Rolandt

This is a short summary (2 page PDF) of previous work done by the Conference Board in a project with the Future Skills Centre. They are focusing on social and emotional skills (SES) because "employers require new hires who possess not only specialized knowledge and technical skills, but also social and emotional or 'human' skills." I'm all for SES, not because hypothetical future employers might value them, but because SES help people live happier and more fulfilled lives. Anyhow, the detailed report is here (34 page PDF). It defines SES (as "skills like communication, leadership, cultural competence, resiliency, problem-solving, and collaboration"), notes that "most tools and resources for developing SES are designed for K–12 learners," warns that "we risk exacerbating existing inequities among vulnerable groups" by focusing on SES, and argues "it will require rethinking SES training and development in the post-secondary context, including considering it as part of a lifelong learning process."

FiveThirtyEight compared six Covid-19 models for a sense of where we might be headed. With different assumptions and varying math, the trajectories vary, but they at least provide clues so that policymakers can make educated decisions.

If you’re interested in the data behind these models, check out the COVID-19 Forecast Hub maintained by the Reich Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They helped with the FiveThirtyEight comparisons and are also the source for the official CDC forecast page.

Tags: coronavirus, FiveThirtyEight, modeling

As the curve is flattening for Covid-19 in British Columbia, the time for physical distancing in the north is starting. In the Yukon territory The Guardian reports that residents are asked to keep one caribou’s length from each other.

Just in case there is a resident in the Yukon unfamiliar with the length of the typical caribou the Yukon Health and Wellness Department has added the following image as well. One caribou’s length is roughly the same as two huskies end to end.

And in case you are not familiar with huskies, they have added another image for physical distancing, that of eight loaves of sourdough bread. People living in the Yukon are often called ‘sourdoughs”. This is after the sourdough starter comprised of yeast and bacteria that was vitally important in the Klondike Goldrush of 1896 to make bread. As most food brought into the area froze, flour did not, and became an essential staple in making sourdough bread.

While the Yukon territory has 11 confirmed Covid-19 cases, they are limiting travel from their borders with British Columbia and Alaska.

For those that are south of the Yukon, here’s a  physical distancing  graphic using Elon Musk with a set of maraccas.

Mr. Musk has been quite outspoken, saying that there is no need for physical distancing and such requirements were mitigating production of his Tesla vehicles.

One of the above statements may be true.

Image: Reddit.com

The Park Board may have closed facilities like tennis courts for their usual purposes, like, um, tennis, but that hasn’t stopped Vancouverites from finding recreational and fitness opportunities outdoors.  Which Dr. Henry thinks is okay so long as you-know-what is maintained.

As with golf courses, perhaps it’s time to evaluate what other uses can be shared with a single-purpose space.

Video here for a look at what cross-fitters will do for their fix. Gym on a tennis court

I think that this is today's biggest news, because Tim Bray isn't just your average VP, and because of the reason he's quitting. "It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential." And as he says, "It’s how 21st-century capitalism is done." How does this relate to us? Can you imagine senior executive at colleges and universities resigning because their IT staff or sessional (adjunct) instructors are treated as disposable? No, neither can I. Now I know, it's not an ideal time for labour activism. By the same token, as this Metafilter post makes clear, continuity is broken. Maybe it's business as usual after the pandemic clears, or maybe people look around at the wreckage and start thinking, "hey, maybe society should be serving more than just the needs of the few." NPR's On the Media covers this too, before the Bray resignation, May 1, parts 3 and 4.

Apple has announced that its annual WWDC conference, which will be online-only this year, will be held beginning June 22, 2020. The company also announced the Swift Student Challenge, in which students can submit a Swift playground that creates an interactive scene between now and May 17th.

The online-only conference will be held through the Apple Developer app and Apple’s Developer website.

In Apple’s press release, Phil Schiller is quoted as saying:

“WWDC20 will be our biggest yet, bringing together our global developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented way for a week in June to learn about the future of Apple platforms,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We can’t wait to meet online in June with the global developer community and share with them all of the new tools we’ve been working on to help them create even more incredible apps and services. We look forward to sharing more details about WWDC20 with everyone as we get closer to this exciting event.”

Commenting on the Swift Student Challenge, Craig Federighi says:

“Students are an integral part of the Apple developer community, and last year WWDC saw attendance from more than 350 student developers spanning 37 different countries,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “As we look forward to WWDC20, although our gathering will be virtual this year, we want to recognize and celebrate the creative contributions of our young developers from around the world. We can’t wait to see this next generation of innovative thinkers turn their ideas into a reality through the Swift Student Challenge.”

Students can learn more at developer.apple.com/wwdc20/swift-student-challenge. Winners chosen from the entrants will win an exclusive WWDC20 jacket and pin set.

Additional information about sessions and other programming announcements will be made through the Apple Developer app, on the Developer website, and by email.

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Finally – over a hundred days into the covid era – a city leader has articulated an initiative for “Reallocation of Road Space to Support Shared Use during Pandemic”.   Lisa Dominato but forward the following notice of motion, bumped to May 12 for discussion.

WHEREAS

Note No. 8 in the Whereas’s.  Had any readers heard of a City of Vancouver street reallocation initiative that focuses on “Room to Queue, Room to Load, and Room to Move”?  Nothing was sent to Price Tags (perhaps too low below the horizon) – nor has much been said of note from the City’s leaders, particularly the Mayor. 

What a lost opportunity to reinforce other initiatives promoted by the City: reallocation as a health response, a climate-emergency response, a local-neighbourhood planning response, an active-transportation response – all of the above at a time when the difficult-to-do has become the necessary-to-do.  (Speaking of which, one would hardly think it necessary to direct staff “to communicate information to the public and businesses regarding the suite of street measures available …”)

Lisa’s motion more importantly goes beyond the immediate pandemic: she sees reallocation as important to a recovery- and new-economy response.

Two recent announcements muzzling doctors have further eroded my faith in the way our national and state governments “manage” the truth. Congress would like to hear testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the long-tenured director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and one of the clearest and most authoritative truth-tellers during this pandemic. … Continued

The post To my government: in the viral emergency, muzzling doctors erodes trust appeared first on without bullshit.

This is going to be an ongoing story for the next four months. Planning is in full flight. Colleges and universities are looking at continued online learning, shrinking enrollment, and large budget cuts. While many have said there will be on-campus classes this fall, that's just for recruitment purposes. Faculty might not be willing to teach. It will not be business as usual. Many have already announced layoffs. Public education funding, which in some places not recovered from 2008, is in jeopardy. Public education itself, according to some, is threatened. But of course they just join the millions who have already lost their jobs, and it would be naive to think that any public service job is safe today.

This post has a ton of information to help you understand how to choose the best bike saddle. A comfortable bike saddle will enable you to enjoy cycling, while an uncomfortable one could cause you to give up cycling in painful despair. This post walks you through the process of making sure you get the right saddle for your own specific cycling needs.

The post How to Choose the Right Bike Saddle appeared first on Average Joe Cyclist.

People are arguing that " arguing how the rush to “online” learning is going to leave students behind, "lead to failure" and that the move to online will deepen the inequality fault-lines between, and within our universities," writes Suellen Shay. But "the bigger reality is that we have been leaving students behind for decades. We are characterised as a sector by high drop-out and low throughput... we have been leaving 30-50% of our students behind for decades now." And the argument is unhelpful; it provides us with no solutions. (Note that if the website throws an ad barrier, you can choose the 'journalists should go hungry' option (in light gray at the bottom) for free access - no need to worry, the author is a university professor and won't go hungry.)

I quit Facebook back in 2017 and thus have been spared its excesses since then. But many people have returned during the pandemic for fear, as Harold Jarche says, of missing out. Facebook is where the community is these days, and if you want to keep up with your family or your town, you join and check in regularly. But I wonder whether people are really getting any value out of it. "We are now dependent on a global corporation — that uses our data to manipulate us — as our main form of communication," says Jarche. "It is as if we live in a company-owned town, and buy all of our goods from the company store, using a party telephone line that the bosses listen in on." I think I'll stay off Facebook.

For Your Consideration

1. Which assumptions will have the biggest impact on how the future will unfold?
2. What underlying trends have catalyzed by the crisis and will have deeper and faster impact?
3. Where will temporary changes lead customers to discover new solutions that get the job done better?
4. Where will new habits lead to lasting changes in how customers define quality?
5. Where will post-event system-wide changes impose new barriers and therefore change the way customers prioritize solutions?
6. Are key job-to-be-done dislocations being targeted by up-and-coming disruptors that are positioned to become near-term threats?
7. What “reverb” opportunities to drive disruptive growth have opened up?
8. What, specifically, are new behaviors required to compete in an increasingly dynamic environment?
9. What specific habits and systems are blocking those behaviors?
10. What behavior enablers, artifacts and nudges (BEANs) can break the blockers and encourage the behaviors?

LENS 1: FUTURE-BACK STRATEGY

While you have no choice but to live life “present-forward,” in the face of uncertainty you should develop strategy “future-back.” Otherwise, you can end up unintentionally defaulting to your past playbook even if you know that competing in tomorrow’s world requires doing something materially different.

Future-back strategy starts by picking a point of time in the future beyond your traditional planning horizon. In normal times, for most organizations, that might be 5-10 years; in abnormal times, where planning horizons shorten, it might be only 12 months. You then look at underlying trends and come to a consensus about what the world is going to look like at that future date. While your picture of the future won’t be perfectly precise, you can paint a kind of impressionist painting based on explicit assumptions that allows your leadership team to strategize within a shared frame of reference. Next, you set an aspiration for the company you want to be in that future environment, including financial targets as well as broad strategic choices about where to play, where not to play and how to compete and win. Finally, you work backwards from that future vision to determine what, specifically, needs to be done today to begin closing the gap between future aspirations and present realities.

Download the full PDF.

 

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In the Covid-19 crisis, the future-back strategy lens suggests asking two questions:

1. Which assumptions will have the biggest impact on how the future will unfold? This isn’t a sensitivity analysis, but an exercise to identify outcome-determining assumptions that define tipping points between different potential scenarios. These assumptions should be as precise as possible by having time frames and numbers around them. For example, “governments will loosen stay-at-home restrictions” is not precise enough; “by June, 30 percent of the world’s population will be freely moving” is precise enough to track and monitor.
2. What underlying trends have been catalyzed by the crisis and will have deeper and faster impact? For example, every university head knew that online learning would be mainstream by 2030. That timeline has been accelerated significantly.

For more information: Lead from the Future (Johnson and Suskewicz, 2020); Dual Transformation (Anthony, Gilbert and Johnson, 2017).

LENS 2: JOBS TO BE DONE

During a crisis, it is natural to think about which temporary behavior shifts will stick beyond the crisis. The jobs-to-be-done lens, which is a broadly useful way to identify opportunities for innovation and for new growth, informs analysis of this issue.

Explore other COVID-19 disruption resources.

The theory holds that people don’t buy products and services; they “hire” them to get jobs done in their lives. This is consistent with management guru Peter Drucker’s famous quote, “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling him … Nobody pays for a product. What is paid for is satisfaction.” We define a “job to be done” as the problem a customer is trying to solve in a particular circumstance. It puts the customer at the center of the innovation equation, allowing the would-be innovator to precisely characterize the customer’s important, unsolved problems and to define quality in the way the customer defines it.

One of Christensen’s most famous parables describes how a fast food company used the jobs lens to rethink the milkshake category. When the company asked customers what they wanted in a milkshake, it heard a lot about desired features (flavors, thickness and so on) but was unable to use these insights to increase sales. When it shifted to studying why customers bought milkshakes, it found two segments with distinct jobs: commuters looking for a companion during a long, boring drive to work and parents looking to connect with their children in the afternoon. The offering had to be completely different to get each of those jobs done, so a one-size-fits-all milkshake ended up being a one-size-fits-none solution.

While the jobs-to-be-done theory holds that jobs are stable, events like Covid-19 can dislocate them by changing a customer’s circumstances, available solutions and measures of quality. Executives should ask three questions to look for jobs-to-be-done dislocations:

1. Where will temporary changes lead customers to discover a new solution that gets the job done better than existing solutions? For example, it is very possible that the use of videoconferencing solutions for meetings persists past the current crisis, as people learn that technology is now good enough to provide a good experience and that they save the hassle and headache of travel.
2. Where will new habits lead to lasting changes in how customers define quality? When making decisions to hire a product or service to do a job, customers (often implicitly) consider functional, emotional and social dimensions. If customers spend enough time following different behaviors, it can rearrange which of those criteria are most important. For example, even when social distancing protocols are relaxed, customers may continue to place premiums on safety and look for financial solutions that minimize face-to-face interaction or physical transfer of cards or cash.
3. Where will post-event system-wide changes impose new barriers and therefore change the way customers prioritize solutions? It would not be surprising, for example, to see significant healthcare reform after Covid-19. Perhaps telemedicine, which has been a fringe solution, could become a mainstream solution as efforts seek to keep hospitals free from being contagion hotspots.

For more information: Competing Against Luck (Christensen, Dillon, Hall and Duncan, 2016); “Finding the Right Job for Your Product” (Christensen, Anthony, Berstell and Nitterhouse, 2007).

LENS 3: DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

Christensen introduced his theory of disruptive innovation in 1995 as a powerful way to understand innovation-driven growth. Disruptive innovations create new markets and transform existing ones by making the complicated simple or the expensive affordable. Disruptive innovations typically start with lower performance along dimensions that historically mattered to mainstream customers. Those limitations mean they have to
start in market segments that are unattractive or ignored by established incumbents focused on more profitable segments. However, as the entrant’s solution gets better, it steadily moves up-market until it delivers the performance that mainstream customers of the incumbents expect – all while keeping intact the unique advantages that drove its early success.

Consider Netflix. Its DVD by mail service had limitations compared to physical rental shops in terms of immediacy, but it offered new benefits related to customization, access to “long-tail” content and the lack of late fees. As it got into streaming, it combined these new benefits with better immediacy than physical stores and drove incumbents like Blockbuster into bankruptcy. Other examples of disruptive innovation throughout history include the transistor, discount retailers, the personal computer, Apple’s iPod and asset-sharing platforms like Airbnb.

The disruptive innovation theory highlights two critical questions for executives:

1. Are key job-to-be-done dislocations being targeted by disruptors on the brink of breaking through and therefore should be considered clear-and-present near-term threats? Research in The Silver Lining shows that companies that are following the pattern of disruptive innovation but haven’t yet crossed $1 billion in revenue are a good bet in the midst of downturns. Financial services plays by players like Grab and Go-Jek in Southeast Asia, cloud computing tools such as Box and entertainment platforms like Amazon.com’s Twitch seem to be examples of disruptors ready to take the next step in their evolution.
2. What “reverb” opportunities to drive disruptive growth have opened up? History clearly shows that innovators have an opportunity to drive growth by filling a gap that a “big-event disruption” exposes. Consider how the oil crisis in the 1970s, for example, hyper-charged the growth of small cars from Japan.

For more information: The Innovator’s Solution (Christensen and Raynor, 2004); The Innovator’s Guide to Growth (Anthony, Johnson, Sinfield and Altman, 2008); “What is Disruptive Innovation” (Christensen, Raynor and McDonald, 2015). The Silver Lining (Anthony, 2009).

LENS 4: ENCOURAGING INNOVATION HABITS

Over the past two decades, innovation has moved from a fringe to a mainstream concept. Organizations have poured billions into enabling structures, employee training and investments in startups, yet most executives still report that innovation is a struggle. Why? The fundamental challenge is the behaviors that drive innovation success, like curiosity, customer obsession and being adept in ambiguity, run counter to the established habits inside most organizations. In other words, the enemy of innovation is institutionalized inertia that is reinforced in underlying systems and structures. The answer is to rip a page out of the habit change literature and launch a well-constructed “BEAN” that combines a behavior enabler (i.e., a checklist) that details the desired new behavior, an artifact (i.e., a trophy or desktop object) that reinforces the new behavior and a nudge (i.e., a leaderboard) that invisibly encourages behavior change.

Deflecting disruptive threats and seizing disruptive opportunities requires companies to innovate at an unfamiliar pace and scale. While Covid-19 is leading to mass experimentation with new ways of working, companies still need significant work to become more agile and responsive. To accelerate and maximize the impact of this work, leaders should ask three questions:

1. What, specifically, are the new behaviors that need to be encouraged to compete in an increasingly dynamic environment? It’s all fine to say that organizations need to be more agile, but what does that actually mean? As Chip and Dan Heath noted in the book Switch, what looks like resistance to change is often just a lack of clarity.
2. What, specifically, are the existing habits and systems that are blocking those behaviors? It is easy to say “we don’t have time,” or “we don’t have proper training.” These kinds of superficial blockers seem easy to fix, but the reality is often more subtle. Ask questions like “What do we do instead?” or “Why are we doing what we are doing?”
3. What BEANs can break the blockers and encourage the behaviors? For example, employees often are afraid to take risks and run experiments because the perceived stigma of failure. Tata Sons, India’s largest conglomerate, offers a prize called “Dare to Try” that celebrates noble failure. Australian software company Atlassian regularly runs premortems, where teams discuss what would happen that would lead their projects to fail, helping to anticipate issues before they happen.

For more information: “Breaking Down the Barriers to Innovation” (Anthony, Cobban, Nair and Painchaud, 2019); Building a Growth Factory (Anthony and Duncan, 2012); The Little Black Book of Innovation (Anthony, 2010).

Conclusion

Executives are facing what feels like unprecedented uncertainty. In the face of such uncertainty it is natural to respond by focusing even more intensely on day-to-day operations. But history clearly shows there are always opportunities to innovate and grow, no matter how stark the crisis. Sony launched the transistor radio in the midst of a global pandemic in 1957; Microsoft was launched in a downturn in 1975; Apple launched the iPod after the dot-com crash of 2001; Adobe built the foundation of its remarkable transformation in 2008-2009, right in the middle of the Great Recession.

To spot and seize opportunities in a crisis, it is important to avoid battles of beliefs where statements start with “I think this…” or “I believe that…” Such battles often lead to emotionally charged stalemates. If, on the other hand, two parties agree to look at the situation through the lens of an applicable theory, and have an aligned view of the mechanics of the theory’s model and the inputs going into it, there is often one and only one conclusion. Of course, there can still be debate over the model and its inputs, but that kind of discussion both lowers emotions and leads to more productive discussions about what to explore or where to experiment. Ultimately, using the right lenses in the midst of a crisis helps to bring clarity by cutting through the fog of massive uncertainty.

About the Authors

Scott D. Anthony is a Senior Partner at Innosight and former Managing Partner of the firm. Based in the firm’s Singapore offices since 2010, he has led Innosight’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region. He is co-author of Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future (HBR Press). santhony@innosight.com

David S. Duncan is a Senior Partner at Innosight and leads the Financial Services and Innovation Capabilities practices. He is a trusted adviser to top leaders at many of the world’s most iconic companies, helping them to navigate disruptive change, create sustainable growth, and transform their organizations to thrive for the long-term. dduncan@innosight.com

About Innosight

Innosight is a strategy and innovation consulting firm that helps organizations navigate disruptive change and manage strategic transformation. Now a member of the Huron Consulting Group, we work with leaders to create new growth strategies, accelerate critical innovation initiatives, and build innovation capabilities. Discover how we can help your organization navigate disruption at www.innosight.com.

The post 10 Questions for Executives in Uncertain Times appeared first on Innosight.

How to install and upgrade Datasette using pipx

I've been using pipx to run Datasette for a while now - it's a neat Python packaging tool which installs a Python CLI command with all of its dependencies in its own isolated virtual environment. Today, thanks to Twitter, I figured out how to install and upgrade plugins in the same environment - so I added a section to the Datasette installation documentation about it.

Via @simonw

This provisions and meat retailer occupied a store in the Arlington Block, developed in 1888 by Dr. James Whetham. No architect has been identified with the building, but another building nearby developed by Dr. Whetham around the same time was designed by N S Hoffar, so it’s likely that this was too. The Arlington Hotel was upstairs.

Whetham, like many early Vancouver developers, came from Ontario. His father moved to Canada, established himself as a general merchant and then died, leaving a widow and three young children. James initially became a teacher, then headed west, farming in Manitoba in 1878. Somehow he managed to study medicine (his biography says ‘in winter’) in Toronto and then Portland, Oregon, while living in Spokane Falls. He only practiced medicine very briefly before moving on to develop real estate, initially in Spokane Falls and then from 1887 (aged 33) in Vancouver.

By 1889 James Whetham had the sixth largest land holdings in the city, was on the board of trade and was a city alderman. He was boarder in the Hotel Vancouver. He died in 1891, aged only 37, of what was diagnosed as typhoid fever.

T J Braden lived on Richards Street, near here, in 1898 when the photograph was taken. He first shows up in 1896, working as a butcher and living on Harris Street. It’s possible he was Thomas J Braden, from Simcoe, Ontario. His brother Robert was working with him a year later, and by 1900 they had additional branches on Harris Street and Granville Street, but by 1901 they were no longer in the city, and these were the premises of the Burrard Inlet Meat Co, managed by Herbert Keithley. Mr. Keithley and his brother-in-law, Robert Leberry, ran six meat stores, some that they had acquired from the Bradens, and lived in New Westminster. Early in 1902 they failed to open the stores, and two days later the San Francisco Call reported their pursuit in the US (left).

The sheriff was on the right track, but not fast enough. A few days later the Province reported that the two men were already mid-ocean, having boarded a sailing ship in San Francisco headed for Australia. It added “The unfortunate part of the affair Is that the wives of the departing men were left in ignorance of their husbands’ destination, and they were left absolutely without funds as well. Both women live In New Westminster and are sisters, and through no fault whatever of their own are left all but penniless. It is said Keithly did write his wife once after his departure, saying that he enclosed certain shares in a local company, the value of which would amount to about twenty-five dollars, but he forgot to send the shares.”

The store was no longer associated with the meat trade after this: A J Bloomfield sold cigars here in 1902. A couple of years later the street address disappeared, and the retail space appears to have become associated with the hotel upstairs. In 1905 it was run by Cottingham and Beatty, and a year later John Beatty on his own, later corrected to Beaty.

Within a few years the premises had been renamed the Arlington Rooms; Alice Gill ran them in 1915. The retail uses reappeared here; in 1920 Mrs Tosa Takaoha had a barber’s shop and S Nunoda sold confectionary.

Today the building still has retail stores; the butcher’s shop would be unrecognizable to former operators in its contemporary uses as an Italian fashion store for men and women, with the stripped-down design favoured by some clothing retailers.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives Bu 5

0970

Singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing and luthier Linda Manzer, hosted by Tom Allen, spend 90 minutes talking about the guitar Manzer made for Fearing 30 years ago.

Soon the Windows May 2020 Update (20H1) will be released upon the world. This update will contain some nice UI improvements, but most relevant to me it allows Web Developers on Windows to upgrade to WSL 2. This is a significant milestone in the #davegoeswindows saga and it’s worth posting about what it means going forward.

I’ve been running WSL 2 on my 13” Surface Laptop 2 for nearly a year now and the initial results are jaw dropping:

Got #WSL2 running on my laptop. Compiling my blog with `bundle exec jekyll build`...

WSL1: 7.853 seconds
WSL2: 0.567 seconds

😱😱😱

— Dave Rupert (@davatron5000) June 18, 2019

That’s 13x faster! It’s not every day you get a 13x productivity boost for free. I got chills and a bit misty-eyed when I saw the results myself for the first time. Why was I weeping? Well, I was mostly mourning all the lost time I’ve accrued over the last ~5 years.

It’s not just blog compilations either. This improves npm installs, webpacking, file-watching, hot module reloading, server startups; nearly everything you do on a daily basis as a Web Developer is dramatically faster. It’s like owning a Mac again (or possibly better since Apple has been thermal throttling their CPUs in favor of battery life for the last few years).

Why is it so fast?

How could it possibly be a 13x delta? I wrote about it some before when I considered switching back to Mac, but the tl;dr is that disk writes and Linux stat calls were expensive operations to make due to the WSL 1 architecture. And guess what modern web development heavily relies on? Yup. When you compile the whole gotdanged planet on every file save, you do a lot of disk writes and stat calls on tens of thousands of files.

Once you learn about this bottleneck, it’s hard to un-see. Depressing psychology takes over when you hear something’s slow and then finally experience it for yourself. Your world caves in a bit and the tool you like doesn’t seem practical anymore.

Thankfully, the WSL team made a big bet and overhauled the whole WSL system. Those pain points were solved in WSL 2 by embedding a whole first-party Linux VM inside Windows and moving the file operations over to a VHD (Virtual Hardware Disk) network drive. The tradeoff is that you pay a first-time startup hit to spin up the VM, which is in the order of milliseconds and hardly noticeable to me, e.g. nothing like spinning up a docker, it’s actually fast.

Wait. Where do my files live?

To get the full benefit of WSL 2, you’ll also want to move your project files from /mnt/c/Users/<username>/ over to your new ~/ Linux home directory on your new VHD. You can see the contents of this drive on the Network by going to \\wsl$\<distro name>\<username>\home or typing the command explorer.exe . from your bash prompt.

This is your Linux filesystem and it acts and behaves as you’d expect. I made a folder called ~/projects that has all my project repos and then I open those projects in VS Code using the code . command.

Smoother web development

Installing the Remote Development Extension for VS Code is the final step in having a smooth developer experience. The Remote extension acts as a bridge for WSL and forces VS Code to do all its operations (git, command line, extension installations, etc) straight into your Linux distro. It makes it all very self-contained.

At first I was a little upset by this extension, because it kept nagging me to re-install stuff I already had installed. But now I appreciate it because it adds a layer of visualization as to which environment I’m running and where files exist. It takes some of the mystery out of the Windows web development process and using the version control UI in Code is a lot smoother.

A new era ahead

The excitement to install the next Windows Update and to get a proper, functioning, fast Linux environment up and running on my beefy gaming computer is palpable. There’s probably some problems lurking that I don’t know about yet, but following the development on the Insider Preview I know the WSL team has solved most of the initial gotchas.

And Windows Terminal is good now too! It solves all my previous gripes about lack of tabs, JSON configurability, and the ephemeral problem of “feeling cool” on Windows. It’s still weird to say it, but Windows Terminal is hands-down the best terminal on Windows.

Having been developing on Windows for 5 years, I’ve been through a lot. From not being able to install Rails, struggling with faux-bash Cygwin shells, and then sitting in the front row at Build 2016 when they announced the first version of WSL; that’s when there was a glimmer of hope that Web Development on Windows would be viable. Without a doubt, WSL 2 is the biggest improvement I’ve seen since then and it feels like a new era for Web Development on Windows.

A hands-on introduction to static code analysis

Useful tutorial on using the Python standard library tokenize and ast modules to find specific patterns in Python source code, using the visitor pattern.

How to get Rich with Python (a terminal rendering library)

Will McGugan introduces Rich, his new Python library for rendering content on the terminal. This is a very cool piece of software - out of the box it supports coloured text, emoji, tables, rendering Markdown, syntax highlighting code, rendering Python tracebacks, progress bars and more. "pip install rich" and then "python -m rich" to render a "test card" demo demonstrating the features of the library.

Despite taking over as head of Windows Experience/client in February, Microsoft’s chief product officer, Panos Panay, hasn’t said much about what’s next for the desktop operating system.

However, in a new blog post, Panay dives into what’s next for Windows. The head of Surface touches on Windows 10X, the upcoming OS designed for dual-screen devices as well the near-term launch of the Windows 10 May 2020 update.

First up, Panay officially confirmed that Microsoft was changing its focus with Windows 10X. Despite initial plans for the new OS to power dual-screen Windows devices, Microsoft will pivot Windows 10X to single-screen devices instead. The reasoning behind the refocusing is, unsurprisingly, COVID-19.

Panay writes that Microsoft wants to help “meet customers where they are” with Windows. ZDNet suggests that means focussing on tried-and-true form factors instead of developing new ones. That tracks with other recent decisions from Microsoft, including the postponing of the dual-screen Surface Neo due out later this year. Ultimately, it means we’ll see Windows 10X on single-screen devices first before dual-screen devices arrive in the future.

Additionally, ZDNet reports that internal rumours suggest the containerization in Windows 10X wasn’t working as well as planned. Back in February, Microsoft detailed how Windows 10X would run some app platforms, such as the traditional Win32 platform used by most Windows apps, in virtual containers. Unfortunately, apps running in containers don’t have great compatibility, according to ZDNet. 

Updates on the way for Windows 10

Along with the Windows 10X news, Panay also wrote about the upcoming Windows 10 May 2020 update. The update will arrive “starting this month” and will include a more streamlined way to pair Bluetooth devices in Windows. Additionally, the new update will feature an improved tablet experience and some fun new changes including access to ‘kamoji’ directly from the Windows emoji keyboard.

While Panay didn’t get into specifics about when the update would roll out, ZDNet says it will arrive for manufacturers starting May 5th, developers on May 12th and consumers starting May 28th. The update timeline was delayed in part by COVID-19 and in part by Microsoft decision to push out a patch for a zero-day bug discovered earlier this year.

Finally, Panay revealed that every month, people are spending 4 trillion minutes on Windows 10. That marks a 75 percent increase year-over-year and just goes to show how much people are relying on computers during the pandemic.

Source: Microsoft Via: ZDNet

The post Microsoft changes focus for Windows 10X, will bring it to single-screen devices first appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Staples is offering the Apple Watch Series 4 with cellular for up to $500 CAD off depending on the model.

You can check out the sale below on both the Apple Watch Series 4 40mm and the 44mm variants. They come in a variety of different colours and models.

Apple Watch Series 4 — 40mm

• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Space Grey Aluminium with Black Sport Loop — $449.99 (regularly $649.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 Nike+ with GPS + Cellular, Space Grey Aluminium with Black Nike Sport Loop — $449.99 (regularly $649.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Gold Stainless Steel with Stone Sport Band — $519.99 (regularly $929.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Space Black Stainless Steel with Black Sport Band — $519.99 (regularly $929.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Space Black Stainless Steel with Space Black Milanese Loop — $599.99 (regularly $1059.99)

Apple Watch Series 4 — 44mm

• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Silver Aluminium with Seashell Sport Loop — $489.99 (regularly $689.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 Nike+ with GPS + Cellular, Space Grey Aluminium with Black Nike Sport Loop — $489.99 (regularly $689.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Space Black Stainless Steel with Black Sport Band — $549.99 (regularly $989.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Stainless Steel with White Sport Band — $549.99 (regularly $989.99)
• Apple Watch Series 4 with GPS + Cellular, Gold Stainless Steel with Gold Milanese Loop — $619.99 (regularly $1119.99)

The sale is available until May 9th at Staples Canada

The post Apple Watch Series 4 cellular now on sale at Staples appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Firefox could soon let you generate email aliases to submit to a website so you don’t have to give out your actual email.

Mozilla is in the process of developing the feature, according to Gizmodo. Called ‘Private Relay,’ it exists as a Firefox browser add-on. When filling in online forms, users can click the Private Relay button to generate a “unique, random, anonymous” email address. Firefox will forward emails sent to that unique address to users’ actual inbox.

The feature sounds similar to Apple’s ‘Sign-In with Apple‘ button, which creates a temporary email so users don’t have to give up their actual email when signing up for something online.

Gizmodo notes that if the alias email gets spammed or if the user no longer wants to receive emails associated with that address, they can just delete it. It’s a much easier process than trying to block spammers or jump through unsubscribe hoops.

“Private relay is in a very early experimental phase at this time. We’ll make sure to share more information when it’s ready to test with consumer audiences,” a Mozilla spokesperson told Gizmodo. However, there is currently a website for Private Relay and the extension is available for download if you have an invite code.

The spokesperson did not provide any details regarding when the feature entered testing or when it would finish. However, ZDNet reports Private Relay entered testing last month. The feature could get a public beta later this year. Further, Gizmodo says that Firefox plans to add a waitlist for Private Relay soon.

Source: Mozilla Via: Gizmodo, ZDNet

The post Mozilla working on email alias feature to help keep your email private appeared first on MobileSyrup.

mkalus shared this story from jwz.

Tim Bray:

May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after five years and five months of rewarding fun. I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19. [...]

At the end of the day, the big problem isn't the specifics of Covid-19 response. It's that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.

Amazon is exceptionally well-managed and has demonstrated great skill at spotting opportunities and building repeatable processes for exploiting them. It has a corresponding lack of vision about the human costs of the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power. If we don't like certain things Amazon is doing, we need to put legal guardrails in place to stop those things. We don't need to invent anything new; a combination of antitrust and living-wage and worker-empowerment legislation, rigorously enforced, offers a clear path forward. [...]

Firing whistleblowers isn't just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It's evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.

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