For me the pandemic has actually allowed me to spend more time outdoors and with my children and as a result less time online. We have been taking walks daily and started gardening. I've cut down social media time to almost nothing on all major platforms (HN is my last "addiction"). The author claims the pandemic forced us inside and on social media--do people find this true for them?
Really depends on where do people live. For example my surroundings are not the best to walk around in (very close to busy main roads), and the city as a whole have shopping malls as the main point of interests before the pandemic. Parks are closed, and walking infrastructure are available but not what I'd call enjoyable (the risk crossing a main road without stop lights just for a morning walk doesn't sit well with me). I'm definitely more locked into my devices compared to before the pandemic.
Owing to the HN audience there might be a bias against this being true, but I expect there was a boost in general population. I don't think I spend more time on social media than I did before, and not by conscious choice.
What's interesting to me is, earlier in the pandemic I would hear more lofty plans for organizing online games and having more video calls between friends and family. It's amazing how quickly the motivation for this dissipated. Maybe because it's plainly cumbersome and awkward and just doesn't feel the same, and everyone I know still works.
For my part I think I've retreated from video/audio correspondence considerably. I still write to strangers online, which is social media, but feel like this experience has made me retreat into my shell. No substitution for seeing people in person.
>The author claims the pandemic forced us inside and on social media--do people find this true for them?
I used to play in a few city-wide social sports leagues, before covid, which were all canceled most of last year and aren't back yet due to the winter weather. I filled my time by hiking and trying out some new hobbies.
So while not quite the same as being force inside and/or forced on social media, I can see where the pandemic upended various gatherings/hobbies and social media is an easy alternative for many people. Social media is free, easy to access, convenient, can be a giant time-sink, etc. along with all sorts of negative consequences.
The pandemic means classes are virtual/online. That means kids need computers with internet connections and modern web browsers. That means games, stupid videos, games, chat, games, and more games.
I'm really at a loss here.
I've gone to demanding a cold-turkey moratorium on the junk, with computer use only when supervised. This solution sucks up too much parental time and doesn't allow enough computer time for the homework.
If the classes didn't require web video, I could get an old VT510 terminal (no graphics) or an e-ink display, and then the gaming would be limited to a few things like online chess. The addiction problem wouldn't be so severe.
It definitely is true for me. I haven't left my house for anything but doctor's appointments in 11 months. The most exercise I get is when I walk to my condominium's garbage disposal room.
I go on more walks. But I also meet way fewer people and spend more days and evenings alone at home. Social media fills some of that time if you don't actively avoid it.
The problem I see at my company is one of incentives. However much as a manager I want my staff to "maintain" and "care", the performance review process rewards people who can "innovate" and build new things. For instance we have hundreds of legacy reports (e.g. a tabular report for the finance dept built in Crystal) that need maintenance and updates, but it's typically easier and more rewarding for a developer to leave that work to someone else and focus their efforts on getting credit for building a new report (a fairly low information visual report build in Tableau for Execs at the company).
Good maintenance approach is innovation. There is no innovation to a 22-year-old coming and rebuilding 90% of the product (the easy part) in <insert your new buzzword here>.
I'm in a similar situation at my large financial institution and it's gotten so bad that even as a director I'm tempted to start learning COBOL to understand what I'm up against
I worked with eye tracking software a decade ago and one of the most interesting and tricky problems was your eye would look at the cursor and over compensate, causing the cursor to keep drifting. It was in essence user error but oddly difficult to control. Does anyone know if this has been solved for?
I tried Nextdoor but quickly closed the app when it was filled with rumors about who in the neighborhood isn't cleaning up after their dog. Maybe I'm throwing away the baby with the bath water, but I don't feel like I miss out on all that much by forgoing yet another social media platform vying for my attention
I understand why it might be harmful (or at least annoying) to see people spreading rumors about who isn't cleaning up after their dog, but I'm curious how you might better handle the problem of people in the neighborhood not cleaning up after their dog.
I have had problems with people letting their dogs poop in my yard. What I started doing was scooping up the poop and putting it on the sidewalk. Interestingly, this seems to work.
I confronted one woman whose dog was pooping in my yard when I got home a few years ago. She came back and keyed my S2000. Of course the police did nothing.
I feel Nextdoor needs to heavily moderate political and racist discussions, but the person-power for this is probably too high until better AI tools come.
In the meantime, they can create more focused discussion and topics than being open-ended. Lost pets, local handymen (and women), and new shops or dining seem to be the most harmonious.
Sadly, crime reports will get comments about legality of shooting one-another, and discussions end poorly. They should turn off comments for those reports.
I recently moved. My last neighborhood had aggressive moderation; by the time you clicked a notification for a political thread it'd be gone. In my new neighborhood we're still arguing about Trump yard signs.
I like how they say "no earlier than the forth quarter" in their announcement. Though it may not inspire confidence in a deliverable date, I might start trying to use the turn of phrase at my work.
It's a common way of describing deadlines in the aerospace industry, since a lot can go wrong with large complex engineering projects in the physical world. It's usually abbreviated to NET.
The Hacker's Dictionary says (by way of recommending The Soul of a New Machine by Tracey Kidder)
> This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the adventure of the design of a new Data General computer, the MV-8000 Eagle. It is an amazingly well-done portrait of the hacker mindset -- although largely the hardware hacker -- done by a complete outsider. It is a bit thin in spots, but with enough technical information to be entertaining to the serious hacker while providing non-technical people a view of what day-to-day life can be like -- the fun, the excitement, the disasters. During one period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter of resignation: "I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
This is perfect timing. I've just been told to communicate a significant project delay to a customer. 'Next quarter' sounds a lot better than 'months, not weeks'. Thanks heaps.
Due to unforeseen events impacting developer velocity, we experienced some slippage while burning down feature development on the critical path. Needless to say this will be reflected in our Sprint planning going forward and we’ve already added an Epic to track the remaining work needed to unblock the remaining tasks.
it may not inspire confidence in a deliverable date.
Maybe not, but it has other qualities. The prashing does seem to convey that if your boss really think about it, Q4 is very early. He's lucky that it isn't Q3 of the following year. Try it. Report back.
The physicality of a constructed graph like this draws me in. I used to work in commercial construction and the superintendent would print out the Gannt chart schedule on a large plotter, stick it to the wall, and use a fishing line and plumb to show the current date. That really motivated the subcontractor who was behind schedule and on the critical path better than an email with an .mpp attachment could ever do.
A large physical display of complex relationships is easy to read, far more memorable than screen space, and politically and psychologically persuasive.
We evolved to experience space, not just look at 2D maps of it.
As a compromise I would love to have wall-sized displays - better, wall-sized holograms - which would show all the relationships between files in a project and keep them editable at the same time.
My daughter is doing a science project on the effects of nature on happiness. I appreciate anyone willing to fill out this anonymous survey or any other help!
