tab page received some flak (I’m a fan of it, but it does have some issues). The new tab switcher also has some problems (I preferred the old Fenix switcher, but either is better than what’s available on Firefox 68). Those issues are far more subjective, however.

Mozilla has yet to roll out the new Firefox to users in Canada, so if you are a heavy extension user, you may want to hold off for now.

You can check out the official changelog for Firefox 79 here.

Source: 9to5Google

The post Mozilla’s revamped Firefox begins rolling out to stable users on Android appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Sandboxing and Workload Isolation

Fly.io run other people's code in containers, so workload isolation is a Big Deal for them. This blog post goes deep into the history of isolation and the various different approaches you can take, and fills me with confidence that the team at Fly.io know their stuff. I got to the bottom and found it had been written by Thomas Ptacek, which didn't surprise me in the slightest.

Via Hacker News

This is the transcript of my keynote at the Digital Pedagogy Lab this morning. Except not really. It was a "flipped" keynote, so this is more like the pre-reading for what I actually talked about. Sort of.

I have really struggled to prepare a keynote for you all. This isn't the first talk I've done since my son died. Hell, it's not even the second or third. But this one has been the hardest to write, in part because I am so close with so many of you in the DigPed community, and what I want right now is to be with you, in person, to cry with you and laugh with you and rage with you and scheme with you.

I know that we're all struggling to muddle through this crisis — or these crises, I should say: the pandemic, economic precarity, school re-opening, police violence, creeping authoritarianism. So much loss. So much death. And I know that it's probably for the best that we use digital technologies in lieu of gathering face-to-face — for school or for work or for professional development or for socializing. Plenty of folks insist that these digital tools can be used well for teaching and learning, that online education doesn't have to be inferior to offline, that offline can be pretty wretched already. (Indeed, that's likely why you all are here: to work on bettering your digital pedagogical practices with an eye to equity and justice.)

But I remain steadfast in my criticism of education technologies in almost all their forms and functions. Indeed, the problems that we've long identified with ed-tech — privacy violations, security concerns, racist algorithms, accessibility and access issues, all-male leadership teams, outsourcing, disruptive bullshittery, and so on — are still here. And I fear we are at a particularly dangerous crossroads for education because of ed-tech. The danger is not simply because of the entrepreneurial and the venture capitalist sharks circling our institutions, but also because the narratives, long foisted upon us, about the necessity of ed-tech are becoming more and more entrenched, more and more pervasive. These narratives have always tended to repress the trauma and anxiety associated with the adoption of new technologies and more broadly with the conditions, the precarity, of everyday life. These narratives want us to forget that ed-tech is, first and foremost, beholden to the ideologies of machines, efficiencies, and capitalism.

But this is ed-tech's big moment, or so we're told. And all those folks who predicted a decade or so ago that schools would all be online by 2020, that universities would all be bankrupt may just be right.

So, that's the other struggle I've had trying to prepare this keynote. What — right now — do I have to offer as a speaker? I mean, who really needs to hear me be Cassandra when we can all see the impending doom? Who wants to hear me criticize the LMS or the video-conferencing software when we're stuck with it.

But that's the message of this talk, I suppose: we're not.

We're not stuck. We don't have to surrender. We can refuse, and we should. And we should support students when they refuse. These can be little refusals — small acts of resistance, obfuscations, that come from positions of little to no power. These can be loud refusals in support of those with little to no power. We can push back, and we can demand better. It didn't have to be like this (imagine me gesturing widely), and it doesn't have to be like this (imagine me pointing at the screen).

In 1984, novelist Thomas Pynchon wrote an article asking "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" Regardless of what Pynchon thinks, I'm here to tell you that yes, yes it is. Luddites are imagined as the "counterrevolutionaries" of the Industrial Revolution and as such the enemies of science and technology. The name "Luddite" is used as a pejorative to dismiss anyone who frowns at technology, anyone who's perceived to be clinging to tradition over "progress." But the Luddites have been unfairly maligned, I'd say, as this group of late 17th / early 18th century English textile workers — skilled, technical workers — were not opposed to machines despite their famed machine-smashing. What they opposed were the exploitative practices of the textile factory owners — that is, the emerging practices of capitalism. The Luddites' tactic of what historian Eric Hobsbawm called "collective bargaining by riot" was used by workers in other industries as well.

I'm rather fond of Pynchon's essay because it weaves together several strands about Luddism — that Ned Ludd first smashed a stocking frame in Leicestershire in 1779; that Lord Byron was one of the only members of Parliament who opposed legislation in 1812 that would make the smashing of loom machines punishable by death; that Byron wrote "the Song of the Luddites" in 1816 — a "hymn so inflammatory that it wasn't published till after the poet's death" (part of which, incidentally, I have tattooed on my right forearm — "Down with all kings but King Ludd"); that the previous summer, Byron had spend with his friends Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley at a chateau on Lake Geneva where the latter wrote arguably the greatest science fiction novel, Frankenstein. Pynchon calls Frankenstein a Luddite novel, and I think it's fair to call it an ed-tech novel too, because it isn't simply about questions of science and ethics, but about education — or rather the mis-education of both Victor and the creature.

Pynchon does not mention one of the other interesting bits of Byron trivia — and trust me, there are many: his daughter was Ada Lovelace, the mathematician who helped Charles Babbage write algorithms for his proposed Analytical Engine, a general purpose computational machine. Ada Lovelace is often called the first computer programmer. Nor does Pynchon mention that we can trace the history of computing back not only to Lovelace but to the Jacquard machine, an automated loom device invented in 1804 that was run via punchcards — each card corresponding to the pattern to be woven. These would have been nice details for Pynchon to include, I'd argue, as at the end of his essay he speculates that the "Luddite sensibility" would struggle in the dawning Computer Age, that few Luddites would be willing to smash these new machines as they'd believe computers would help us to "cure cancer, save ourselves from nuclear extinction, grow food for everybody, detoxify the results of industrial greed gone berserk." Rather than a machine of exploitation, Pynchon argued, the computer would become a tool for revolution, one that, with its immense data-analyzing capabilities, would finally overturn the "permanent power establishment of admirals, generals and corporate CEO's."

Ha.

Unlike Pynchon, I do believe the "Luddite sensibility" survives, although not necessarily, as the insult suggests, in those who drag their feet in adopting the latest gadget. And this seems to be a perfect time to cultivate it further. Recall, the Luddites emerged in the economic devastation of the Napoleonic Wars — they wanted jobs, yes, but they wanted freedom and dignity. As we face economic devastation today, we need some solidarity and perhaps even a little sabotage. We can look at ed-tech as something to smash knowing that what we aim for are the systems of violence, exploitation, neoliberalism, mechanization, and standardization ed-tech that demands.

This requires more than a Luddite sensibility. It requires a Luddite strategy. And for us, I'd say, it is time for a Luddite pedagogy.

A Luddite pedagogy is not about making everyone put away their laptops during class — remember those days? Again, Luddism is not about the machines per se; it's about machines in the hands of capitalists and tyrants — in the case of ed-tech, that's both the corporations and the State, especially ICE and the police. Machines in the hands of a data-driven school administration. Luddism is about a furious demand for justice, about the rights of workers to good working conditions, adequate remuneration, and the possibility of a better tomorrow — and let's include students in our definition of "worker" here as we do call it "school work" after all.

A Luddite pedagogy is about agency and urgency and freedom. "A Luddite pedagogy is a pedagogy of liberation," Torn Halves writes in Hybrid Pedagogy, "and, as such, it clashes head on with the talk of liberation peddled by advocates of ed-tech. According to the latter, the child, previously condemned to all the unbearably oppressive restrictions of having to learn in groups, can now be liberated by the tech that makes a 1:1 model of education feasible, launching each and every child on an utterly personal learning journey. Liberation as personalization — here the Luddite finds something that ought to be smashed." A Luddite pedagogy doesn't sneer when people balk at new technologies; it doesn't assume they won't use them because they're incompetent; it finds strength in non-compliance.

A Luddite pedagogy is a pedagogy of subversion and transgression. It is a pedagogy of disobedience and dismantling. It is a pedagogy of refusal and of care. It is — with a nod to Jesse's opening keynote — against models and against frameworks (quite literally, Luddites smash frames). It is wildly undisciplined.

Let us be Luddites, not pigeons.

(You can read what I actually talked about in my keynote here.)

These were my remarks today during my "flipped" keynote at DigPed. You can read the transcript of my keynote here.

We haven't had a dog in well over a decade. Kin and I travel so much that it just seemed cruel. But now, what with the work-from-home orders and no travel til there's a vaccine (and even perhaps, beyond that), we decided to get one.

It's actually quite challenging to adopt a dog right now, as everyone seems to be of the same mind as us. And even before the pandemic, there's a big of a dog shortage in the US. Spay-and-neuter programs have been quite effective, and many states have passed laws outlawing puppy mills. The West Coast generally imports dogs from other parts of the country, but these rescue-relocations have largely been shut down. The shelters are pretty empty.

It's a great time to be a dog.

Adopting a dog is quite competitive, and we have been on multiple waiting lists. But finally, we lucked out, and last week we adopted Poppy. She is a 9 month old Rottie mix. She weighs about 55 pounds. She is not housebroken yet — but we're getting there. She's very sweet and super smart and is already getting better on the leash, at sitting when in the apartment elevator, at sitting at street corners, at sitting when people and other dogs approach her. It's important, I think, if you have a big dog, that you train them well.

If you have a dog, you probably know that the best way to train it is through positive behavior reinforcement. That is, rather than punishing the dog when she misbehaves, the dog should be rewarded when she exhibits the desired behavior. This is the basis of operant conditioning, as formulated by the infamous psychologist B. F. Skinner.

The irony, of course. I've just finished a book on the history of teaching machines — a book that argues that Skinner's work is fundamental to history, to how ed-tech is still built today. Ed-tech is operant conditioning, and we should do everything to resist it, and now I'm going to wield it to shape my dog's behavior.

Some background for those who don't know: As part of his graduate work, Skinner invented what's now known as "the Skinner Box." This "operant conditioning chamber" was used to study and to train animals to perform certain tasks. For Skinner, most famously, these animals were pigeons. Do the task correctly; get a reward (namely food).

Skinner was hardly the first to use animals in psychological experiments that sought to understand how the learning process works. Several decades earlier, for his dissertation research, the psychologist Edward Thorndike had built a "puzzle box" in which an animal had to push a lever in order to open a door and escape (again, often rewarded with food for successfully completing the "puzzle"). Thorndike measured how quickly animals figured out how to get out of the box after being placed in it again and again and again -- their "learning curve."

We have in the puzzle box and in the Skinner Box the origins of education technology — some of the very earliest "teaching machines" — just as we have in the work of Thorndike and Skinner, the foundations of educational psychology and, as Ellen Condliffe Lagemann has pronounced in her famous statement "Thorndike won and Dewey lost," of many of the educational practices we carry through to this day. (In addition to developing the puzzle box, Thorndike also developed prototypes for the multiple choice test.)

"Once we have arranged the particular type of consequence called a reinforcement," Skinner wrote in 1954 in "The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching," "our techniques permit us to shape the behavior of an organism almost at will. It has become a routine exercise to demonstrate this in classes in elementary psychology by conditioning such an organism as a pigeon.”

"...Such an organism as a pigeon." We often speak of "lab rats" as shorthand for the animals used in scientific experiments. We use the phrase too to describe people who work in labs, who are completely absorbed in performing their tasks again and again and again.

In education and in education technology, students are also the subjects of experimentation and conditioning. Indeed, that is the point. In Skinner's framework, they are not "lab rats"; they are pigeons. As he wrote,

...Comparable results have been obtained with pigeons, rats, dogs, monkeys, human children… and psychotic subjects. In spite of great phylogenetic differences, all these organisms show amazingly similar properties of the learning process. It should be emphasized that this has been achieved by analyzing the effects of reinforcement and by designing techniques that manipulate reinforcement with considerable precision. Only in this way can the behavior of the individual be brought under such precise control.

Learning, according to Skinner and Thorndike, is about behavior, about reinforcing those behaviors that educators deem "correct" — knowledge, answers, not just sitting still and raising one's hand before speaking (a behavior I see is hard-coded into this interface). When educators fail to shape, reinforce, and control a student's behavior through these techniques and technologies, they are at risk, in Skinner's words, of "losing our pigeon."

In 1951, he wrote an article for Scientific American: "How to Train Animals." I pulled it out again to prepare for this talk today and realized that it contains almost all the tips and steps that dog trainers now advocate for. Get a clicker. Use that as the conditioned reinforcer. But then give the treats and associate the click with the reward. (The clicker is faster.) You can train a dog anything in less than twenty minutes, Skinner insisted. And once you're confident with that, you can train a pigeon. And then you can train a baby. And then…

Two years later after that article, Skinner came up with the idea for his teaching machine. Visiting his daughter's fourth grade classroom, he was struck by the inefficiencies. Not only were all the students expected to move through their lessons at the same pace, but when it came to assignments and quizzes, they did not receive feedback until the teacher had graded the materials -- sometimes a delay of days. Skinner believed that both of these flaws in school could be addressed through mechanization, and he built a prototype for his teaching machine which he demonstrated at a conference the following year.

Skinner believed that materials should be broken down into small chunks and organized in a logical fashion for students to move through. The machine would show one chunk, one frame at a time, and if the student answered the question correctly, could move on to the next question. Skinner called this process "programmed instruction." We call it "personalized learning today." And yes, this involves a lot of clicking.

Skinner is often credited with inventing the teaching machine. He didn't. Sidney Pressey, another educational psychologist, had built one decades beforehand. (Skinner said that Pressey's was more testing than teaching machine.) Despite who was or wasn't "the first," Skinner has shaped education technology immensely. Even though his theories have largely fallen out of favor in most education psychology circles, education technology (and technology more broadly) seems to have embraced them — often, I think, without acknowledging where these ideas came from. Our computer technologies are shot through with behaviorism. Badges. Notifications. Haptic alerts. Real-time feedback. Gamification. Click click click.

According to Skinner, when we fail to properly correct behavior — facilitated by and through machines — we are at risk of "losing our pigeons." But I'd contend that with this unexamined behaviorist bent of (ed-)tech, we actually find ourselves at risk of losing our humanity. To use operant conditioning, Skinner wrote in his article on animal training "we must build up some degree of level and again reinforces only louder deprivation or at least permit a deprivation to prevail which it is within our power to reduce." That is, behaviorial training relies on deprivation. Behaviorist ed-tech relies on suffering — suffering that we could eliminate were we not interested in exploiting it to reinforce compliance. This pigeon pedagogy stands in opposition to the Luddite pedagogy I wrote in the text for this keynote.

So, here's to our all being "lost pigeons," and unlearning our training. But dammit, here's to Poppy learning to be a very good and obedient dog.

How GPT3 Works - Visualizations and Animations

Nice essay full of custom animations illustrating how GPT-3 actually works.

drawing by Elliot Keeler 

Perhaps uniquely, Canadians say “sorry” almost automatically when something goes wrong; it does not (often) imply an admission of guilt, or of remorse. In fact, this is so Canadian that our lawyers had to craft (I am not making this up) the Apology Act, so that prosecuting lawyers couldn’t imply that merely saying “sorry” was an admission of having done something wrong; that it could quite simply be “an act of commiseration”.

I put this propensity down to Canadians’ capacity for embracing complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. We don’t tend to lay blame for things quickly (and sometimes after a rant we will follow it quickly with a “sorry” for the outburst, and an assurance that “I know we’re all doing our best”).

I am “Canadian-sorry” for many things. That is possibly because my life has been so blessed, so it is in my Canadian nature to feel guilty about that, rather than proud or rhapsodic. Here are some of the things I am sorry for, or about, these days:

I am sorry for being a seemingly incorrigible “joyful pessimist”. Sorry about being joyful, when that comes across as disengaged or unsympathetic. Sorry about being a pessimist, when that comes across as defeatist and undermining.

I am sorry for the terrible state of the world, both human and more-than-human. I more or less know that my contribution to that has been relatively negligible, but I still feel more than relatively responsible.

I am sorry for being a Doubting Thomas, such that when someone comes to me in anger or tears and is looking for compassion and reassurance and I try to parse and understand what they’re saying, so they’re forced to tell me, stupid Canadian that I am, to just STFU and agree with them, for once.

I am sorry for the ghastly plight of the world’s other-than-human animals, both farmed (97% of whom live in incredible misery and stress) and wild (97% of whom live in constant retreat as their habitats are erased by human activity). I’m a vegan, but confess I have on occasion been known to eat a cheese croissant. I excuse my inaction on animal rights on the basis that if I knew or saw more instances of animal cruelty, I would probably commit multiple serious crimes against the perpetrators. Sorry, animals.

I am sorry for being, at least for now, a fan of Radical Non-Duality, which is preposterous and unnerving to those who fear it might lead me to entirely dissociate from all the problems and predicaments of the (illusory) “real” world. Especially their particular problems and predicaments. I am sorry that I cannot explain why that will never happen.

I am sorry for not speaking out more militantly against those, both in my community and in others, who don’t social distance and don’t wear masks and who brag about how their community has done so well during CoVid-19 and are completely oblivious to how outbreaks that kill and permanently sicken people actually occur. I am sorry that I don’t know why I don’t speak out. Potentially shaming people, even for something as dangerous as drunk driving, seems somehow un-Canadian. If it’s because I’m just a conflict-avoiding coward, I’m sorry for that, too.

I am sorry for being so stupid, so self-centred, so inattentive and so un-self-aware as to have said and done all those hurtful things I said and did, and to have failed to say and do all those useful and appropriate things I should have said and done. There is no excuse.

I am sorry for my obliviousness to social, political and economic injustices of all kinds, and for the privilege that has enabled that obliviousness, and for the shameful inaction on my part that obliviousness has enabled.

I am sorry that this list may come across as flip or unsympathetic or passive-aggressive or hurtful or like one of those “Kill all x!; [and then later] you know I was just kidding right?” statements from the shithole president and his toadies and their ilk. I am sorry if this post has caused you to feel there is some barbed double meaning to this post. I am sorry if you think I doth protest too much and that there is definitely an intentional or unintentional double meaning to this post.

I am sorry for the grief and terror and destruction the shithole president and his toadies and their ilk all over the world have done, are doing, and will do, whether or not they are elected, re-elected, or otherwise take or retain power. I can’t help feeling my inaction or ignorance has somehow contributed to and/or abetted this.

I’m sorry for saying “sorry” so much that when you really need me to feel sad and sympathetic for your situation, the word, coming from me, has lost its meaning and comes across as insincere and dismissive.

I’m sorry for being so far ahead of mainstream thinking that most people just cannot fathom what I’m trying to say, so they’ve given up reading this blog. And I’m sorry it sounds so arrogant to say my thinking is far ahead of the mainstream. I didn’t mean you. I didn’t mean anyone. It’s just… I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for all the things you care so deeply about that I just cannot, despite all efforts and a ton of soul-searching and introspection and self-challenging, find it in myself to really care about.

I’m sorry for wasting so much of my and others’ time on things of no importance, and specifically for wasting so much time feeling sorry instead of actually doing something about it.

I’m sorry for being so afraid of so many things that I haven’t gathered up the courage to do things that would make an enormous difference to my life and that of others. And I’m sorry I don’t know why that fear has so paralyzed me.

And I’m sorry it has all been so hard for you. Yes, you. I keep thinking it shouldn’t be this hard, shouldn’t have to be this hard. I keep thinking we make it harder than it has to be, harder than it really is. But then I see how hard it really is for so many, perhaps for you, and I feel ashamed and sorry for even thinking this. Sorry it’s been hard, and hope it gets a bit easier.

And finally, I’m sorry if this post, instead of coming across as a minorly self-deprecating (except for the being too-far-ahead part) and strangely insightful, creative and clever essay, comes across as a veiled desperate plea for reassurance, or forgiveness, or emotional support. Didn’t mean it that way, and so sorry if it struck you that way.

Oh, and so sorry for that thing that happened last week, or was it last month? You know the thing I mean.

Kameras in Laptops sind unfassbar schlecht. Selbst die neuesten MacBooks liefern gerade einmal 720p und kacken bei wenig Licht ganz schnell ab. Kein Vergleich zu den Selfie-Kameras in Smartphones. Deshalb hatte ich mir neulich ein Setup gebaut, wo ich eine Smartphone-Kamera in mein Zoom-Setup integriert habe. Warum sind die Laptop-Kameras so schlecht? Das liegt sicher auch daran, dass die Bildschirmdeckel so dünn sind. Die geringe Bautiefe führt zu einen schlechten Kamera.

Das erklärt vielleicht, warum der EagleEye Cube von Poly so dick ist. Oben ist er auf ein Stativ geschraubt, hier hängt er "einfach so" am Bildschirm eines ThinkPads:

Der Cube kann natürlich noch mehr als dick sein: Er zeichnet Videos mit 4K Auflösung durch ein sehr weitwinkliges Objektiv auf und zaubert dann damit herum. Das sieht man so ein wenig in diesem Bild, wo der Cube auf einen ThinkVision Monitor sitzt:

Ich stehe eher neben als vor dem Bildschirm und bin dennoch voll im Bild. Der Cube ist mir einfach gefolgt und hat einen Bildausschnitt gemacht. Laufe ich zur anderen Seite aus dem Bild, folgt er mir erneut. Das hat zwei Vorteile: Einerseits kann man während einer Videokonferenz auch mal aufstehen, statt vor dem Rechner festgenagelt zu sein. Und andererseits kann man mit mehreren Menschen um einen Tisch sitzen und dennoch sind alle im Bild. Da der Cube Mikrofone hat, kann er erkennen, wer gerade spricht und dann einen Ausschnitt um diese Person machen.

In diesem Bild sieht man ein Vorschaubild für eine Teamskonferenz, bei der ich vor dem Tisch stehe. Wenn ich mich danach hinsetze, bin ich immer noch im Bild. Um diese Kamera zu nutzen, muss man zunächst den Poly Companion installieren, der einen Gerätetreiber für die Kamera mitbringt. Auf dem Surface Pro X ließ sich dieser Treiber nicht erfolgreich installieren.

Über den Companion kann man die Kamera auch mit allen Parametern manuell steuern, inklusive des gewünschten Bildausschnitts. In den Admin Settings findet man viele weitere Einstellungen, etwa den Firmware Update. Hier legt man auch fest, ob die Kamera manuell gesteuert werden soll oder welchen Bildausschnitt sie wählen soll. Sie kann statt des Sprechers auch immer alle Menschen vor der Kamera im Bild halten.

Spätestens beim Auspacken des Zubehörs war mir klar, dass das hier keine persönliche Webcam ist, sondern dass die eigentlich in kleine Meetingräume gehört. So gibt es einen soliden Winkel, um den Cube an die Wand zu schrauben, dazu ein dickes USB-C-Kabel und eins für Ethernet. Das USB-Kabel hat sogar eine Schraube, um es so an der Rückseite zu verankern, dass es keinesfalls rausfällt. Der Cube kann auch über Ethernet als IP-Camera eingesetzt werden und lässt sich dann mit PoE (Power over Ethernet) mit Strom versorgt werden. Das habe ich bisher nicht ausprobiert.

Von den Features her finde ich die Kamera super, aber leider nicht von der Bildqualität, was vor allem daran liegen könnte, dass bei meinem Szenario von den 4k auch nicht mehr als 720p übriggeblieben ist, wenn die Kamera auf mich zoomt. Horizontal hat die Kamera einen Blickwinkel von annähernd 120 Grad und die kann ich bei weitem (nicht mehr) ausfüllen. Sehr vorteilhaft sieht man dabei auch nicht aus, weil Weitwinkelobjektive eher "rund" machen.

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Many audio enthusiasts still prefer wired headphones, but the best pairs may require more power than the cheap amps built into phones, tablets, and computers can muster. If your favorite wired headphones sound too quiet or dull when connected to a mobile device, you may need a portable headphone amplifier with a built-in digital-to-analog converter (DAC). We recommend the EarMen Eagle for most people because of its great combination of convenience, performance, and affordability. But we also have recommendations if you need something more powerful or more affordable.

I never really understood why people liked their Jabra Elite 75t earbuds so much, until I put them in my ears. I did not like their design, until I put them in my ears. And I thought they might be earbuds for people who don't have an iPhone. Until ... you get the drift.

Now I think they can beat AirPods in all but one (important) category: AirPods are incredibly easy to pair to Apple devices and they switch between iPhone and Apple Watch automatically. After the fall update, they will get even better in this respect.

Let's start with the design. The form is dictated by two factors: they disappear into your ear, and they have a physical button, which control all the headset functions. Start/stop, answer/end/reject, skip forward and backwards, volume up and down, hear-through on/off.

The Elite Active 75t use the same Sound+ app like the other Elite and Evolve headsets. And they add a very important feature: My Sound. It's a hearing test, for the right and left ear separately. Tap when you hear a sound. It only takes a minute or so, but then the earbuds are really yours, because they adjust to your personal hearing profile. GN, the parent company of Jabra, makes hearing aids. I can't wait for the other Jabra headphones to get the same feature.

What's in the box? A charging case, three sizes of gels, a USB-C charging cable with a USB-A plug at the other end, and the earphones of course. Both have two microphones for phone calls and I find them to work very well. Quite astounding for headphones that don't stick out of your ears.

The Elite 75t are IP53 rated, the Elite Active 75t take that to IP57. Jabra extends a two year warranty for dust or water damage, so the Active variant is perfect for sports.

Since the earbuds fit into your ear canal, you have pretty good passive noise cancellation, and there is a hear-through function which your switch on/off with a button press on your left ear. The volume of that hear-through can be set in the app. Press the button on your right ear to start/stop the music. That means if you want to hear everything around you as if you were not wearing earbuds, press both buttons once. To get back into your zone, do it again. Press and hold on your left ear to turn down the volume, on your right ear to turn it up. Double press left for next track, triple press left to go back. Double press right button to talk to your assistant, be it Siri or Google Assistant. If you connected multiple devices, the one paired last, is called.

The assistant only talks to your right ear, which is kind of strange. Then it turns out you cannot use the left earbud without the right. If you take one out the music stops. But if you take the left out, you can press the button on the right to restart the music. Put both back in and it starts automatically.

Jabra currently leads the software game with headphones. The Sound+ app lets you customize all aspects of their headphones and it is very well designed. My Sound takes everything to a new level.

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If you live within 20 to 30 miles of a TV transmitter tower, you can probably get most network and local channels by using a good indoor HDTV antenna instead of paying for live-TV service.

Any antenna’s ability to pick up a given over-the-air TV channel in a given locale is unpredictable, so we test antennas in a variety of places to gauge average performance. Through six test runs in three cities, the Channel Master FLATenna delivered the best average result, so we recommend starting with that model.

If you live more than 20 miles from your area’s main TV transmitter array, you might get better results with the Channel Master FLATenna+, which includes a detachable amplifier.

mkalus shared this story from Charlie's Diary.

Post-infection cardiac damage found in 78% of recovering COVID19 patients

That's 78% of a cohort, average age 49, of whom 67% had recovered at home (ie. disease was not categorized as severe enough to need hospitalization). Cohort was normalized with respect to other risk factors relative to uninfected patients. Diagnosis by MRI. Looks reasonably solid, at first glance, publication in JAMA Cardiol. (Journal of the American Medical Association, cardiology). Study coordinated via a German hospital.

Reason for "no comment necessary" is that this suggests most COVID19 survivors—including mild disease survivors—suffer cardiac damage.

You don't want to get this virus.