davidwitt415

RTFA:

Batteries and electricity storage follow learning curves too One of the downsides of renewable sources is their intermittent supply cycle. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Technologies like batteries that store electric power are key to balance the changing supply from renewables with the inflexible demand for electricity.

Fortunately electricity storage technologies are also among the few technologies that are following steeply declining learning curves.

I'm in favor of the Black Mirror approach for politicians; Give the people full transparency into politicians' activities. This shouldn't be so controversial, given that they work for us, but of course, that is when you would see some real concern for privacy!

Check out 'Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine' as a counter-example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Speaks_Out_Again...

Also worth noting is the October Surprise, where Reagan foiled negotiations with Iran to bring US hostages back, in order to help his election chances.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/1/ronald-reagan-october-surprise...

'White propaganda is fine and even necessary at times' reads just like 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.'

Fully agree. The bookstore/library browsing experience is intimately tied to adjacency/serendipity. I love browsing up and down the stacks and looking for whatever catches my eye. Typical genre or sorting lists don't even come close to the richness and density of the stack experience.

Agree. Imo downvotes are actually a form of cancelling.

Indeed, the majority of posts here live up to the aphorism of Americans seeing themselves as 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires.'

Great attention grabbing headline, but it ignores the typical user scenarios where PDFs are created. So how is your typical Office worker who is probably using Word going to create this awesome web page? It's simply not realistic to expect that office workers are going to use HTML, and it's been tried for years and years. Nielsen may as well go after Powerpoint next. Same criticisms and human limitations apply. Yes, better formats exist in the ideal, but ignoring the user's real context and limitations goes against the principles of User Centered Design.

I printed out an eye chart this week to do just that. I also purchased a device for testing and tracking my vision that I just started with: https://www.eyeque.com/visioncheck/ You can email me (davidwitt415 at gmail) if you want me to keep you updated on my progress.

One of my covid projects is improving my nearsightedness, I'm 20/200+. I've been spending 20 minutes a day doing techniques called Eqyptian Black Dot and Egyptian Letter Gazing plus other techniques I got from a book called The Art of Cosmic Vision by Mantak Chia, a well known Taiji master. I've been doing it now for 7 weeks and have noticed significant improvement in my vision. I'm not going to be driving without glasses any time soon, however, I am increasingly able to function without glasses, which was my main goal.

Your point about the outdoors is also made in the book. We are spending our time in near focus on screens and not using our far vision, as in nature. I now make sure to take time during the day to get outside and do distance gazing and expose my eyes to sunlight.

A simpler explanation is profit motive; it doesn't 'pay' to promote free/low cost alternatives. Most of western medicine is geared this way, imo.

I've been using MURAL, Miro and Figma. MURAL and Miro are pretty close, and each has it's strengths, but I prefer MURAL. For a team that doesn't need the bells and whistles, Figma is a great choice.

Gifs may be fun to watch the first time, but I have to say it drives me crazy to have a bunch of looping animations running all over the screen when i'm trying to focus on something.

To me, Brad Porter responded like an engineer, that is, his total focus was on technology and process (valuable, to be sure), but had no human focus. Tim, otoh, did, and that is what struck a chord.

A decent overview of Knapp's original process, but not complete by any means. I'm participating right now in Global Virtual Design Sprint 4, being run by Robert Skrobe of Dallas Design Sprints. Originally, design sprints were onsite, but afaik, GVDS was the first to popularize Virtual Design Sprints, where global teams participate remotely, using tools such as Zoom, Mural, Miro and Figma. This started in 2019, so very timely to be ahead of COVID-19. Virtual presents some challenges but also great opportunities.

The Design Sprint is a useful tool for generating collaboration, shared process and fast prototyping results. As such, it is not a cure-all, just a very handy tool to use.

It can be seen as a corrective to 'let the free market decide everything,' which is clearly showing its limitations in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

It is the ideal for any business, but it definitely is not for the consumer or the economy, and this is why governments enact anti-trust legislation. The government is supposed to enforce against monopolies, but unfortunately in the US government this has been undermined. Matt Stoller has a great book and e-newsletter about monopolies past and present vs. government.

My wife grew up in the French school system and is a mostly full time mommy, and she has been very active with both our boys (6 and 12) well before the lockdown. When the lockdown started, she immediately put a schedule together for them, while I went to the library and checked out a ton of books. When the online learning started, she has been combing over everything the school has sent out, spending most of her day on schoolwork and at night is busy keeping ahead of their schedule.

Bottom line, it is just barely manageable, with the considerable amount of time she puts in, and we both wonder how others that can't (or won't) do so will be able to keep up. I don't think it's an improvement, but at least I hope this sets a foundation for doing it better in the future, as I foresee this being a long-term trend.

A few weeks ago, Johnson suggested in public that the US 'take one on the chin' regarding Covid-19. How's that working out for you Boris?

I don't care if you think this is inappropriate, because I find it welcome that for once a politician has to personally face the ramifications of his fecklessness. If only more of our leaders would have to face up, we might have real leadership instead of political posturing.

Apparently, the app wasn't wasn't released until Feb 1. Also, The New York Times reported that the Iowa Democratic Party was secretive about using the app, and that it asked that Shadow’s name be withheld from the public. "According to a person familiar with the app, its creators had repeatedly questioned the need to keep it secret, especially from the Iowa precincts where it would be used."

This doesn't necessarily mean there is a huge conspiracy, but the optics -and the reality- of the party machine functioning properly is terrible, and the choice is between incompetence or malfeasance. Either way, they shot themselves in the foot, and it's not a good look.

Easy enough to find, here's an editor of the Guardian calling out the President of MEMRI for just that:

"The fact is that you gave evidence to Congress claiming that Gallup had found "a large majority of the Arab world" who believed the September 11 attacks "were the work of the United States government itself and/or a Jewish conspiracy". What you said is untrue, and Gallup has confirmed that. I trust you will now apologise to Congress for your false testimony. Finally, in the light of your most recent remarks about me personally, I will make clear now that your nationality and religion do not bother me in the slightest. What does concern me is your political agenda, and the deceitful way you go about promoting it."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/28/israel2

Regarding the 'ideological echo chamber,' I fully concur. MEMRI's board has included such characters as Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Bolton, so the discriminating reader should take that into consideration as well.

MEMRI is a well-known neocon propaganda outlet, so your arguments merely reflect this.

From Sourcewatch: "Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an Israeli propaganda organization that selectively translates materials from the Arab/Muslim/Iranian press purportedly demonstrating hostility against Israel/Jews."

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Middle_East_Media_Rese...

Citation please.

The more salient questions are, a.) why would they think that way, and b.) why would you characterize their stance that way?

Briefly, the anger felt by Iranians is due to their support for their fellow Muslims, the Palestinians, and their extreme mistreatment at the hands of the Israeli government. Note this support even though Iranians are Shia and Palestinians are Sunni.

To answer b.) both Israel and Saudi Arabia view Iran and an enemy due to a regional power struggle, where Iran stands in opposition to both. The promotion of Iran as Public Enemy #1 in the ME says more about maximalist Zionist power projection, and Natanyahu's lust for power than anything else. For example, Iran was abiding by the JCPOA, as verified by IAEA inspectors, while Natanyahu was inciting action against Iran, as rapproachment was not in his interests. The canard here is that Natanyahu was claiming Iran was trying to make nuclear weapons and that was unacceptable, despite the fact that Israel already has a well-known but never publicly acknowledged nuclear arsenal, and are famously not a part of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Even with nuclear weapons it is ridiculous to think that the Iranians do not understand the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction vis a vis Israel.

Thanks for this, lots of good nuggets of wisdom!

I highly agree. I read this book 30 years ago and it sticks with me to this day!

Food for thought: Just because e-scooters are turning out not to be a unicorn play doesn't mean they are suddenly non-viable as a transportation or venture option. In fact, having the gold rush leave this space could very well open it up to practical -and sustainable- innovation and implementation.

Here's one explanation: I work as an HMI designer for an Automotive OEM. Since we have a fully digital driver display, I designed a feature to address your problem; it displayed a large graphic with a text explanation of what was happening.

Unfortunately, it was killed by our Customer Care team, who were, paradoxically, more concerned about giving the driver/customer negative information that might lead to complaints, buybacks, etc. Needless to say, there are many stories like this, and it shows that even though UX/UI design is the most apparent aspect of a product, it is only as good as the decisions made underneath it.

C# is also the language behind Unity, which beyond games now powers 70% of all AR applications. Since Unity is now expanding into Automotive, Architecture and other verticals, there is a ton of demand for non-game C# devs for Unity.