Amit Gawande @am1t@mastodon.technology
Reader. Writer. Coder. Code for living. Live for reading and writing. He/him.
Joined Aug 2018
Techies keep dreaming of a day when iOS and Android can be used for serious console-style gaming. I, on the hand, am always in search for the casual games that I can play one handed, in small bursts for mindless fun. I enjoyed Desert Golfing a lot. Tiny Wings was another.
I'm from a generation that is spoilt by the usability of a mouse. Is it better? Simpler? I won't comment on that. May be the intuitive interactions with touchscreen interfaces are faster, more sensible for a larger demographic. But I always find them a bit cumbersome, limiting.
I had completely forgotten that Flickr was acquired by SmugMug and had been their property - makes so much sense. Of course, I don’t think Yahoo can run any thing any longer.
That brand has faced such a horrible downfall - it was the shining example of the power of Web.
The more I think about the account from Andrey Sitnik on how a month without computers helped him, affected him, the more I feel I need to attempt this abstinence from technology, at least at some smaller scale. I’m curious to find for myself my ability to stay digital-free.
So the free accounts terms on Flickr are changing. There was a time when I was in love with this service. It was before Yahoo ruined it. I think it is a positive sign that the people running the service now have decided to go back to its roots and focus on Pro consumers.
https://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/11/01/changing-flickr-free-accounts-1000-photos/
It is so difficult to explore anything that Google announces without passing it thought the lens shaded by their ad business model. It doesn't matter with what intention they implement a change or if those intentions are pure.
Sure, this will make the login secure by preventing credential stuffing. But doesn't this also help them get more data from users who preferred not to by disabling JS? And was this the best and only solution to tackle this problem?
https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/announcing-some-security-treats-to.html
Every now and then, I come across stories that makes me realize how little I know about things around me -- apparently the iPhone we use everyday? Yeah, they are allergic to Helium. A tiny molecule "can turn your phone temporarily into a paperweight". Fascinating.
https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/
I wished I understood the compression and streaming of audio better to understand why some form of audio (for example, episodes of a podcast) sound choppy over Bluetooth and others don’t. I am sure Marco Arment could go on and on explaining the reasons, but this just baffles me.
Less than 24-hours away from the Apple event and we still haven’t seen any credible hardware leaks of actual devices. All we have is hearsay mock-ups. Either Apple’s cracked the secret to keep the supply chain silent or it’s going to be bumpy few week full of brickbats for them.
This thread on Quora captures some of the best stories from real people meeting Steve Jobs — some wonderful memories.
“You don’t often get close to people like the Jobs, much less in a ridiculous situation like this, where you realize that they are just really good people.”
You know what the biggest surprise of any Apple event going ahead will be? An updated iPhone SE. The chances of that happening at this event? Close to zero.
But hey, I can continue to dream, right? #BringBackSE
Boy, Google's Night Sight mode looks totally bonkers -- if the image comparison by Vlad Savov is anything to go by, his comment "play around with it as I have and lose your shit at the unreal results it produces" is apt. Want to know how the hell is Google doing that?
I wonder what are the simpler ways to pull the data out from Mastodon? I do not think it supports Webmentions yet. Are there any feeds? I mainly want to pull likes and reposts and replies. Display them with original posts if possible. In short,
Twitter:Bridgy :: Mastodon: ?
With a very different demographic than West, India has an efficient way of solutioning a tech that focuses on local problems first. Mobile-first. Low-data Lite apps. And now with electric vehicles - "with more rides possible in a day, the e-rickshaws are proving more lucrative". https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-25/india-s-rickshaws-outnumber-china-s-electric-vehicles
Rant on ads fraud Show more
Irrespective of what every reader and commenter says, the iPhone XR screens are not “terrible”. Rather they are configured very similar to what they are every year. And the reviews confirm that. https://blog.amitgawande.com/iphone-xr-screens-ppi
I don't get the enmity for Bluetooth headphones. For normal usage, these are very convinient. Are they without any issues? Of course, not. But they never evolved because there wasn't any demand. And hence no incentive. Now there is, and am already seeing these become common.
There was a time when I used to visit the Wikipedia main page as a routine, every morning. It’s one trove of fascinating information. As I grew, not sure why I decided to be less smarter and abandoned this routine. That page is still brilliant.
There are new calls for retraction of Bloomberg's compromised spy chip story -- a story that apparently a lot of background research from renowned publications too failed to corroborate. And now people with skills are getting critical of the presented claims. Not looking good.
“Infinite scroll can be disorienting, uncontrollable, and can cause your users stress (...) UX people shouldn’t consider infinite scrolling as a silver bullet to solve their pagination issues.”
It's worse when they load a new article when you reach the end of the current one. This is a hostile behavior towards your readers when you force articles to him/her in your quest for maximizing ad revenue via page views.
Reader. Writer. Coder. Code for living. Live for reading and writing. He/him.
Joined Aug 2018
