The other side of this challenge is that the "technology" is mostly irrelevant for above-average applicants with solid CS chops.
I apply for lots of jobs featuring technologies I haven't used (beyond toy personal projects or something in college) because I have a long history of picking up new tools and being productive in weeks or months at most - because I understand the underlying semantics of the tool regardless of its presentation, syntax, etc.
Keyword scanners (and humans focused on keywords) are unable to hire me for roles where I haven't used the technology (much) before - and I guess that's fine and well as I am indistinguishable on paper from someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
Just presenting it as another part of the challenge of both finding good people and for good people finding good jobs.
I haven't used the remarkable but I bought a screen protector for my iPad that's intended to yield a paper-like writing and drawing experience when using the Apple pencil. It gets pretty close I think.
N.B. if you go this route you'd need to replace the Apple pencil tips a bit more regularly than you otherwise would given the rougher surface you're "writing" on.
I want to share a personal anecdote, as I recently spent quite a bit of time deciding whether or not to leave Mac OS for linux (Manjaro) this year for my personal computing needs - primarily because of gaming. Ultimately, I did make the switch.
Several years back, Apple broke most of my steam library with Catalina.
I wasn't a serious gamer, but I had a lot of nostalgic games from the aughts and early 2010s that ran great (pre-Catalina) on my top-of-the-line mid-2015 retina MBP.
I finally retired that machine this year and bought a higher-end gaming pc for less than half of what it would cost me to get a less-than-the-best Apple Silicon MBP.
Yeah, it's heavy. Battery life isn't great. But my phone has replaced so much of my mobile computing needs that I don't really need to take a laptop with me when I'm traveling unless it's for work, in which case I'll have my company-issued machine with me anyway.
I never thought I'd leave MacOS for Linux - but I recently got back into gaming and basically wasn't willing to spend $4k+ on a machine I couldn't game on when all of my personal project needs, etc. can be attended to on a cheaper gaming laptop.
The fact that Apple Silicon is an absolute beast, graphically, made it all worse somehow. Like having a Ferrari in your garage that you aren't allowed to drive - only pay for and look at.
Am I Apple's target demographic? Apart from being a developer - probably not. I don't do a lot of multimedia stuff (at least, I don't do anything that isn't adequately served by a PC with a solid GPU). Because I grew up on linux I'm right at home there with all of my non-work dev / geek / fun stuff and that probably makes me an outlier.
Apple's success clearly speaks for their business savvy - and, there's now a number of chinks in my (previously 100%) Apple loyalty across my wide array of gadgetry (several Apple TVs and one each for me and my wife of: laptop, ipad, iphone, watch, airpods). After a disappointing battery experience with my airpods - I replaced them with some excellent-sounding soundcore buds. My apple watch needs to be replaced soon and I'll probably get a Garmin (again - battery life and consistent failure to capture VO2 max on outdoor runs, other frustrations). I enjoy VR gaming and plan to upgrade from a quest 2 to a quest 3 instead of buying a vision pro. What's next to go in my Apple line-up? I don't know but I've become much more open to shopping around for non-Apple tech than I was in, say, 2016 when it seemed to me that nothing else could compete with Apple.
I wonder how true this is for Apple's "geek core" of tech professionals, and how much of it is just my unique little anecdote? And, in any case - does Apple care? They've cornered the market for both the technical-artistic and "luxury" class. Plenty of meat on those bones without worrying about the geeky whims of the pesky few that are open to (and capable of) something like abandoning Mac OS for Linux.
Still, it was sad to give up my Mac OS personal computing environment. I love Apple - but for what I care about, Apple just doesn't seem to love me. We'll always have our iOS time together I guess, for now anyway.
* $3500 price tag
* 2D / "Arcade" games support (lol)
I'm a buyer 3-4 generations in if price comes down significantly and I can replace my monitors with it. The seamless use with a mac for work will be really nice - but isn't worth $3500 to me for a gen 1 device / experience.
For now, I'm probably just going to get a Quest 3 when it drops this September. In terms of a virtual work environment - immersed is _almost_ there on a Quest 2. Maybe Quest 3 will be the ticket to a compelling experience. If not, well... I still have my library of dozens of VR games to make it worth $600 (or w/e).
Still, excited to see what Apple does with this platform over the next five or so years. The "macbook air" version of this a few years down the road will probably be more my speed!
Anecdotal: the app "One Sec" broke my twitter habit over the course of a few weeks.
Via iOS' automations feature the app allows you to configure a per-app waiting period during which you can decide you don't actually want to open whatever app you've tried to open.
Do you find yourself making better use of your time, or do you substitute one time waster with another? I can definitely see how this would help me be more productive during my work hours though...
That's usually where those things fail for me. Still, I don't really consider them worthless - the goal is not to prevent you from wasting your time, but to make you aware you're wasting your time and turning a muscle memory action into something you actually have to think about.
In my experience phisical separation is the best for when you don't want to use your phone (for example, when going to bed or if you want to focus on discussions when having lunch) but that is not always possible - then apps like one sec or other tricks like setting your phone to gray scale, moving icons around, focus mode, screen time... All serve to nudge your brain into thinking if you really want to waste time.
For making better use of your time... Eh. Everyone struggles differently of course, but I'm unlikely to go out and run, or do focus work, when I would waste 30 minutes scrolling through Instagram. But if you make sure to have better alternatives (reading a curated feed, listening to a audiobook/podcast) then they can nudge you that way. Finding a better alternative is entirely up to you. I do find that writing down things you want to do, no matter how silly it sounds ("of course I want to read more books!") helps, especially as you can always reference to that list later when you're bored.
Second data point. I love that app. Well worth all the money.
I've also customised the automations so I have added friction to opening, for example, Slack after 6PM or on weekends. However it opens immediately during working hours.
Can vouch that this has worked for me as well with Instagram. Just hope one day they would give you the option to remove the "Explore" page. Same with YouTube shorts.
> Given a simple problem A, when adding more options, at some point, choosing among the options requires more effort than solving the simple problem, if only by brute force.
Looks like they may have launched a hypersonic missle that reached speeds of ~Mach 10[1], and the US (publicly, at least) seems to be lagging behind China and Russia in Hypersonic R&D - at least as of 2019[2].
How long would it take for a missile traveling at Mach 10 to reach a point where a high-altitude EMP attack[3] would cripple the west coast of the US?
Is that time longer than it would take for aircraft to return to a place where they could land? If NORAD spots a bogey moving that fast, is the rule right now just... everything stops until we understand what's happening?
Would love for someone who knows about hypersonics, NK missle capabilities, EMP attacks, etc. generally to say more.
I'm not an expert, just a rocket enthusiast, but "hypersonic" really just means "near orbital velocities".
There's a lot of noise about admittedly really impressive low-altitude air-breathing scramjets, but - as your articles point out - those are still a long way away. The war hawks like to complain that we're not spending sufficiently many billions on developing futuristic hypersonic scramjet missiles. They point to our lack of a working scramjet as evidence that we're doing poorly. And look! North Korea's launched a hypersonic missile, China's launched hypersonic test missiles, Russia's launching hypersonic missiles; we're behind in the next war and it hasn't even started yet!
But those are just orbital or sub-orbital rockets at 50-100km altitude. Of course they're hypersonic, but that's not really that difficult - just build a big rocket, go up for a while, then turn sideways. We've been doing it since the 50s, tech is good enough now that relatively small companies like Firefly Space are launching small satellites to LEO with Series A fundraising of just $75 million. Tada! Hypersonic! The main point is that everyone has the capability to launch lots of these simple rockets, which can be devastatingly effective. Not as effective as highly steerable reentry vehicles or hypersonic scramjets, but enough that no one wants to be a target.
"Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle For the Soul of American Business"[1] by Bob Lutz tells this story really well, from Lutz' vantage point trying to salvage General Motors from the clutches of an army of MBAs.
There's a decent summary of the book (and the general problem) in the 2012 Time article "Driven off the Road by MBAs"[2] as well.
The room my wife and I booked in 2019 offered a panoramic, bird's eye view of Bangkok's skyline from one of the higher floors in the building. Not bad at ~$90 / night at the time.
Bangkok is absolutely full of view likes this, in no small part due to lax planning regulations. Also there are many tall buildings with bars on the top.
My wife and I once visited a friend of a friend who was “living like a king” in northern Thailand. He had a walled compound with a Mets baseball theme, a half dozen Burmese slaves, and had recently downsized from multiple wives to 1. He explained that there were three ways people make money in Thailand, drugs, money lending, and prostitution. And that he didn’t touch drugs...
It was one of the saddest and strangest experiences of my life.
But yes. People do this. It is weirder than you think.
Just to tamp down on the hyperbole a little, while Burmese legal refugees and illegal immigrants are mercilessly exploited, slavery (and polygamy for that matter) are illegal in Thailand, and many Western people who think that their money insulates them from the legal system find out the hard way that no, it does not.
This was 13 years ago, so the political situation may have changed. But this guy was very much operating in the open, and definitely breaking all kinds of laws. He’d been doing it for more than a decade, and no jail time yet.
He did also finance construction of an elementary school and some other community improvement stuff. He didn’t explicitly talk about bribes, but I’m sure he was paying people off. At least at the time he seemed to have figured out a way to avoid the law. But maybe corruption is down and it finally caught up with him - I’m definitely out of date here.
So do? Plenty of companies hiring remote, and you will be far (far far far) from the first tech worker to move to South East Asia. Bangkok in particular has world class (and affordable) health care, food, and night life, and you’re only ever a couple of hours from the beach
Thai police can be corrupt sometimes (not always - I've even been busted for pot twice, talked my way out of it both times even though they knew they could have gotten some western cash out of me), but Thai justice system is usually quite fair even for foreigners. There are exceptions of course, but usually you won't get into real trouble unless you are doing something that is obviously illegal (doing drugs, running prostitution ring, something something royal family). Even some my friends have sued and won against a big bank or people hustling money from them.
I haven't researched much about this but India seems like a better fit for tech workers? There I'll find folks who share my interest and the culture is good too.
When's the last time you went to one? I had three different reasons to go to one in the last 3 years and each time I was in and out in under 30 minutes with almost no wait time. This meme is garbage.
I apply for lots of jobs featuring technologies I haven't used (beyond toy personal projects or something in college) because I have a long history of picking up new tools and being productive in weeks or months at most - because I understand the underlying semantics of the tool regardless of its presentation, syntax, etc.
Keyword scanners (and humans focused on keywords) are unable to hire me for roles where I haven't used the technology (much) before - and I guess that's fine and well as I am indistinguishable on paper from someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
Just presenting it as another part of the challenge of both finding good people and for good people finding good jobs.