After some more experience at various types of workplaces, you'll discover that this hyperfocus on "productivity" is a mind virus trying to destroy all stability and long term value.
Trying to be a rockstar every day is the fastest way to burning out and making bad decisions. It ensures that you will be left holding the bag. How is that not more performative, if it's in the name?
It's an allegory for AI hysteria and WFH depression. Generally, anything to put a wet blanket on the nice things that have happened to tech workers in the past few years. To put salt in the wound, it's done in a style that used to delight HN.
It reminded me of those cringe videos CGPGrey put out for COVID.
> ...the focus of hackathons has completely shifted away from typing code...
> ...iterating on intricacies of implementation with radical refactors has become a trivial task...
The irony is unreal. Where's the hardware?
Since the advent of SBCs and microcontroller kits, software devs have felt the same way about hardware being trivial. Yet, a hardware engineer still makes a massive difference in the outcome of the project.
It's the rotary phone and the raspberry pi, of course. Don't gatekeep.
The fact that microcontrollers are so cheap now means for most (but, sure, not all) applications they're strictly superior in every way compared to e.g. 555 timers and LM386 amplifiers, or whatever. This is because, critically, you can debug and reprogram a micro. To do the equivalent with a 555 timer means, at minimum, de-soldering a bunch of components and probably poking around with a logic analyzer or an oscilloscope.
What's more, you can get a full tcp/ip stack in a surprisingly small and low-power package these days. No need to futz with analog telemetry, or even SPI/I2C unless you really need to.
The "hack" in TFHackathon is altering the function of a phone. Who cares if they used a ras pi to do it vs something else? In what possible way does that diminish their feat?
A buddy let me try his Vision Pro, but I instead bought USB C display glasses. I just use them as a second display, not the AR experience you're probably thinking of.
I don't specify which brand or model because I have gone through several pairs since then. They're all about the same and somewhat flimsy, but worth it for the reduced bulk.
I also got usb-c display glasses and they've been great as an external monitor while traveling. I strongly recommend them to folks who want to be able to work comfortably on airplanes or other situations where you don't have an ergonomic desk.
I got the RayNeo Air 2 since they had the largest field of view.
Pros:
- Price (~$200 one year ago)
- Display quality/resolution is fine
- Brightness is excellent, can use it in direct sunlight without issue
- Build quality is fine.
- It really is just a plug-and-play USB-C monitor that overlays on whatever you're looking at.
- The focal distance (~4 meters) is really nice since my eyes often get strained when working on my laptop screen
Cons:
- (BIG con) it turns out that the field of view is TOO large - I often can't see the system clock in the corner of my screen or the quickbar in games.
- It just has normal pads like for glasses, and they can get a little sore/leave a red mark since they're heavier than normal glasses
- It's powered by the same USB that delivers the display data, so while it works fine for my macbook, it won't display from my phone. I've seen that there are battery/power converter dongles to add power to the cable but haven't tried one.
So if I did it again I'd just check reviews and get whatever is cheap and well reviewed currently. I was thinking about finding some sort of airplane-friendly keyboard+mouse setup as well but it turns out that just using my laptop keyboard and touchpad works fine.
Not the OP but I use mine a lot too. I use them with Samsung DeX and a foldable keyboard. Means I functionally have a desktop computer with me all the time. It's pretty amazing.
I like them a lot and carry them as one would with headphones. My use case is boring and I mostly plug them into my phone and laptops, but they "just work" on most devices made in the last few years. I use them any time I'm stuck sitting somewhere for more than about 15 minutes.
With this form factor, the main limitation is physical user input, not compatibility or fatigue. There's no battery or adapters or walled garden to mess around with. I would not be opposed to a touch pad or gesture system if it actually worked reliably and didn't require accessories or excessive motion from me.
For now, they're literally just a screen in a pair of glasses, and that's all I ever wanted. I'm sure there will be improvements to this category, but any product that strays from this core functionality will be a hard pass from me.
I'm not an anthropologist, so I won't handle this topic with gloves. Cultures are a shared ignorance. They have to be this way, almost by definition, else they wouldn't have any appeal.
The way we discuss health today is different from even 50 years ago. The debate about alcohol isn't new, but things like fitness trackers and smartwatches are. People can now prove it to themselves in real time that "feeling like shit" is not "all in their head", and that it's not a matter of "just drink water" or "eat something".
On the flip side, this cultural step forward comes with a step back. There's a lot of money to be made with this health anxiety.
Is this more scraping at the bottom of the barrel?
I get it. So many tech companies built their platforms around people submitting their work for sale. Now that things have cooled down they're desperate. This is exactly like what happened to the music and movie industries.
If they want to make money they must take bigger creative risks. AI is the exact opposite of that because it's trained on what's already been done.
> What we're seeing is social media splitting in two [...] young people publish a lot of content but it's more funny parodies and remixes of existing material. The goal is to make people laugh, not to tell people about their lives. [...] Whether it's TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, we are a long way from the "digital town square" of personal interaction that social media was even just a few years ago.
I don't understand why this article has to play dumb. This is how most of the internet always was until commercial interest invaded social media. They yelled their billions of dollars worth of messaging so loudly for over a decade that it drowned out anything authentic.
Now that there's a political break away from all the tone deaf pseudoprogressive messaging and the money for it has dried up, what did they expect to see there? Most people never posted sincere "life updates" unless they had something to sell or were a naive part of the bandwagon.
Trying to be a rockstar every day is the fastest way to burning out and making bad decisions. It ensures that you will be left holding the bag. How is that not more performative, if it's in the name?
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