Greetings from Vermont! In this NixMashup, Pretty Don’t Mean Smart. A Contemporary Internet-Age Creepiness. Why Pay People. Impactful 2014 Tech Trends. Cleaning the Cache, Android Cache That Is. 4 Credentialed Software Developers Walk into a Bar. Starting the Car By Watch. The Intellectual’s Guide to The Black Mirror. From Holo to Material Design. Home IoT Partnerships Forming.
Here’s something you don’t see every day, a review of Elementary OS without the author gushing on and on how beautiful it is. The reviewer has some good things to say about the Elementary Freya 0.3 beta, but he captures my own experience trying to be productive with Elementary OS on the desktop, “Pretty don’t mean smart.”
A Contemporary Internet-Age Creepiness
If you watched the Black Mirror series on Netflix Streaming then you will no doubt enjoy this review of it from The Verge. The article helped me articulate why I personally found the series so disturbing. Black Mirror is “shorthand for a certain type of contemporary Internet-Age creepiness.”
Article published in DZone titled “Why do you pay people?” A valuable read for employers and workers alike. Cutting to the chase, people should be paid for bringing ideas to the workplace and not performing some plug-and-play function in the corporate machinery.
TechCrunch with “Ten Ways the World Changed in 2014.” The trend of “things finding people” is interesting when considering the potential of data collection on services like Amazon and Uber. In another trend, the smartphone is now starting to control aspects of the real world. New platforms like 3D printing, IoT, bitcoin, wearables and new payment form factors will serve as a basis for new innovations. VR is now more than a gaming platform, universal personalization, urbanization trends and more.
Cleaning the Cache, Android Cache That Is
Article from Android Authority on various techniques to free up more storage on your Android device, which if like my Samsung S5, has only 16GBs. I followed the guidance of the article and cleared my cache, but I freed up the most space by removing about 1000 photos. I also installed an app mentioned in the comments, Clean Master, which seems to do a good job.
4 Credentialed Software Developers Walk into a Bar
It was at least 20 years ago when I started dismissing meaningless developer distinctions between Developer and Senior Developer titles. Here is an interesting post theorizing how four credentialed developer types would approach the same code problem. Best takeaway from the post is the description of the exceptional developer. “They don’t just make complex problems simple – they make complex problems disappear entirely.”
When I was scheduling the Best Buy Geek Squad to install a new car audio system over Christmas I learned that the hot thing going on now in automotive installs was remote starters. That’s here in Vermont anyway. No, I don’t have a remote starter, but I am looking forward to the day when I can start the car with my watch.
The Intellectual’s Guide to The Black Mirror
This is a first. Two links to a TV Show in the same NixMashup, but I wanted to preserve a link to this article titled “Black Mirror as Hell-Is-Other-People Futurism.” It’s a very deep take on how Black Mirror is a reflection of our technology choices, for good and bad, and their affect on our human-ness. Here’s an excerpt, “Despite a pretty solid concept and excellent production, the show ultimately fails to deliver. Because it is equally possible to view seeming ‘degradation’ of the priceless aspects of being human as increasing ability to give up anthropocentric conceits and grow the hell up.”
Excellent and lengthy post comparing Android Material Design application layouts to what is currently found in Holo KitKat theming.
I read recently how the home is going to be a major driver in the Internet Of Things, and it sounds like a good bet when reading about the new Nest partnerships between Google, Philips, LG and others in the home services arena.
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Today’s Vermont Photo is provided by Nicholas Erwin, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.