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Tips for a Better Life

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131–140 of 488 posts

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#131

Post by munificent »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93

> 25. History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect. This is why everyone remembers the MPMan F10 and no one has heard of the iPod. Being the first to get it right is more important than being the first to get to market.

I think it's also important to be precise about what "it" is.

Most MP3 players at the time had around an hour's worth of storage. The Creative NOMAD was 64 MB. That means those products were from a user experience perspective in the same category as Walkmen and Minidisc players. It was a writable music player that held about an album. It let you make your own mixtapes, but selecting media while at home was a fundamental part of the user experience.

The first iPod had 5-10 gigs of storage. You didn't have to decide what to listen to before you left the house. You just put everything on there and decided on the fly. This was a completely different experience.

Whether the little box played MP3s is essentially an implementation detail. It was the storage size that made the iPod an entirely different "it" from the devices that came before it, because the way you used it was so different.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#133

Post by inanutshellus »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93

> 25. History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect. This is why everyone remembers the MPMan F10 and no one has heard of the iPod. Being the first to get it right is more important than being the first to get to market.

"Your blanket truism has a counter-example! I shall provide a counter-truism to fill the void."

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#135

Post by grecy »

amelius wrote: post #104

> If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking. I don't agree. Use a virtual desktop instead and switch workspaces with a keyboard shortcut. I'm currently using 9 workspaces, and monitors couldn't ever beat that UX.

I'll disagree with you - the value of 2 or more monitors comes when you want to simply have more stuff on screen at the same time so you can compare / check / whatever.

I.e. you can have a spreadsheet on one monitor, and the results of a bunch of terminal windows on another, and be typing out an email about those two things on another.

You can continue to type the email while reading the spreadsheet and checking the terminal results without having to "switch", or take the draft email off the screen to check that other thing.

I really notice this falls down when I have multiple tabs open in my browser and I want to be mentally dealing with info from one, and inputting it into another. Switch tabs means the one you're entering data into goes away. (Of course, the solution is to have the tabs in different windows, on different monitors, though this example always makes me realize the HUGE time saver of having so much information in view at the same time.)

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#136

Post by mholm »

corytheboyd wrote: post #26

> 7. Don’t buy CDs for people. They have Spotify. Buy them merch from a band they like instead. It’s more personal and the band gets more money. What? Now I’m a bit more curious about the life of the author lol

I'm in the same boat, and I don't know anybody who still uses CDs. Maybe my 60+ year old uncle? If I received a CD as a gift, I wouldn't even have a way to play it, and haven't for almost a decade. I think my car has a CD player?

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#137

Post by earwaxauditor »

ggm wrote: post #113
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultivate compassion for people trapped in dogma-driven politics, whether religious or secular dogma. Or did you mean "dogma held with religious fervor/intensity"? If so, I will agree with you. People hold political views the way they used to hold religion, and it has not improved politics...

Really, I was just responding to the prior. They drove the pseudo-rationalist line. I do think there is a toxic culture in rationalism, but I tend to blame it on neoliberal economic reductionism, or libertarianism. I don't think rationalism per se is at the root of it, pseudo-rationalism, what would that even be? purported rationalism but actually.. over-arching asocialism? self interest? Anyway, I saw religiosity as…

David Hume is an empiricist. Noam Chomsky is more of rationalist.

LessWrong-rationalism is just crackpottery.

This brings to mind a review of Stephen Hicks “Explaining Postmodernism”. In the book he contrasts postmodernism with objectivism: postmodernists are irrational while objectivists are rational. And once you look long enough at the comparison tables you realize that there is no philosophy there; it’s just “bad thing” v.s. “good thing”.

Kind of like “rationalism”, that obvious good thing. Who wouldn’t want to be rational? What’s our philosophy? Uh, to be rational? To be for good things and against bad things?

Hence your indignation at putting pseudo in front of that word: how could one possibly object to something called rationalism? Hello, it’s in the name—rationalism! It’s about being rational. What more do you want, Jack?

“Per se”...

And nice touch with the but-religion-though. That was a zinger.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#138

Post by closeparen »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #72
closeparen wrote: post #40

>77. If you haven’t figured things out sexually, remember that there isn’t a deadline. If somebody is making you feel like there is, consider the possibility that they aren’t your pal. What do you think this means?

I think it could mean at least two things. 1. If someone is pressuring you to sleep with them and you're not sure whether you want to, they're not your friend. 2. If someone is harassing you because you're still a virgin, they're not your friend. [Edit: It's in the relationships section. So I guess it means "If things aren't great yet in the bedroom, and someone's making you feel inadequate because of that, the someo…

#1 is interesting. Does it imply malicious intent towards a romantic partner, if you would break off the relationship over a lack of sex? Or imply that you might?

Seems to me like misaligned desires are more unfortunate than evil.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#139

Post by kzrdude »

NortySpock wrote: post #24

I think the compassion section has the most wisdom in it, especially the reasoning behind the recommendation: 82. Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them. 83. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out. 84. If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in yo…

Thanks. The list started out so materialistic I quickly lost interest.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#140

Post by amelius »

grecy wrote: post #135
amelius wrote: post #104

> If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking. I don't agree. Use a virtual desktop instead and switch workspaces with a keyboard shortcut. I'm currently using 9 workspaces, and monitors couldn't ever beat that UX.

I'll disagree with you - the value of 2 or more monitors comes when you want to simply have more stuff on screen at the same time so you can compare / check / whatever. I.e. you can have a spreadsheet on one monitor, and the results of a bunch of terminal windows on another, and be typing out an email about those two things on another. You can continue to type the email while reading the spreadsheet and checking the…

A simple solution to that is simply copy the stuff you want to process into your clipboard, and pasting it into the document you want to edit, and then edit out all the stuff you don't need or want to change.

I'm personally not in that kind of situation very often. And switching workspaces is faster for me than turning my head to another screen.

An added benefit is that my window manager always knows what workspace I'm looking at. With multiple monitors, your computer doesn't know that, and so keyboard focus becomes a problem, e.g. finding what is currently "in focus" takes more time, finding where your mouse cursor is, etc.

Finally, my setup is the same everywhere I go (at home, at work, on a laptop, etc.) since I only use one physical monitor. I think this is a huge advantage too.

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