NaraVara's recent activity
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
NaraVara Link ParentPeople seem to forget that California, by itself, is almost as big as all of Spain. It has an only slightly lower population and an economy about 3x bigger. Most people there aren’t in “miserable”...People seem to forget that California, by itself, is almost as big as all of Spain. It has an only slightly lower population and an economy about 3x bigger.
Most people there aren’t in “miserable” living conditions, it’s actually quite glamorous for the median resident relative to most of the rest of the country. There’s people who fall through the cracks, but that’s an endemic problem across America.
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
NaraVara Link ParentI imagine those are usually group-housing/roommate situation where you’re on the hook for all the common maintenance tasks. This Pod living seems more like a hotel situation where the common areas...I imagine those are usually group-housing/roommate situation where you’re on the hook for all the common maintenance tasks. This Pod living seems more like a hotel situation where the common areas and bathrooms are cleaned and maintained and you’re getting things serviced.
Back when I was living in group-houses it was also kind of a challenge to get into one. There was usually a fairly competitive interview process where you had to gel with the folks you’re talking to on CraigsList, and the roommates are assuming the financial risk of any one of them not being able to cover their share of the rent or communal expenses.
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
NaraVara Link ParentThe city wouldn’t have to give up the vibe of having 3-stories within walking distance of transit if they just built more transit and infilled the neighborhoods around it to be more walkable....The city wouldn’t have to give up the vibe of having 3-stories within walking distance of transit if they just built more transit and infilled the neighborhoods around it to be more walkable.
That’s basically how development in the Washington DC area worked. There’s long stretches of density all along the metro that have developed to resemble downtown DC and its denser residential corridors. It’s taken some of the housing price pressure off, but it’s always surprising to me how much of the area outside of SF/Oakland is just detached homes and suburban style gated communities. Fresno isn’t an agricultural town anymore! Why is it zoned like one!?
-
Comment on What is Mastodon for? in ~tech
NaraVara (edited )Link ParentI’d say BlueSky’s social aggression has been pretty successful at herding the range of acceptable opinion. The blocklists are a great tool for blunting the impact of certain types of posters, but...I’d say BlueSky’s social aggression has been pretty successful at herding the range of acceptable opinion. The blocklists are a great tool for blunting the impact of certain types of posters, but I think anyone joining BlueSky today is going to encounter a lot of unhinged posting and will be disinclined to sift through it to find enough value to be worth learning about the blocklist feature or the shared moderation lists.
The shared moderation lists also have the same HOA-brained scope creep that Mastodon instances suffer from. In theory you’re just signing up for someone’s general moderation and vibe-setting decisions, but in practice the groups that maintain these start to attract highly ideological users who want to use their moderation powers to banish wrong-think and not just cull abusive users.
The most difficult part is that all the enforcement mechanisms are all-or-nothing, so the equilibrium ends up being that a lot of obnoxious and anti-social behavior is permitted to slide because it’s not quite on the level of being worthy of a ban or total disaffiliation forever. In days of online forums moderators had a lot more tools for “vibe setting.” They could directly edit the content of posts to soften language or remove a section of objectionable behavior within an otherwise okay post. They could use temporary mutes or temporary bans to encourage people to cool off. There were options for keeping people around but enforcing boundaries around behavior without needing to kick people out entirely. You could have an escalation path with off-ramps for correcting the bad behavior instead of letting people lean into their worst selves until they cross a line that requires banning. The way it’s set up you’re either a good or a bad account rather than a person who sometimes makes mistakes.
In general I think much of the Fediverse has been a failure because they seek to recreate the social model of sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. But that entire model for socializing is actually bad! There’s no salvaging it. Federation would have worked best if it was presented as just a protocol for posting your things to the internet and allowing other people to follow the things you post. Instead its most vocal supporters are pitching things as drop-in replacements for Twitter, Instagram, or whatever else only with blackjack and hookers. Just create the identity/account and the schema for syndicating posts and let other people build whatever kind of interface they want for looking at it.
-
Comment on Tildes Survey #1: How old are you? in ~talk
NaraVara LinkIt’s funny how as a little kid one would often give their age in 6 month increments (five and a half), then it gets to your teens and 20s where you’re down to the year, then by your 30s you’re...It’s funny how as a little kid one would often give their age in 6 month increments (five and a half), then it gets to your teens and 20s where you’re down to the year, then by your 30s you’re just like give or take 3 years which becomes give or take 5 years. Then into your 40s you’re just “in your 40s” and nobody really cares where.
I assume by the late-40s/50s you’re just flatly “middle aged” before you hit “retirement aged.” It’s really a logarithmic function if you think about it.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentA mobile friendly internet didn’t exist prior to the smartphone. It only came into being after everyone had one. It also killed Flash, which immediately made the entire web more usable for a...A mobile friendly internet didn’t exist prior to the smartphone. It only came into being after everyone had one.
It also killed Flash, which immediately made the entire web more usable for a beautiful year or two before it got flooded with ads and slop.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentThat’s what I mean. But you don’t get to a point where the headsets are comfortable without consistently putting out products where you keep iterating on ways to make the displays better and...The Vision Pro seems more positioned for that, and I can see it working like that for a niche user base. However, a headset will always bee less convenient than an iPad or a laptop. A headset is too burdensome and too limiting for daily casual use.
That’s what I mean. But you don’t get to a point where the headsets are comfortable without consistently putting out products where you keep iterating on ways to make the displays better and smaller and more power efficient. I think the meta glasses are dumb, but a lot of that is just the stink of Meta and its taste level that seems to come down to being a sociopathic basic-bitch.
A lot of the features we think of as being transformative about smartphones didn’t actually exist when the smartphone first came out, they were invented after it came out. The reason people decided the pocket was a good place to put the internet is because people were already carrying their cell-phones with them wherever they went. Initially it was only good for taking calls and checking emails. You could browse the internet but the experience was kind of ass since web design wasn’t geared for it. It was not a good tool for doing anything not-cell phone related, just a good enough one to do in a pinch.
The world of digital products isn’t just divided into either being as big as the iPhone or “niche” either. No other product is as ubiquitous as smartphones but it doesn’t make them failures, personal computers for normies were just spreadsheet and document creation machines for the first 10-20 years and people only used them intermittently. You don’t need everything to be something people engage with all day every day. A pair of glasses people wear for specific situations is fine and potentially a large market to go after. There’s lots of use cases for smart glasses or goggles one can imagine, like specialized HUDs for things like navigation or all sorts of professional contexts to having a camera able to OCR hand-written text and save it to a digital notebook. It’s not implausible to me that AR/spatial computing goggles could replace a budget laptop while being significantly more portable.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentApple’s take on AR seems to be aiming more at being a Macintosh or iPad killer than a smartphone accessory. So I don’t think it’s that hopeless. If there is a meta glasses type of competitor I can...Apple’s take on AR seems to be aiming more at being a Macintosh or iPad killer than a smartphone accessory. So I don’t think it’s that hopeless.
If there is a meta glasses type of competitor I can see it making sense as part of a personal cloud of wearables. If anything replaces the smartphone that’s where I see things going where you’d have a compute unit in your pocket but your interface is done primarily through wearable devices connected to it that you interact with through hand gestures, voice commands, eye-tracking, head movements, etc. But getting there will involve a lot of “transitional state” products that iteratively make the necessary improvements in miniaturization, reliable and low latency wireless I/O, display technology, AI systems that can infer intent, UI conventions, etc.
It’s going to be a lot of duds and a few interesting toys until all the pieces come together to create something transformational.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentThe Magic Mouse was functionally a moving trackpad that allowed all the gestural controls you get with the trackpad on the mouse. The buttons weren't really buttons but haptic feedback to simulate...The Magic Mouse was functionally a moving trackpad that allowed all the gestural controls you get with the trackpad on the mouse. The buttons weren't really buttons but haptic feedback to simulate button presses. There was likely an actual engineering reason to not have a USB-port at the front that they were willing to suck up for the rest of the feature set they wanted to have.
An innovative product culture isn't about whether there's any output people don't like or makes people go "wow cool!" it's the team's willingness to try things and make trade-offs that would seem risky or weird. Doing weird stuff is a sign that innovation is happening, even if you think it's bad or in the wrong direction.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentThe truth is that the MBAs are generally just the hatchetmen for the engineers who are making all the decisions you hate. It's easy to blame them because they're the ones acting on it, but they're...The truth is that the MBAs are generally just the hatchetmen for the engineers who are making all the decisions you hate. It's easy to blame them because they're the ones acting on it, but they're just responding to the direction being set from above.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentIt charges enough for a couple of hours of use in a couple of minutes though. So it’s easy to make fun of because it looks a little silly, but it doesn’t actually negatively impact usage at all....It charges enough for a couple of hours of use in a couple of minutes though. So it’s easy to make fun of because it looks a little silly, but it doesn’t actually negatively impact usage at all. Especially if they intend to force the user to not use the mouse while it’s charging or to not leave it plugged in all the time.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentAll these things are big swings Apple took that missed, which is what you'd expect if you were prioritizing innovation. You're going to miss more than you hit. Where the operational stuff gets in...There were also some notable hardware missteps along the way, like the Magic Mouse with the underside charging port, the butterfly keyboard, the Touch Bar, and the “dongle era” of USB-C–only MacBooks. Many of those decisions have been reversed, and recent MacBooks feel like a return to form. Still, it raises the question of whether the company prioritized operational excellence over innovation during this period.
All these things are big swings Apple took that missed, which is what you'd expect if you were prioritizing innovation. You're going to miss more than you hit.
Where the operational stuff gets in the way is that it prevented them from killing bad ideas after it became clear they were bad. When Steve Jobs released the G4 cube and it didn't catch on he killed it after a year even though it was his own special baby project. But the touchbar and butterfly keyboard lingered for years in the lineup without being fixed, deleted, or meaningfully reconceptualized because they were trying to amortize the R&D to justify it. THAT, to me, is the essential Tim Cook difference for better or worse.
I've long felt like, with the scale that Apple operates now, they really need to spin off a separate brand identity (sort of like Beats) that's focused on weirder, one-off stuff just to try interesting ideas and see if they stick. They can't afford to get truly weird with it with their main product lines just because of how big a market they have to serve with the iPhone, iPad, or the Mac. But if they had a separate vertical that's just for more showy or interesting tech they could tinker more.
-
Comment on Apple names insider John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in ~tech
NaraVara Link ParentAccording to people who have inside sources, Ternus is the favorite pick among the design and software teams (the people Alan Dye didn't take with him) and is well regarded across the company. I...According to people who have inside sources, Ternus is the favorite pick among the design and software teams (the people Alan Dye didn't take with him) and is well regarded across the company.
I kind of assumed Tim Cook was going to ride out the next couple of years to act as "sin eater" for all the bending-the-knee to Trump Apple has been doing. But I guess he doesn't feel like he needs to do that at this point considering how far public opinion has turned.
-
Comment on Which covers did it better than (or put a fresh twist on) the original? in ~music
NaraVara LinkMy other post forgot to mention Peter Gabriel's cover of Heroes (originally by David Bowie) Also the Nirvana Unplugged performance is basically entirely acoustic covers of rock songs.My other post forgot to mention Peter Gabriel's cover of Heroes (originally by David Bowie)
Also the Nirvana Unplugged performance is basically entirely acoustic covers of rock songs.
-
Comment on Which covers did it better than (or put a fresh twist on) the original? in ~music
NaraVara Link ParentIMO you can’t mention Richard Cheese and not recommend Chop SueyIMO you can’t mention Richard Cheese and not recommend Chop Suey
-
Comment on Which covers did it better than (or put a fresh twist on) the original? in ~music
NaraVara LinkWell there’s Obadiah Parker’s Hey Ya. And in a similar but funnier vein, Alanis Morisette’s take on My Humps performed as a torch song. And finally, Megan Washington, has an entire album that is a...Well there’s Obadiah Parker’s Hey Ya.
And in a similar but funnier vein, Alanis Morisette’s take on My Humps performed as a torch song.
And finally, Megan Washington, has an entire album that is a cover of the Killers’ debut album Hot Fuss
-
Comment on “60s lounge” and Laufey in ~music
NaraVara Link ParentYou should intersperse some Calypso music in there. Get some phases to liven things up so people will get on the dance floor.You should intersperse some Calypso music in there. Get some phases to liven things up so people will get on the dance floor.
-
Comment on “60s lounge” and Laufey in ~music
NaraVara Link ParentI think one of the canonical examples is Lisa Ono’s cover of Country Roads. The Japanese flavor of the genre tends to be more poppy and also mash up a lot of American folk music styles.I think one of the canonical examples is Lisa Ono’s cover of Country Roads. The Japanese flavor of the genre tends to be more poppy and also mash up a lot of American folk music styles.
-
Comment on “60s lounge” and Laufey in ~music
NaraVara (edited )Link ParentLaufey is Icelandic with partly Chinese roots IIRC, so her influences are probably more of a generic global sensibility than just USian. Japanese Bossa Nova might be more in line with the vibe she...Laufey is Icelandic with partly Chinese roots IIRC, so her influences are probably more of a generic global sensibility than just USian. Japanese Bossa Nova might be more in line with the vibe she has than the more traditional Brazilian stuff. But primarily she feels “jazzy.” She actually makes me think of the soundtrack to a 90s Norah Ephron movie more than anything, so that’s probably the best place to look for similar sounds.
And I think most of the people there prefer that to living in Boulder, Colorado. We infer this because they haven’t moved to Memphis despite the huge COL differences if they did so.