It nerfs adblockers so the current net convenience of using Chromium vs Firefox becomes a net inconvenience. Manifest v2 disablement day might as well be Firefox Switching Day.
I am the same way with my coworkers. I spend a lot of time helping juniors with their code and doing code review. My boss talked to me and told me to stop helping out so much and focus on my own tickets.
There’s an article that was going around again about ‘glue work’ ([1]) that has a story where an engineer gets caught up doing all this kind of mentoring, coordination and other work like that and then is passed over for promotions because they don’t have technical achievements (though they claim to have become instrumental in enabling everyone else’s technical achievements).
The article never gets to quite the right conclusion - it’s actually massive management failure - what I was thinking the whole way through was “why hasn’t somebody sat them down and told them to do their actual job??”
Mentoring and code review are both super important, but if the organisation wants you to focus on getting tickets done then you basically just have to, unless you can convince them to actually add the additional work to your actual role description or get enough seniority to add it yourself.
But it’s good to have feedback on what kind of work you’re actually going to be measured on in performance reviews, promotions etc.
If you're a senior engineer, mentoring junior engineers IS your actual job, in addition to the coding work. It's arguably the more important part of your job description because junior engineers write most of the code, so you get far more done via mentoring than you do typing on a keyboard
I think this is an important perspective - in the end you need to do what the company asks of you and not what you think is right for the company if the two are in conflict.
The approach the company I work for has taken, is that leads and managers are primarily coders.
I think this makes sense especially for smaller companies, but it does put a extra emphasis on hiring well. Basically, I'm expected to code and helping my team is secondary to that. If I want the team to succeed I need to hire people who are self motivated and competent enough that they only require a little guidance here and there.
Turns out that's very difficult to hire consistently for. Finding self motivated and highly skilled developers just isn't all that easy in todays climate of boot campers.
It’s a balance. Sometimes it is worth spending a ton of time leveling up your team (teaching them to fish), and sometimes it’s much more helpful to have you do the work yourself (we ran out of food and you’re our best fisherman).
I get why people say this but let's be real. You optimize for the review cycle. If I'm told not to help as much I'm dropping it down until I'm told to help more. Then I'll correct the minimal amount necessary.
Thanks! Good question, I think it's probably mostly a mental block on being "done". There was always "one more feature" I wanted to add before trying to market it. The feature I can most think of right now is playlists. They are supported in Subsonic but not the web UI.
Currently I have exactly 2 customers, who are pretty much friends helping me test. The good news is the site is optimized for being set-it-and-forget-it (all serverless arch) so just having one customer is enough to break even.
I've built sites like this; clear, concise, to the point. Not many people used them.
Once I started adding a bit more "flair" to it, things got traction. I'm not talking a complete redesign, but I too had to go back to capitalizing words, adding color, and caring about the "experience" for the market I was aiming to capture.
I hated it, I still do, but I hate it less after seeing success with the changes I was willing to concede on. Just sayin'.
As a concept I absolutely LOVE no-BS sites like this. The downside is that they make the service appear simple enough that I could code one myself, specific to my needs, and/or self-host it - inevitably neither happen! - so I just don't sign up in the end.
Yeah I feel you. It might feel kind of like "selling out" but making it professional is almost certainly the better choice for things like this, especially if you have to pay money for it.
Have a really small demo tier or a demo account, say with public domain classical and jazz standards, just something basic.
The demo tier could be phone number based, then a write once system, let's say 100mb ... something really token.
You could even have a few sample tunes everyone gets by default. Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin is in public domain for instance as are say, the rags of Scott Joplin, Debussy's Deux Arabesques, etc.
If that doesn't onboard people then have a no-hassles 7 day refund. If someone gives you money but then decides they don't want it, have it built in the interface they can back out for 100% money back in 7 days.
> Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin is in public domain for instance as are say, the rags of Scott Joplin, Debussy's Deux Arabesques, etc.
I could be wrong about this, but aren’t individual performances of these works still protected? If I record an album of works by Debussy that performance isn’t in the public domain and couldn’t be used as sample tracks.
Funny apocryphal story about that song. For a long time I had got in my head that was extremely disruptive for the time. I envisioned men with powdered wigs running distressfully throughout the aisles as he plays the work for the first time as their wives fan themselves and couch faint in the seats.
I still think that every time I hear it and I think it's hilarious to imagine European high society losing their composure over this sonata. This and Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 are ridiculously close to modern music structure. That's a 110bpm breakbeat done with violins you're hearing.
this will allow you to navigate through things when listening over bluetooth using the media buttons. I'm sorry for the rather advanced example but here's how I use it to navigate through hierarchy with double and triple tapping: https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/blob/master/w...
> "Free 2 week demo. No credit card needed. [Try it now]"
> "Register" is too committal ...
I actually didn't notice the "No credit card needed" until I had written a long explanation :-)
That is how hard the "Free demo" has been abused to snag my credit card, so maybe experiment with some variations as long as it doesn't delay launch :-D (FWIW: personally, with my background and as a non-native speaker, "register" doesn't sound as scary as "Free 2 weeks demo".)
You gotta pair it with "no card needed" otherwise it sounds suss.
There's other ways. "Upgrade to a paid account if you like it" works. "Upgrade" implies work. "Paid" implies the work is paying. Thus the thing you're currently engaging with doesn't need payment.
You can also call it "Free tier" which has "14 day expiration" as a stipulation.
There's no best practice here because it's dependent on the product, value proposition, where you are in the funnel and who the customer is. They'll perform differently and counterintuitively and most frustratingly, change over time (because the context of the relationship between your prospect and product is always dynamic)
I think the parting advice I can give is <all products are relationships>. The interface and experience defines this relationship. We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us or the interface sets the terms of the engagement or the medium is the message. It's been stated a myriad of ways.
I kinda hated "Selling the invisible" by Harry Beckwith but out of the 100 or so marketing and product development books I've read, I think, for you in particular, a weekend paging through that book might really help you here. You have to read it as an analogy of how to design software of course.
Because devices change all the time and most people don’t even have a repository of music files they keep. To even start using this service in earnest requires all that. This dude made the perfect thing for a period that existed like 20 years ago.
I had the same first thought, but I'm not sure it's as big as a problem as you make it out to be. I know plenty of people who still have music in the form of mp3's. One of the biggest issues the service has is being able to reach the right people. I don't really have a solution for that. GPM was used by millions of people, the service doesn't need millions of users to be successful. It can still be a valuable product that serves a niche audience.
Agreed. Personally I like to support the artists directly by buying their albums in MP3/FLAC form (and going to their shows) so I know I'll have a high quality backup forever. I am not a big fan of streaming services like Spotify, although I will certainly admit that it is way easier to use them than to manage your own music library.
I'll look into serverside Last.fm support. I think it should be relatively easy to add. Agreed that an app would be awesome but I don't have the resources for it :(. The web interface works decently as a PWA (at least on Android according to testers, it has MediaSession support and stuff) but it's still kind of bad, definitely not a real app substitute.
I didn't really promote it anywhere, except I posted on the Google Play Music Reddit I think. I got some good feedback from there. TBH I have no idea how to market things. Not sure how to toe the line between "hey I want to make something cool for you" and spamming. I'll check that out though. I definitely had music enthusiasts in mind, I understand their hatred for re-encoding :)
Disclaimer: I don't have one of these and don't particularly want one. The privacy concerns kinda creep me out. That said, I've been to friends homes and seen them use it.
As far as I can tell the primary use case for these things is to be <random place in your home> and then just say out loud "Alexa, set a timer for ....". I've heard that you can order stuff from Amazon also using your voice. I think a third use case starts with "Alexa, tell me a joke".
I'm assuming that there's other things you can do with these (and would love to know, if anyone's willing to share).
So - if the solution to the privacy concern is to walk over to the device and push a button then that seems to remove most of the usefulness of the device.
Speaking as someone who doesn't want one / doesn't have one of these things I can totally see how eliminating the "voice control from anywhere" feature leads to opting out of it.
(When I'm walking around my home I've always got my phone on me (which, to be fair, has a bunch of privacy concerns too) so I can more easily set a timer / buy something on Amazon / Google for jokes by fishing my phone out of my pocket and then using that, rather than walking over to push a button.)
(The "what else can you do with these" is a genuine question - if people are comfortable sharing I'd love to hear what you can do with these)
There's a lot of little use cases. Hand free cooking stuff (set a timer, home many tablespoons in a pint). Device control, faster to turn off a TV with voice than dig for the remote, or play a playlist/skip songs. None of those really save that much more time than the old fashion way, so concerns about privacy mean things get done the old way.
I know some people like having them in if they have frailty or mobility concerns, which is probably the only really new usecase.
Definitely. We can think of connecting such basic skills with more advanced skills too. The fact that Leon has a modular architecture makes it very flexible. We just need to let our imagination drives us.
I have Alexa, although I'm going to remove her and replace with a locally-hosted thing.
I've tied mine in with home automation stuff. So I can turn on and off lights using voice, even if I'm not at home. I sometimes forget to turn off my workshop and I can do that from anywhere.
I'd like to figure up a way to reset my internet, because I access cameras, and it goes out sometimes. I'm very sure this can be done.
I also use her for weather, although I'm annoyed about some of her limitations there, and I intend to get exactly what I want by coding. I want to be able to ask things like "when will it rain next", but Alexa can't do that.
She can also do reminders in a week or whatever, I use that some. And I ask very simple questions that she can query Google for, but honestly she's terrible at it.
I also think she's too verbose, even with verbosity turned down. She just goes on and on sometimes workout being asked--like instructions on resetting the routers if she can't contact Amazon.
I also try Google assistant and Bixby. I use my watch for a lot of the things you said you use your phone for.
Anyway I'm not happy with any of them. I plan to work a bunch on some skills as my next project, after the current one is done.
> I'd like to figure up a way to reset my internet, because I access cameras, and it goes out sometimes. I'm very sure this can be done.
Just get one of those controllable outlets that can be controlled locally, it'll allow you to power cycle your modem/router/wifi AP. Shelly.cloud makes one and it can be controlled through REST [0] with a call like http://192.168.0.40/relay/0?turn=on
I noticed that you referred to an AI with a disembodied voice as "her". Not that unusual, as sailors (even today) refer to ships as "her", and Davy Crockett named his rifle "Old Betsy".
But, it does beg the question: will you feel bad when you 'remove' her? (Will she? Shouldn't you ask?)
I have some skills idea for Leon after the official release. The idea is to centralize all of them into your own hardware that you control. Then Leon can be seen as a "second brain".
Let's say we build a budget tracker, then we can ask Leon "How much did I spend last month in groceries?". Mini apps are coming up on Leon, feel free to read the latest blog post, I'm sharing some thoughts on it.
We can also think of a tracker skill where Leon can understand your location habits. Like if you spend 10+ minutes at a specific place, then you can flag it as "gym". Then when you go to this place again, Leon will trigger a counter and count the time you are at the gym. The next week you can ask "Leon, how long time did I spend at the gym last week?". It can be gym, office, or anything you could think of.
Such use cases will be possible to make after the official release and the mobile client.
Half the reason I originally bought it was to simply be able to turn the light and fan on and off without getting out of bed.
The other half was music. Google Play Music was a godsend for a long time before they killed it. I can't stand Youtube Music and don't pay for other services, so I just don't use voice to listen to music anymore. Actually pretty angry and haven't given Alphabet a single cent since.
I ask it the weather every day. It answers 'when will it rain' with an hour and/or day of the week it might next.
I used to use it for relaxing sounds like rain, but one day they replaced the realistic rain sound with one that sounds to me like generated white noise only somewhat resembling rain, so it kind of annoys me now.
I constantly set alarms and timers for various reasons. Reminders and calendar events also, which sync with google services of course so I get them on my phone.
It can make notes. Any time I think of something in the shower and can't write it down I consider buying another one for the bathroom.
I can ask it where my phone is and it'll make it ring.
General queries are no more or less as good as what searching Google gives you at the top. Still useful when wondering something. I can ask it to define words or look for synonyms when I'm writing, without taking my mind away from the text. Or random stuff like 'what day of the week will September 22nd fall on,' 'how many days until Easter,' etc.
I frequently use it as a calculator. Easier to just speak a lengthy list of numbers than to type them all.
The most important thing about all of this is I don't have to move a muscle, and don't have to avert my eyes from what I'm focused on. Whether I'm passing out in bed, have my hands full while late for an appointment, or working hard at my PC, that's invaluable to me. Maybe not as important to everyone though.
Do I recommend Google's assistant specifically? Not exactly, but I don't like the other options either. Alexa will constantly break my train of thought by advertising what it can do with suggestions and whatnot, which is a main reason I don't use it, but my housemate doesn't mind. Other assistants just don't seem as polished and useful. Google's interoperability with my phone is a big reason I use it.
For $25 just get one for your desk and/or bedroom. There's still a lot of room to grow in this space before there's a better option without privacy concerns.
This is a good list of thoughtful, interesting uses.
I can totally empathize with not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, and getting it to ring my phone would actually be really useful. Like, embarrassingly useful :)
That's just one of several privacy concerns. It's possible to parse voice locally, as in TFA and eg Mycroft('s open source, self-hosted version, anyway), but for "some reason" mainstream assistants don't do it. Sure, you can hold a button, and Google will only hear about your timer request and nothing more, but some people find the idea of Google knowing when you're setting timers to be upsetting. Or at least worthy of avoiding.
Siri, G Assistant, Alexa, Bixby, Sonos all perform at least some locally. It seems the major issue is large dictionaries (eg music libraries) or complex queries. Most had an article about how basic features (times, smart home) work entirely on device.
If I have to hit a button to activate the voice assistant, that removes use-cases like "my hands are full but I want to turn on the smart lights" and "I'm cooking and want a timer, but my hands are too dirty." These are the use-cases where the tool really shines because it has no competition.
Without such a use-case, the tool gets put in the back-of-mind. Sure it might be marginally easier to use than swiping and poking, but my mental model of using the phone is already swiping and poking.
Does each web request to an app server have to hit the disk on the same server? And if so, for the entire request duration? Also, what about horizontal scaling which also means that the db is on a different server (likely with secondary / replicated DBs)
