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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • This polling seems to work extremely hard to avoid noticing the elephant in the room: a company isn’t going to build a datacenter in the middle of Beverly Hills.

    The data from the article seems to suggest that people in the top quartile of income resisted 14 DCs out of the 365 projects considered.

    They then decided that that is a resistance rate of 14 / 365 * 100 = 3.836%.

    Um. No.

    The resistance rate is number resisted / number proposed for that income quartile. If only 14 were proposed in upper-income areas, and 14 were resisted, that would mean that the resistance rate for high income areas was 100%.





  • At the beginning they weren’t “kinda crappy” because there really wasn’t anything else you could compare them to. Nobody else made a camera that you could strap to your chest, or your helmet, or your motorcycle while you did something action-ey. They had fully waterproof cases too, so you could take them underwater.

    As a camera, they weren’t amazing. But, people weren’t using them to take wedding pictures. They were using them in situations where a normal camera would be too heavy, or wouldn’t stay attached, or wouldn’t survive.

    There’s a reason they became a household name. They enabled people to do things that had never been done before, and they changed the way a lot of sports are shot.


  • Boomer and Gen X retired people didn’t typically grow up with computers. So, I think part of the challenge is a way to play games that’s easy. Probably games on mobile phones are a good approach because the process of finding, installing and launching those games is easy if you’re not a “computer person”. OTOH, old people’s eyes aren’t great, and they don’t tend to have a lot of dexterity, so while a phone UI might be good, the actual device is maybe too small and fiddly. Games on tablets is probably a much better option.

    Steam deck might be ideal, but only if you can bump up the UI font size so that it’s more readable if you’re older. That would give them access to hundreds of thousands of games. But, the problem is most are probably designed for a PC screen, so they’ll have tiny UI elements.

    In terms of the games themselves, probably something turn-based would be ideal. I happen to like those kinds of games anyhow. But, as I get older and my reaction speed gets worse, I think I’ll play fewer and fewer games that require fast reactions and good aim.

    Another consideration would maybe be something social. A lot of older people are still in relationships, and want to be able to do something together. That also means either multiple steam decks so each person can have their own, or maybe couch co-op games.

    So, I think it’s:

    • Turn based strategy, or any other turn-based game – visual novels might work, trivia quizzes, detective games, just so long as it isn’t reaction speed based
    • A system that’s easy to find, install, and launch games. Even steam for PC is probably intimidating for people who haven’t been on PCs for most of their lives.
    • Big fonts for people with fading vision.
    • Easy controls.
    • Maybe couch co-op for couples to play together

    Based on that, I can see why Nintendo Wii games were really popular. The system is very easy to use. It runs on the TV so fonts can be nice and huge. A lot of it is couch co-op so couples can play together. They also have a lot of games meant for kids, but those games are also easy for older people to understand and enjoy. They also didn’t have sexual / violent themes that old people are sometimes more sensitive about than your typical gamer.

    It also shows why Nintendo’s follow up consoles didn’t work as well. The Wii U had a gamepad. That’s more intimidating, and not as easy to use if you have poor vision. Then came the Switch, which was even worse if you have poor vision. Plus the detachable controllers are ideal for kids, but old people now have to fiddle with little almost hidden buttons to detach them. Not good.





  • I really hate the way they use the colour in the netting to try to make the fruit look better / fresher. Red netting for oranges to make them look more ripe, onions in brownish netting, limes in green netting, garlic in white netting.

    I’d pay more for neutral / translucent netting that’s more honest. Or, maybe we can just get rid of the plastic entirely and use paper or something.



  • Sure, it might seem like a sprint compared to a Waterfall project where it’s a marathon, where there might be months between points where you check in with the plan and try to figure out if the software is ready to ship yet.

    I still just object to the word “sprint”. Any job where you’re sprinting over and over, week after week, where that’s the main thing you’re doing, you’re doing something wrong.


  • What makes it so annoying to me is that a sprint implies putting in maximum effort for a short time. The pace of a sprint is unsustainable over more than a few seconds.

    If you say you did “sprints” for over a year… no you didn’t. Either you sprinted for a little bit and then had to walk for a while because you’d used up all your energy. Or, you jogged at a sustainable pace for a year and just called it a sprint.






  • On that subject, does anybody hate the term “Sprint” as much as I do?

    “Sprints” are extremely quick events that last tens of seconds and are done at most once a day, but more often (in competition) a few times a month, or a few times in a day every few months.

    You don’t sprint for a full week every week. That’s a marathon, maybe an ultra-marathon.