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Is his book "Wiring Up The Big Brother Machine...And Fighting It" worth a read?


Yes it is worth it, and most of it is still relevant today.


nothing wrong, you do you and stick to what makes you happy :)


insane, I never thought that `toList.appendChild(item.closest('li'));` would MOVE the item. You learn something every day


If you add a DOM node somewhere, it’s first removed from where it was because it can only exist in one place. You need to clone the node if that’s not what you want.

Incidentally, here’s a briefer spelling of that function (skipping the superfluous Array.from(), using a for loop instead of forEach, and using .append() instead of .appendChild(), cumulatively reducing 8 years of browser support to 5½+ years, which is no meaningful difference; and although I’ve declared Array.from() superfluous, note that this is only the case because querySelectorAll returns a non-live NodeList—you couldn’t do this with childNodes since it’d be being mutated during iteration so you’d miss half the items due to how it all works):

  function moveSelectedItems(fromList, toList) {
      for (const item of fromList.querySelectorAll('input[type="checkbox"]:checked')) {
          item.checked = false; // Uncheck the item
          toList.append(item.closest('li')); // Move the entire list item
      }
  }


Yeah, to the extent "I need to lie down," it's actually due to the features I didn't even know existed. In that followup with the accessibility corrections, I had no idea you could even do those things...


I totally agree with the impact of spontaneous things happening when in person.

I had been working remotely for 8 years and really was 100% for it and advocating it. I recently joined a new job where I'm at the office 3 days a week, and I can definitely feel the difference both in the time it took me to onboard (compared to other remote-only onboarding I did) and the productivity / relationships / other gains from those days we are all in the office.

Those ad-hoc conversation happening around a desk, a white board, at lunch, do bring a lot of value that you never get while WFH. I can definitely see how some of my previous burn outs may have been prevented if I was not 100% remote.

Of course YMMV, but personally I can definitely see how a company may decide to get back to the office and it's definitely not all black and white where remote is better and omg the mean bosses are getting butts back in seats for more control.


Depends on if your life revolves around work or your work revolves around your life.


Depends on if the culture supports messaging the right person when it comes to mind or just when it's convenient.

Slack/Teams/email/etc can be spontaneous as well. Just a matter if the culture appreciates and encourages the behavior.

If the CEO is leaving off-sites w/ brand new, strategically significant, ideas that no one was comfortable even hinting at via Slack/Teams/email - yep, seems like a very in-person, face-to-face culture. Seems very brittle in this day and age.


Easy for management to pat themselves on the back for good ideas but then excuse themselves from a failed execution because there is no log of the ideation ever happening.


the question is, when you "work" more, are you actually "working" more. I'm not advocating for either side, but I believe a few places that have moved to a shorter work week haven't seen lower productivity. Might be a sign that most people actually can't do ~40hrs of work per week.


I think if you take someone like me, and really most people, and have them sit in the office for an extra hour per day, you probably won't see much benefit. But I definitely feel like there are some people who grind work all day, putting in ridiculous hours, and they do amazingly work, beyond what 1.5 or even 2 people can do. Especially when you consider career progression over time, maybe the people who are hustling will have ranked up a couple times over an 8 hour/day person, and is contributing at a much higher level.

I think you make a good point that it's more complicated than "just stay longer", but I do also agree with GP that there is some kind of compounding interest when it comes to how many hours work. Don't know how it works though.


That’s because most people work at bullshit jobs they don’t care about, where productivity can’t be effectively measured and they are distracted more than half the day anyway. With a shorter day you are compelled to focus more to get essential things done and this is probably where people get the idea that you can accomplish just as much in fewer hours.


FWIW, as I'm edging close to burnout, I've noticed that at work, I exhibit one of two modes on any given day:

- If doing some incidental bullshit or chore or otherwise work that I don't like, I struggle to keep focus and am all stressed until I clock out, after which I eventually unwind and calm down;

- If doing something I like, or when I feel I'm making good progress, I'm highly focused and productive, but half-way through start to stress about coming end of work day; in those situations I absolutely do not want to stop working - and if given a chance, I'd continue until I'm done or too tired to continue.

With that in mind, I have mixed feelings towards the idea of a shorter work day. While I'd love to have more personal time, where I can exercise my autonomy, I'd also hate it on those days that I'm making good progress and don't want to stop.


You shouldn’t burn out, and we should design a system that doesn’t make you burn out, and then you won’t have to arrange your workflow around compensating for your burning out.


> but I believe a few places that have moved to a shorter work week haven't seen lower productivity

First, it's hard to measure, I wouldn't believe any of the studies I've seen at the moment (good or bad). (BTW I was the one who pushed for a 4-day week at my previous company.)

Second, lots of companies waste a lot of time with meetings. A shorter work week actually doesn't always translate in less work time, it can translate in useless meetings getting trimmed, and in people still working during time off but now being able to work during these days peacefully and focused.


I agree with you. Lots of positions ask you to stay "at work" when in reality all you are doing is watching your inbox for another email or something even less important.


Work-from-home has really changed this. I don't even need to pretend to work, just need to keep that Slack dot green and appear "responsive."


>just need to keep that Slack dot green and appear "responsive."

You need to do that? Dang, that sucks. Still "butts in chairs" attitude.


But that assumes that productivity measure is accurate - which is almost certainly bullshit most of the time.

I'm perfectly fine with wanting a work / life balance and choosing a job just for the easy money. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. 40, 35 hours per week, maybe 30 hours - depending on the country.

But whenever there is a job where the 'productivity' can be directly evaluated - say some parts of finance world, sports, startups, cooking come to mind too - it's crystal clear, that it's people who dedicate their lives to it that accomplish the most. And it's not even close.


My opinion is that on average, people achieve as much on less time, but individually, that may not be true. Evidently not for Carmack nor a lot of the high-performing, always-on people I know (though a lot of the time, them “working” doesn’t necessarily look like “work” in the traditional sense).


I'm surprised they don't mention Parker. At school in France in the 90s, that was the true classic.


Parker was purchased by Newell Rubbermaid, and — as with so many other old famous brands — their current products are junk.


Sorry, can someone explain what is happening here? What's wrong with those products?


They're likely a cheap SD card inside the case with firmware that pretends to be 10TB. When you use them, they appear the correct size, but once you go over the size of the actual SD card (e.g. 256GB) you overwrite existing files and corrupt them.

You can tell that they're fake as the price is unrealistic.


I just searched for the prices of 256GB SD cards and they're about 20$. At this point I guess they put 128 or even 64 gb SD cards, otherwise it makes no sense...


Yeah, they go for the cheap ones so likely not 256GB. The only advantage of the bigger sizes is that it takes longer for the user to corrupt their files which is probably a disadvantage for those users.

Another way to determine if you've got a fake drive is that the I/O speeds will be much slower than a usual SSD.


I really believe that most people don't notice, unless you specifically need the "extreme" speeds that some microSD manufacturer offer.

I think the user journey is sort of like:

- oh let me search for a portable SSD drive with a lot of space

- wow, this one is BIG (1TB!) and costs less than Samsung ones; well who cares, even if it lasts 2 years, it's still 1/2 the price

- buy it

- be fine with the no-brand

- write a great review where you think you got a great deal and you're smarter than those who pay so much for the same size (hahah!! lol!!)

and the irony is that it might indeed last 2 years before they find out that it's BS :D


The scam is that nobody makes 10TB SSDs. Scammers buy a 128 GB SD card, put it in a box, have it report itself as (very slow) 10 TB drive. Joe consumer doesn't fill 128 GB right away, so the drive looks fine at first. Then suddenly fails to write.


They aren't 10 TB products. The storage device (usually an SD card inside a larger case) has been modified to report 10 TB of space but actually has far less than that. Once the actual space has been filled, the device will write over the initial bytes (or some other undesired behavior).

It's not possible to buy 10TB of storage for the prices listed as a hard drive, not to mention as SSD.


If you understand the market value of non-scam SSD storage, the price of basically every item on that page is well into "too good to be true" territory.

Further, a lot of them have the trappings of a scam: e.g., can't spell worth shit, the same product is somehow sold by 15 different companies all with very fake sounding names, etc.

Go to a reputable manufacturer, like Seagate, and find a product. E.g., a 1 TB SSD will set you back $130. Now, the listings here are half the price for 10x? Too good to be true.


They put microSD cards into boxes and sell them as SSD drives :)

Thanks to OS abstractions and all, 90% of people will never notice, or once they do, they remember that too cheap is most of the time scam :)


Well to start with, there's no such thing as a 10TB SSD (currently).


[flagged]


You don't see any scams...? How? 10TB SSDs do not exist. Any listing claiming to offer a 10TB SSD is a scam, by definition.


SSDs of similar sizes, like 8 and 12 TB exist, but they're close to or are multiple thousands of dollars.

A 10TB offering wouldn't be unreasonable to exist. Just not at this price.


"Similar sizes" are not "the same size", obviously. I've never found any manufacturer that actually makes 10TB SSDs. Whether it is "unreasonable" or not is entirely irrelevant when they don't exist. The price is an obvious clue to anyone who knows anything about storage, as you mention.

But, choosing to use 10TB for the size in a scam seems like an odd choice. I have to imagine the scam would work equally well with a size that actually exists, but the current size should make it trivial for Amazon to filter out these listings, so it's odd that they aren't even tackling the low-hanging fruit.


Well, nothing exists until it does. There are oddball products out of China that are real.

I suspect 10TB is a very good choice, as it is a round figure that may have broad general appeal to people, and it also dissuades people who understand the importance of powers-of-two in storage sizes -- if you're scamming people, it's better to filter for those who don't know better, rather than for people who know better.


I learnt ruby with Zed Shaw’s Learn Ruby the Hard Way. Was a really great experience!


That's good timing, because with the increase in the price for youtube premium, I started thinking that I wanted an alternative to watching youtube on my TVs without ads.

Does anyone know if using a pi-hole triggers ad-blockers popups on websites, and if yes, is it easy to deal with (either activate ads for specific websites, etc)?


I've just started playing the demo yesterday and I'm hooked. Will definitely buy the game, but wondering on which platform. My laptop screen already feels a bit small - anyone has an experience playing on switch and thoughts on playing on handheld mode and/or using controls compared to keyboard/mouse?


Laptop/desktop on Steam. For the "when the screen feels small" it isn't too much additional to set up a gaming space with a larger monitor. It would also then easily transition to Steam Link and using smart TVs or, if you get one, a Steam Deck (I have a Steam Deck, but no Switch).

The other part there is the mod support. There are a number of quality of life things that mods can do (such as https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Supercheese/Squeak%20Through ) which become more important as the factory grows and the "physical" constraints of the game make it difficult to play at the extreme ends.

Continuing on the mod theme, there is also the "once you feel that you have sufficiently beaten the vanilla game, there are a number of ways to mod the game that add complexity or other challenges." I am personally fond of Seablock where the game is a vast ocean with a few small scattered islands. Everything is then made from water. Water -> electrolysis (H and O are vented initially) -> slag -> crushed stone -> (+ water) -> mineralized water -> ore... and that gets you started.


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