Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
Daniel's avatar

Apple’s size is breathtaking.

Amazon determined to continue its assault on Apple or something – MacDailyNews – Welcome Home:

MacDailyNews Take: Elevating Amazon to the level of an equal with Apple is a joke. Apple could buy Amazon outright, with cash, and still have $15 billion left over. Apple’s market value is rapidly approaching 5 times that of Amazon’s. Five times. Amazon’s net income for calendar Q311 (they don’t report Q4 until tomorrow) was $63 million. Apple’s calendar Q311 net income was $6.62 billion. Apple made 105 times more than Amazon did last calendar Q3. Calendar Q4 will likely be a worse comparison for Amazon as Apple generated an astonishing net profit of $13.06 billion.

[Apple’s current size is mind boggling.]

d: Suffering we mutually endure

You can often a read a line like this

“Get on my wheel, buddy,” I urged. He gurgled something, latched on, and I dragged him over the top.

And every time a read a line like this I think “Really?” because I’ve been offered wheels as I hack my way up a climb, and I never feel latched on, and I never feel like I’ve been dragged over the top. For the times where I’ve been the stronger rider (Um, ok, let it pass.) and offered my wheel… I don’t feel any additional resistance if they do grab on. Where does this language come from?

I once thought this must be the difference between the racers and pros and us recreational types. Maybe they climb the hills fast enough for these words to have meaning? Maybe you can feel the reduction in effort created by the aerodynamic suction of the rider in front? Yeah. I’ll bet it doesn’t feel that way to those riders either. As Greg Lemond famously said “It doesn’t get easier, you get faster.”

To understand we must remember the essence of cycling as a sport. The suffering we mutually endure, regardless of level, when we point our bikes upward. It is a gesture of hope, commiseration and understanding. It is an act of kindness. An offer to share the pain and misery. I see you. I feel you pain. Do not quit. Do not give the hill your soul. Join with me and we will climb this together. A contract that eases the grade—sooner or later we all are on the front or the back. And it is the respect for this that brings us the language.

Value | The Cynical Musician

Value | The Cynical Musician:

Google’s greatest fear, however, is that the content that draws the biggest audiences might be placed beyond its reach. It has seen this happen with Facebook. That’s why Google lobbies against copyright enforcement and for and “open internet” – with the special Googley meaning that “open” has here. It doesn’t mean open, as in “open market”(where anyone can set up shop, for fun or profit), it means open as in “you cannot shut Google out”.

[snip -Ed]

Apple, on the other hand, as Andrew points out: “hasn’t spent one cent on lobbying against intellectual property”.

Apple doesn’t need other people’s property to make money. For Apple, consumers aren’t the means to an end. They are the end. Apple creates valuable consumer products and charges a pretty penny for them. Guess what? People are buying. Not just the “atoms” (devices) either; the iTunes Music and App stores are doing pretty well, too. Apple sees value in intellectual property and is prepared to pay for it in order to sell it to its customers, increasing the value of its devices in the process. Apple’s thoughts are for the consumer and how it can provide the greatest value, that it will then charge for. Unlike Google, it has no interest in decreasing the perception of value, because that would mean that it would need to charge less. To Google, the value of what it provides is simply in how many eyeballs it gets. It doesn’t need to be great, just good enough.

[I don’t agree with everything here but there are lots of good points and even more in the comments. You can argue the various monitory theories, and for example Apple does make a fortune by owning its markets (iTunes, App Stores, iBooks, etc.) which do you require other people’s property. The bottom line, is that it is not easy to convince a large group of people that your art is valuable. It’s gonna take hard work and not a small amount of luck.]

Tweets still must flow

Tweets still must flow:

Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

Source: Twitter Blog

Sandi Metz: SOLID Design Principles – Dependency Injection

Sandi Metz: SOLID Design Principles – Dependency Injection:

Because of the style of coding in Job, it contains dependencies that effect my ability to refactor and reuse it in the future.

[An excellent example of something that was hard to think through in the last significant codebase I worked on. There are always tradeoffs in style, testing, and time spent. We managed as best we could, but I think we should have done more of this (easy to say now.)]

Source: brynary

Cars Kill Cities « Progressive Transit

Cars Kill Cities « Progressive Transit:

Contrary to how it may sound, I do not want to rid the earth of cars.  I just want to use them smarter.  Do you really need a 2-ton vehicle to pickup your dry-cleaning?  Probably not.  Although I do see the appeal in loading a family of 6 into an SUV and traveling to Florida for vacation.  That is a totally reasonable use of an automobile.  What I really want  is clean, walkable, safe, affordable, and family-friendly cities and towns.

[I was just talking to my wife about the impact of living far from work and school. We have no easy solutions at the moment, but we’re thinking about what we can do…]

Source: Dave WIner

ExtremeTech: “Google is FUBAR”

ExtremeTech: “Google is FUBAR”:

Google’s “one thing well” has historically been indexed search. While they’ve had “sticky” web applications like Gmail for years, their main focus has been enabling you to get off their site as fast as possible. Google still needs to be able to do that, but now they’ve also declared that they want to keep you on their site as much as possible. I don’t see how this can be reconciled.

[They are creating quite a mess now aren’t they? I disagree with FUBAR though. SNAFU? Sure. TARFU? Possibly.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

The promise of iCloud

There’s an app on my mac called Notational Velocity. It’s a simple note taking app, that has two critical features. It’s searchable in a “that’s how you use it” kinda way. the second is that it stores your notes on Simplenote. So what’s the big deal?

I started using Simplenote because I wanted a dead simple way to share a food shopping list with my wife. And it was good. Then I got an iPhone and there was an app, so now I could add something on the fly and vice versa. And then I looked for a Mac app because it seemed like that would be an easy to capture thoughts as well. Other “To do” lists worked well in the past, but this felt different and better. Somehow less pressured and achievement oriented. There are some things that require rumination not action, and “to do” by nature is an action.

And so like that the circle was complete. Web access, device access, desktop access to all my notes. And that is the promise of iCloud. No, Simplenote doesn’t rely on iCloud. But iCloud is a system(s) service and it will become more and more common to live in the cloud in all things. Apple hit the basics for now. Music, mail, photos, calendars, contacts… these are things we desire to have on all our devices minus the bother of syncing. And it feels right. Just as right as it does for my notes.